The fires had been preceded by explosions, the guard at the gate told him. But Cardinal Brownpony, now Pope Amen II, was not dead. He had only fled the city along with most of the Curia. Gone where? The guard could not say. Most of Mayor Dion's brigade had ridden south on the papal highway, leaving a few men, with part of the Yellow Guard, to train the civilian militia in the fort the spooks had built. Several cardinals had taken refuge there. Perhaps the Holy Father had gone with Dion. The Texark spy had disappeared from the jail, and the guard reckoned there must have been as many as forty infiltrators to accomplish the jailbreak and blow up the Palace. "These bastards have been living among us for years—settlers from Texark. Most of them pretended to be fugitives."
    The Nomads had returned to the Plains, he told Nimmy, and perhaps the Pope was with them, instead.
    Blacktooth hurried first to Aberlott's. A note on the door said, "Gone to the fort. Help yourself." Blacktooth tried the latch. This time it was unlocked. Judging by the mess on the floor and the overturned furniture, someone had already helped himself, or else the student had been dragged to the fort after resisting.
    He went to SEEC. The building was deserted, except for the covert wing. When he tried to enter there, he was quickly ejected. He went to Saint John-in-Exile. Only a curate was present. He told Blacktooth that the new Pope, after escaping from the burning building, had left the city in a coach belonging to the Grasshopper sharf, but they had indeed followed Dion south.
    "Did the coach have 'I set fires' painted on the side?"
    "Is that what it said? It was ancient English, I think."
    Bråm was going to take charge of a shipment of guns, Nimmy thought. He started walking to the fort. On the way, he was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged to the fort. It was Ulad, who would not believe that he was going there of his own free will.
    "You know I am a servant of Cardinal, uh, Pope Amen Two," he protested.
    "If you still were, you would be with him. You are a soldier now, piss-robe," the giant said. "You are going to fight for the Holy City."
    Holy City? Did he mean New Rome or New Jerusalem?
    "Will I get to see Ædrea?"
    "Not likely," growled the hulk.
    Nimmy stopped struggling, but Ulad kept his long slender hand around his neck as they walked.
    
     
    
    
    
CHAPTER 22
     
     Let a good pound weight of bread suffice for the day, whether there be only one meal or both dinner and supper.
     — Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 39
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
E
LIA BROWNPONY—NOW POPE AMEN II—MISSED his Grasshopper interpreter; no one had seen Nimmy since the election. The new Pope was reluctant to believe that Blacktooth had deserted him; he had left messages with cardinals who remained in Valana. Now he rode with Sharfs Oxsho and Demon Light Bråm in Bråm’s coach, while several cardinals came along behind, some in coaches, some on horseback. Wooshin, who was not fluent in any Nomad dialect, rode with the Pope's driver. Inside the coach, the young Wilddog sharf fawned on his Pontiff, somewhat to his Pontiff's annoyance, because Bråm was still calling him "Red Beard," and every time Oxsho said "Your Holiness" or "Holy Father," the Grasshopper sharf grew surly. Bråm mentioned Esitt Loyte more often than seemed polite. Oxsho argued that the spy had been caught before he could learn much more than the identities of the participants in the war council.
    
     "And that's too much," Eltür snapped. "Once the Hannegan knows we have allies in the east, he will be less likely to send forces across the Great River. Isn't that so, Red Beard?"
    Brownpony had been staring out the window at the scenery as if in deep reverie. Eltür was forced to repeat the question. Oxsho rephrased it in the Wilddog dialect, but Brownpony's response was indirect.
    "The attack on the Palace was a complete surprise to me. I was too confused to think clearly for an hour or two. The agents who broke Loyte out of jail must have taken him straight to the telegraph terminal. We should have thought of that immediately and sent forces to capture it before he could get a message out. Now it will be captured in due course, but too late."
    "So the Hannegan's forces will not cross the Great River!"
    "We can't know that until you try to arrange a cease-fire, Sharf Bråm."
    "You expect me to play the coward, Red Beard?"
    "Of course not! You can seem unwilling. Let him know that Holy Madness demands it of you, that you would be delighted to resume hostilities if Texark turns you down."
    Brownpony had the uneasy feeling that Eltür blamed him for twin Hultor's self-destructive behavior, but this feeling probably arose out of Father Steps-on-Snake's opinion that Hultor's murderous raid was meant to send a message to the cardinal who pampered Wilddog Christians and left the Grasshopper out of his councils.
    "Your tribes and your warriors, and you yourself, Sharf Bråm, are the most powerful force we have against the Hannegan."
    Eltür had trouble understanding. Oxsho tried to shift the dialect to Grasshopper, but the result was less than satisfactory.
    "We are not your force, Red Beard," said the sharf.
    
    They passed a dozen armed men from New Jerusalem along the way. The papal highway had been seized by, and was being patrolled by, Dion's forces. The guard drew itself up into formation and saluted as the Pope passed by. Soon they came to their destination. The road to Shard's place was no longer just a path through the bushes leading to Scarecrow Alley. Magister Dion's men were fast builders. The brush had been cleared. Fifty yards from the papal highway, a log barricade had been erected, and twin guardhouses flanked the improved road. A cloud of dust raised by men and horses hovered over the area. The ramshackle houses of the gleps had been razed. Barracks and other log buildings replaced them. Two trains of wagons were loaded and stood ready to move out, while the dust of a third train heading south was still visible—Önmu Kun, Brownpony thought.
    Amen II was quickly surrounded by his Curia when he descended from Eltür's coach, and his leave-taking from the Nomad sharfs was perfunctory and less than cordial. Each of them was met by a band of warriors from his horde, and they were ready to move out within the hour. The secrets of the Suckamints were no longer secret, and the colony now was clearly at war.
    The Mayor strode up to the group of cardinals, genuflected with military precision to the figure in white, and brushed the Pope's ring with his lips. He answered questions before they were asked.
    "The telegraph station has been captured. According to the prisoners we took, Loyte had already been there and gone. Outlaw forces ambushed a cavalry troop in the outlaw lands. The ruffian you sent me brought over a hundred men to us, and they took no prisoners. Our light horse are riding hard toward the second station, and they are passing Jackrabbit guerrillas on their way to join us. Now what of our allies in the East?"
    "Well, word has not reached them yet about what's happening here." Brownpony shrugged. "So we'll not know for some time." He gestured toward the mountains. "Is the way open to us?"
    "Of course, Holy Father. The buildings are all of logs, but new, and it is your third Rome as long as you wish it to be." He beckoned to a young man with such long legs and short arms that one might have considered him a glep, except that Dion introduced him as his son, and he was both well-mannered and handsome.
    "Slojon will be your guide as long as you need one. He will be in charge of my office while I am with the army."
    The young man bowed and squinted closely at the Pope's ring without actually kissing it.
    Brownpony continued to peer out at the scenery as if in deep thought while they rode upward into the mountains in a coach formerly belonging to the Mayor, who had ordered the door panels repainted with the papal tiara and the keys. This time Wooshin rode with him inside the coach, along with Dion's Slojon, and Cardinals Hilan Bleze and Mother Iridia Silentia. With the latter, he had enjoyed a distant but enduring acquaintance, and she had thanked him for concurring in the first Amen's choosing her for the cardinalate. Brownpony admitted that he had in fact done no such thing, but he now applauded her appointment after the fact.
    During the journey into the mountains, she brought up the subject of Ædrea's captivity, but Brownpony's respiratory weakness returned to him as they gained altitude, and he was unable to say anything to support her in her petition to Dion's Slojon, except to smile at her and gesture in the young man's direction. The gesture could have meant whatever each of them might want it to mean. Hilan Bleze changed the subject to curial matters.
    By the time they arrived in the heart of the community, Pope Amen II needed to be carried by sedan chair to his new quarters. He asked the Secretary of State to send an urgent message to Blacktooth in Valana for a copy of a recipe by the Venerable Boedullus. Then he collapsed in a feather bed and slept for sixteen hours. Outside the building was a disappointed crowd of the faithful among these normal-looking "Children of the Pope," who had assembled in the hope of receiving the Apostolic Benediction from their special father. Secretary Hilan Cardinal Bleze blessed them himself, and told them to come back tomorrow.
    
    Corporal Blacktooth St. George never received his Pontiff's urgent message, for when it arrived in Valana, it was routed to the fort and delivered to his commander, Major Elswitch J. Cleaver, who signed a receipt for it in Blacktooth's absence, but somehow forgot to give it to him later. He called Chuntar Cardinal Hadala's attention to the message. The cardinal opened and read it.
    "Our new Holy Father must have become a gourmand since his election," said Hadala with a hint of contempt in his tone. "It's only a request for a recipe by a cook named Boedullus."
    "Could it be a coded message?" suggested the florid major.
    "I think not. If Corporal Blacktooth had any secret information, the Pope would just summon him directly."
    "Well, I heard that His Holiness had sent for him."
    "Where did you hear that?" the cardinal asked sharply.
    "A rumor. He may have started it himself, but somebody said it came from Cardinal Nauwhat."
    "Damn it! I'll have a talk with Sorely. You know Mayor Dion doesn't want that monk in New Jerusalem. There is his affair with that suspect girl, and the Pope, after all, is now too dependent on the Mayor to risk offending him. I'm sure that's why Elia hasn't summoned him. Besides, he won't need a Nomad interpreter in New Jerusalem, even if—" He broke off.
    The Major looked at him and wondered if the distinction between interpreter and translator had stopped his line of thinking. As » to confirm this, Hadala continued:
    "Besides, we are going to need someone to handle correspondence between ourselves and the Nomad sharfs. Sorely will surely need him too, for the same reason. That's why we proposed his promotion to corporal, and we want to keep him reasonably satisfied. I doubt any rumor about his going back into Brownpony's, uh, the Pope's service came from Nauwhat."
    "Well, I can keep him busy until you need him," said Gleaver. "Right now, the police have him. And then he's on leave until after the funeral tomorrow."
    "Better have him watched, lest he make a run for it. He can't be trusted. Brownpony learned that. And don't assign him duty in the city. He's probably too squeamish to shoot traitors."
    
    A cleaning woman, who came on Mondays to scrub the former Pope's clothing, dishes, and floor, usually turned away when she saw his I PRAY—GO AWAY sign in place, but on the Monday in question, a brown stain from something that had leaked out under the door caught her attention. She knocked timidly, but there was no answer. She tried the latch, and the door swung inward. It was a quiet morning, and her scream echoed from the opposite hillside. A farmer and two shepherds responded. The decapitated body of Amen Specklebird had fallen sideways from the prie-dieu where he had obviously been kneeling before his altar when his killer struck. His head had bounced off the wall and rolled under a table. He had been dead at least two days.
    The manner of his death—by a single horizontal stroke of a sword—caused immediate suspicion to fall on the Yellow Guard, but neither Gai-See nor Woosoh-Loh had left the fort during the week of the murder, and the others, including Wooshin, had accompanied Pope Amen II to New Jerusalem.
    Blacktooth had been one of the last people to see Pope Amen Specklebird alive, and the police questioned him closely, but in the presence of his lawyer-advocate, a priest appointed by one of the cardinals to look out for his interests. As it turned out, the police did not suspect him, but his advocate was of some help in explaining the religious relationship that developed between the Leibowitzian monk and the retired Pope during their nine days of silent prayer in Amen's residence just days before his murder. Nimmy blamed himself. He had failed to act on his intuition at the time of their parting: the feeling which had come to him that Specklebird was in imminent danger. He was distracted from this worry when Ulad had grabbed him by the neck and drafted him into the militia, but he had felt certainty that Specklebird would ignore a warning anyway.
    The police were unconcerned by his guilty feelings; they had as yet no suspects, although the population of the city was being carefully screened, and any citizen who could not offer proof of his place of birth was sent to a detention camp adjacent to the fort. Fifteen known participants in the terrorist uprising had already been shot. The death sword could as plausibly have been a well-sharpened cavalry saber as one of the beautiful blades of the Asian warriors. Nimmy was allowed to go in peace, and his leave was extended to include the time of the old man's funeral. He wanted to run away to New Jerusalem, but he would surely be caught, and Brownpony might not welcome him if he did escape.
    Amen Specklebird lay in state, his body illuminated by many candles on the high catafalque in the Cathedral of Saint John-in-Exile, and all the faithful who remained in Valana after the insurgency, the purge, and the flight came now to pay their respects and to pass in a slow line to view the body. There was less pomp and grandeur than if he had died as a reigning pontiff, and a certain amount of chaos, but that was more a result of the exodus to New Jerusalem than it was of his resignation and the previous transfer of papal power to Cardinal Brownpony. Investigators found, for example, that no official had taken from the old man the signet of his fisherman's ring and the two seals (one for wax, one for lead) of office upon his resignation; these seals were normally seized and broken by the Cardinal High Chamberlain during the interregnum after the death of the Pope. Had they been used after Brownpony had ascended? The ring was removed from his finger after death, but militiamen searched his home and found no seals. Stolen by his killer? These and other irregularities cast doubt upon many documents that emerged from the Specklebird pontificate, especially in cases where living witnesses could not be located.
    After joining the slow line and awaiting his turn, Blacktooth passed the catafalque. He noticed that the undertaker had done a good job of concealing the fact that the head had been severed from the body, but otherwise the corpse looked more like a pope than Specklebird had ever looked while alive. The wild white hair was carefully combed, the deeper creases in his face were caulked, and his black skin lightened somewhat with a brown powder. The stink of the corpse, however, had begun to penetrate the background odors of incense in the Church. Nimmy choked with tears and hurried into the square.
    There was a thin crowd. Many of Amen Specklebird's admirers had been fanatically devoted to the old holy man, and enough of them disputed the validity of his resignation, and therefore the validity of Brownpony's election, that some were heard to suggest that Brownpony himself had arranged the old man's murder in order to secure himself in office. Nimmy overheard two hill-dwellers giving voice to this theory, and he shouted at them, "You stupid oafs! That's exactly what Texark wants you to believe."
    The men took umbrage, and Nimmy let himself be goaded into a fight. He won the fight, but lost self-respect, although he was now wearing the green uniform of a militiaman and not his brown monk's robe. He felt pats on the back, however, and heard cheers from Valanans who knew and liked the new Pope.
    
    By the time of the funeral on the following day, Blacktooth smelled the stink of the corpse even through the haze of pinon pine incense that pervaded the cathedral; later witnesses for the cause of canonizing Pope Amen I would testify of the heavenly perfume exhaled by the body. He knew all about the olfactory miracles performed by saintly corpses; Saint Leibowitz had smelled like ambrosial barbecue, his followers said. He too now tried to smell the miraculous perfume of Amen Specklebird, but his piety perhaps had been diminished by his sins, for the rotten odor persisted.
    Suddenly, however, the body of Amen Specklebird sat up on the catafalque and pointed straight at Blacktooth. The whiskers of the cougar twitched, and fangs were bared. Nimmy closed his eyes to squeeze the tears out of them. When he opened them again, the corpse lay back down and never moved during the high funeral Mass, concelebrated by the six cardinals who had stayed in the region.
    
    The purge of Valana's people continued, even during the funeral. When Nimmy emerged from the Church, he learned that the number of suspected conspirators who had been shot had risen to eighteen,  and more than thirty citizens were imprisoned in the stockade next to the fort. Anyone unable to furnish proof of his place of birth, either by document or through testimony of witnesses, would, if no one appeared to testify of his participation in the terror, be sent into permanent exile. Any captive with an enemy or two in the city could expect a denunciation and testimony leading to his execution. Old scores were settled thus. The court trying the cases was neither civil nor ecclesiastical, but military. Nimmy guessed that most of the real villains had fled the city immediately after the crime, but the trials provided an outlet for revenge. In the murder of Amen Specklebird, however, the police had no suspects.
    When Valana had been pacified and purged, there was no talk of disbanding the militia. That Chuntar Cardinal Hadala and his New Jerusalem officers had their own plan of battle in the war became clear when orders were posted to prepare the combined forces to move out from the city by the first of the month, when the moon was full. Messengers had been sent out to the Wilddog, and Sharf Oxsho replied by sending three guides and more than a hundred horses for those citizen soldiers of Valana who had none of their own. The guides were assigned to Blacktooth for interpretation. He found them ignorant of the fact that they were directly following the orders of Chuntar Hadala, Sorely Nauwhat, and Elswitch Gleaver instead of the Pope. He was afraid to mention it, because Nauwhat had always been close to Brownpony. Valanans were skeptical and complained a lot about leaving the vicinity of the city for a move away from the mountains, but there was as yet no talk of rebellion.
    Then, on the first of July, when the militia was preparing to ride east with fourteen wagonloads of arms, a messenger of the Papal Guard rode into Valana and posted on the door of the Cathedral and the wall of the Papal Palace an eight-page document with the papal seal, then proceeded to the fort and posted another copy on the orderly room wall.
    Its heading was thus: Amen II Episcopus Romae servus servorum del, omnibus electis domini ipsis fidelibus in una Ecclesia vera Catholica atque Apostolica credentibus, qui subsunt nobis secundum Petrum unicum pastorem . . .
    Blacktooth knew historians would call it by the first words of the text, Scitote Tyrannum, which followed. Newly returned after dark to the fort from furlough, he read by torchlight the first few paragraphs on the wall:
    
    Amen II, Bishop of Rome, servant of the servants of God, to all the faithful believers in the one true Church, Catholic and Apostolic, to these chosen ones of the Lord, who are subject to Us as to Peter, the only shepherd appointed by Christ to become the head of His mystical body, sends greetings and the Apostolic Benediction.
    YOU SHALL KNOW THAT THE TYRANT Filpeo of Texark [Tyrannum Phillipum Texarkanae] together with his uncle, the former Cardinal Archbishop of the City of Hannegans [Civitatis Hanneganensis], having by their own acts [ipso facto] been excommunicated, as affirmed by Our predecessor of holy memory, Amen I, are hereby declared by Us to be enemies of God and His Holy Church, are cursed, condemned, cast out, cut off from the Body of Christ, apart from which there is no salvation. For crimes against humanity and the Church, including his own people and their clergy, We declare Filpeo Harq deposed from the office of Mayor; We absolve his former subjects from all oaths of obedience to him, We urge them to reconstitute a legitimate government in his place, and We enjoin all Christians against serving or obeying him. As long as the tyrant remains in power, We encourage all Christian rulers of peoples throughout the continent to take up arms against him. They shall receive through Our venerable Brethren, their own Bishops, Our blessing upon their armies and their arms.
    Moreover, whosoever among the faithful is fit to bear arms shall, upon undertaking to wage righteous war against this heretical tyrant and his uncle, receive from Us through his confessor a plenary indulgence for all his sins and remission of all temporal punishment which may be due either in this world or in Purgatory. Upon confession, his only penance shall be to wage war against the forces of the imperial tyrant, and should he die in battle, We, who hold the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, shall unlock the gate thereof that he may enter into the holy Presence . . .
    
    A crusade!
    The word itself was not used, and had not been used since the twenty-third century, but all the characteristics were there. The Pope spoke of heroes marching behind a crucifer into battle. War was to be waged under the sign of the cross and the banner of the papacy. The Church in Hannegan City was laid under interdict. Ecclesiastical courts were ordered closed. Priests were forbidden to say Mass. All sacraments except last rites were withheld. Clergy and laity who ignored the interdict were automatically excommunicated. The sentence did not extend to the Province, except to those parishes which had refused obedience to Brownpony's former Vicariate and remained tied to the Hannegan City Archdiocese.
    Upon Urion Benefez himself the Pope pronounced a sentence of "Anathema, from which he can be absolved only by the Roman Pontiff and at the point of death."
    There was more, but Blacktooth left the furious document and returned to the barracks by full moonlight. They would be moving out tomorrow. His astonishment was due to the fact that such language came from his former employer, a man slow to anger.
    "Why astonished?" Aberlott asked him. "Haven't you heard of a crusade before?"
     "Yes, but not since the twenty-third century, and that one of the least holy wars ever fought. The bull or whatever it's called just doesn't sound like Cardinal Brownpony."
    "Well, it isn't Cardinal Brownpony. It's Pope Amen II. Maybe his voice changed when it dropped on him."
    "It sounds more like Domidomi Cardinal Hoydok."
    Aberlott pondered for a moment. "And why not? Hoydok wouldn't dare go back to Hannegan City. He's not here. So he must be with the Pope. And who could better write a letter to anger the Mayor and the Archbishop? He's probably the Pope's secretary for urban affairs by now."
    Nimmy's urge to run away to New Jerusalem had not entirely disappeared, because of Ædrea, but it had been diminished in urgency by the tone of the bull Scitote Tyrannum. He was not sure that he wanted to work for its author.
    
    Early the following morning, most of the remaining population of Valana turned out to watch its young men ride off toward the Plains and to war under command of the spooks of New Jerusalem. Minor clergy, who had read Scitote Tyrannum, had donned vestments and now fell in with the riders. A priest bearing a crucifix marched ahead of Major Cleaver's horse. Blacktooth suspected that the support of clergy had been arranged by one of the cardinals. The show of religion in support of the militia prevented a public display of hostility toward the alien commanders who were leading local soldiery.
    The sun was approaching the zenith when Cleaver called a halt for food, water, and a brief rest. When the formation fell in again, Ulad sent Blacktooth to the head of the column as interpreter. Only now that they were safely out of civilian earshot was Cleaver prepared to disclose the planned route to his Nomad guides. Even so, the major ordered that the details be kept secret from the men and from Nomads of either horde they might encounter during the journey.
    "From here we ride southeast until we reach the Kensau River. We'll follow the river until it turns northeast, then continue east-southeast until we pick it up again at some of the old dams near Tulse, and on until we're within half-a-day's ride from the Texark patrol road. At that point we reconnoiter, and send a patrol to infiltrate the Watchitah."
    Blacktooth translated for the Nomad scouts, and Cleaver continued:
    "The moon should be full again about the time we arrive. Our brothers beyond the border there can arrange incidents to distract the patrols while we try to drive the wagons past the border at night. With luck, we can arm the Valley people without a fight. If we have to fight to get them in, it will mean Hannegan has seen us coming. That means secrecy. Don't talk to any Nomads we meet about where we are going."
    The Nomad warriors nodded their understanding, but Blacktooth heard them talking later about the troop being observed by motherless ones, who regularly sold news of Grasshopper movements to Texark agents. There would be a blue moon on the last day of July. By day or by night, a convoy of wagons escorted by light-horse infantry traveling east-southeast across the Plains toward Watchit-Ol'zarkia would not go unobserved. Nimmy and the Nomads expected a fight, but only Nimmy was committed to it, and his Ædrea was in jail.
    The whole scheme seemed crazy. A week after the departure from Valana, Sorely Nauwhat caught up with them. He was weary from fast riding and immediately made a bed in one of the wagons. The horse he had been riding bore a brand which identified it as belonging to one of the Nomad messenger families, so it was clear that he had changed horses several times in catching up with them. Why Nauwhat? What was so important about this expedition that the head of SEEC joined the command? Previous to his appearance, Blacktooth had suspected that this feckless sortie of the Valanan militia was entirely Chuntar Hadala's project, and, impressed against his will, he wanted to desert. But Nauwhat had been Brownpony's closest friend and supporter in the Curia, and his presence seemed to confirm the legitimacy if not the sanity of the mission. Gai-See and Woosoh-Loh, now sergeants, had come with the expedition, and their loyalty to Brownpony was beyond suspicion. There would be no deserters with them looking on.
    One morning early in mid-July, while passing the cardinals' tent, he overheard a murmur of conversation between these princes of the Church.
    ". . . peace, yes, but the peace of Christ!" Hadala was saying.
    "Sure, Brownpony loves peace," Brownpony's friend answered. "He loves it so much he doesn't care who he kills to get it."
    Blacktooth hurried away, but perhaps not before being seen; Sorely Nauwhat began avoiding him immediately afterward.
    O Santa Librada! Freedom is not visible!
    Pray for us!
    That night he dreamed of a woman, a casualty of war. She was half buried in a hillside pocked by cannon fire.
    Blood drained slowly in a thick stream from a hole at the edge of her breast. Half her body and her right arm was swallowed up by the landslide, while her left arm lay free and limp among the stones in sand. He touched her arm and felt for a pulse. He could find none, but the wound in her side continued to bleed. The flow of blood continued. It ran into the sand and between the stones and continued to run ten feet down the slide. He tore off a piece of his robe and tried to stanch the flow, but even after leaving it there while he counted to a thousand, the wound bled unchecked. He began trying to dig her out, but his work moved a critical stone, caused her body to shift, and caused several rocks to roll from above, as if the landslide had not finished its work.
    Soon it became apparent that the flow of blood was increasing, until he saw that the blood could no longer be her blood but was coming through her from somewhere deep within the collapsed hill. But the blood was keeping her alive. After a while, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
    For a moment, she was Ædrea. She raised her left hand toward his face, and he saw a torn palm with more blood.
    "Tengo ojos, no me miren.
    "Tengo manos, no me tapen."
    She was Santa Librada now, deposed from the cross.
    He backed away in fear. She hissed and turned red and tried to bite him. She was the bride of Brownpony, the Buzzard of Battle. A shadow fell over him, and he looked up. There stood Elia Brownpony in white vestments and wearing the tiara. He sprinkled the woman with holy water, and she shrieked in agony.
    Blacktooth always had trouble sleeping under the stars.
    
     
    
    
CHAPTER 23
     
     Indeed at all seasons let the hour, whether for supper or for dinner, be so arranged that everything will be done by daylight.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 41
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
T
HE EMPEROR WAS A PART-TIME SCHOLAR.  With the help of a young political-science professor who was also a popular author, Filpeo Harq had written a book. It was a book Brownpony not surprisingly had sent to the Holy Office as soon as he saw it. The Holy Office duly added it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, although it bore the imprimatur of the Cardinal Archbishop of Texark, and carried an introduction by a monk of Saint Leibowitz, who, unfortunately for his career, happened to agree with the Imperial Mayor that the restoration of the Magna Civitas could only be accomplished by secular science and industry under the protection of a secular state against the resistance and hostility of religion. It was such a self-evidently wicked book that the Holy Office wrote neither an attack nor a commentary; the work was filed under "Anticlericalism." Its author was already so thoroughly anathematized that further curses from eternal Rome would seem petty.
    
     But Filpeo was a scholar, and among other things, he had been able to restore several ancient pieces of music, including one of regional origin which seemed well suited to become the new national anthem for the Empire, and he published it in his book. The tune was now well known. Its ancient words were English, but the Ol'zark translation scanned well enough. It began: "The eyes of Texark are upon you." The Mayor wanted his subjects to feel well watched.
    Every priest in the Empire who read the crusading bull Scitote Tyrannum aloud from the pulpit or who publicly observed the interdict imposed on the Texark Church by the Brownpony papacy—there were only thirteen of them—was arrested and charged with sedition. Two bishops who had suspended Masses and confessions in their dioceses in obedience to the bull joined the priests in jail. In six out of seven parishes throughout the Empire, however, the religious life went on as if Amen II had never spoken. After so many decades of a papacy in exile, the people of Hannegan City and even New Rome had lost sight of the Pope as a real player in their perceived world. He was distant, and his anger was like that of a player on the stage, except that the people only read the reviews without seeing the play. The communications media—mostly paper since the telegraph line to the west was down—kept them informed, but the media were deferentially kind to the relatively absolute ruler of the state.
    Scitote Tyrannum, therefore—however binding it might be in Heaven—was the least of Filpeo's worries on Earth. The Antipope's forces were going to march, and the Antipope had used the treasures of the Church to arm the wild Nomads with superior weapons to be used against civilization. Filpeo always spoke of him as Antipope, although there was no competing Pope. Filpeo stood for the renewal of the Magna Civitas, and Brownpony the Antipope opposed it. It was that simple, from the Hannegan's point of view. Brownpony was the past waging war against the future. He armed the barbarians and would soon send them against civilization's holy places, if not against the City of Hannegans itself. Filpeo was confident he could defend the city until the new firearms were delivered, and after that his forces would be able to drive the spooks back to the Suckamints and herd the Jackrabbit into the southwest desert, push the Wilddog north of the Misery, and herd the Grasshopper into formerly Wilddog lands, so that the two northern hordes would be forced to fight each other for living space.
    The Imperial Mayor hoped to win the Nomad outlaws over to his side, and he sent an ex-pirate to recruit them. Admiral e'Fondolai promised them Grasshopper lands in the aftermath of victory. Filpeo was amused to hear of it at first, but after giving the matter some thought, he decided that he would, if possible, honor the promise Carpy had so rashly made. If the motherless ones could marry farm women and be assigned enough land, they could raise fully domesticated cattle and live in fixed homes, and trade with the farmers and the cities. In such circumstances, they would not develop a society anything like the hordes. Very likely the taboo against capturing wild horses could not survive without the Weejus to enforce it, and the motherless ones, once they settled down, were not likely to restore the matrilineal inheritance of wild Nomads. They would acquire property and fight to defend it. In the Mayor's dream, in the wake of his certain victory, the Grasshopper and the Wilddog and the motherless ones would each be at war against the others, and the Jackrabbit would straggle back out of the desert to be arrested and put to work repairing war-damaged properties.
    Filpeo was well pleased with his admiral, but not his general.
    When General Goldæm went to the university and demanded Thon Hilbert's cooperation in teaching the troops how to contaminate wells in the Province and infect cattle with the new diseases, Thon Hilbert refused. General Goldæm went to the War Office and got him inducted into the Texark Army as a private. Then he ordered him to teach. Hilbert cursed the general personally, then cursed his Monarch. The general had the professor put in jail for sedition. The Hannegan summoned the general to his quarters, fired him, and retired him at half pay. He then put Admiral e'Fondolai, alias Carpios Robbery, in charge of the project. Because Hilbert's assistant at the university agreed to teach the military whatever was required, Hilbert remained in jail, pending an apology to the Hannegan. The apology was not immediately forthcoming.
    Three months after he fired General Goldæm, Filpeo watched with delight as Admiral e'Fondalai's model strike force, led by Carpios himself on horseback, marched past his reviewing stand. The Imperial Mayor had never seen such a burly gang of cutthroats outside of a prison yard. They were armed with the several dozen repeating arms which had already been delivered by the gunsmiths, which was quite an investment, and one which Filpeo had been reluctant to make at first. Carpios made the point that for an effective assault force, firepower was everything, so the Emperor placed his most advanced weaponry in the hands of ruffians dressed in wolfskins and chewed leather. He watched them march under a banner that depicted a bird being roasted on a spit over a fire; the bird was branded with both the Weejus symbol for the Buzzard of Battle and with a pair of crossed keys. Filpeo laughed aloud at the sacrilege, called the old pirate back to the stand, and awarded him the ancient title of "Vaquero Supreme of the Plains," which had been claimed by the Hannegans since the time of their Nomad roots, but which dropped out of use after Hannegan IV fell off his horse.
    Part of Filpeo's delight was at Carpios’ expense, for the sight of the bearded pirate in admiral's white uniform riding at the head of three hundred bathless ruffians dressed in wilddog skins was hilarious. After the parade, Filpeo not only gave him the title of Vaquero but promoted him to field marshal—"so you can choose your own uniform" was the way the Emperor put it. But he made sure to let the old seaman know that when he finished the project, he would be made commander in chief of Texark forces. There was something oceanic about the Great Plains. The admiral sensed it too, and became enthusiastic about the wars that plainly lay ahead.
    There was no clear Texark military doctrine for Nomad warfare, not since Hannegan IV fell off his horse, and the admiral's job was quickly to develop such a doctrine. The Plains resembled the ocean in that there was nowhere to hide, and no naturally defensive terrain in which to take refuge. Most land west of the last timber was equally accessible from all directions, and therefore as inhospitable as the storm-tossed sea. A cavalry battle there could be like an engagement between two ships of war—short, savage, and with only one surviving side.
    The admiral thrice visited Thon Hilbert in jail. He informed his ruler of the visits, and affirmed their obvious purpose; he promised an account of the ultimate outcome, but declined to give a running report. The jailer told Filpeo that during the admiral's third visit, they played Old Zark chess and talked about nothing but the game. What came of the meetings was also nothing, but Carpy wanted the Mayor to let the professor go anyway. Filpeo refused. He had no use for an apology, but apology or no apology, Hilbert would stay in jail until the university's cooperation with the military was satisfactory and assured.
    "Thon Hilbert's disease is hindering them in the South," a field commander told him. "A few cases have appeared among Brownpony's armies, but it is becoming endemic only in the Province. Because of it, the spooks and the Jackrabbit rebels are exhausting their military energy for the time being. We can soon launch a counterattack."
    "And no cases of the disease have appeared among our troops?
    "No, as I told you, as long as they drink Hilbert's preventative every day. It tastes bad, and they don't like it. But there is a standing order than any trooper who catches Hilbert's disease shall be immediately shot. To prevent further contagion is the stated reason."
    The Mayor shifted restlessly. "That sounds unnecessarily cruel."
     "Well, if carried out, of course. The threat is necessary to prevent contagion; it is only meant to insure the men drink the preventative."
    
    The War Dog was a constellation in the Nomad night, but he was also the mythical pet of the Lord Empty Sky. That ancient hero had led even wilddogs into battle against the army of the Farmer King. Nomads had always sent their dogs against the enemy whenever practical, but Empty Sky's battle was unique in that his dogs were wild-dogs, and in that their elder Weejus bitches had elected Empty Sky to be sharf of the Horde of Wilddogs, while his sister thought the dogs were merely being loyal to the Qæsach dri Vørdar to whom all loyalty was due. The fact that the Horde of Wilddogs had elected him as its own rival to the human Wilddog sharf suggested that the office was usually held by a dog. That this dog had an equal claim on human Wilddog loyalty and young Wilddog women was a Grasshopper conceit. It was a conceit that sometimes led to fighting between rival bands of drovers of the northern hordes.
    But the War Dog was still a Nomad mythic reality, and Swimming Elk had begun his reign as sharf by ordering a return to the old practice of keeping attack dogs trained to accompany horsemen into battle against an unmounted enemy, and he awarded a monopoly on the training of war dogs to the family of his brother's wife. Which is a Nomad way of saying that he gave the job to a brother-in-law, Goat-Wind by name, who happened to be good at it. Goat-Wind persuaded all the adolescents of his extended family to organize parties for raiding lairs of wild bitches and stealing their puppies. He turned the management of puppy collections over to his sister, with an injunction against killing bitches except in self-defense, and another against taking pups younger than six weeks.
    A Weejus minority held that stealing wild puppies was an offense like stealing wild colts, but Eltür's sister asked them scornfully, "Who are we offending? The Høngin Fujæ Vurn is not the Wild Bitch Woman. The dogs belong to Empty Sky, for whom the sharf speaks. We don't even punish the motherless ones for roasting wild puppy."
    Demon Light wanted results within two months, so Goat-Wind collected every available dog with any experience at all as a working companion to a horseman. Even now in late July results were apparent. Thirty-five willing warriors had been given thirty-five dogs to work with, and eighty-one younger dogs were already in school.
    There was no way to test dogs in the occasional skirmishes with Texark cavalry, for dogs could never effectively join one side in an encounter between mutually mounted war bands. The dogs could participate in a cavalry attack on infantry, but since Nomad wars were usually ceremonial conflicts between hordes, there had been no reason since the time of Høngan Ös to bear the expense of feeding a large war pack—until Eltür began contemplating battle against the standing armies of the Hannegan. The spirit of the dog-man-horse war entity was still alive in the tribes, however, and Demon Light's attempt to awaken it was immediately popular. It added Empty Sky's blessing to his leadership. But any Nomad-speaking Texark agent—and there must have been at least one—who learned about the training of dogs for war would know that dogs were only for fighting unmounted armies like the defenders of Empire. They would be useful for incursions into Texark space.
    His brother Kindly Light, when he broke through Texark border defenses and rode all the way to New Rome, had needed dogs. With dogs, Hultor might have lost only half as many men, even if it cost him all the dogs. A dog was a lethal loyal weapon, once the man and the dog and the horse became melded into a single spirit, which was then merged into a spirit of a pack. Man became more horselike and doglike. Dog and horse became more human, and more like each other. It was a spiritual unity, but probably the only outsider to notice it as such was that old Christian shaman of the Wilddog, Father Ombroz, a man Eltür much admired, although he begrudged his influence on the Wilddog shamans. The epiphany of the dog-horse-man unity was, when experienced, a Nomad sacrament—according to Ombroz. Monsignor Sanual had called it "a bestial form of diabolic possession," a remark which Eltür found flattering.
    It was the issue of the War Dog that saved Chuntar Cardinal Hadala and his officers from death at the hands of a Grasshopper war party. The occasion of the issue being raised was a council called when the news of Hadala's invasion first came to the Grasshopper leadership. Demon Light became livid, and was quite ready to launch an immediate attack on the cardinal's forces. For negotiating purposes, it always behooved a Grasshopper sharf to take a harder line in council than he expected the grandmothers to approve. But it was his own sister who used the issue of the War Dog against him after Eltür proposed killing Hadala and anyone else who resisted a seizure of the militia's wagons.
    "It is a complete betrayal, my sister," said Demon Light before he yielded. "Brownpony's plan was for the Suckamint spooks to attack in the Province, and the eastern allies to strike at the other shore of the Great River. The Grasshopper was to keep the peace until Hannegan took the forces which now face us to the defense of his allies. Now here comes this army of farmer clowns out of Valana tramping toward Glep Valley with guns! How is Filpeo Harq not to notice them coming? Every motherless one south of here has seen them and tried to sell the information to Texark. The first one who tried probably got paid."
    "Yes, and I wonder," his sister said thoughtfully, "if the motherless one who told Texark about your war dogs was properly paid. And whether your dogs will affect Hannegan's temptation to weaken the forces that face us. No, I don't think Grasshopper justice demands killing the fools; it demands they turn back. You should let them choose: take their guns with them or surrender them to you. And that, my sharf, is the Weejus consensus."
    Demon Light let his battle fury subside, as it usually did in the face of the Weejus consensus, if no Bear Spirit objection arose. After the council, Bråm assembled a force of eighty warriors and led them south by east to intercept this mounted militia of townsmen from the mountains. His men had armed themselves with new five-shooters as well as traditional lances, but Eltür ordered ten repeating rifles brought along for killing officers at a distance if they met resistance from the townsmen.
    Then he took an action which changed the course of the war. He sent for Black Eyes, who had been captured during Hultor's raid. The man had been imprisoned by the Hannegan and had met Cardinal Brownpony in jail, but he was released months later to carry a message from Filpeo to his horde. Both Demon Light and the Emperor knew Black Eyes was a double agent, but as such he could be useful to both.
    "Tell your contacts about Hadala's expedition," said the sharf, "so they can mount a defense in that area. And tell them I told you to tell them. If they want to know why I let them know, explain that I want hostilities to cease between the Grasshopper and Texark."
    "The farmers will be glad to hear it," said Black Eyes with a snicker; he left camp immediately for the frontier.
    Demon Light was not really turning on his allies, because he was not convinced of his own complaint of betrayal by the Pope, for while Brownpony alone might be foolish enough to launch such a venture, Brownpony had good advisers on Nomad affairs. Some were sent to him by Holy Madness, Lord of the Hordes. And Eltür thought highly of one of the Pope's secretaries, the Nomadic interpreter monk Nyinden, who spoke Grasshopper so well. None of these counselors would allow Brownpony to believe that Chuntar Hadala's incursion into Nomad country was acceptable to the Grasshopper, even were it not militarily stupid on the face of it. When his initial berserk reaction to the news of the advent subsided, Demon Light expected his war party to be confronted—not by a force of official crusaders launched by a Pope, but by a motley parade put in motion by the lunacy of lesser men.
    
    When Brownpony first learned about Hadala's mission, he himself cried betrayal, and his anger was stirred against his successor in the Secretariat of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Concerns. The Pope could think of no reason why Sorely Nauwhat would betray him or lend support to a harebrained scheme to arm and assist such dubious allies as Hadala's flock of gleps in the Valley, at the cost of probable hardening by Texark of its western frontier. Hadala had gone crazy in the service of his flock, the Pope decided. He would think thus: If Brownpony can arm the Nomads, I can arm the real Children of the Pope—not the spooks in the Suckamints, but the gleps in the Watchitah and Ol'zarks. The Pope could understand Hadala's passion for his own people, but not Sorely Nauwhat's duplicity in the ridiculous undertaking.
    The possibility that his old friend Nauwhat had simply gone over to the enemy never occurred to Brownpony until it was put to him by Abraha Cardinal Deacon Linkono, the New Jerusalemite schoolteacher who was invited to join the Curia because he knew everyone in this nation now playing host to the papacy.
    "But what could Filpeo Harq possibly offer that would tempt Sorely Nauwhat to betray us?" Pope Amen II wanted to know.
    "The papacy perhaps?" the schoolteacher guessed.
    Stung by Linkono's speculation, Brownpony sent an immediate message to Valana ordering Cardinal Nauwhat and Brother St. George to appear before him. By including Blacktooth in his summons, the Pope hoped to alleviate suspicion in case Sorely really was guilty. Within two weeks, however, the messenger returned with the news that Blacktooth had gone with the Valanan Militia, and that Nauwhat had disappeared shortly after their departure. The news was very depressing to Brownpony. He called his Nomad messengers and instructed one of them to pursue Hadala's militia and order him to turn back. He deputized another as an Officer of the Curia to arrest Nauwhat on sight if found in Nomad country and to arrest Hadala if he disobeyed the order to retreat. He sent a third messenger to assure the Grasshopper sharf that Hadala's sortie was not authorized, for the Pope feared the wrath of Demon Light.
    The Nomad messenger-service families, both Wilddog and Grasshopper, had for decades enjoyed a monopoly on a High Plains relay parcel delivery between Valana and New Rome. They kept fixed camps, and for this un-Nomadic practice they were not admired within their hordes. Sneering warriors would ask to see their "vegetable patches." But they had made money, and they used it to buy horses from outsiders, thus freeing themselves from family obligations incurred by both buyer and seller when the seller was a Nomad mare woman. Brownpony had always used the relay families for communicating with the sharfs and the tribal chiefs. Now he used them for keeping in touch with the Qæsach dri Vørdar, and he was encouraging the families to establish relay stations north of the Misery River and well beyond the reach of Texark patrols. He had already sent messages toward the King of the Tenesi and several other rulers beyond the Great River, and he was awaiting news from that front.
    To New Jerusalem Brownpony had brought two Wilddog and two Grasshopper riders to open a branch office of the families' service. In the abrupt wake of Nauwhat's and Sorely's defection, he now found need for three of them. To one Grasshopper rider he gave a message for Demon Light. It "authorized" Bråm to exercise the papal warrant for the arrest of two princes of the Church in his territory with authorization to imprison them humanely. Forgetting for a moment that the Pope understood their dialect, this Grasshopper rider said to his kinsman, "Our sharf will surely appreciate these new powers in his own realm."
    "Your family must send us someone less sarcastic," Pope Amen said to him in half-decent Grasshopper. "You can pass your message on to the next Wilddog relay rider tomorrow. Then you can start riding home to tall-grass country. Your family can send us your replacement when you get there."
    He stopped looking at the man and spoke to the Wilddog rider. "You can be home tomorrow, and relay my message to Hadala from there. It will get to him quicker that way. We can't give arrest powers to a Wilddog in Grasshopper country. We do deputize you to arrest Nauwhat anywhere else you may find him. There will be a reward for him. Spread the word on that."
    He turned to the second Grasshopper. "You must chase Hadala all the way to Ol'zarkia if you need to. Give him a copy of the same message. If he's not already obeying it and coming home by the time you catch up with him, you can read aloud to his men paragraph seven. It excommunicates all Hadala's followers who do not disband and desert at once. Arm yourself, but try to get help from your sharf in making the arrest." He then looked pointedly at the maker of the sarcastic remark.
     "When you see a man you can't control about to take the law into his own hands, you might as well save yourself embarrassment and put the law in his hands yourself."
    The man—having already been fired—answered back: "Nevertheless, Your Holiness will be embarrassed when I tell Sharf Eltür you said that."
    Brownpony glared at him for a moment, then broke out laughing. "All right, you can come back here after you pass the message for Bråm to the relay. Someday we'll need an insolent rider with a gift for blackmail."
    Grandmother Grasshopper raised insolent colts and children. "Maybe I'll come back, and maybe I won't," the relay rider said.
    
    Chuntar Hadala's war party and ammunition train traveled faster than anyone expected. The moon was nearly full again in the late days of July, but when it left the world dark, setting before dawn, Blacktooth could see distant points of light on the eastern horizon. They looked like fires. Would farmers keep night fires burning? Nimmy knew that a relay messenger had come from the west with a message for Cardinal Hadala on the 28th. The messenger had seemed surprised to find Cardinal Nauwhat with the train. Of course, the Cardinal Secretary had left Valana two days late, and by night, so that no one in the city could be sure of his destination or whereabouts. The messenger left again, but the effect of the message on the cardinals was to command a forced march. The troop rode eastward until midnight.
    The next morning, the sun arose above the distant hills where Nimmy had seen points of firelight in the night. Beyond those hills would lie the sprawling glep settlements of "the Valley." After a fast breakfast of biscuits and tea, the militia rode on toward them.
    Two days later, near sundown, the Grasshopper sharf with a war band overtook them from the west. The militia had already camped for the night. After conferring with the cardinals, Major Gleaver ordered the wagons arranged in a defensive array and the men to take cover in expectation of an attack.
    "This is crazy, Nimmy," Aberlott said. "They are allies." 
    "Just don't obey any order to shoot. I'll talk to them." Blacktooth walked out of the defensive position and went to meet the Grasshopper warriors as they approached. He could hear Major Gleaver yelling at him to come back, and he stopped once when a Nomad raised a rifle at him; Demon Light spoke a word, and the rifle was lowered. He recognized the monk and beckoned him on.
     
    A bullet struck the ground near Blacktooth's feet. The report came from behind him. The Nomad who had lifted the rifle lifted it again and returned fire. Nimmy looked back in time to see one of the lieutenants standing beside Gleaver drop his pistol and fall to the ground.
    "For God's sake, stop shooting, you fools!" Nimmy yelled.
    "I'll try you and hang you!" the major yelled back.
    Behind Gleaver stood Chuntar Hadala, looking grim.
    Sharf Bråm lingered just beyond gunshot range, and he sat there for several minutes while the monk came up to him.
    "You remember me?" Blacktooth asked.
    Bråm nodded. "But what is the Pope's servant doing with these men?"
    "I'm not the Pope's servant now. My master left Valana without me."
    "Yes, I knew that. I took him south to meet Dion. He thought you abandoned him. Did you?"
    "Not intentionally. I was not in the city when the Palace exploded. When I came back, he was gone and I was drafted into the militia."
    "You seem not to have been told the news."
    "What news is that, Sharf Bråm?"
    Demon Light, unable to read for himself, handed the monk a letter. Blacktooth read it with mounting dismay, looked at Eltür, then back at the cardinals.
    "This must be the same message Cardinal Hadala got."
    "You go tell him what it says, and ask him. Then tell him if he continues east, I shall not arrest him if he travels alone."
    "Alone? I don't understand. What about Cardinal Nauwhat?"
    It was Eltür's turn to be surprised. "Is he here? Then they can travel east together. The rest of you will stay here."
    "I don't understand. They seem to be expecting you to attack."
    "They expect me to arrest them. Doesn't the message say that? What they don't know is that I already sent a messenger to the Texark border guard. The enemy knows you're coming, and he knows why. The only way Hadala can keep the guns from the Hannegan is to give them to us. And the only way the cardinals can escape from me is to surrender to the Hannegan's border guard. Then the rest of you go home. Remind them what Høngan Ösle Chür did to Esitt Loyte. We can do as much for them, if we have to arrest them."
    The letter Blacktooth had read said nothing about handing the cardinals over to the Hannegan, but he chose not to argue. When he returned to the camp, everyone was watching him and Ulad was waiting to seize him. At the last moment, he changed direction to put a group of recruits between himself and the spook sergeant. He spoke quickly to Aberlott:
    "The sharf has orders from the Pope to arrest the cardinals. If we resist, we are all excommunicated. And the enemy is ready for us, because Bråm warned them we were coming. Tell the men, especially Sergeants Gai-See and Woosoh-Loh. Tell them to pray, and let Hadala see them praying."
    He tried to get to the cardinals before Ulad got to him, but the giant was fast. He arrived in a headlock and was forced to his knees. Sorely Nauwhat since joining the expedition had seemed anxious to avoid Blacktooth, and he now hurried away. Chuntar Hadala bent over the monk. He was a glep himself, his skin dappled with various shades of brown—a common mutation—but he was a handsome man in spite of it, with a goatee and a long mustache that had once been golden.
    "Well, Brother, tell us about your conversation with the Nomad warlord," said the Vicar Apostolic to the Watchitah Nation.
    "Your Eminence won't shoot the messenger?"
    "Nobody sent you as a messenger!" the cardinal snapped. "And the major may yet have you shot. Just tell us what you found out."
    "Have you seen the fires in the east at night, m'Lord?"
    "Yes, they are our people's beacons. They know we're here."
    "So does Texark. The sharf warned them you were coming. The fires belong to the cavalry."
    The lighter patches of the cardinal's skin drained of color. "They are supposed to be allies!" he gasped. "Why does he sell us out to the enemy?"
    Blacktooth, under threat and afraid, decided not to mention the Pope's letter directly. Hadala already possessed a copy.
    The monk resumed: "He says he will not arrest you and Cardinal Nauwhat if you surrender to the Texark troops. He orders the rest of us to surrender the weapons to him and get out of his country."
    Hadala sputtered, and went in search of Nauwhat. Soon he came back with an order.
    "Go see him again. Invite him here to parley. We will stay out in the open where his men can see us. If he comes alone, he may come armed. Do you think an oath by me that he will not be harmed or taken captive would help?"
    Blacktooth thought about it for a moment. "No. He might find it insulting."
    "Do the best you can without it, then."
    The sharf was not reluctant. He borrowed a second pistol from a warrior, tied the leash of a heavily built war dog to his belt, grasped the monk by his uniform collar, and began walking toward Hadala's encampment with a gun to Nimmy's head.
    "I'm not going to hurt you."
    "I'm no good as a hostage, Sharf Bråm. They won't care if you kill me."
    As they stopped before Hadala, Gleaver, and Hadala's Grasshopper guide, Eltür released Blacktooth, untied the dog's leash, and barked a single word at the animal, who began to growl and stare at the cardinal.
    "If I'm shot, the dog kills you."
    Hadala spat venom at Demon Light for trafficking with the enemy, and Blacktooth translated it.
    The sharf ignored it. Bråm waved an arm toward the east and spoke in short sentences; between them Blacktooth translated:
    "This eastward lane here will be kept open. It goes from your camp to the hills yonder and to sunrise. When an armed man steps into the lane, we shoot him. An unarmed man gets one warning shot. But you and the other Red Hat may pass, going east. Take with you any disarmed officers you wish. Red Beard ordered me to arrest and hold you. I am Sharf of the Grasshopper Horde. I give orders here. Empty Sky is my Pope. The Wild Horse Woman is my sister. Høngan Ösle is my Lord." Demon Light gestured broadly at the sky, at the earth, and again toward the northwest prairie where his Lord would be encamped. After a pause, he went on grandly. "I, the sharf of this country, offer you Grasshopper hospitality. You will be required to gather dry turds for the kitchen fires. And the women will make you shovel horseshit. They will tease you a lot, but you will not be hurt. When Red Beard sends for you, you must go to him. If you don't accept our hospitality, you just march east. Without arms and without men. The Hannegan's men will take you in. He may be glad to get you."
    "Are you including Major Gleaver?" Hadala asked sourly.
    Eltür grew impatient, and began talking in longer sentences. He knew nothing of Gleaver. He had already been told he could take unarmed officers. Bråm made scattered remarks about the cardinal's stupidity. Blacktooth waited for him to pause and then summarized.
    "Let Major Gleaver cooperate in his own disarmament, he says. The sharf will leave him in command to hold the men together on the trek back home. He says the rabble will get out of his tall-grass country quicker if we are under command. But if Gleaver wants to surrender to Texark, Sharf Bråm will let him pass."
    "He knows we outnumber his men nearly four to one. What makes him think . . ."
     "He can stop us? Shall I ask?"
    "Ask him if two of his men are equal to seven of ours."
    The sharf chuckled as soon as Nimmy translated, then shared a few private jokes with his interpreter. Hadala became angry.
    "What does he say? Stop having your own private conversation."
    "He says seven-against-two would be fair, if you leave your wagons undefended. Your seven men with seven guns might chase his two men with two guns for several days, inconclusively, but you would lose the wagons. If we defend the wagons, we'll just be pinned down and starved out. And if you don't make up your minds soon, Texark will come out and get the wagons."
    "Are those his words, or yours, Brother St. George? Be careful you don't go too far." After this admonition, Hadala began speaking slowly enough for Nimmy to translate simultaneously.
    "Look, we are as worried as you are that the wagons will be intercepted by the patrol as we try to take them in. So why don't you help us? Your people have been well supplied with arms, and you don't need my wagons. The occupied territory ahead is just a narrow strip along the western frontier of the Watchitah Nation. It's hardly more than a double roadway. The outer road is patrolled by Texark troops; they look outward toward your country. The inner road is patrolled by the Valley Customs Service; they look inward at the Watchitah Nation, my people. I myself am on the Customs Service Board, for the Church. Their patrol will help us, once we're past the Texark troopers and the patrol sees who I am. If you could just help us hold back the Texark riders until we get the wagons through, we'll all cut and run afterward."
    "You are another Christian war sharf? Another military genius in a red hat? There are so many of you." Blacktooth found himself unable to avoid echoing Bråm's sarcastic tone, although he could see that the cardinal was beginning to seethe. "But what will stop the Texark cavalry from riding right straight into the heart of the Valley of the Gleps to take the wagons away from you?"
    "Why, we hoped to cross over by night, unknown to them. But you ruined that by warning them. And the treaty between . . ."
    Hadala's explanation was cut off by a Grasshopper war cry. Someone shouted that a large dust cloud and a probable party of horsemen was seen in the east.
    "They've decided to come and get you themselves, glep priest, said Bråm with a savage smile. "Now, we are going to get out of the way. Aren't you lucky? You can fight them instead of us."
    All Nomads  took immediately  to  horseback,  and  Blacktooth watched them ride away toward the northwest. He was tempted to mount up and ride after them, but Ulad had threatened to shoot him in the back for desertion if he again broke ranks.
    Hadala looked at him for a moment. "Do you have an opinion, Brother Corporal St. George?" he demanded sternly.
    "Those riders will be here in a few minutes. That is my opinion, Your Eminence." Blacktooth turned and broke into a trot toward the wagons. Sorely Nauwhat and the major had been standing there watching the meeting between Bråm and Cardinal Hadala until the shouting started, but Nauwhat had faded from view.
    "Cardinal Hadala's done with you, Private St. George!" Gleaver snapped at him. "Report to Sergeant Ulad. Get your arms buckled on, and get in the saddle."
    Still wearing corporal's chevrons, Nimmy took note of his reduction in rank without openly acknowledging it. Earlier in the day, the major had been yelling at him about a court-martial and the gallows, so the demotion was a welcome commutation of sentence. When Ulad looked at him, however, he could still see a readiness to kill.
    Having observed the Grasshopper withdrawal, the Texark commander halted his advance just beyond rifle range. The troopers dismounted. Some of them began digging.
    Demon Light drew up his warriors in a half circle just out of range to the west of the Valanan brigade's position. Blacktooth had no doubt that they would fight to prevent the guns and ammunition from falling into the hands of the imperial forces, but they would not begin to fight until Hadala and his men were defeated by those forces. The Valanan light horse, untested troops and their spook commanders, were sandwiched between two superior war bands.
    It was almost nightfall on Tuesday the 2nd of August. The moon rose an hour after sundown. During that hour, Sorely Nauwhat vanished, never to be seen again west of Texark frontiers.
    "There is going to be a mutiny," Aberlott whispered to Blacktooth at the first opportunity, "unless the glep cardinal quits."
    Nimmy shook his head. "These townsmen could mutiny in Valana, but not out here between two unfriendly armies."
    
    Chuntar Hadala remained at the head of his command. Sergeant Ulad shot a deserter who made a break for Grasshopper lines during the night. When the body was dragged back to camp, it turned out to be the cardinal's Grasshopper guide, who was only quitting his job to return to his people.
    
     Blacktooth told Aberlott: "He was the sharf's man, and here we all are in the sharf's jurisdiction—so look at the sergeant now." The monk was remembering how Ulad at their first meeting in Valana had expressed hate for all Nomads. But now that he had killed one, he showed in his face not satisfaction but an astonishing fright.
    
CHAPTER 24
     
     If a brother who through his own fault leaves the monastery should wish to return, let him first promise full reparation for his having gone away; and then let him be received in the lowest place, as a test of his humility.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 29 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    
    
F
RIGHT,  THE  MOTHER  OF  HATRED,  POSSESSED the whole militia, but there was nowhere to run. Behind them, the Grasshopper; in front of them, the Emperor. Prowling among them were Chuntar Hadala, and two willing killers of conscripts: the major and Ulad. The flanks were faced with fires, but it was an unusually windless day. The fires had been set in the night, and no one was sure who set them, but because of the calm air nobody worried about them much. Before dawn, Ulad and three husky townsmen unloaded two cannon from the wagons and dragged them forward to face the foe to the east. Then they unloaded two more and aimed them toward the Nomads. The sharf watched them do it, then broke his forces into two equal groups. He moved one group north and one south; they halted so as to face the Valanans from the southwest and northwest. Ulad rearranged the cannon accordingly, but the Nomad movement spoke of no need for cannon. The way west was wide open, by invitation of the sharf. In Blacktooth's opinion, acceptance was the only sane thing to do, but Chuntar Cardinal Hadala was adamant.
    "All you who repent your sins, I absolve you," he announced to the assembled troops at dawn, "in nomine patris, filii, et spiritus sancti. And if you die in battle for God's glory and the Holy Father's righteous cause, you will attain Heaven without purgatory's purifying pain. I now bless you . . ."
    "This," Aberlott whispered, "from a man with the Holy Father's excommunication in his pocket."
    Surprised that other conscripts were not jeering Hadala, Blacktooth asked, "Didn't you tell the others what I told you to?"
    Aberlott was meekly silent. Nimmy looked him in the eye, then laughed bitterly. Everybody knew that Aberlott was an outrageous liar, not to be believed. Besides, where would he get the courage to accuse a cardinal behind the cardinal's back when every man would in the end point his finger right at Aberlott and say, "I heard it from him"? Well, Blacktooth would have to spread the word himself, or at least enlist one of the Yellow Guard. It was not easy to get close to them, however. They were close only to Cardinal Hadala, as they had always been to Brownpony.
    Water was rationed. The supply of jerky was exhausted, and with no hunting possible, the men ate beans and biscuits. The enemy waited for Hadala to move. Hadala waited for gleps from the Valley to attack the enemy from the rear, but this seemed wishful thinking to Blacktooth. On the third day of the standoff, in plain view of the Valana forces, Sharf Bråm sent a messenger under a flag of truce to the Texark commander. This further traffic with the enemy increased the cardinal's fury. At Cleaver's orders, several townsmen shot at the messenger, but he was riding beyond range for accurate rifle fire.
    That night before the moon rose, fourteen Grasshopper warriors stole into camp, killed two sentries, and stole or drove away most of the horses. After the rise of the gibbous moon, a detachment of Texark cavalry, which had approached noiselessly in total darkness, mounted and rode through the camp screaming and killing with sabers and horse pistols. Several attackers were killed in turn by the well-armed militiamen. After dawn, eighteen bodies were buried, five of them wearing Texark uniforms. There were seven nonfatal casualties as well. Aberlott had lost his right ear to a Texark saber.
    "You never left your bedroll, you bastard," he said to Nimmy.
    "I guess I slept through it," Blacktooth lied.
    The loss of the horses drove the Hadala over the edge. He ordered an infantry attack on the now entrenched Texark position. The cardinal took a cross and proceeded to march proudly with it at the head of the army, his red cap and sash making him a conspicuous target. Major Gleaver shot three men who refused to move out. Three companies of green troops with bayonets fixed to their excellent rifles moved forward behind sporadic covering fire from three cannon. Ulad, furious as usual, led the way behind the cardinal crucifer, but kept looking back to see that the others stayed in line. Terror whitened men's faces as they came into range and some of them began to fall from a crackle of fire by the enemy. Nimmy kept his eyes half closed and prayed to the Virgin. He was astonished that there was no artillery fire directed at them from the Texark rear.
    When they had covered half the distance to the enemy lines, he could see that berms of earth and sod had been thrown up. Imperial troops were firing at them from well-protected positions, and the effect was devastating. About a third of the men had fallen. Twice Ulad ordered the attackers to halt and fire, but each time the enemy's heads ducked behind the berms.
    "Double-time march! Shoot while you run!"
    In terms of accuracy, it was a waste of ammunition, but it kept the enemy's heads down. After five shots, it was necessary to slow to a walk in order to reload. Most men had brought two extra cylinders, already loaded, but while it was faster to change cylinders than to reload individual chambers, it was necessary to stop altogether to avoid dropping the pins. And to stop was to be shot by a spook officer.
    "Look! They're clearing out. Run, damn it, run!"
    Terror changed to a furious glee as the townsmen realized that the Texark rifle fire from the forward berm had ceased, although there was still shooting in the distance.
    "Pope's children! My people are there!" Hadala was shouting back at them. He kept waving his cross like a club toward the foothills. "They're attacking from the rear."
    "That explains why cannonballs aren't raining down," Nimmy said toward Aberlott's bandaged ear. The message was not received above the sound of gunfire, but he added, "Maybe the gleps' cardinal is not as crazy as we thought."
    The Texark army was not at all defeated. Forced by guerrillas from the Valley to defend their rear, they had retreated from the attack out of the west to defend their artillery from an attack out of the east. The retreat was limited. When militiamen climbed the first berm, three of them were shot down as they went over the top.
    Gleaver called a halt. Obviously there were defenders of the second berm. But the attackers could use the enemy's first berm for their own shelter while they ate pocket rations and sipped from canteens.
     Nimmy looked up to see Gai-See crawling toward him up a shallow gully. He was not hiding from the enemy, he was hiding from Hadala and the officers.
    "Is it true?" asked the Asian warrior monk after taking a careful look around.
    "Yes," Nimmy told him, "if you got it from Aberlott."
    Gai-See nodded grimly and crawled away by the same route.
    Now something would happen, he thought, but it did not happen immediately.
    
    The sun was scorching in early August, but by midafternoon a light westerly breeze came up. Blacktooth noticed that the restless Grasshopper had moved again. The Nomads had re-formed and split into three groups, positioned to the north, west, and south of the wagons. They were still out of range, visible against a background of smoke, but the groups to the north and south were in place for a flanking attack against either the Hannegan or the cardinal.
    The fires seemed to be moving slowly eastward. They marked the probable confines of the battleground and defined the possible lines of advance or retreat for the Nomad groups who had likely set them.
    Soon afterward, during an assault on the second berm, while trying to shoot over a man's head Nimmy shot him down. Facing Blacktooth, the Texark trooper lay on his back on the sandbank just as he fell when shot. A glep, a glep in Texark uniform, with Hadala's dappled skin and the rather common hairy ears. He stared up at the former monk, trying to see him against the smoke-blurred orb of the sun. His hands were raised toward his face and they hung limply from the wrists; he looked like a puppy begging for a morsel. Why surrender with a ruined abdomen? He clenched his lids, waiting, hoping to be shot again. But Blacktooth dared not to waste ammunition on pity, or even take time to reload, because Ulad was watching him with deep suspicion. Every time he felt such tension, Wooshin's face and words came to his mind.
    "Life is a dewdrop and a flash of lightning—that's the way to look at it, Nimmy."
    Touching the point of the bayonet to the man's throat, Blacktooth severed the carotid artery. A blade of lightning, a drop of red dew. The drop became a spurting stream. He stepped back, looking around. His throat hurt and was dry; it was a hot day and the air was full of smoke from burning grass.
    "Each man, each being is a world. There are innumerable worlds, my friend. Each world of this innumerable array contains and inter penetrates all the other worlds throughout the myriad cosmos, for there are no barriers between the worlds." Metaphysics from an executioner? For the Axe, religion was a martial art. He wanted to talk to Gai-See or Woosoh-Loh about it, but they were always with the cardinal and the officers, and he was made afraid by Gai-See's crawling to him in a ditch.
    It's just that I have cut my own throat somehow, he thought, looking at the corpse. So murder feels like this to the murderer. Holy Mother of God, forgive me, but I don't feel very much.
    Sergeant Ulad was still watching him from the left, shaking his head. He must be careful not to waver or hesitate. Ulad was suspicious of his piety. He could see two men beyond Ulad. Corporal Victros had climbed to the top of the berm. He motioned the attack party upward.
    The sandbank flanked a scythed and well-hoed—but useless— firebreak. Blacktooth climbed the berm and cautiously peered beyond, but the patrol had fled. Why? It was the best place to stop and fight, unless they thought the Valanans' firepower overwhelming. Or, more likely, they might know that greater safety for them lay ahead, and that the glep guerrillas must be prevented from seizing their artillery. Standing atop the berm, he looked back toward the wagons. What had happened to the men guarding them? He could see Nomads in the distance, but no militiamen with the wagons. Without horses to draw them, they were lost anyway.
    Somewhere to the north the tall grass was burning faster. They had been crosswind of the fire whose smoke veiled the foothills in the northeast, but they were almost downwind now and still the breeze was changing. He began to smell the smoke, and could see to the north distant horseback warriors moving west out of the fire's path. If the wind kept veering, the wagons would be in danger. He motioned to Ulad that the enemy had fled. They went over the sandbank and continued their cautious advance, camouflaged shadows flitting from knoll to knoll in the great ocean of grass.
    
    Watching from a distance on a hillcrest south of the battle, the Grasshopper sharf could see some of the fight going on around the Texark artillery pieces. Texark was temporarily in trouble, and he was pleased. Demon Light hoped to influence the outcome of the battle by moving warriors about in a menacing way from time to time without actually exposing them to fire. His only intention at the moment was to keep the wagons from being captured by anyone except himself, although if he got them, the Grasshopper had no pressing need for extra ammunition, and the horde's arsenal was already wealthy in new guns. He was not opposed to giving the gleps guns, if it became possible. Now it seemed it might be possible. It was clear that the Texark force was being harassed from the rear. The fact surprised him as much as it did the Texarki.
    Demon Light had warned them of Hadala's expedition, but they had trusted him only enough to send two companies of cavalry, two of light horse, and a few artillery pieces to the region where he told them the townsmen would try a border crossing. Surprising to Eltür was the fact that many of the Texark troops were gleps, drafted from the Valley. They had not expected a glep attack from the rear, and had not come well prepared. They would regret not having taken him seriously enough. Such regret might incline them to trust him more next time. When he sent them a message under a white flag, they had listened politely to the messenger as he laid claim to the contents of the wagons, and if this claim were honored, there would be no reason for hostilities. He had also warned the Texark commander that he was about to steal the townsmen's horses. About the wagons, the commander gave a polite but evasive answer, and he smiled on the horse-theft project. In this situation, Demon Light was reluctant to attack his hereditary enemies except to prevent seizure of munitions.
    Nothing prevented his enjoyment of the conflict unfolding before him except a report by a scout from his southwest detachment that a band of motherless ones had approached but stopped a few minutes' ride away and occupied a hilltop there. To Bråm, they were a damn nuisance, and they too wanted the guns. He was aware that many of the motherless ones in the south part of the Wilddog lands had been armed by Dion and sent against the enemy in the Province, but these outlaws were far from that battle, and if they were able to get their hands on the new weapons, they were as likely to shoot at his people as at the Texarki, but they were even more likely to sell the fancy guns to the Hannegan, who had been slow in getting them.
    Though it would spoil his view of the fight for a time, he decided to withdraw his detachment from the north where the fire was beginning to crowd his rear, then to skirt around the townsmen's position and join all his forces together again between the militia and the outlaws. It would give other commanders something to wonder about, and the fires had become the Grasshopper's allies, as the Grasshopper sharf knew they would when he practiced his family motto and set them. As he rode between the Valanans and a group of his own men to the west, he noticed with approval that the horses stolen from the wagoneers were being kept out of sight beyond a ridge. None of his warriors' mounts were broken as draft horses, so seizing and keeping the grass-eaters' animals was essential to his plans. He sent a messenger to tell his cousin to the west of him to post enough men to guard the horses and join the rest of the detachment with Eltür's main force.
    
    Sundown was approaching when the enemy resumed fire, and Cardinal Hadala was among the first to fall. Elswitch Gleaver rushed to his side, inspected his wound, which he seemed to find in the back, and turned to look around at the men. This time Blacktooth saw Gai-See lift his pistol again and shoot Major Gleaver in the forehead. At the same time, a high-pitched scream came from the rear. Ulad's voice. The blade of Woosoh-Loh's sword rose bloody into the air and fell again. Junior officers were shouting angrily.
    Brother Blacktooth St. George threw away his rifle, picked up a pistol from the body of a slain officer, and ran south for his life. A bullet struck the ground near his feet, but he was unsure which of three sides was shooting at him.
    As he ran around the bend near the crest of the ridge, he noticed a wide tunnel under a rock where something made its home. It was just big enough for him to slip into, and he dived for it, feet first, praying earnestly that the owner was absent. The tunnel sloped downward as he slid into it and it was somewhat deeper than expected. He braked his slide and found his face two feet from the sunlit opening. Between the straps of his sandals, he felt wiggling fur with his feet; something bit his big toe, tiny fangs but sharp. He kicked it off. Other mouths were chewing on his sandal straps. My God, I'm in a cougar's den, and I am going to die!
    Today is like any other day in being the day of death. Today a war is going on and I am not a Daniel in this den, O Saint Leibowitz. Still, it's the only day I've got. Last week it was a thunderstorm, and the wet body of a lightning-struck warrior. Year before last a cyclone killed seventeen Jackrabbit peasants. Then the locusts, the locusts, the locusts, and the emaciated corpses found frozen last winter. Just like any other day, he noted, as a bullet ricocheted off the rock above his head. The spent lump of lead fell into his waist and he picked it up to inspect in the dim light. It was no bullet from a Grasshopper or Valanan weapon, but a musket ball from a Texark or an outlaw piece. The fact gave him a general idea of the direction of the enemy.
    He felt around with his feet, kicking kittens away. Their teeth were needles. What was keeping their mother? Afraid of the fires, perhaps. He too feared them. "In here, we'll choke to death," he told the kittens.
    
     While he was thus indulging himself in more fear and self-pity than was usual before he had so recently killed a man, something came and darkened the light from the end of the tunnel. He prepared to die.
    HailMaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththee . . .
    "Ho! Who is down there?" The language was Rockymount, but the accent was from Asia. Nimmy looked up to see a rifle aimed at his face.
    "Don't shoot, it's Blacktooth. Is it safe to come out?"
    "It's not safe anywhere yet," said Gai-See, "and the fire is getting too close. Give me your hand."
    Nimmy shook a playful kitten loose from one trouser leg and crawled upward into the smoky light of late afternoon. The din of battle had subsided, except to the east where Texark troops were still holding off gleps trying to get at the weapons. The warrior and the monk climbed the ridge and lay on the ground to look over the top. They could make out the bodies of Chuntar Hadala and Major Gleaver; both had been killed by Gai-See, who, like Wooshin, was prepared to execute anyone who betrayed his master.
    "Where is Woosoh-Loh?"
    "Ulad shot him when he saw me execute our master's enemies."
    "But I saw—"
    "My brother lived long enough to kill his killer."
    Nimmy observed a detail of Grasshopper warriors hastily hitching three of the wagons to draft horses they had stolen, for the fire was coming closer. The wagons' defenders had scattered during the infantry skirmish. The Valana Militia had been destroyed, by death, desertion, and the absence of command. From the east, Texark cavalry was riding toward the scene, but warily, for behind the ridge to the south was the Demon Light's main force, and just to the north was the advancing wildfire. Half a mile from where they lay, a Texark trooper rode to the top of the ridge to observe the Grasshopper order of battle. Gai-See rolled over, lifted his rifle, aimed very high, and fired. The impossible shot fell close enough to frighten the trooper's horse, and alerted the Grasshopper, who joined Gai-See in firing on the scout. The scout retreated. Gai-See stood up and looked south. Eltür's warriors were watching. Evidently they were not shooting at militia uniforms.
    "Look!" said Gai-See, pointing. "Somebody killed a big cat."
    Blacktooth stood beside him, then went to investigate. The animal lay on the rocks twenty paces west of them. It was a female.
    "Come on," he said to Gai-See, and went back down the ridge to the cougar's den. Soon they had recovered the kittens, but three Nomads rode up with drawn guns and spoke in Grasshopper.
    "Drop your weapons at once, citizens! Surrender."
    They complied, but Nimmy smiled at the polite word "citizens," and replied in the same language. "The troopers are riding toward the wagons, you know. We'll gladly surrender, but we'll need our weapons to get home again."
    One warrior rode to the top of the ridge. The other dismounted and recovered the guns. As he unloaded them, he spoke to Blacktooth.
    "You are the man who came out to parley with the sharf. He says you are a servant of the highest Christian shaman. Is that so?"
    "It used to be so."
    The warrior handed him back his unloaded pistol, then returned Gai-See's empty rifle.
    "You are the man who killed the cardinal and the major, are you not?"
    Gai-See nodded. The other warrior came down from the ridge and said, "We'd better tell Sharf Eltür it's time to attack. Let's go!"
    They both rode away, leaving the two to follow on foot with empty firearms. As soon as the warriors returned to their command, the main party of Nomads split into two groups, one of which rode to the bottom of the ridge, dismounted, and climbed it on foot; they took prone positions on the crest as snipers. From the fact that heavy smoke was blowing south over the ridge, and that the snipers did not commence firing at once, Nimmy deduced that the fire was delaying the movement of the cavalry toward the wagons. Every time a trooper mounted the ridge to the east to reconnoiter, he was fired upon by the main Nomad party. The Texark commander probably wished to cross the ridge before riding west, but the Grasshopper made it impossible. At least some of the wagons were being pulled west by Valanan draft horses driven by Nomads. The rest would soon be caught by wildfire, if not captured first by Texark.
    By sundown, the rest of the wagons had been swept up in the fire; some exploded, all burned. Burned too were the bodies of the slain, but the wind subsided at twilight and the blaze did not cross the ridge. Sharf Bråm had rounded up and fed all the militia survivors who surrendered their arms. The few who refused to give them up, mostly spook officers who feared revenge by Valanan conscripts, he ordered killed. He ordered his warriors to treat the prisoners of war with courtesy, but the Grasshopper fighters were too full of playful malice toward farmers for the farmers' comfort. Food was shared, but dipped in sand. One warrior lent Nimmy a leather pouch large enough for three cougar kittens, then claimed the monk had stolen it. There were less than forty exhausted captives, but some other deserters had perhaps escaped capture by the Texarki or the Nomads.
    When he saw Nimmy among the refugees, Demon Light called him to his side as interpreter. After laughing at the kittens, he returned the monk's pistol and ammunition. Nimmy immediately asked permission to turn the weapon over to Gai-See. "My eyes are too weak to hit anything. I killed a man by mistake, when I meant to miss him."
    Eltür sent for Gai-See and after a brief conversation through Blacktooth concerning the warrior monk's continuing loyalty to Brownpony, the sharf gave him his weapons back. Then he looked at the smoky sky.
    "Your Pope's wife has come. Look. The sister of the Day Maiden."
    Overhead, a large bird was circling the battlefield. In the smoke and the light of the late sun, the buzzard appeared to be bright red. Other birds were gathering. They seemed small and dark by contrast, but perhaps they flew at higher altitude.
    "It means the battle is over."
    Nimmy and Gai-See were eerily silent.
    "Tomorrow we leave for the tents of my tribe," Bråm said. "The wounded can stay there until they heal. The rest of you will be taken west to be judged by the Qæsach dri Vørdar, Høngan Ösle Chür . Then I imagine you will be escorted back to Valana, or in your case, Nyinden, to your Brownpony. Tell this to the others. Tell them they must travel with us, or they will fall into the hands of the motherless ones. We have recaptured enough of Hadala's horses for you to ride."
    Demon Light seemed quite friendly, and Nimmy dared ask, "Are you satisfied with today's outcome, Sharf Bråm?"
    "The Burregun will not eat Grasshopper bodies; I lost no men,' said the Nomad leader. "We captured five wagonloads of rifles and pistols before the fire or the motherless got to them. The ammunition wagons exploded. The Texarki must have got about four loads of weapons that went through the fire. Those guns were ruined."
    "Ruined as weapons, maybe, but not as patterns for Texark to copy," Nimmy said.
    "You think so? And how long will that take?"
    "I don't know. Months, probably."
    "There is one other matter I do find troublesome, Nyinden," said Eltür. "Do you know that there were many gleps among the Texarki?
    Nimmy frowned. "The man I killed was a glep! That surprised me. It seems that the Emperor is either impressing able-bodied gleps from the Valley, or hiring them as mercenaries. It suggests he is short of manpower."
    "Or, he is sending some of his main force to the east of the Great River, as we hoped. There was dissent in the Texark ranks. My messengers told me so. Do you understand why?"
    "I think so. Cardinal Hadala was expecting a force from the Valley to strike the troopers' rear. When they did so, the glep troopers probably refused to fight. Maybe that's why they retreated from us."
    Eltür snorted. "You townsmen make good corpses but not good killers. It had to be the reason. Now, tomorrow we must go to a messenger family and send today's news to the Lord of the Hordes and your Pope. You may, if you wish, write to Brownpony yourself, so long as you tell me what you say to him."
    "Of course! You may read it."
    Demon Light laughed scornfully and departed. Blacktooth's face burned. He had forgotten that the sharf was without letters.
    Blacktooth was prepared to write his letter on cowhide with ink made of blood and soot, but the messenger family to which Bråm brought him the following afternoon kept paper and pens for such emergencies, although they themselves were barely literate. He wrote hurriedly, because the sharf was impatient to return to his family and tribe.
    
    I understand that Sharf Eltür Bråm is sending you an oral account of the battle fought here, and to his words I would add nothing. While most of the weapons were recaptured by the Grasshopper war party, Texark troops found a number of them that passed through fire and are probably unfit for use, but the Mayor's gunsmiths may learn much from studying the design.
    I am ashamed, Holy Father, that I was not present in your time of peril. I was staying with the late Pope when you departed from Valana, and then I fell into the hands of your betrayers. Sorely Cardinal Nauwhat has sought asylum in Texark. Chuntar Cardinal Hadala was executed by Brother Gai-See when he learned of his treason against Your Holiness. Many townsmen died in this futile battle. My body was unharmed, but my soul is a casualty, for I killed a man.
    I have been invited to stay with my distant Grasshopper relatives (yes, the Sharf knows who they are) of his tribe until I receive orders from Your Holiness, Abbot Olshuen, or the Secretariat concerning my future duties and destination. Meanwhile, Sharf Bråm wants me to be tutor to his nephews. I would find this work congenial, but with no books and no proper writing materials it will be difficult.
    Again, I beg your forgiveness for my absence without leave in your time of need, and shall gratefully accept and perform any penance it may please Your Holiness to impose. 
    Your unworthy servant, 
    Nyinden (Blacktooth) St. George, 
    A.O.L.
    
    The relay horses of the messenger families were fast and frequently changed. In late August, the moon was waxing, permitting them to ride by night. Still, Nimmy was astonished by the speed of Brownpony's reply. It was very simple. "Honor the slaughtering festival, then come at once," said Amen II, only three weeks later.
    His cousins had been teasing him unmercifully about joining the fourteen-year-olds who would be undergoing the rites of passage to manhood at the festival, which normally occurred during a period of several days around the last full moon of summer, before the autumnal equinox. "They will stop calling you 'Nimmy,' if you endure the rite," the great-granddaughter of his own great-great-grandmother told him.
    "Thank you, but the first man to call me 'Nimmy' was Holy Madness, the Lord of the Hordes, and he intended no insult. I am not a warrior, I am not a Nomad."
    This was the same festival which had been declared a movable feast last year when its usual time coincided with the funeral of Granduncle Brokenfoot. The farmers celebrated a harvest festival at about the same date, but for the Nomads it marked the beginning of the time of killing off old cattle and weaklings who could not survive the winter. Women culled out the horses not fit for war or breeding, and sold them to farmers north of the Misery River, or had them butchered and barbecued. Many of the slaughtered animals were converted into jerky for the time of deep snow when the wild herds were hard to reach.
    It was a time for dancing, for drums, for gluttony, smoking keneb, drinking farmers' wine, for fighting by firelight, and for celebrating the ravishing by Empty Sky of the Wild Horse Woman. Young men crawled into the tents of sweethearts, and Blacktooth was visited in the night by the dark form of a woman who would not reveal her name, but began removing his clothes. He was careful to do nothing that might offend her, and it turned out to be a hot and sweaty night.
    
     The following morning, one of his female cousins smiled whenever she caught his glance. Her name was Pretty Dances, and she was chubby as a pig, but cute and comely. He thought of Ædrea and avoided her glance as much as possible.
    He had established his honor by fighting several young men his own size, and did well enough to avoid further teasing, but they still called him Nimmy more often than Nyinden.
    On the day before his departure from the lands of his ancestors, the Grasshopper double agent Black Eyes brought him a book he had obtained in a transaction with Texark soldiers. Black Eyes had occupied the cage across the aisle when he and Brownpony were prisoners in the Emperor's zoo, and he still admired Blacktooth for an alleged attempt to kill Filpeo.
    "The book cost me seven steers," he told the monk. "The sharf thinks it might help you teach his nephews, because the soldiers said it is written in our own tongue. I don't understand how a book can have a tongue."
    Nimmy looked at the Nomadic title and felt a rush of grief and shame. The Book of Beginnings: Volume One, by Verus Sarquus Boedullus. The Texark publisher had done a good job of duplicating Blacktooth's pan-Nomadic orthography, with the new vowels which permitted any Nomad of any horde to hear the words as pronounced in his own dialect. In the front matter, there was an acknowledgment that the translation had come from Leibowitz Abbey, but there was of course no mention of the translator's name. Blacktooth had not included it in the original.
    The face of the late Abbot Jarad loomed large in his mind, and Jarad's voice spoke to him as before, saying, "All right, Brother St. George, now think—think of the thousands of wild young Nomads, or ex-Nomads, just like you were then. Your relatives, your friends. Now, I want to know: what could possibly be more fulfilling to you than to pass along to your people some of the religion, the civilization, the culture, that you've found for yourself here at San Leibowitz Abbey?"
    "Why are you crying, Nyinden?" asked Black Eyes. "Is it the wrong book for Nomads?"
    
 
    
    
    
    
CHAPTER 25
     
     If a pilgrim monk coming from a distant region wants to live as a guest of the monastery, let him be received for as long a time as he desires, provided he is content with the customs of the place as he finds them and does not disturb the monastery by superfluous demands, but is simply content with what he finds.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 61
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
D
URING    THE    TWO    MONTHS    MOTHER    IRIDIA Silentia spent at the court of Pope Amen II in New Jerusalem, one of the Pope's informants called it to his attention that this Princess of the Church and Bride of Christ visited Shard's Ædrea in her house of arrest three times a week, every week. He hesitated to inquire into this, for it was assumed by anybody who noticed or cared that Mother Iridia was either practicing spiritual therapy or teaching the girl the latest edition of the catechism as rewritten and promoted by Pope Amen I—the edition already condemned as heretical by several eastern bishops. Soon it became clear to her jailer that the girl wished to join Iridia's religious community. This caused no alarm, and only Brownpony stirred and became restless. Prisoners often converted to religion in jail.
    Mayor Dion, as commander in chief of the insurgent forces in the Province, was gone most of the time, and Slojon's only interest in religion was as a tool to be used in the governance of men. When Ædrea took her simple vows as a nun of the Order of Our Lady of the Desert on Saturday the 12th of August, Mother Iridia visited the Pope and complained that the secular government of New Jerusalem was keeping one of her nuns in prison. Brownpony smiled and sent for Slojon.
    "You are holding Sister Clare-of-Assisi in detention for unspecified offenses," said Amen II. "Messér, must I tell you that you have no jurisdiction over religious?"
    "I don't even know a Sister Clare-of-Assisi, Holy Father!"
    "You know her as Shard's Ædrea," said Brownpony. "She became a nun on the Feast of Saint Clare last week, and so Mother Iridia named her Clare, which is what she will be called in her cloister."
    Slojon sputtered. "Her offenses are not unspecified. She violated the law by leaving the community without a permit from the Mayor's office. And she is suspected of espionage."
    "She is innocent of espionage against this realm, to my certain knowledge," Brownpony growled. "As for your other complaint against her, the Church does teach obedience to legitimately constituted government, such as yours. Since she admits her guilt in disobeying the law while it was in force, I promise you she will be appropriately sentenced for that offense by me. I must take note, however, that you are no longer enforcing the law that she broke. That is your affair. Sister Clare is our affair. You shall release her immediately to an ecclesiastical court. You well know the sanctions incurred for usurping Church jurisdiction. My predecessor of beloved memory excommunicated the Emperor of Texark himself for jailing me and my secretary."
    "So that's the trick! Well, it won't work with me." Slojon turned and walked away from the papal audience with minimum courtesy.
    Brownpony immediately drafted a letter to all clergy throughout the Suckamints commanding that the sacraments be withheld from the Mayor's son until he obeyed the order to release Sister Ædrea St. Clare into the custody of the Curia. The Pope knew that Slojon would not give any weight to such a sanction, except for the humiliating effect of the bad publicity when the letter was prominently posted for all to read in every Church in the mountains.
    Still, Slojon would not budge until his father returned from battle a week later. Dion conferred with the Pope. First they discussed the war in the Province, which had stalled around the 98th meridian. Then they discussed Ædrea. Whatever he might believe privately, Dion was a public Catholic. After the conference, he released Sister Clare into the custody of Mother Iridia Silentia, O.D.D., who became her defense counsel. The sanctions against the Mayor's son were lifted. In an unusual move, the Pope permitted Slojon to assist the schoolteacher Abraha Cardinal Linkono as inquisitor and prosecutor.
    The outcome was inevitable, and the only point in dispute became the sentence to be imposed upon the nun by the Supreme Pontiff.
    Brownpony noticed that the beauty of the barefoot Sister who stood before him had not been diminished by motherhood, or completely obscured by her coarse habit. She was radiant, smiling at him faintly, and her eyes were attentive and unafraid. That was bad. It implied that there was a conspiracy, and it had worked. Slojon already knew he had been duped, but—he noticed the faint smile.
    Thus spoke Amen II, with some attempt at sternness: "Sister Ædrea St. Clare-of-Assisi, you are remanded into the permanent custody of Cardinal Silentia. For your offense against the laws of New Jerusalem, a legitimate secular authority, we sentence you to cross the Brave River and spend the rest of your life in exile there, or until your sentence is commuted by the Holy See. Should you cross the river again from south to north, you incur excommunication by the very act of doing so."
    Ædrea's smile did not change. The sentence imposed was not different from that which her vows imposed. She came slowly forward and knelt to kiss her judge's ring. "Where is Blacktooth?" she whispered.
    Brownpony suppressed a chuckle at her audacity, and whispered back, "I have no idea."
    Thus it came to pass that the lady cardinal departed from New Jerusalem with Sister Ædrea St. Clare and the three nuns who had been her conclavists in Valana. A coach was provided, and four mounted soldiers were appointed to escort them all the way to the Brave River. At the last minute, Iridia paid the Pope another visit and sweetly asked his permission to make a rest stop at Leibowitz Abbey, a detour which would add no more than a few days to their journey.
    Brownpony gazed at her in surprise. Cardinal Silentia was almost his own age, still gauntly beautiful and full of charm if not grace, but now he saw that she was being charmed by Ædrea.
    "She wants to know if Blacktooth has gone back to the abbey," the Pontiff sighed.
    "That had occurred to me, Holy Father. But the guesthouse there is adequate and secure. The Brothers and my Sisters will see each other only in Church, if at all."
    "Very well, but if you lose her, you are both in trouble," he told her. His permission was based on his belief that neither Blacktooth nor Abbot Olshuen wanted to see the other ever again. "However, if you meet Brother St. George anywhere, tell him I require his presence here immediately."
    Iridia knelt and withdrew. That was three weeks before Nimmy's letter came to him from a battleground on the eastern Plains. Brownpony found the letter irritating, and said to the messenger, "Tell him to honor the butchering festival, and then deliver me his butt."
    But as soon as he said it, there came to Pope Amen II a flash vision of Blacktooth's future—in shock upon learning of Ædrea's sudden calling to religion, and of the Pope's sentence passed upon her. Shock and maybe fury. He resolved not to see the monk immediately upon his arrival. Let him hear about it from Qum-Do, Jing-U-Wan, Wooshin, and the two Oriental secretaries he inherited from Cardinal Ri. They understood his motives and his necessity. Brother St. George would eventually apply his religious thing to his fury, and then it would be safe for the Pope to see him.
    
    Late September came, and Blacktooth had still not arrived at Pope Amen II’s log-cabin Vatican. His Holiness gulped the rest of his brandy, put his heels on the table, leaned back, and smiled at his elderly bodyguard. A single candle lighted Brownpony7s private office in the Papal Palace with its log walls and fired-clay floor, but there was an exceptionally bright full moon shining through the big southern windows, and everything seemed to glow in its light, including the faces of the Pope and the warrior.
    "Axe, do you know what tomorrow is?"
    "Thursday, the twenty-ninth, 'Oliness."
    "It is a feast of Saint Michael, the commander in chief of the heavenly hordes."
    "I thought it was the 'heavenly hosts.' "
    "No, no! All angels are Nomads and there are hordes of them."
    "So what of it, 'Oliness?"
    "Axe, the Cathedral of Saint Michael Angel-of-Battle is in Hannegan City, and belongs to Urion Benefez. For him tomorrow is a day of pomp and High Masses. And I shall offer the same Mass in a quiet way. The Gospel for the day is the first ten verses of Matthew Thirteen, and at first glance it seems unrelated to the Archangel Michael. In it, Jesus calls a little child to him, and tells how we must all become little children again before we can enter Heaven. Isn't that strange?"
    "No, to the children the angel's sword gives life."
    Brownpony paused. He knew what Axe meant, but what an odd way to say it.
     "An old Jew once told me that this, our angel of battle, is the defender of the Synagogue, just as we see him as defender of the Church. And of course of her children. That explains the choice of the Gospel, I think. But do you know that a bunch of old Nomad women married me off to the Burregun, the Buzzard of Battle?"
    "I believe you have mentioned it several times, 'Oliness. I hope it is a happy marriage."
    "Oh, it is, it is! We're winning the war, I think." The Pope poured himself another glass of brandy. "But I feel strange praying to Michael now. I hope the commander of the angelic armies forgives me. It was a forced marriage. Must I apologize for imagining Benefez's Angel of Battle pitted against my supernatural bird-wife?"
    "No."
    "Oh, you have an opinion! It was a rhetorical question, Axe, but why do you say 'no'?"
    "Because the angel and the buzzard are the same."
    "I wish you had said they are on the same side. You'll never be a Christian, will you Wooshin? And yet you have certain shocking insights. Tell me about Mankiller again sometime."
    "Again? I don't remember telling you about him a first time, 'Oliness."
    "No, I just heard part of what you were telling Blacktooth one day. Who is Mankiller?"
    "The Compassionate One." His capital letters were audible.
    Brownpony stared at him by moonlight and wondered.
    Wooshin added: "An ancient saying among my people goes: 'The sword that kills is the same sword that gives life.' "
    "Have another glass of this good mountain brandy. But to whom has a sword ever given life?"
    The Axe declined the brandy. "Whenever there is a fight, the sword gives death to one man and life to the other. And life to his family, his retainers, and lord."
    "Yes, I suppose your sword has given me life once or twice. The saying is less than profound, though. Some things you say make a lot of people think you confuse God and the Devil, Wooshin."
    "I hope Y'roliness is not among them."
    "No, but what do you say to the charge?"
    "I deny it. How can I confuse them? I see they are not two."
    Brownpony laughed. "Axe, did you ever take paradox lessons from Pope Amen Specklebird?"
    "No, but he kindly spoke to me a few times. You say I'll never be a Christian. Foreman Jing says the same. But if I could have been Saint Specklebird's student, I might have become one."
     "You just canonized him. That's my job. Are you an atheist?"
    "Oh no, I honor all the gods."
    "How many belong to that all?"
    "Countless. And one."
    "How meaningless!"
    " 'Oliness, let me hear you count to one."
    "One."
    "Point at that one."
    Brownpony stirred restlessly. Finally he tapped his index finger against his temple.
    Wooshin laughed quietly. "Wrong. You had to think about it too long. And you didn't count to one. You counted from one and stopped. The one is countless."
    The Pope changed the subject. He was no mystic, but he seemed to attract mystics. Specklebird, Blacktooth, and Wooshin—they all had a streak of it, and they were all quite different. He was fascinated, but he did not understand.
    
    In Hannegan City in mid-September, the Emperor called together his generals and waxed gleeful about the captured weapons; fire had not ruined them for study, only for use. Stocks and grips were burned, some cylinders had exploded, and some barrels were bent by the heat and by bursting kegs of powder. Filpeo handled them lovingly, and his hands were black with soot. According to his gunsmiths, it would be possible to begin duplicating this west-coast weapon as soon as they could tool up, produce the right kinds of steel, find copper for making brass for cartridges—if his forces could hold out that long.
    Meanwhile Admiral e'Fondolai, Carpios Robbery, was already equipped with several dozen of the repeating weapons. Soon he and Esitt Loyte (he whom the troops called "Wooden-Nose") would begin their raids from north of the Misery. The wolf-skinned Texark forces, disguised as motherless outlaws, would wreak enough havoc on the Nomad women and horses left behind to draw off the left flank of the Antipope's crusade.
    "Admiral?" protested General Goldæm. "I thought Carpy had been made a field marshal."
    "Admiral for now," Filpeo answered. "An admiral is a pirate with a uniform, and a pirate doesn't think in terms of capturing territory. His method of warfare is perfectly suited to the ocean of grass that is the Nomad homeland."
    Time as well as terror was on the Emperor's side. The opposing armies of Pope and Empire, Church and State, were dug in on opposite banks of the Washita, and it was easier for Filpeo to feed his men than for Amen II to feed his. Moreover, Brownpony was counting on forces he did not control.
    "The Antipope thinks he holds the undying allegiance of the Wilddog Horde, but I am not so sure," Filpeo told his generals. "They say Sharf Oxsho licks the false Pope's footprints, but Høngan Ösle Chür seems to have risen above his Wilddog partisanship to become the Sharf of Sharfs, so to speak, of all three hordes. Even Sharf Demon Light pays respect to his lord, and we know how the Jackrabbit leaped into his arms and arose against us. No doubt, Eltür is as much our enemy as his brother Hultor, but he is cautious, he is clever, he is reasonable. And unlike Høngan, he is no Christian. We may be able to negotiate."
    "I'm not sure you mean what you seem to be saying, Sire," said Father Colonel Pottscar. "You speak as if Christianity demands submission to a false pope."
    "No, Pottsy. It just means Sharf Eltür, with no Christianity, cares nothing about disputes internal to the Church. Therefore he is free to negotiate."
    
    A few days later, the glee of Filpeo Harq surpassed all bounds, and he danced a three-second jig in his private quarters when his uncle Urion came to him with the news that Sorely Cardinal Nauwhat had defected from the service of the false Pope. His jig-dancing stopped when he realized that he should have heard the news about Nauwhat before his uncle heard it.
    "Why didn't the commander who accepted his defection report it to me?" he demanded.
    "I made arrangement with Sorely while he was still in Valana, and I made the border guard honor it. I had advance knowledge he was coming, because he agreed to cross over only if my archdiocese granted him sanctuary."
    "Bastards! You subvert my own military. Heads are going to roll. And he wants sanctuary from whom, me?" Filpeo barked.
    "Of course. And I don't think you'll take Father Colonel Pottscar's head or mine."
    "Damn! Why, with me the cardinal is completely safe. I'd give him a state dinner."
    "That's what he's afraid of. And from you, he would be safe from harm, but not from interrogation."
     "What has he got to hide?"
    "Everything! He is here to separate himself from this maniac in the western mountains, not to betray him. He will give no aid and comfort to either side. He is neutral, but only under my protection."
    The Emperor tugged at his nervous earlobe and paced for a time. "By God!" he said at last. "When this is all over and you elect a real pope, who to choose?—who better than a cardinal who remained principled but neutral?" He turned to watch the Archbishop's face, and immediately laughed. "Uncle Urion, you stand accused of too many bad habits to be the next Pope. I'm sure the accusations are false, but—" He shrugged.
    "Yes," said Benefez. "I suppose Sorely has thought about Hoydok's slander."
    "Treat him well, Uncle, even if you fear his ambition. And let me visit him in your palace. Invite us both to dine with you."
    "Not unless he is comfortable with the idea. If he is comfortable with it, I'll invite you. Otherwise you won't even get an explanation."
    
    The invitation to dine at the Archdiocesan Palace came to Filpeo after only three days. The Emperor eagerly accepted, and warmly welcomed the dissident Nauwhat to Hannegan City. But he began to question him as soon as his uncle briefly excused himself after a whispered message from the subdeacon Torrildo.
    "Brownpony is under a suspended death sentence throughout the Empire," Filpeo told the Oregonian as soon as Benefez was out of earshot. "His election itself was an act of war by the Valanan Church against Texark. If he is caught, he will go to the chopping machine. He should not blame you for turning your back on him."
    "No, Sire. But you call his election an act of war by the Valana clergy, and I helped elect him. I did not—we did not—think of it as declaring war on you, I can tell you that."
    "The Valana clergy elected him, you say? Not the Sacred College?"
    "Sire, in exile, the Valana clergy is the clergy of Rome. The Sacred College is the clergy of Rome only because each member maintains a Roman or Valanan Church. But in an emergency situation, the clergy of the Roman diocese elects its own bishop. The College was a later development in Church history."
    "Oh, I wondered how you justified that so-called conclave!"
    "I believe it was justified. But afterward, it was Brownpony who abandoned the Curia. You may think of this war as his alone, although others do claim it and do pursue it. I was in Valana, and was not consulted before he proclaimed a crusade. I am not even sure his war is just, let alone holy."
    "And yet I am told that there was a council of war before the election, and that you attended. And how is it that you joined Chuntar Hadala's attempt to bring arms to the Valley?"
    "I merely accompanied him across the Plains, Sire. I left him before the battle started."
    "Yes, well, tell me this. How long ago did Brownpony begin to pile up an arsenal in the Suckamint Range?"
    "Did Cardinal Benefez not tell you that I would give no reply to questions about military matters? I am not a spy."
    Archbishop Benefez returned to the table and, having heard the last exchange, began berating his nephew for breaking his promise not to badger the cardinal from Oregonia.
    Nevertheless, the Emperor went away happy that night. The defection of Sorely Cardinal Nauwhat, now a guest in the episcopal palace of his uncle, added respectability to Filpeo's cause. Even though Nauwhat declined to be interviewed by intelligence, and made it plain that he considered himself the equal of his host, the Emperor was delighted at the prospect of establishing good relations with the Oregonians, who were Nauwhat's people. It was the odd move of a knight on the continental chessboard: two squares west and one north. Oregonia was not far from what the Emperor had concluded to be the west-coast source of Brownpony's arms. The man owned land there, and received revenue from it. Filpeo would bestow gifts upon the Oregonian ruler as soon after victory as possible, whoever that ruler by then might be.
    
    To the east, while Hadala was preparing his expedition from Valana, before the time of harvest, the King of the Tenesi had taken advantage of the Mayor's problems with the Grasshopper and with Brownpony's army in the Province. He attacked the Texark puppet state of Timberlen on the east bank of the Great River. Filpeo Harq sent his regulars across the Great River to drive back the Tenesi from his burned and looted ally. But the Tenesi were expecting them; they retreated into impenetrable mountains, which the Texark general then decided to penetrate.
    Brownpony in due course learned about these battalions, which constituted a regiment of cunning mountain fighters; the Pope sent a courier to express his wish that the Tenesi might encourage the Texark troops to extend their stay in the east until spring, by a minimum of necessary hostile engagements. The courier carried the message as a coded tattoo in his crotch, and he was too fat to lean over far enough even to see it himself without a mirror, and he did not have the key to the code anyway. Brownpony did not worry about him; there seemed to be no point in torturing the messenger. Nevertheless, agents from Imperial Intelligence caught and tormented him into revealing that the tattoo was a message to the Tenesi, and tormented him some more to establish his ignorance of the code. The I.I. men decided not to kill him, but they strapped him to an operating table and removed the message with a skinning knife. He was then free to go, but could not walk because of the pain between his legs. They salted the skin, tacked it to a board to dry, and sent it to Hannegan City for study. The skinning knife had not been sterilized, and the Pope's fat courier died of septicemia.
    Upon learning of his messenger's fate, Brownpony could only heap more ecclesiastical sanctions upon an already excommunicated and anathematized Filpeo Harq Hannegan and his uncle, the apostle of Platonic friendship and other deviations from orthodoxy.
    Wooshin did his best to console his master. "It seems to me, 'Oliness, that the Tenesi will be doing what you asked them to do anyway."
    "So my message needlessly sacrificed the messenger?"
    Wooshin was silent, remembering that his master, even if he did share the warrior's indifference to life and death, would never allow himself to realize it.
    "How simpler it must have been to manage a war with the methods of communication of the Magna Civitas!   Our generals receive our commands—if at all—weeks after we send them, and by then the situation has usually changed!"
    "Yes, 'Oliness, and that is why, in my people's tradition, a general in the field is obliged to consider his Emperor's commands only as fatherly advice, unless he is fighting very close to the imperial court. As for the Magna Civitas, Brother St. George told me that generals in those days complained bitterly because commands from the rulers were so numerous and came so quickly that the war was mismanaged by politicians. Look what happened to the Magna Civitas!"
    "I should not try to tell the Tenesi what to do?"
    Wooshin was silent again, and Brownpony smiled. "Axe, if it were up to me, you would be the commander of the operation in the Province instead of Magister Dion."
    "I have no ambition to command an army, 'Oliness."
    
•      •      •
    
    
     It was November before Blacktooth came limping into the snowy mountains with a sore toe and in the company of Aberlott and a glep cougar kitten with one blue ear and a half-bald skull. He had been robbed of his mount by outlaws after his Wilddog escort left him on the papal highway, and then Aberlott—who had returned first to Valana and then taken the highway south in the hope of seeing the sister of Jæsis again—found him moaning and half-conscious, with a ravenous kitten sucking at his bloody big toe. When they arrived at the military checkpoint at Arch Hollow, Blacktooth's name was found to be on the guards' list of admissible persons, but Aberlott's name was not.
    "He was here with me last year, and we were both here as emissaries from the Secretariat in Valana."
    "There is no 'Aberlott' on the list. And I don't think he is one of us."
    "Neither am I."
    The guard stared oddly at the monk. "No? I could have sworn—"
    Aberlott broke out laughing. "You're a spook, Nimmy. I've known it since Ædrea told Anala you were."
    Blacktooth sputtered. To the guard, he said, "I'll vouch for the idiot."
    The guard called an officer. Blacktooth was made to sign a guarantee as Aberlott's custodian.
    "If he breaks any laws, you'll take his punishment."
    "What a wonderful opportunity for me!" said Aberlott. "When I'm naughty, you'll get whacked!"
    "And you'll get shot!" the officer snapped.
    But as soon as they arrived at the new and temporary Holy City, they found themselves in the polite custody of Wooshin, Qum-Do, and Foreman Jing, and for the second time Nimmy had to inform them of the death of a comrade serving their common master. They expressed concern about Gai-See's continued absence.
    "I think Sharf Demon Light is keeping him for a while as a teacher of his arts to young Jackrabbit warriors. He wanted to keep me to teach them to read. Now, when may I see His Holiness?"
    He found himself looking at Aberlott and three—uh-oh!—expressionless yellow faces.
    
     
    
    
    
CHAPTER 26
     
     It happens all too often that the constituting of a Prior gives rise to grave scandals in monasteries. For there are some who become inflated with the evil spirit of pride and consider themselves second Abbots.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 65
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    
W
HEN THEY TOLD BLACKTOOTH WHAT HAD BEEN done to Ædrea, they were prepared to restrain him and tie him down until he listened to the whole story, including their master's promise to commute her sentence as soon as the Pope could leave New Jerusalem. Instead Nimmy listened in silence, wept a little, but in the end said, "Good! But what about Gai-See? Has he come back yet?"
    "We have heard nothing," Axe told him.
    Nimmy wanted an audience with the Pope, but Axe convinced him the time was not right. They waited five more days for the warrior's return. Then Blacktooth said to Foreman Jing, "Come with me to Arch Hollow." 
    "Why?" 
    "Because I am no longer the Pope's servant. Nor was Gai-See  when he started obeying Hadala and Nauwhat. The guards will not answer my questions. They may talk to you."
    Jing agreed. They left the municipal area in the early morning and were back to their servants' quarters before sundown. Blacktooth allowed Jing to tell Wooshin the bad news.
    "Gai-See arrived at Arch Hollow a few days after Blacktooth and Aberlott. The guards there seized him, charged him with murder, and escorted him straight up through the mountain passes. They took him to Slojon's court in the central square. There he was indicted, and thence he was sent to the cage. Slojon went directly to the Pope and informed him of the action. They met alone with no witnesses."
    "I remember that meeting!" said Axe. "I did not know what it was about."
    "Of course," said Qum-Do. "You were there too," he said to Jing.
    "So, why aren't you looking angry, Axe?" Blacktooth asked.
    "At whom?"
    "At the Holy Father, of course! For approving Gai-See's arrest."
    So unthinkable was the suggestion, so irreverent to their master, that they all glared at him.
    "Well, false friends, I am going to see the Pope about Gai-See!" said Blacktooth.
    "No you're not," said Wooshin, laying a hand on his arm. "His Holiness is not ready—"
    Having called him a false friend without provoking him, Blacktooth slapped him. So unexpected was the event that Axe failed to evade the blow. Nimmy stepped back defensively.
    "You'll have to kill me to stop me, Axe, and your master won't like that."
    "But you're not supposed to crash in without—"
    "That's not for you to say. I am going to see the Pope. Come along if you want, all of you." He glanced at Ri's warriors. Qum-Do and Foreman Jing were standing at hand-on-sword alert. Either of them would abandon Gai-See to his fate without protest, if their master so much as frowned at him. So would Axe.
    Nimmy turned his back on them and walked out of the house. He could hear them coming behind him. He had recovered from the beating he had taken from the outlaws. The earth felt good under his feet again. However briefly, he had visited his ancestors. While with them he had seen something within himself as in a mirror. The earth, any earth, was his to walk on now. Moreover he had seen the Nomad wife of the Pontiff, red as the sunset, soaring over the corpse-strewn landscape. Gai-See was only the beginning of what he wanted to see the Pope about. Blacktooth was vaguely conscious of casting aside his vow of obedience, but felt no qualms about it this time. Ædrea was in his mind like a vision, but he had nothing to say about her.
    At the entrance to the audience room, a member of the Papal Guard armed with a halberd blocked the doorway. Blacktooth stamped the guard's slipper with his heel, seized the halberd, and rammed his stomach with the butt of it to get inside the door. His Oriental companions watched the fight without comment. Once inside the doors, he was seized by Cardinal Linkono and the Grand Cardinal Penitentiary. Axe stepped in to assist them now, but Brownpony called out from the throne.
    "Let him in. Let them all in."
    Blacktooth strode up to the dais and fell to his knees before his Pontiff. The Pope reached down to lift him up, but the monk evaded his hands and stood erect. Brownpony regarded him with faint amusement.
    "Is this so urgent, Brother St. George? We were discussing policy with our eminent brethren. About Ædrea—"
    "It's not about Ædrea. Who do you see here besides your eminent brethren?"
    "Why, I see an unhappy monk, and three of my personal guards."
    "Why not four of your personal guards, Holy Father?"
    "Oh. I did not know that you and Gai-See were close. It is unfortunate."
    "We were not close at all, and your betrayal is worse than unfortunate."
    Brownpony frowned as if not quite believing his ears.
    "I see it is possible for a Pope to do evil."
    Against these insulting words to the master, swords were drawn.
    Nimmy turned his back on the Pope and faced his companions. "If your master wills my death, cowards, why do you hesitate? Hit!"
    Immediately he turned to Brownpony again. "Can't you see what you've done? Right here before you, they're ready to do what Gai-See did. Except that Gai-See thought he was right and they know they are wrong. And Your Holiness accepts this kind of loyalty in good conscience?"
    Brownpony was watching his former Nomadic secretary in apparent fascination. Blacktooth heard one sword return to its sheath. That would be Foreman Jing, he guessed. Wooshin would kill him without the Pope's nod if he thought the Pope's best interest would be served by the killing.
    "Blacktooth, you were always a quick study, but this is a new role, isn't it?"
     "Holy Father, as a Catholic, I have to believe that what you bind on Earth is bound also in Heaven, and I have to believe that when you are speaking about faith and morals, the Holy Ghost prevents you from speaking any error."
    "You have to believe, but do you?"
    "I have a question. Is a declaration of war an assertion about faith and morals? Ever? Even if you call it a holy war? Father Suarez taught—and he was extending Saint Augustine's teaching—that a war to convert the heathen can never be just. Can a war against heretical Christians be holy, if a war against the heathen is unjust?"
    "The war is against neither heathens nor heretical Christians. It is against a tyrant who usurps the apostolic power and oppresses the whole world."
    "But it's heathens and Christians who are killed, while the tyrant still lives and the apostle is still in power."
    Brownpony seemed to swear under his breath for a moment, then recovered. "You wrote me that you killed a man in battle, Nimmy. Is that what's wrong with you now?"
    Blacktooth nodded and spoke slowly. "The man in a Texark uniform was a child of yours, Holiness: a glep from the Valley. I meant to miss him. My aim was bad, and I hit him in the belly. What he wanted from me then was a bullet in the brain, but I cut his throat instead, because a sergeant was watching. Yes, I think that is what's wrong with me, Holy Father. Eltür Bråm, because I had already killed, would have made me a Nomad warrior with only the initiation, without the ordeal of battle. Then they would stop calling me 'Nimmy,' he said, and stop laughing about it. I don't mind the name or the laughter. I want never to kill again. But I don't want to see Gai-See punished. He saw Hadala as a fugitive from your commands. He couldn't arrest him or Gleaver; he did what he thought was necessary."
    "He had no license from me."
    "You accepted his services as a warrior. Did you really withhold from him the license that he assumed was his?"
    Pope Amen frowned and called out for everyone but Blacktooth and one guard to leave the room. It was the guard with the sore stomach who stayed, and who sealed the doors after the others were outside.
    "Go on, finish what you have to say."
    Blacktooth looked around to make sure Cardinal Linkono was gone. "For one thing, Gai-See is a member of a religious order, and—
    "I see," Brownpony interrupted. "I claimed jurisdiction in Ædrea's case, why not in Gai-See's? Because no pope has yet recognized the Order to which Ri's men say they belong, that's why. I meant to do it sooner or later, but I can't do it just to free Gai-See. It's too transparent. But go on, if you have more to say."
    "I cannot, Your Holiness, speak to the Vicar of Christ on Earth as freely as I did to my former employer, the Secretary for Extraordinary Ecclesiastic Concerns. I don't know the Vicar of Christ."
    "It seems to me you've been speaking freely enough. But suppose I just take off my zucchetto and tell you that the Vicar of Christ has taken the day off. I am still Elia Brownpony—the bastard son of a lesbian nomad and a Texark rapist. So, Nyinden, farmboy Nomad, sometime monk, sometime lover, speak your mind. I may throw you out, but I won't throw you in a dungeon."
    "Then release Gai-See from a dungeon."
    "I didn't imprison Gai-See. Cardinal Linkono did."
    "Without your permission?"
    "You don't understand the situation here, Blacktooth. We are the guests of the city. I won't say we're captives here—until I try to return to Valana and see if they let me go. Cardinal Linkono informed me of Gai-See's arrest. Chuntar Hadala played bishop to these people, because he was bishop to the Valley whence they came. Slojon and everybody here knows that I sent men to arrest Hadala, and, well—"
    "Oh. So when Gai-See killed him, they thought you ordered the execution."
    "Not yet, but they will certainly suspect it if I secure his release now. He killed a bishop, and prince of the Church. Cardinal Hadala was popular here."
    "I was there when it happened, Holy Father. All along, Gleaver and his officers had been shooting those of us who wavered or held back. In that light, Gai-See shot in self-defense and the defense of us all. But first he crawled up to me under fire. He asked if it was true that Cardinal Hadala was defying your orders, and betraying you. I told him it was so. I knew what he might do when I told him that, and I hoped he would do it. So I am the one who sentenced the cardinal to death. Have them arrest me too, Holy Father."
    "I'll see what I can do," Brownpony said darkly, and beckoned to the guard and breathed a quiet order. The guard with the sore stomach seized Blacktooth's arm, led him straight to jail, and put him in Gai-See's cell. Gai-See embraced him. During the embrace, the guard reached through the bars and punched Blacktooth hard in the kidney with the butt of the halberd.
    "I'll be back for you soon," he said with a sweet grin.
    Gai-See was not alone in jail. Two men who claimed to be political refugees from the Empire and who now sought asylum in New Jerusalem were imprisoned there until their claims were thoroughly investigated. One was Urik Thon Yordin, S.I., the Ignatzian who was also a professor of history at the secular university at Texark, and whom Brownpony had suspected of hiring the thugs who tried to kill them on Easter before the last conclave. How desperate the man must be to escape Texark, that he should come here for asylum! He glanced at Blacktooth once, but neglected to recognize him.
    The other man was Torrildo.
    "Blacktooth, my God! You can't imagine what that beast Benefez did to me!"
    Nimmy sat down on Gai-See's bed and fell to questioning the warrior. He tried to ignore Torrildo's confession of the intimately brutal sins the Archbishop of Texark had perpetrated upon his person.
    According to Gai-See, Yordin and Torrildo were refugees, not from a terrible Emperor, but from a furious Archbishop who had suddenly been made to realize that he could never be Pope, even if his nephew conquered all of his enemies. At the university, Yordin had made the mistake of saying openly that Benefez was now non papabilis, and Torrildo himself was part of the Archbishop's problem which insured that he would never wear the tiara. In each fugitive's case, it was his own confessor who, after hearing the rumbles from the top of the mountain, advised his penitent to do his penance in some land far from the reach of the Imperium and the Diocesan Ordinary. So there they sat in a New Jerusalem jail, hoping to be of some value to a Pope who had the power to set them free. Blacktooth found this interesting and ironic, but decided not to concern himself with their fate.
    After a while, the guard came back for him and they returned to the throne room. He asked Wooshin in a whisper if he knew about Yordin and Torrildo, but the Axe ignored him.
    
    "Is Gai-See sick?" Brownpony wanted to know. "Is he mistreated or badly fed?"
    "He is sick at heart. Keeping him caged is mistreatment, and so is the food."
    "If you had not been hiding out with Amen Specklebird when they blew up the Palace, none of this would have happened," Brownpony told him. "You would have come here with me. Now you are furious, as if it were my intent that you fight or kill in battle."
    "I was not 'hiding out' with the Pope."
    "Just praying?"
    "Not quite. We talked. One thing we spoke of was war, and I made the traditional mention of 'the Church Militant on Earth, the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in Heaven.' But the Pope said to me, 'There is no Church Triumphant in Heaven, although I have heard that foolishness before.' I asked him why he said that, in disagreement with all the elders, and he told me, 'John says it. Chapter Twenty-one, Apocalypse, "And I saw no temple therein." In the presence of God, the Church is a discarded crutch.'
    "What I am saying to you, Holy Father, is that if the Church Militant on Earth does not produce members of a Church Triumphant in Heaven, then its militancy is not . . ."
    "Stop. I bow to all the words of my predecessor, but not to your explanation of them. Especially not on the subject of war."
    Nimmy fell silent, feeling stupid.
    "It wasn't murder, when you accidentally shot that man. You don't need absolution for it—but I can shrive you if you like." The Pope stared at Blacktooth's face for a time, and began to frown. "I think you would not accept absolution from me if I gave it to you!"
    "You have already given me a plenary indulgence and a passport to paradise in Scitote Tyrannum, Holy Father. What more could I ask?"
    Brownpony reddened at the sarcasm, but Blacktooth persisted in standing there with his hands spread wide as if to receive gifts. In reality, he was frozen in fright by what he had said.
    "Get out of here!" Brownpony erupted. "Go visit your patron saint at the priory. I don't want to hear this."
    "May I be excused now?" Stupid again!
    "Yes. Go."
    Blacktooth glanced at the Pope's hand. Brownpony did not lift his ring, and Blacktooth did not reach. He made a fast genuflection and beat a faster retreat. He did not see Brownpony again during that winter.
    
    He took residence at the Priory of Saint Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods, where Prior Singing Cow St. Martha assigned him work in exchange for room and board. He was not required to assist in the Divine Office, but he was not forbidden either. So he added his voice to the choir, took dictation and penned letters for the prior, washed dishes and took his turn as cook. The brothers were kinder to him here than at the abbey, although they were the same monks; he had known them all at the monastery in the desert. They were all specialists. Brother Jonan, who used to wake Blacktooth every morning for Lauds, was a mathematician. Brother Elwen, who had been Torrildo's lover and went over the wall, had come back repentant and become skilled in his previous studies: mechanics and engineering. Old Brother Tudlen, whom Blacktooth had barely known because he had been on leave from the abbey for so many years at sea, was a naval architect, astronomer, and navigator; he seemed somehow out of place this far from the ocean, but Brownpony, like Filpeo, had ambitions. Tudlen had built a schooner in old Tampa Bay, and it was supposedly the property of the Order; here in the mountains where the air was thin and clear, he was grinding a telescope mirror. The others were specialists in Church history, in political and military history, and in the work of Boedullus among other authorities on the Magna Civitas and its catastrophic collapse.
    Persuading Mayor Dion to permit the opening of the Leibowitzian priory in New Jerusalem had been no small undertaking. Singing Cow had only high praise for the Pope as a persuader and as a devotee of their patron saint. "His Holiness convinced Dion that we would be of educational value to the community here. But so far, no schools have called on us; Linkono runs them. These spooks don't want their superbabies growing up to be monks. There are two layers of religion here: Catholic above ground, and New Adventist below ground. They're out to save the world. Hadala was typical."
    "The old Jew Benjamin told me about them," said Blacktooth, "but he kept mumbling, 'It's still not him, still not him,' and I don't know what he meant."
    Singing Cow smiled as if he knew but said nothing.
    He confessed to Father Prior "Mooo," as the Brethren sometimes called him. As one ex-Grasshopper farm kid to another, it proved a strange experience for them both.
    "Were you taken into the Nomad war cult, my son?" Father St. Martha asked, in connection with Blacktooth's confession of killing a man in battle.
    "No, Father. The Grasshopper people treated me with kindness, as they would a boy who had not yet passed through the ordeal. I did not intend to shoot the man."
    "Of course not, but you intended to cut his throat, did you not?"
    "I thought he was begging me to. I still think so."
    Singing Cow, who sometimes liked to think of himself as a Nomad, mentioned that the Church frowned upon assisting a suicide, but that he would probably have done the same; still it was an act to be repented.
    Nimmy failed to mention disobedience among his many sins. Singing Cow did not remind him. Absolution was forthcoming, and the penance was mild: pray five mysteries of the rosary and begin singing for his supper.
    
     One cold night he and the Cow were walking home through the snow after singing Compline in the neighborhood Church which they shared with the local pastor and his small flock. Compline was the night prayer of the Church, concerned with sleep and wakefulness, life and death, sinning and receiving grace. But it was no lullaby, and left him feeling lonely.
    "I can tell you something I think you'll want to hear, Father."
    "Tell away," said Singing Cow.
    "Remember when we ran away and tried to join the Grasshopper? They fed us, let us rest two days, and then drove us out of the camp with whips in a snow like this. Were you as bitter as I was?"
    "Those rope whips! Listen, I still don't know what we did to offend them. I used to think that you or Wren must have made a pass at a girl. Because our parents farmed? Was that why? Yes, I was bitter, and Grasshopper Nomads still make me uncomfortable."
    "If we had fought back, we might have had a chance; instead, we just cringed and ran. There is a Grasshopper Weejus there who thinks she remembers three wandering orphans at about the time we visited their tents. She explained to me why they offered us no more than food, water, and two nights' sleep."
    "Explaining cruelty doesn't absolve it."
    "Perhaps not. But I'll try to repeat what she told me as best I remember. 'Who wants to adopt a teenage nimmy,' she said, 'no matter how he was raised? A Weejus spends four or five years feeding him, clothing him, and teaching him the horses. In exchange for what? Unskilled and lazy labor. He's horny and he gets in fights. He starts trouble with other families. Maybe she catches him coupling with one of her own daughters, but they can't be married under the breeding rules. Or worse, he runs off to marry a daughter of her horse-breeding rival! A family that mourns a dead son would be better off adopting a young cougar than another boy.' "
    Singing Cow laughed. "She knew about your kitten?"
    "I was carrying Librada when I visited her. She herself had adopted a pubescent orphan girl. But among Nomads, when a girl grows up she stays with her mother. A boy grows up and leaves her and her whole family when he marries. Motherless boys are as welcome as leprosy there, unless they can fight and join the war cult."
    "Rope whips." Cow was ruminating on it.
    "That was more than twenty years ago, Father. This year, the sharf himself wanted me to stay and tutor his nephews. I would have been adopted, at my age."
    "Well, I'm glad you told me why they were cruel. Charity's rarely convenient; sometimes it's completely impractical." Singing Cow thought for a moment. "The sharf’s grandmother probably believed your vow of chastity protected all of the daughters," he added.
    Blacktooth looked away and blushed. "You're supposed to forget what I tell you in confession!" he complained as they entered the monks' dormitory.
    
    At the small priory, each man took his turn at cooking or menial labor. Blacktooth had been told by the Axe that the Pope had wanted his recipe for summonabisch stew, and when his turn came to cook, he asked Father Mooo's permission to prepare the dish for all the Brothers, who needed permission to eat meat. When permission was granted, Blacktooth bought the ingredients from a local butcher, prepared the feast, and sent a quart of it to the Papal Palace. The lack of a response seemed an indicator of the Pope's disfavor. Librada consumed the leftovers with gusto. She had caught a mouse on her first day, thus insuring her room and board.
    "Why did you name her Librada? What does it mean?" Cow asked.
    "It was Spanish, and means 'set-free.' Because that's what she'll be, before she's much bigger and eats one of us."
    
    The winter of '45-'46 was the mildest in memory. Most of the Wilddog Horde moved their cattle south as usual. Hannegan's agents among the motherless outlaw bands observed the migration, but saw nothing unusual to report until March, when all the warriors of the horde assembled as an army under Lord Høngan himself, with Oxsho second-in-command. They rode swiftly eastward for several days, then south to the river. Before Filpeo Harq learned about the movement, the Nomad horsemen had forded the Nady Ann and attacked from the rear those Texark forces dug-in along the east bank of the Washita. With them they brought three Grasshopper dog trainers and nearly a hundred dogs who would kill any unmounted man who did not smell like a Nomad. At least six of Sharf Oxsho's warriors were bitten for not having the usual Grasshopper aroma; by the light of the full Pascal moon the dogs tore out the throats of Texark soldiers in the trenches along with some of their reluctant Jackrabbit allies who ate too many onions to smell friendly. The dogs' attack on the night of Holy Saturday enabled the forces of Önmu Kun to cross the Washita without coming under fire until they charged the fortifications with fixed bayonets. By Easter's sunrise, the trainers had regained control of ravening dogs and the battle was won without further Jackrabbit casualties, and Mayor Dion's well-rested men crossed the river to carry the war eastward on horseback.
    After the fray, Høngan Ösle Chür met with Önmu Kun in the middle of a battlefield at dawn; he then rode with the Jackrabbit's forces without taking command. This was his reason for defying his shamans. The Jackrabbit were lacking in respect for Önmu the smuggler. Their respect for the Lord of the Hordes was enhanced by the fact that he was not Jackrabbit. Such was the self-contempt of a conquered people.
    Father Steps-on-Snake had recently come to the vicinity and he now celebrated the Mass of the Resurrection at noon on March 25th—the earliest Easter in many years—and gave the Eucharist to Lord Høngan Ösle together with Sharfs Oxsho Xon and Önmu Kun in the sight of all the warriors and the Jackrabbit population of the region. Thus did the faithful rejoice in the victory of the Nomad over tyranny at the same time as the victory of the Christ over death. Never in the memory of old Steps-on-Snake had the subject people expressed such jubilation on this highest feast day.
    Holy Madness spent nearly a week building up the Jackrabbit's esteem for the Jackrabbit sharf by accompanying him everywhere, listening to Önmu address the rebel fighters and civilian groups, then reinforcing the sharf's words with a few of his own, bringing on rousing cheers from the multitude.
    There were about seven hundred unwounded prisoners. Jackrabbit warriors had begun to maim them until Holy Madness put a stop to it. That Nomad custom had been abandoned soon after the Texark conquest, except for captured spies and saboteurs, but the Jackrabbit was only trying to honor the custom, for they had been told by Önmu what Høngan had done to Esitt Loyte.
    But the forces of the Hannegan were rushing westward to rejoin the battle against the Jackrabbit rebels, and Önmu's gathering army now marched to meet them following Dion's light horse. Having destroyed the enemy forces in the immediate vicinity and inspired the Jackrabbit fighters with a new enthusiasm for battle, Høngan and Oxsho withdrew the Wilddog horsemen from the area by crossing the Washita and riding westward to cross the Nady Ann at a point where their movement would not be observed by Texark scouts.
    When the warriors rejoined the rest of the Wilddog Horde at their wintering grounds, Høngan Ösle first sent messengers with an account of the battle to Sharf Bråm and Pope Amen. Then he summoned Father Ombroz as well as his senior Bear Spirit shaman and his own Weejus mother; he told them to prepare immediately to accompany him to New Jerusalem and the Court of Amen II.
    
 •      •      •
    
    The Lord of the Hordes and his party arrived in New Jerusalem at the end of April. They were greeted by the Pope and the Mayor— Dion was briefly home from the wars—with high ceremony. The Major General Quigler Durod was already in town as plenipotentiary from the King of the Tenesi. Durod had taken the trouble to learn a Nomad dialect (Jackrabbit, because in his youth he had served in the Province as a Texark mercenary), and he made friends quickly with Høngan Ösle. Besides Durod, armorers had come from the west coast, bringing samples of their latest model firearms.
    Although Høngan Ösle as Qæsach dri Vørdar spoke for all three hordes, Brownpony expressed regret that Sharfs Bråm and Önmu Kun were unable to attend the council of war. Three days later, an angry Grasshopper emissary rode up from Arch Hollow to confront the Pope.
    The Grasshopper messenger was not a Christian. He stood defiantly before Amen II and six members of the Curia to voice the demands of his sharf. "Unless you release Nyinden and the swordsman Gai-See into my custody, the Grasshopper will make war not against your enemies, but against you!"
    "Perhaps your sharf has been lied to by someone," the Pope said. "Nyinden is staying at the priory with the other monks. If he wants to go with you, there is nothing to stop him."
    "And the yellow warrior? Where is he?"
    "He's in the city's jail. I did not put him there. The only man in this room with any voice in city affairs is Cardinal Linkono, who grew up here. Your Eminence, would you please?" He beckoned to a short man with a white beard who looked like a gnome wearing a red skullcap. Then he said to the messenger, "I think your sharf would want his message to go to the right man. I am the wrong man, and His Eminence Abraha is not the right man either, but he can take you to the right man."
    "Are you not the most powerful man in this awful place—not Pope Redbeard, the Lord of the Christian Horde?" the Nomad demanded.
    "Not really Lord as you understand it. You might think of my office as that of a high priest."
    Linkono limped up to stand beside the Nomad, facing him, and spoke in a voice surprisingly deep for so small a man. His Nomadic was heavily accented but understandable.
    "Young man, why is this an 'awful place'?"
    Brownpony himself explained: "The Nomads say evil spirits come down from the mountains, especially the Old Zarks, and inhabit wombs. The belief explains why a Nomad woman sometimes gives birth to a glep baby."
    "I see. Well, young man, compare our Pope to your oldest Bear Spirit shaman. Neither he nor your sharf has to obey the other. The sharf in this place is Mayor Dion. But he just left here to go back to the war. His son takes his place. This, the Church, is like the Bear Spirit Council. There is nothing we can do for you here, my nephew, except pray."
    Linkono was smart enough not to say "my son" to a Nomad, but this Nomad did not like "nephew" either.
    "My only uncle is Demon Light, gray runt. My name is Blue Lightning, and I am the eldest son of his eldest sister. We both witnessed Hadala's crimes."
    "Surely you mean the crime against Cardinal Hadala!"
    "I mean Hadala's crimes, for which he was executed."
    The gnome's jaw fell. "Crimes under what law? Nomad law?"
    "The Treaty of the Sacred Mare. He violated it by bringing an army into our lands. Hadala violated the law and defied our sharf. By his order, his officers killed his own men. If Nyinden and the yellow warrior hadn't put him to death, my uncle would have done it."
    "I had not thought of it in that way before," Brownpony said. "He's right, you know, Abra. Hadala clearly violated the Treaty."
    "Holy Father, I can't believe what I'm hearing!"
    Blue Lightning grabbed the small cardinal by the shoulders and shook him. "I can make war or peace, little man. My words are my uncle's words. Perhaps we cannot bring war to you here in your evil mountains, but we can join the war against your men who fight south of the Nady Ann. Take me to the man who jails the victim instead of the criminal."
    Linkono limped toward the exit as fast as he could move, with the burly Nomad crowding his heels. When they were gone, Brownpony turned to his personal guard. "Axe, go with them, and take Jing and Qum-Do. Keep that Nomad out of trouble, and make sure Slojon has to look you in the face when he talks about Gai-See." Then, to the Cardinal Penitentiary who was also his personal confessor, he said, "Go to the guests' quarters, please, and tell Høngan Ösle Chür what has happened here. Blue Lightning does not realize that his Qæsach dri Vørdar is in town."
    In the administration building, Slojon haughtily dismissed the Nomad's claim. The Nomad grabbed him by the ears and hauled him, squeaking in pain, across the desk. A sergeant drew a pistol, and instantly three swords were in the air.
    "Drop it, or lose your head," said Axe. The sergeant dropped it.
     Eltür's nephew now stood behind Slojon with his arm in a hammerlock and a knife held to his throat. He pushed him toward the door. "This fart is going to jail," said the Nomad.
    Slojon screamed as he felt his own blood running down his chest.
    "Stop him, Wooshin! Stop him!"
    "Only you can stop him, Messér. Take him to the jail in peace."
    "Brownpony is behind this!"
    "No, the Pope is not! The man behind it is also behind you, right now. You did violate the Treaty, Messér."
    "All right, we'll go to the jail."
    The trip to jail was halted by the sudden entrance of Høngan Ösle Chür and his two shamans. Blue Lightning took one look at him, gasped, and released the Mayor's son. He made a sweeping kokai to the chosen one of the Day Maiden, Husband of the Prairies, then fell silent to await orders.
    The Lord of the Hordes asked for an explanation of the problem. Blue Lightning spoke first, then Slojon and Axe. Then the Qæsach dri Vørdar told the Mayor's son that he, Høngan Ösle Chür, ruled in favor of the Grasshopper claim and made the same threat to Slojon that Blue Lightning had made. The hordes would turn against New Jerusalem for breaking the Treaty, and might even carry the conflict into these feared mountains. The Jackrabbit would turn on the spooks in battle and kill Slojon's father as well.
    Thus it came about that the charges were dropped and Gai-See was released into the protective custody of Blue Lightning. Because the Nomad claimed plenipotentiary power to speak for his uncle, Brownpony invited him to attend the council of war, which had all but ended upon the departure of Dion, but was now renewed in the presence of the Grasshopper. The Pope dispatched a message to Bråm through the Nomad relay network to assure the sharf that Gai-See and Nyinden were free. He also thanked him for sending Blue Lightning, who added to the document his initials—Blacktooth had taught him to draw them—and peace was restored among the allies.
    
    After his harsh beginning, Blue Lightning proved a well-rounded diplomat. In spite of his initial threat to abandon the alliance and join the other side, he brought intelligence gathered from several sources. On balance, the news was good, but there were things to worry about. Filpeo had new repeating arms now, but not yet enough of them to turn the outcome of any foreseeable battle. The countryside surrounding New Rome was by no means demilitarized, but the occupation forces there were thinned out by the withdrawal of troops being sent to the Province to halt the eastward advance of the armies of Önmu Kun and Mayor Dion. Sharf Bråm estimated that no more than seven hundred men, Texark cavalry and glep mercenaries, remained to block access to the gates of New Rome.
    And there was trouble in the Valley. Texark recruiters had been ambushed and killed. "I wonder who could be doing that?" Quigler Durod asked innocently, provoking laughter. Everyone present knew that Tenesi agents disguised as gleps had crossed the Great River and infiltrated the Watchitah-Ol’zark region. Further recruiting in the Valley of the Misborn was inhibited, if not halted.
    "If we don't strike now," Høngan said, "the Emperor's firepower will increase rapidly. We will lose the advantage the Pope's weapons have given us."
    Blue Lightning murmured assent. General Durod wanted to know if it was possible to use the Nomad relay network to contact his men in the Valley.
    "If you have a secure cipher, maybe," said Blue Lightning.  "There is a risk of a messenger being caught. He must not know what your message is."
    Pope Amen came to a sudden decision. "We shall mount an expedition to capture New Rome, and do it as soon as possible, unless one of you disagrees."
    Nobody objected. After so many decades in exile, the Holy See was going home.
    
    Pentecost came on May 14th in 3246, and Blacktooth had known for a week that Holy Madness and other important guests were in town to consult with the Pope, but the consultations were private and he was as ignorant as any local citizen of what happened behind the closed doors. Prior Cow wanted all eight of them to attend the Pontifical High Mass in the Pope's log-and-stone cathedral, but Nimmy begged off. Instead, he attended Mass at their usual neighborhood Church, sang the Veni Creator Spiritus with the small choir, and assisted the priest in distributing the Eucharist to local spooks and their beautiful children.
    Singing Cow found him sitting in the garden, trying to extract a still fluttering pigeon from the jaws of his growling glep cougar. Librada slashed his hand and clamped down on the bird. Nimmy gave up. "I think it's about time for Librada to be librada," he said to the prior.
    "We'll take care of it, Nimmy. You're going to be too busy."
    "It's up to me, Father. I brought her here. She ought to be let go as far as possible from humans. She's not afraid of anybody. And why do you say I'll be too busy?"
    "I think you will be. The Pope wants to see you right now. He's going away."
    "Away?"
    "To New Rome—as a conqueror, I believe. Now go bandage your hand and run over to the Palace."
    
    As soon as he saw that Gai-See had been set free, Blacktooth felt shame for his earlier impudence toward his Pope, and he looked for an opportunity to apologize. But Axe had assigned him to a place in the baggage train in the rear, and the procession had been in motion for three days before he found an opportunity to approach his former employer. They were both on horseback.
    "Don't thank me, thank God and the Grasshopper," said the Pope after waving aside Blacktooth's apology.
    "I don't understand, Holy Father."
    "You don't have to!" Brownpony snapped, and after a pause relented. "Somebody told Sharf Bråm that you and Gai-See were both in jail for killing Cardinal Hadala. Hadala was violating the Sacred Mare Treaty by bringing an army onto Nomad land. The sharf would have killed him if Gai-See hadn't. I don't know what made him think you helped kill him."
    "I did help, Holy Father. I told Gai-See that Hadala was defying you, and I knew what I was doing when I told him. Eltür knew this."
    "I see. Well, he became quite angry and sent his nephew with an oral message to Gai-See's jailer."
    "Which nephew was this?"
    "Stützil Bråm—Blue Lightning. He's up ahead with Høngan Ösle's party. At first he thought I was the jailer. He told everybody that unless you were released at once, he would make peace with the Hannegan and attack Dion's forces wherever he found them. Høngan Ösle stepped in at that point and took over; he even threatened to hit New Jerusalem. So you can thank the Nomads, not me. I'm only bringing you along to satisfy Eltür Bråm."
    "So that's why!"
    "That and your prowess as a soldier," said Brownpony, and spurred his horse to get away from the conversation.
    
     
    
    
    
CHAPTER 27
     
     Except the sick who are very weak, let all abstain entirely from eating the flesh of four-footed animals.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 39
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
C
HIEF HAWKEN CARDINAL IRRIKAWA, WHO HAD departed Valana for his own country some months ago, returned suddenly to rejoin the Curia's wagon train. He explained that his road home north of the Misery River was temporarily blocked by the presence of Texark troops in the region. The lands beyond the Misery were considered open range, and both Grasshopper and Wilddog peoples drove cattle there in season, although the campsites were not permanent and there were no breeding pits. If Texark troops were in the area, it was in violation of the Treaty of the Sacred Mare. The Pope was alarmed at first. But those who questioned the cardinal closely concluded that what he had encountered was a band of well-dressed and well-armed outlaws, imitating Texark cavalry maneuvers. It was strange, but only Sharf Oxsho seemed worried. "Too many outlaws on the move," he said softly to Father Ombroz. "Too many to believe."
    
     The Pope's train gradually gathered a multitude as it moved east. Parties of ten or twenty warriors converged with the growing army every few hours. While passing through Wilddog country, the legion grew to sixteen hundred horsemen and their animals. Sometimes when the moon was bright in June, nocturnal riders thundered into camp with obscene war cries followed by laughter as sleepy men scrambled out of their bedrolls. There was talk of victory in the air, talk of spoils and of farmers' women. And rebuke for such talk from Sharf Oxsho's lieutenants.
    Blacktooth rode in the back of the hoodlum wagon with Librada, his cougar. He had made a rawhide collar and kept her on a short leash. A sickness of the spirit had come over him. He was unable to pray except to God in his cat.
    That was the summer of the Year of Our Lord 3246. On the eve of the solstice the moon was pink and full over the western horizon when dawn broke on the Plains. As Blacktooth crawled from under the hoodlum wagon, he could see that breakfast fires were already being extinguished here and there about the militant horizon. Groups of armed men, horses, cattle, and cannon as far as the eye could see: it was seething, but not yet boiling, this pot.
    The Hannegan knows we are coming. When will he respond?
    There was no haste to resume the journey, probably because today was a special day. Blacktooth could not be certain, for he was out of touch with those in command. A tripod with the remains of a slaughtered cow hung near the wagon. He scraped some raw meat from the bone with the hood's stolen bayonet. A monk of Leibowitz never ate such meat without the abbot's permission, which was rarely given, except on high holy days, or to the gravely ill. I am gravely ill, he said to Jarad breathing over his shoulder. The hood handed him a pancake, a cup of tea, and the usual morning insult. The hood was a Wilddog Nomad, whose name was Bitten Dog, drafted by the Pope's chef as cook's helper, and Blacktooth was supposed to be the Bitten Dog's helper, but diarrhea and deep sadness made him useless. His only work became the gathering of dry manure for fuel during stops, and the polishing of kitchen implements during days in the wagon.
    As it turned out, the day was indeed a special day. The Nomads ordinarily celebrated the Nomad Feast of the Bonfires at the solstice; and the Church once had observed on the twentieth of June the Feast of Pope Saint Silverius, the son of Pope Hormisdas. Silverius had offended the Empress Theodora, and she exiled him—a punishment which led to his suffering and death in 538 A.D., and therefore to his being called a martyr. Pope Amen Specklebird had borrowed his feast day (which had been borrowed twice previously) for the observances of Our Lady of the Desert, patroness of his Order. But now it was not Specklebird's feast that Brownpony chose to celebrate, but the Mass of a Sovereign Pontiff, Si diligis me; for to consecrate a bishop was his aim, during an early Mass that day in the midst of his armies on the hot and arid plain.
    Amen II gathered about him the eight cardinals who accompanied the train. He called it a consistory, and made the intended announcements. He and Wolfer Poilyf, Bishop from the North Country, together with Bishop Varley Swineman of Denver, consecrated Father Jopo e'Laiden Ombroz, S.I., as Archbishop of the ancient but moribund diocese of Canterbury, and then made him Vicar Apostolic to the Nomads—including of course the Jackrabbit Nomads, whose present clergy was now fleeing from the advancing Crusaders of the Western Church. The reluctant Bishop Ombroz was obedient to Brownpony, but less than elated by his own elevation. The Pope made him a cardinal as well, as announced in consistory. The elders of the Bear Spirit would, Ombroz said, laugh at his finery, and he would be called Cardinal Cannibal in Texark. Ombroz was now the ninth cardinal accompanying the main army of the crusade, and Brownpony confided in him and in Wooshin that he would be naming a tenth cardinal soon; he did not mention a name.
    From what little Blacktooth saw of the Pope from a distance, it seemed to him that Brownpony looked more ethereal and spiritual than before. Maybe closeness had made him miss something in the man. The change, however, was not necessarily good. Brownpony looked at the sky a lot, other observers said. He always seemed to be looking for something in the clouds or on the horizon, and gave little attention to those around him.
    Blacktooth wondered who had suggested to Brownpony the motto he had inscribed upon his new coat of arms as Amen II. It said LIKE HELL YOU WILL in ancient English, instead of the usual Latin. He understood it, but he wondered if the Pope really did. When Brownpony's coach overtook Eltür Bråm's coach one day, Jopo Cardinal Ombroz was the only member of the College who knew enough ancient English to laugh at the juxtaposition of their mottos.
    
    It was to celebrate Ombroz's ascension to the Sacred College that Önmu Kun had traveled north with Father Steps-on-Snake and a party of thirty Jackrabbit warriors. They arrived well before the event, and brought with them disease, although none fell ill until days after their arrival. Blacktooth, already ill, was one of the first to get sick after Önmu came up from the south to meet the train; he heard talk of epidemic in the Province. At first they blamed the water, but a week later three of the warriors and several Grasshopper children fell ill, and then Blacktooth St. George, who already had the runs.
    As Önmu explained it, the crusaders in the south at first attributed the affliction to poisoned wells left by retreating Texark forces, but the cattle that drank from the wells were not so afflicted. And the disease seemed to spread from the men who had drunk of the wells to men who had not. So far, the enemy was not affected by the plague, if such it was. The disease, whose symptoms were something like those suffered in Valana before the election of Pope Amen I, was not yet epidemic. To contain it, certain fighting units were quarantined.
    Blacktooth did not attend the Mass of a Sovereign Pontiff or Father Ombroz's consecration, but watched from a distant hilltop while squatting in the grass, taking a long painful dump. Blacktooth had given himself over to the Devil. He had stopped praying the Divine Office, except when it came to him in snatches. He listened to himself fart and said amen. He had ceased to meditate, except for an occasional rosary in honor of the Virgin—but then his mind dwelled on Ædrea in the role of God's mother.
    He assumed that he would never see her again, for she was now a nun. He had not, and would not, ask Brownpony for assurance that he had done what he had said he would do as soon as they were gone from New Jerusalem, that is, commute her sentence from permanent exile. He had no evidence for believing that the Pope had remembered or kept the promise, and he could not ask. He knew he was going mad; the origin of his cosmic madness was his inflamed bowel, which was caused by his guilt, which was driving him crazy during this summer of the Year of Our Lord 3246, the year of the Reconquest, not the previous year when he had killed a pitiful, drafted glep, for that had not been a year of diarrhea and fever.
    His days of madness made him reclusive. Only the responsibility he felt for Librada, the duty to return her to the country of her birth, kept him from abandoning all hope and fleeing. Father Steps-on-Snake was available to him, but he did not confess. The idea of confession seemed to make his diarrhea worse. He had made himself a stranger to his master by his insolence. The journey was misery, and every few days he had a day of delirium and uncontrollable behavior.
    But it was on such a bad day that the dead Pope Amen came to comfort him.
    "Your Christ is the true man of no identity," Amen Specklebird told him while he took a dump at sundown, "the one not wearing a mask; he comes and goes through your face, where your mask is. He comes and goes as he likes, fore and aft, and your mask sees him not.
    
     A mask sees self only in a mirror. But the true Jesus without a mask is alive and well; austere he sits in solitude under the bridge where the Christ sleeps, and takes a dump."
    "Are not all sins, in themselves, their own punishment?" Blacktooth asked, impertinently. He thought he remembered Specklebird saying something like that during the nine days of prayer they had shared.
    "Punishment like your congress with old Shard's daughter?" the Pope replied with a grin, and disappeared before Nimmy could say that was not a mortal sin.
    
    Besides his illness of body and spirit, another factor discouraged flight. Just out of sight beyond the southern horizon another train was traveling eastward on a parallel course, and another might be coming behind it. There was too much chance of being caught. Dust from the other train was usually visible by day, and the glow of its wagoners' fires by night. A rare glimpse of the wagons and riders occurred when the train mounted a low hill in the distance. Some of the wagons flashed in the sunlight as if they were covered with metal, but with the heat and the distance even the hills seemed to be made of red-hot metal in the late light. The Nomad riders stayed clear of the mysterious train; they had been so ordered. No one to whom the monk talked knew much about it, except that it had departed from New Jerusalem after the Pope's train, and that someone who knew someone who knew Wooshin said that it carried secret weapons, and that it was under the command of Magister Dion.
    
    A few days later, Blacktooth became aware that they had penetrated into tall-grass country. He knew it without looking up from where he lay on the feed sacks in the back of the bouncing hoodlum wagon. He knew because the bands of incoming warriors were beginning to speak the dialect of the Grasshopper, and their animals began to include dogs. The dogs were not immediately friendly to Wilddog Nomads, and were noisily hostile toward Churchmen and New Jerusalemites. Because of the dogs, Blacktooth began sleeping inside the cramped hoodlum wagon instead of under it.
    Pursued by a pack of the wolfish beasts, a screaming man leaped upon the tailgate of the hoodlum wagon one morning, and Blacktooth helped haul him inside. A snarling dog refused to let go of his shin. Librada shrieked. Cat and monk lunged for the dog at the same time. The man's shin was well wrapped in military leggings, but he kept screaming until Blacktooth beat the dog off with a fagot and restrained the cat.
    "Thank God! And thank you, Nimmy. I didn't know you were with us."
    "Aberlott! What in hell are you doing here?"
    "I'm just here for the crusade. Wooshin let me join the team. Damn, it's bleeding. Your cat did that."
    "You've been on the train all along?"
    "Sure, but this is the first day I've had free."
    Blacktooth thought for a moment. When the Pope's party of Churchmen had left New Jerusalem, they brought with them seventeen wagons and an "elite" fighting team from the Suckamints, men whose only loyalty to the Pope was guaranteed by their frightened respect for Wooshin, their sergeant general—a rank created for the occasion by the reigning Pontiff in a moment of whimsy. The wizened old warrior wore gold chevrons and a star on his plaid tunic, which Amen II had given him. That he had accepted Aberlott among his so-called crack troops strained Nimmy's credulity, but the student swore it was true. Blacktooth was glad for the company, at least for a day.
    "Are you ready to run away again?" the student asked. "Like last year?"
    Nimmy snorted. "Last year, one mad cardinal was leading a crowd of amateurs. This year, the Vicar of Christ is leading three hordes of warriors and two small armies."
    "Two? Where's army number two?"
    "It's moving south of us."
    "Oh, you mean the tanks. That's different. That's something I'm not supposed to talk about, if I know anything, which I don't."
    "Tanks? Secret weapons?"
    "Water tanks for all I know. We'll need a lot of water."
    
    While they marched across Grasshopper country and the Pope watched the sky, the Burregun flew over the procession so often that it became a Nomad joke. During this time, Pope Amen I appeared to Blacktooth more than once, and warned him against continuing his rebellion against his master. When he answered the old black cougar, Bitten Dog the hood accused him of talking to himself, and he sent a message to Wooshin saying that the monk needed a witch doctor. The doctor who came turned out to be the Pope's personal physician, although the patient had never seen him before, and was unable to guess to which of several schools of medicine the doctor belonged. He wore Nomad leathers and he swore Nomad oaths under his breath, but he carried a black bag full of pipes, needles, pincers, and charms, like a member of the ancient and mystical school of allopaths.
    The doctor told him that the Pope was also not well, although he had not yet contracted the four-day fever, as it was being called. His symptoms reminded Blacktooth of Meldown. Blacktooth described the Venerable Boedullus's summonabisch stew. The doctor immediately claimed it was an old Nomad dish, and became enthusiastic when he learned that Brownpony had thrived on it. When he left Blacktooth, he went to see the cook. The reinstitution of summonabisch stew as a foundation of the papal diet was thus probably responsible for Blacktooth's elevation to the cardinalate when the Pope had another whimsical moment.
    
    Because the movement of armies of horsemen was also a religious procession, each day must be begun with a sunrise Mass, and the Christians among the Nomads must be fed the bread of Heaven before the march resumed for the day. Out of deference to his Lord Høngan, Eltür Bråm put up with this sanctimony for a whole week before he went over his lord's head and asked the Pope's leave to lead his warriors on ahead as skirmishers. It was a bad idea only if one assumed the worst of the Grasshopper sharf. Brownpony had done his best to see the man without assumptions. The Pope took the sharf by the arm and led him into the tent of the Qæsach dri Vørdar.
    Høngan Ösle Chür opposed the Grasshopper's request at first, but the Pope said, "There is merit in moving to separate a strong striking force from liturgical encumbrance, especially as we grow closer to the enemy. That enemy knows very well we are coming."
    "That is true," said Holy Madness. "And what worries me most is that we don't see him doing anything about it. But I am not ready to relinquish my command to Sharf Bråm. With Holy Father's permission, I will take the sharf and as many of his warriors as he wants to bring, along with an equal number of Wilddog warriors under my command, and we shall advance as skirmishers toward the frontier."
    The Pope turned to Wooshin, who quickly endorsed the plan, but added, "The Lord Høngan is right to worry. We must find out soon where the Texark force is massed, but skirmishers should avoid battle until our main force arrives."
    "It is possible that they are embattled in the east," Brownpony suggested. "They dare not lose control of the Great River."
    "If it is so," Axe said, "New Rome may not show much defense. Hannegan City will have the defense."
    
     It was agreed then. At least six hundred warriors, part from each horde, stacked their arms for the Pope's later blessing and knelt beside the wagon tracks to pray at their last Mass before battle. Sharf Bråm and perhaps two hundred active disbelievers, both Grasshopper and Wilddog, waited on a distant hilltop for the Mass to end. The two forces then united and rode east.
    
    Holding court in a field of sunflowers in the heart of Grasshopper country, the Pope mentioned the name of the next candidate for a papal battlefield promotion to the Sacred College, whereupon Wooshin went into a waking trance, while Jopo Cardinal Ombroz blinked and walked away uttering mysteries. The fall from grace by Blacktooth Brother St. George ended with a thud when the Pope—in a recurrence of the whimsy which had moved him to create the rank of sergeant general for his bodyguard—created Blacktooth St. George a Cardinal Deacon of Brownpony's old Roman Church, Saint Maisie's.
    The monk was not immediately informed of this signal honor, for such announcements normally emerged from a full consistory, but he got wind of it in small whiffs, as when Aberlott first addressed him as "Your Eminence." Nimmy correctly attributed this to sarcasm. He therefore blamed Aberlott again when Wooshin rode back to the hoodlum wagon on the Pope's white stallion and used the same form of address.
    "The Holy Father sends me to thank you for the special stew, and to ask about Your Eminence's health," said Axe.
    Blacktooth glared quickly at Aberlott and responded, "I shit sixteen times a day, Axe. I'm weak. Every fourth day I have fits and Bitten Dog ties me up. Except for that, I'm very well, thank the Holy Father."
    "I'll tell him you're dying," Wooshin grunted, and left. The physician returned that afternoon to check him over again.
    "You have the Hannegan's science to thank for your illness," he told the monk. "Jackrabbit warriors brought the curse up to us from the south."
    Sometimes the physician spoke Rockymount with a Grasshopper accent, and sometimes he spoke Grasshopper with a Rockymount accent. He made Nimmy eat bits of charcoal from a mostly dung fire and drink a slurry of its ashes. He put Blacktooth on a diet of meal boiled in milk, and gave him some bitter bark to chew. These measures could be either Nomad medicine or allopath remedy, but he blew keneb smoke toward the four quarters, mumbled a litany, and prescribed keneb to be smoked on Blacktooth's crazy days. The Pope apparently liked this medicine man, and Blacktooth was grateful to Brownpony for his care.
    Before he left, the physician gave him a small package. "The Pope sent you this. I almost forgot."
    Blacktooth neglected opening it. A gift from his former master would make him feel more guilt.
    Sometimes he wanted to go to the Pope and prostrate himself as he had often done in his early years before Jarad and his brethren to obtain their forgiveness for putting a lizard in Singing Cow's bed, or for yodeling in choir; but that was within a brotherhood of equals under the Equalissimus. His present laesae majestatis culpa seemed much less forgivable. But that, of course, was before he opened the package and found the red hat. It was not the big red hat that was customarily nailed to the cathedral ceiling after the first wearing, but only an extra scarlet zucchetto borrowed from Chief Hawken Cardinal Irrikawa; it was identifiable by the hole in the brim through which the cardinal monarch inserted his feather.
    "Now we shall have to ordain you deacon of Saint Maisie's," said Brownpony's note.
    The Pope gave him three days to recover before summoning him to the head of the papal caravan. Blacktooth refused the honor. The Pope refused his refusal. "Put on the red cap," he said. "It means you get to vote for the next Pope. It is not a reward for holiness or good behavior."
    "Then for the stew?"
    "Not even for the stew of many blessings, Nimmy."
    "A punishment for sin, then?" Blacktooth wondered.
    "Ah! Symmetry. Either punishment or reward. You were always a symmetrical dualist, Nimmy."
    "A symmetrical duelist?" asked the Qæsach dri Vørdar. "What is that, Holy Father?"
    "Ambidextrous swordplay," the Axe told him in an aside.
    Blacktooth was still holding the hat between thumb and forefinger as if it were dripping slime.
    "Grab him, Axe," said the Pope.
    Wooshin seized his shoulders. Brownpony took the zucchetto from his hand and centered it carefully upon his stubbly tonsure, then patted it down. When the sergeant general released him, his hand darted toward his head, but the Pope grabbed it and laughed.
    "Do I have to wear it all the time?" asked Blacktooth Cardinal St. George, Deacon of Saint Maisie's.
    
     When news of the war finally came, it came from the rear. Texark cavalry had descended mysteriously out of nowhere to fall upon the Wilddog families in the west. They were dressed like motherless ones, and they made a great slaughter of the Weejus women and their breeding stock, the messenger said. At one family compound—that of Wetok Enar—there was a complete massacre, apparently to eliminate witnesses, but two daughters nevertheless survived, and one described a cavalry colonel with a wooden nose and long hair that covered his ears. The other, Potear Wetok, lived long enough to name her former husband, Colonel Esitt-of-Wetok Loyte, as the commander of the troop of Texark marauders. She had watched them shoot her whole family before he, full of hate, personally shot her in the lower spine so that her death was slow.
    The Texarki seemed to know just which horses to kill among the breeding stock in order to ruin every Weejus as a breeder. Between murderous raids on family encampments the marauders were observed doing something to the Nomad cattle whenever they had made camp for the night.
    When all this was reported to Brownpony, the Pope became sad but was not surprised. He looked at Hawken Irrikawa and said, "Your Majesty was right. They were Texarki you encountered in the north, although I'm surprised they made it that far west without encountering the Wilddog."
    He turned to Sharf Oxsho and said, "You'll have to take care of it." To Blacktooth, it sounded like neither a command nor a suggestion, but simply an observation about Oxsho's fate, or perhaps his own.
    Sharf Oxsho called together the Wilddog warriors who had not ridden on ahead with the skirmishers. "There is a difference between being a shepherd to the Lord's sheep and a cowherd to Christ's wild cattle," Brownpony said mildly, as he watched a fourth of his army prepare to advance to the rear. He sent the Wilddog messenger on eastward to report the raids to the Lord Høngan Ösle.
    Three days later Høngan returned to confer with the Pope and Wooshin. He brought no news from the east. No Texark patrols had been encountered, and even the motherless bandits were staying clear of the hordes as they advanced in battle array. The Grasshopper sharf had sent patrols toward Texark, but they had not yet returned when Høngin left the skirmish line to come here.
    They took a census of the forces remaining to them after the homeward departure of Oxsho and his warriors. Their strength had diminished by a quarter. All leaders conferred, and were joined in conference by the spook commander from the secretive train to the south. There could be no change in the master plan. The strongest force would be directed southeast toward Hannegan City, as before, and only the force of the assault on the "protectors" of New Rome would be diminished.
    But tonight the Pope determined that for a few hours, at least, there would be no more talk of war. Since leaving New Jerusalem, the same group of people always gathered around the Pope after supper on the trail. The summer nights were hot, and everyone sat well back from the fire, but close enough to hear and be heard. In the beginning the cardinals had wanted to say Compline at this time of evening, followed by religious silence. But the Pope objected to this as an imposition on non-Christian Nomad leaders who were part of his court, and he called this his "Curia Noctis," and encouraged the telling of stories. Tonight, he had determined that the subject would be saints and holy men, although anything but talk of war might be permitted.
    Because Holy Madness was still with him, he sent for Cardinal Blacktooth to join them at the fire. The monk was too weak to walk alone. Axe gave him a shoulder to lean on, but at last carried him on his back to the Pope's vicinity.
    "Where is your red hat?" Brownpony demanded.
    "It was stolen by a holy man, Holy Father," said Blacktooth.
    "Really? Who's the holy man, Your Eminence?"
    "Your predecessor, Holy Father."
    "You have been visited by Amen Specklebird, Brother St. George?"
    "He comes to see me every fourth day."
    "If so, he should have cured you. Tell him we need miracles to canonize."
    "I don't think he wants to be made a saint."
    "Why, Blacktooth! Nobody makes a saint. He is already a saint, or he isn't. And that is up to us to decide."
    "Of course, Holy Father."
    "Well, make him give you your hat back. Don't come back here without it."
    Blacktooth confided in Wooshin. "Tomorrow is my crazy day. I already feel queer. Don't let me do anything disgraceful."
    
    Some of the cardinals seemed to be dozing. There was a long silence at first. The Pope looked at Wooshin. The Axe cleared his throat, then offered a few words to open the session. "I admire the saints. You may not think so, Lords and Eminent Fathers, because I myself am not religious, but my people do honor holy men, and one of them was called Butsa. When he had squeezed his way out from his mother's gateway at birth, he stood erect. He pointed upward with one hand, down with the other, and said, 'Sky above, ground below, and I alone am the honored guest.' "
    Ombroz laughed. "Every squealing baby says that before I baptize it. That's exactly what the kid's howling about. He is all too much the honored guest."
    Sitting cross-legged, Axe smiled as if his point was made. He closed his eyes and became a sixteen-foot golden body, weighing seventeen tons. Then he vanished and became a blade of grass. Blacktooth noticed that Pope Amen I, having come earlier than expected, was standing in the fringes of the firelight. He had stopped there to piss. Having retucked his long black member into his robes, he slowly approached the fire—but he cautioned Nimmy by touching a finger to his quiet smile. It was plain that nobody else could see him. Blacktooth could even smell him, and he smelled like death.
    Made nervous by the smiling Specklebird spirit, Blacktooth broke the silence.
    "Saint Leibowitz spoke at birth too, you know," said the monk. "He stuck his head out of the birth canal and asked the midwife, 'Now what?'
    "The midwife answered, 'For ninety-nine years, a great waste.' "
    "Ag!" It was a low grunt from the Axe.
    "Saint Isaac said, 'Begone!'
    "She vanished. He lived ninety-nine years, you know."
    The Pope smiled wryly. "Saint Leibowitz had the Devil for a midwife, then? Does this story come from the basement of Leibowitz Abbey?"
    "You can find strange legends down there, Holy Father," Blacktooth admitted. "The earliest 'Life of Saint Leibowitz' was anonymous. A man could be hanged for writing a book. We have no bylines from those decades. But that's not the only story that connects Leibowitz with the Devil."
    "Tell another," said the Pope.
    "I can't, really. Did you ever hear of Faust, Holy Father?"
    "I think not."
    "It's about a pact with the Devil. We have only pieces of the story. I can't tell you why the Venerable Boedullus thought Faust was Leibowitz."
    "Didn't the simpletons think he made a pact with the Devil?"
    "Yes, but the Venerable Boedullus was no simpleton."
    Amen II laughed. The word "simpleton" had come to be a polite form of address, and Nimmy had just asserted that Boedullus was no gentleman.
    "I mean, he was not a Simplifier, who thought the Devil inspired all books except Scripture."
    "And the Venerable Boedullus didn't think so?"
    The questions were making Blacktooth dizzy. He watched Pope Amen II, who slowly and in a serpentine manner was becoming the sixteen-foot golden body of the idol Baal. Blacktooth after a moment of dizzy indecision lurched up to smash the Pope idol, until Wooshin objected. They took him to the hoodlum wagon bloody but unbowed, and they helped Bitten Dog tie him down. It was another day of the plague, and the war that disappeared only at the Curia Noctis.
    During his dementia, the cougar Librada ran away.
    
     
    
    
CHAPTER 28
     
     In time of famine, when the garden fails, when the brothers are eating yucca roots, cactus paddles, chaparral cocks, snakes, and the laying hens, and yet are near to starving, "let the Abbot pray for Saint Benedict's blessing and allow them to eat the four-footed  livestock, unless there be able hunters among them to stalk the wild blue-head goats.
     Rule of Saint Leibowitz, Deviations 17
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
A
BBOTS   WERE    NOT   ALL   ALIKE.    JEROME    OF Pecos, abbot before the Conquest in the time of Pope Benedict XXII and Mayor Hannegan II, had thrown open the monastery gates to the world, and had allowed his sons to listen to natural philosophy lectures by practical atheists and play with electricity machines in the basement. What had happened to the religious vocation in that time, Abbot Olshuen could only wonder. The monks of Leibowitz Abbey under his guidance had kept themselves as unaware as possible of the changing world, including the controversial pontificates of the two Amens. Without offending the Pope, such isolation had not been possible under Abbot Jarad, who was also a cardinal, but Dom Abiquiu had discontinued Jarad's policy of letting the monks know about Church affairs outside the monastery. Always conservative in his interpretation of the Rule of Saint Leibowitz, the abbot withheld most news, including ecclesiastical news, of the outside world from his cloistered flock; the only monks he had told about the bull Scitote Tyrannum were the abbey's business manager and those Brothers native to Texark or the Province whose families were in the path of war, and these were told to keep silent.
    But Amen II, when he marched out of New Jerusalem to conquer New Rome, sent Olshuen two letters. The first told him that he, the Servant of the Servants of God, was undertaking a Crusade to correct the errors of his beloved son, the Emperor, and that the S.o.S.o.G. needed the prayers of all the monks of Leibowitz to support this holy cause. The second letter ordered him to grant sanctuary at the abbey to a certain Sister Clare-of-Assisi in case she chose to avail herself of the Pope's clemency and return from her exile at the Monastery of the Nuns of Our Lady of San Pancho Villa of Cockroach Mountain south of the Brave River. Brownpony did not mention that Sister Clare was formerly Blacktooth's lover, but the abbot knew this anyway. Iridia Cardinal Silentia had visited Leibowitz Abbey on her way south. Olshuen had been startled to observe that the young Sister accompanying her was the same girl who had impudently flashed herself at him from the roadway the previous season before she followed the old Jew to the Mesa. He stirred unhappily at the memory, but the command to grant her a temporary refuge was the Pope's.
    Olshuen was strict in matters of the rule, but he was neither a rebel nor an especially brave man. If he must lead his congregation in prayers for the Pope's intentions, he felt he must tell them about the Crusade. And if he must grant sanctuary anytime soon to a barefoot whore in an O.D.D. habit, he must begin construction immediately of a special extra cell.
    The messenger who brought the Pope's letters to Olshuen had ridden as fast as possible to Leibowitz Abbey from New Jerusalem, and the next day he had to ride on south as fast as possible to San Pancho Villa Nunnery, evidently with a message of clemency for the girl.
    Upon receipt of the Pope's letters, the abbot immediately sent a message of his own to New Jerusalem summoning Singing Cow home from his priory. This too was irregular. But the abbot needed to know how the departure of the Pope from his Suckamint Mountain sanctuary might affect the relations between the government of New Jerusalem and the monks of the Priory of Saint Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods, a mission of the Order.
    The special extra cell was a lean-to against the north wall of the guesthouse, but there was no door between them. Compared with the monks' cells, the whore-hut (as Olshuen thought of it) was luxurious, having its own running water, a charcoal stove for cooking or heating, a wooden tub for bathing, and an adjacent one-hole privy only three paces from a side door. Like the monks' cells, it had a cot with a straw mattress, one chair, one table for writing or eating, one prie-dieu for praying, and one crucifix before which to pray. A missal, a psalter, and a copy of the Rule of Saint Leibowitz were on the bookshelf. If the cook brought her food, the trollop would not need to leave the guest accommodations even for meals, unless she came to Mass, which the abbot considered unlikely.
    The abbey had two guests already. One was Snow Ghost, a younger brother of Sharf Oxsho, who wanted to become a postulant. The other was Thon Elmofier Santalot, Sc.D., Vaq. Ord., who, besides being an associate professor at the Texark university, was a major in the Reserve Cavalry. His unit had been called to active duty, but he was on a leave to pursue his studies at the abbey, where he spent all his time in the vaults and the clerestory reading room, joining the monks only at meals and at Sunday's Mass. No one, not even the abbot, knew the purpose of his study at the abbey. Seventy-two years ago, Abbot Jerome would have begged him to tell them all. Now Dom Abiquiu begged him not to discuss anything with the monks.
    Snow Ghost spoke no Ol'zark. Santalot spoke no Wilddog, although he had learned a little Jackrabbit while serving in the Province. Both of them knew a little Churchspeak. They had trouble communicating, but since they were enemies, this was just as well. Snow Ghost was already attending Mass and chanting the hours with the other monks in choir, although his habit was still being tailored for him. The abbot had warned him sternly against discussing politics with the Texark scholar, but the warning proved unnecessary. Snow Ghost seemed thoroughly afraid of the man.
    Thon Santalot, whose life seemed to be driven by curiosity, became curious at this time as to why the extra cell was being built when the guesthouse was nearly empty. Snow Ghost could tell him nothing; Brother Carpenter said it was for a special visitor, and that was all he knew.
    The expected trollop was never to occupy the extra cell, however. In late June, the old Jew who never died came out of the east and collapsed outside the gates. The abbot ordered him carried to the guesthouse, but when he began raving in Hebrew, Thon Santalot became frightened of him, and so Dom Abiquiu housed him in the whore-hut and fed him bread and boiled goat's milk.
    Brother Medic was unable to diagnose the ancient hermit's illness, which seemed to abate on the day following his arrival. He insisted on going back to his mesa, but on the fourth day, before he got under way, he went wild again and had to be restrained. When he recovered temporarily from his fever, he insisted to Olshuen that he was a danger to the community, and exacted a promise of sanitary measures. He said he had caught the disease while traveling behind the lines in the Province, where he had sold military weather to both sides. He insisted that to prevent spreading the contagion, the doors and windows of his cell were to be covered with cloth to exclude insects. Knowing that old Benjamin had medical experience, the abbot readily consented.
    When Elmofire Santalot heard of the nature of old Benjamin's illness, and where he caught it, the scholar went straight to the abbot's office. The abbot was out, so he gave the abbot's secretary a bottle of pills, explaining that he had needed them to avoid catching Hilbert's disease from the troops in the Province. The scholar was having a late breakfast in the refectory the following morning when Dom Abiquiu sat down beside him, placing the bottle of pills on the oak table.
    "If you take one pill a day, it's a preventative," said the scholar. "Take twelve a day, for five days, it's a cure. You should have enough to give two pills to any monk who had contact with him."
    "And you want me to give the rest to Benjamin?"
    "If you want to save his life. It is not usually lethal, but he is so old and feeble . . ."
    "Old yes, feeble no. But I don't understand how you happened to have these with you. You called it Hilbert's disease?"
    Thon Santalot looked around the empty refectory. It was almost time for lunch. Beside the abbot, only Brother Cook and Brother Reconciliator were listening. "Thon Hilbert's disease is no longer a secret, really, I suppose. Our forces have prophylaxis—these pills—and the invaders don't."
    "Go about your business," said the abbot to the other monks. When they were gone, he asked Santalot, "Are you saying that Hannegan's military is deliberately spreading the disease in the Province?"
    "Certainly. Those who wage war have always used disease, Domne. Pestilence is one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, is it not?"
    Olshuen shook his head. "No. Well, there are various interpretations."
    "You must remember that a sexual disease was one of the weapons used in the so-called Flame Deluge. A disease was used by Hannegan Two on the Plains back in the last century."
    "But Hannegan's was a plague of cattle, not human beings."
    "Well, yes, it is being used again on cattle. Horses too. That was part of Hilbert's work. He isolated the microorganisms. Today, we can infect the Nomad's animals directly, without driving diseased herds among them."
    "How is that done?"
    "I'm not sure. The cavalry carries it around in bottles. It can be sprayed from upwind, I think."
    "You called it Hilbert's disease," murmured the abbot, who often became quiet when astonished. "Who is Hilbert?"
    "Thon Brandio Hilbert is, or was, a brilliant epidemiologist, formerly occupying the Chair of Life Science at Hannegan University."
    "Was? Formerly? Is he dead?"
    "No, he's alive, but he's in jail. He conscientiously objected to the military use of his work. Well, here they come for lunch, Domne, and I must return to my research. Thank you, Brother Cook, for feeding me at this odd hour."
    As they left the refectory, the abbot knelt to pray at the feet of the wooden figure of another conscientious objector who had founded the Order. Olshuen managed to pray for the Pope's soul and the Pope's beloved son errant, the Emperor, without mentioning victory in battle. He prayed only briefly, then returned to the refectory with his flock to consume his daily bread, red beans, and milk. Afterward, he took the pills to the old Jew.
    The cure was effective. A week later, the patient returned to his mesa after leaving instructions for decontamination of the cell he had occupied. The procedure involved burning sulfur and leaving the cell vacant for several months, during which time it could not serve its designed purpose, if and when the need for a whore-hut arose.
    
    If Singing Cow resented the abbot's midsummer summons, he kept it to himself, but his return from New Jerusalem did not seem a happy homecoming for him. Olshuen suppressed his eagerness for news of Brownpony's Crusade, for Cow seemed half-dead of heat exhaustion, and he let him rest for a day before interrogation. But on the following day, the prior of Saint Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods claimed ignorance of the doings of the Papal Court. Further, said Father Moo, the relations between his priory and the government of Magister Dion could not be affected by the Crusade, because no such relations existed, by Brownpony's design. When Olshuen wanted to discuss Sister Clare-of-Assisi, Singing Cow knew her only as Blacktooth's Ædrea; and since this knowledge had come to him through the confessional he would say nothing about her, nor would he listen patiently to the abbot's gentle slanders.
    
     The abbey had accepted seven Jackrabbit refugees as postulants that season, so Singing Cow's old cell was occupied. The abbot put him in the guesthouse with the Wilddog postulant and Thon Elmofier Santalot after telling him what Santalot had said about Hilbert's disease. Father Moo remained expressionless. Dom Abiquiu went away with a faint smile. He had not asked Singing Cow to question the scholar.
    Three weeks elapsed, and no one else at the abbey became infected. Singing Cow requested permission to return to Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods. Olshuen realized that it had been a minor mistake to summon him, but he was reluctant to let him go without putting him to good use first.
    "I want you to go over all the work that Brother St. George left behind, not only the Boedullaria, but also the Duren manuscripts, and see if you can make a glossary…"
    
    A cloud of dust arose far to the south of Sanly Bowitts. At the time, three novices happened to be standing on the parapet wall, where they were recording the altitude and azimuth of the sun for comparison with an ephemeris; the purpose was to reset the monastery's clock. A coach escorted by two men on horseback emerged from the distant dust and entered the village, then reappeared a few minutes later on the road toward the monastery. The novices watched, transfixed, as the richly decorated coach stopped outside the gate and the two uniformed soldiers of the Laredan King opened the doors, whence emerged Sister Clare-of-Assisi, an unknown Sister, and the cardinal herself, Mother Iridia Silentia, O.D.D.
    "Five for the guesthouse," someone called out.
    
    It was after the evening meal and almost time for Compline. Iridia Silentia appeared at the abbot's office, but seemed reluctant at first to sit down. She seemed nervous but full of enthusiasm.
    "Sister Clare is a vessel of the Holy Spirit, Domne. I am certain of it. The reason I am certain is that she cannot command this talent, and she will not pretend to heal when she can't. She is deeply sympathetic, and in some cases it might be helpful to pretend to be healing someone whose ailment is partly emotional. But she will not pretend."
    "Does she attribute it to God?"
    "I think it would not be prudent to ask her that," the cardinal said sharply, and Dom Abiquiu reddened. Iridia finally sat down. "If she said yes, she would become a problem for the Church. If she said no, she would become a problem for the Church. This is why we cannot accept such a treasure in our community. She has taken our vows, walked on our stones with her bare feet, prayed with us, eaten God's Body with us, and we quickly came to love her. But she is a treasure, and she has to be released."
    "Did Brother St. George know about this talent?"
    "She told me she had teased him. I think she meant she showed him her gift, in minor ways. You can see how we cannot have anyone special in our midst except the Lord."
    "So you have brought her to me."
    It was the cardinal's turn to blush. "Because the Pope told me to ... No, not quite. The Pope told me to send her here if she wished to leave us. I decided she should go, and I helped her to wish it, and I brought her myself. If I sent her, I would not be able to tell you about her."
    "You could have written a letter."
    "I could not have written a letter, nor can you put anything at all about her in writing unless you want to destroy her. Don't you see?"
    Dom Abiquiu was briefly silent. "Like asking her if her gift is from God or not?"
    The cardinal smiled warmly, causing the abbot's heart to squirm.
    "She needs to go home, if the Mayor's son will let her. You need keep her here only until the Holy Father can arrange it."
    "You are aware that the Holy Father is otherwise occupied?"
    Silentia ignored Olshuen's irony. "I'll tell Sister Clare that she must avoid talking to anyone outside the guesthouse."
    "There is one of our postulants in the guesthouse."
    "Then she must—"
    "But I'll get him out. Who is the other Sister?"
    "My assistant. She will return with me to San Pancho."
    Brother Liveryman appeared in the doorway, caught the abbot's eye, and in response to the abbot's nod asked: "Domne, did you tell our guests to choose their own rooms?"
    "Yes, of course. Is there a problem?"
    "Only that one of the nuns chose the, uh, isolation cell."
    "You must get her out of there! It's not safe yet."
    "She said it was built for her. I don't know what she meant."
    The cardinal studied the abbot's expression for a moment and said, "I think I know." She arose. "Well, Domne. I am very tired and would like to retire. If I may be excused, I shall say Compline alone in my room. I'll speak to my student. I do thank you for all."
    Student? The word lingered in the abbot's office behind her.
    
•      •      •
    
    That evening, Sister Clare abandoned the abbot's whore-hut for a cell in the guesthouse with the others, saying that she knew it had been meant for her originally, but that she had been unaware of the quarantine. Singing Cow suppressed his curiosity about her and said nothing.
    Three nuns, two soldiers, a scholar from Texark, a Nomad who was a possible postulant, and Father Singing Cow now shared the guesthouse. Ædrea stayed in her cell except when they all went to the refectory or to Mass together. The cardinal, her assistant, and the Wilddog Nomad Snow Ghost were often absent from the building, presumably singing the Divine Office with the Brothers. Singing Cow was busy in the Scriptorium making a glossary from the work of Brother Blacktooth, and Thon Elmofier Santalot was usually busy searching the bookshelves in the basement, or reading and making notes in the clerestory. The Laredan soldiers were left alone most of the time, with Ædrea staying behind a closed door. One of the soldiers rode into Sanly Bowitts on the second day and brought back a jug of local hooch. When the soldiers were both solemnly drunk, the bolder of them knocked upon the pretty nun's door and offered her a drink.
    Ædrea opened the door, took the proffered jug, tilted it, and swallowed mightily.
    "Thank you, Corporal Browka," she said with a smile, then closed the door and clicked the latch.
    Browka knocked again, but there was no answer. "You saw her smile at me?"
    Father Moo and the Nomad youth returned from Church, and soon after, Santalot came in. The soldiers offered everyone a drink, but there was little left in the jug and no one accepted. The cardinal came in and sat down in the reading room for a moment before retiring. The soldiers hid the jug and pretended to be sleeping.
    "We shall leave here after Lauds in the morning," said Mother Iridia. "We must all thank the monks for their hospitality." She was speaking Churchspeak, which was the only common language among the monastery's guests. The soldiers spoke it poorly, but as soldiers they were very curious about the military campaigns of the present Pope, and had many questions, asked and unasked. In two days at the abbey, they had learned very little.
    In the morning, after a last conference with the abbot, Mother Iridia bade her student a tearful goodbye and she and her servants departed. Ædrea cried in her cell for an hour after they were gone. She shared the guesthouse now with Singing Cow, Snow Ghost, and Elmofier Santalot the scholar. Abbot Olshuen told Snow Ghost he could now move to a cell in the dormitory, but Snow Ghost resisted, saying he was not yet quite ready for silence and solitude. Surprised, the abbot glanced quickly at Ædrea, as if he wondered whether the Nomad was not quite ready for chastity either, but he did not press it. Nomad vocations were rare, and except when Singing Cow was present, Brother Wren, the abbey's cook, had no one to talk to in his own tongue or a related dialect.
    
    It was during the Feast of Saint Clare, one year after her taking her vows, from which she was now released, that Ædrea Sister Clare-of-Assisi performed a miracle in the guesthouse of Leibowitz Abbey.
    In late August Brother Wren got permission to visit Singing Cow in the guesthouse, and Ædrea Sister Clare-of-Assisi became aware that Brother Cook had a cancer eating his throat. His voice had diminished to a hoarse whisper. He called his cancer Brother Crab, and joked about it. Ædrea came up behind him as he sat and talked with his old friend, Moo. He started up as she touched him, but then settled back in his chair with a smile and let her hands explore his throat. He started again when she pressed down hard with her fingertips below his Adam's apple.
    "Relax, Brother. Does it hurt?"
    "Not much," Wren whispered. "What have you done? Something popped."
    She continued caressing his throat for a while, then left him and went to her cell. Father Moo crossed himself. Brother Wren noticed and followed suit.
    "Better not tell anyone," Singing Cow said.
    Within three days, Wren began to get his voice back. Word got around. Within a week, Sister Clare had healed infected blisters, a hernia, an abscessed tooth, and a probable case of gonorrhea of the eye. All this might have passed unnoticed, but when she cured the old librarian, Brother Obohl, of his myopia and he got a look at the beautiful woman who had laid hands on his eyes, his squawk of astonishment was followed by the joyful noise of his thanksgiving, and this fell upon the ears of Dom Abiquiu.
    Singing Cow was present in the guesthouse when the abbot strode to the closed door of Ædrea's cell.
    "I told you not to mix with the monks."
    "I have not mixed with the monks."
    "Cardinal Silentia forbade you to practice your healing tricks."
    
     Sister Clare opened her door. "Beg pardon, Domne, but she did not. I do not have any healing tricks."
    "You argue with me! Where is your religious training?"
    "You prefer Brother Librarian half blind?"
    "It was my fault, Domne," put in Father Moo. He ventured a lie: "I sent him to her."
    "What?" Olshuen gasped and paused for self-control. "You are not to lay hands on anyone else while you are here. Do you understand?"
    "Yes, Domne."
    "Will you obey?"
    "Yes, Domne."
    The abbot glared at Singing Cow. "I think it is about time you returned home."
    "Thank you, Domne." As soon as Dom Abiquiu was gone, he said, "Alleluia!"
    Sister Clare smiled. "Will you carry a message to my family and the Mayor when you go?" she asked.
    
    But Singing Cow had not yet departed when her wounds began to appear. When Ædrea went to Mass, she knelt in the back of the Church behind a pillar where she was not visible to the monks in the choir. Thus she always left the Church first. Following her back to the guesthouse, Singing Cow noticed dark spots in the prints of her bare feet in the sand. When she walked across the guesthouse floor, the blood was even more apparent. He called out to her, asking how she had hurt her feet.
    The young nun stopped, pulled up the skirt of her habit, and looked down. She stared, then looked back at Father Moo. When she lifted her hand to her face, he saw that the palm was bloody. She seemed very confused.
    "Who hurt you, Sister?"
    Her voice trembled. "I don't know. It was dark. I think it was the Devil. He was wearing a robe like yours."
    "What? Someone actually attacked you?"
    "It's like a dream. There was a hammer—" She stopped, looked at him wildly, then bolted into her cell and latched the door. Singing Cow could hear her praying. He went to look for Dom Abiquiu, whom he found praying before the wooden Leibowitz in the corridor.
    "She said it was like a dream," Father Moo told him. "But she thinks somebody with a hammer, maybe the Devil—"
    "Was she raped?"
     "She didn't say anything about it."
    "Let's go. Did you tell Brother Pharmacist?"
    "He is on his way."
    The pharmacist had already arrived when they entered the guesthouse. The door to Ædrea's cell was open, and she was lying on her cot. As they started to enter, the pharmacist pushed them back outside, joining them and closing the door behind him.
    "Her wounds?" the abbot whispered.
    "The wounds of Christ," the medic answered softly.
    "What are you talking about?"
    "The wounds of the nails. The wound of the spear."
    "The stigmata? You're saying the female, the, uh, Sister, has the stigmata?"
    "Yes, she does. The cut in her side is clean. The wounds in her hands and feet have bruised blue edges. She speaks of a hammer."
    "Devil!" It was as close as Olshuen ever came to swearing. He turned and walked out of the guesthouse with Singing Cow at his heels.
    "Retaliation!" he spat. "Retribution!"
    "Excuse me? What do you mean, Domne?"
    "I forbade her to use healing powers. This is her answer."
    Singing Cow was silent for several moments as they walked toward the convent, then he shook his head. "Domne, I am leaving tomorrow for home."
    Abbot Olshuen stopped. "Without asking permission?"
    "You already gave it, remember?"
    "Of course." The abbot turned on his heel and walked away, alone.
    
    A few hours later, when Brother Wren St. Mary came to inquire about a change in the diet for the sick, he found Abiquiu Olshuen lying on the floor of his office. He could not move his right leg. When he tried to speak, he squawked.
    Brother Pharmacist came directly to the infirmary where Wren had carried Olshuen.
    "Is it a stroke, Brother?" Wren asked.
    "Yes, I'm afraid it is."
    The abbey had its own prior again, and Father Devendy was immediately summoned, along with Singing Cow. Wren went back to the kitchen.
    Prior Devendy turned to Prior Singing Cow. "Can you get the Sister who heals to come?"
     "You know about her?"
    "Dom Abiquiu told me what Mother Iridia told him. I know he was alarmed, but—he may die, you know."
    "I'll go ask her. She was, uh, injured, you know. Did Brother Medic tell you?"
    "No," put in the pharmacist.
    "Describe the wounds to Father Devendy," Father Moo told him, "but don't interpret them."
    "I understand. Make sure she wears shoes of some kind and doesn't walk on the bandages."
    Singing Cow glanced at the abbot. Dom Abiquiu was shaking his head from side to side with his eyes closed. It meant nothing, Moo decided.
    
    Cow found a small pair of sandals in the storeroom. They were very old and might once have belonged to him or to some other adolescent Nomad whose feet had not finished growing. He took them to Sister Clare and told her they might once have been Blacktooth's. She said nothing to that, and put them on without protest.
    "Where are we going, Father?"
    "To see Dom Abiquiu. He needs you."
    Ædrea had become accustomed to obedience, and came without asking why she was needed. When she limped into the infirmary and approached the bed, Dom Abiquiu groaned mightily and shrank back from her, his eyes wide and his face a mask of dread. He used his left hand to shield his eyes from her. Ædrea stopped and stared.
    "Oh, pigs!" she said abruptly, and crossed herself with a bandaged hand. "There is nothing I can do for him."
    "What do you mean?" asked Prior Devendy.
    "I mean I can't do it tonight. And he told me not to do it again anyway." She turned and started to leave the room.
    "Sister Clare, please, he may be dying," said Singing Cow.
    She crossed herself again, but walked on down the corridor without looking back.
    The next day, she was missing from the guesthouse, and her small traveling bag was not in her cell. No one had seen her leave, but there was a note on her bed: I'm sorry about your abbot. Thank you for your hospitality. God bless.
    No one knew where she had gone. On his way back to New Jerusalem, Singing Cow stopped in the village of Sanly Bowitts to ask about her. She had been seen going toward the Mesa of Last Resort. He followed the trail to the foot of the cliff. Once he found a spot of blood on a stone, but no other sign of her. She was with Benjamin, then. Father Moo was certain the old Jew would cure her of the Lord's stigmata. Feeling a little guilty for abandoning her and Dom Abiquiu, he steered his mule toward the papal highway leading north. It was already September and he traveled by the dark of the moon.
    
     
    
    
CHAPTER 29
     
     Just as there is an evil zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to hell, so there is a good zeal which separates from vices and leads to God,
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 72
    
    
    
    
    
    
B
LACKTOOTH CARDINAL ST. GEORGE,  DEACON OF Saint Maisie's, was on the hillside taking a long and painful dump, his first of many for the day, when he heard the pop pop pop of repeating guns. It was coming from the main encampment, in the wooded bend of a wide, shallow creek back over the hill.
    Blacktooth couldn't see the camp from where he was standing, or rather, squatting. For his morning ritual, which was the only one he found the leisure to perform in privacy, he preferred the western slope of the little bluff, a hill so small that it barely cleared the trees. Truth was, Blacktooth was homesick. Not for a particular place; he had never had anything even approximating a home except for Leibowitz Abbey, and while he sometimes (indeed, fairly often) missed the companionship of the Brothers and the security of the routine and the Rule, he never missed the abbey itself. He was homesick for the desert, the grasslands, the country of Empty Sky.
    Even though he could see nothing to the west but more trees, Blacktooth knew there was open land beyond—rolling plains that went on and on, treeless and townless like Eternity itself. And the sky seemed definitely bigger to the west.
    Unsmiling, unspeaking, unlimited.
    From here I greet you, Empty Sky.
     Pop pop pop.
    Blacktooth stumbled as he stood up, hurriedly wiping himself with a wad of grass—then slowed, no longer alarmed, recognizing the sound. It was celebratory, ceremonial, not real; not a firefight. The Grasshopper sharf’s warriors, disciplined for firing the precious brass cartridges but bored by the lack of military action, had perfected the art of imitating the sound of the new repeating "Pope rifles." As with everything the Nomads tried, they had quickly learned to do it well.
    Blacktooth had first noticed it in the outriders returning from a scouting mission a few days before; he had remarked to his boss, Bitten Dog, that the warriors were mimicking the sound of the brass shell-firing guns from across the sea. "Imitate the sound of pots being scoured, Your Eminence," Bitten Dog had growled.
    The pop pop pop was joined by the sound of dogs. It was not barking but the alarming half-howl, half-growl of war dogs being brought up on leash. All this was coming from the camp of the Pope's armies down at the edge of the trees, in the bend of the creek called Troublesome or Trouble Some. Attempting to shade his eyes from the early-morning, late-September sun, tying his habit back around him with his booklegger's cord, Blacktooth crossed the crest of the hill and started down toward the camp. He took off his sandals and carried them, so that he could walk barefoot in the pleasantly wet grass. Through the trees, he could see horses milling and stomping, warily watching the dogs that circled them like a dust devil.
    The pop pop pop was punctuated by whoops and cries, and Blacktooth could see the Grasshoppers now, painted up, pumping their weapons into the air. More than a small party, too.
    Something was afoot; or rather, a-horse.
    Blacktooth was almost glad. For several weeks now, on the final approach to New Rome, the tension had been growing among the Nomad warriors that had attached themselves to the Pontiff's crusade. As the twelve-hundred-strong party, now fully a day's march long, crawled east, the arms of trees extending out into the prairies had become more numerous, longer and thicker, until it had changed—in a day, and Blacktooth remembered the day—into arms of prairie ex tending into trees. It was like an optical illusion; one thing turning, with a trick of the eye, into its opposite.
    As they left the tall-grass country and began to penetrate the woodlands, the warriors had expected resistance from the Texark troops Hannegan II had—supposedly—left behind to guard the approaches to the Holy City. There had been none. The warriors had expected resistance from the semi-settled Grasshopper farmers, and the settlers Filpeo had sent to live among them. There had been none. Foraging horsemen had found nothing but abandoned farms, barns burned or burning, cattle killed or driven away, leaving behind only their footprints or their still-soft droppings. The log homesteads were burned or looted, sad-looking little homes bereft of even doors or window glass. The Grasshoppers in particular had looked forward to breaking glass, and this made them even more impatient. The contemptible grass-eaters had either broken or taken their windows with them.
    The new cardinal was as firmly attached to the hood wagon as the old monk had been, but several times Blacktooth had deserted his pots and pans and explored one or two of the abandoned houses, hoping perhaps—although he never admitted this to himself—to find signs of Librada, his glep cougar that had freed herself before he could set her free. But Librada didn't eat carrion and the few farmers and farm families Blacktooth had found had been mostly carrion. Several times he had watched as parties of the Nomad horsemen, singing death songs and seated well forward on their ponies, had gone out into the trees—nervously at first and then with growing confidence, finally with boredom. The countryside around New Rome had been stripped of its people. There were no warriors to fight, no women to rape or even to be restrained from raping. Nothing but trees, dumber than horses and stiller than grass. The farmers—many of them of Grasshopper origin—had deserted their farms, and whatever troops Hannegan II had left in the region to defend the city were gone as well.
    In fact, some said it was the troops that had driven the farmers away. An old man found wounded on his barn floor, and brought back to the camp to die, had told the Pope and his Curia that it was the Texark soldiers who had shattered his window glass and torched his fields, and his neighbors' as well, but Blacktooth thought he was lying. Or at least partially lying. Truth was as rare as beauty in wartime. It occurred by accident, in unexpected places; like the glint of sun off a button on a corpse.
     Pop pop pop.
    And now, some action at last. Blacktooth felt like two men: one who dreaded the excitement, and one who desired it; one Brother who slipped eagerly down the hillside toward the milling horses, and one who held back, heels digging into soft dirt. He valued the hilltop because it carried him above, or almost above, the trees. Descending into them was like descending into a prison.
    Pop pop pop. One of the shots, at least, sounded real. Perhaps the Texark main force had been located by a scouting party, and a battle was planned for the day. It would have to be to the east. As he half slipped and half walked down the hill, Blacktooth squinted out across the sun-bright ranks of trees. Beyond them was New Rome, within a day's ride at most. And beyond the city, also unseen, was the Great River—the Misspee, the grass-eaters called it. Blacktooth had dreaded the Crusade's arrival for months but now he looked foward to it, even if it meant a battle. Much to his eternal regret, Blacktooth knew battle; and he knew that even worse than the fighting was the long waiting, the constant tension, and the heavy smells of men on the move.
    The camp smelled like shit and smoke. It smelled like Hilbert's fever, the bowel-emptying sickness that Blacktooth shared with at least a third of the men, Nomad and Christian alike. The smell had thickened as the tall grass had turned to trees, as the world of Empty Sky had given way to a world folded in branches, hedged by trees. Darkness and mud and stumps and shit—in greater and greater profusion as the Pope's Crusade approached New Rome. The Mother Church was coming home.
     Pop pop pop!
    
    Down in the camp, the huge night fire had been rekindled. Logs as big as corpses smoldered and smoked, as reluctant as corpses to flame back into life. Everything here in the woodlands was damp. The edge of his habit wet from the long grass, Blacktooth joined the milling crowd around the fire pit at the center of the camp. Horses and people and dogs made an uneasy mix. More warriors came from the smaller Wilddog and Grasshopper campfires, joined by the Qæsach dri Vørdar and his personal guard. Nomad warriors were spitting into the fire and stomping, and firing their imaginary shots toward the impenetrable gray of the sky. It looked like rain again; it had threatened rain now for a week.
    The Grasshopper sharf, Eltür Bråm, came out of the trees, holding up his repeating rifle, joined by a squat shaman in an intricate hat riding a white mule.
     Pop pop pop.
    Brownpony was conspicuously absent, but a small contingent of his Papal Guard joined the party, leading uncomfortable-looking horses. Their rifles were identical to the ones the Wilddog warriors carried. Blacktooth was surprised to see Aberlott among them.
    "Don't look so sad, Your Eminence," said the pudgy Valana student, holding a repeating rifle anything but sheepishly.
    "Where are you going?" Blacktooth asked, ignoring his old friend's sarcasm.
    "To get a biscuit." Aberlott gestured toward the morning wagon, where there was a line, all Wilddog and Grasshopper; or rather, all men with guns. "Come."
    Wooshin, the Axe, was in the morning-wagon line and he let Aberlott and Blacktooth in beside him. This was, Blacktooth knew, acceptable practice among the Nomads, who regarded every man as an extension of his friends and family. If a man was in line, his connections were in line as well.
    "Morning, Axe."
    "Good morning, Cardinal Nimmy. Why so sad?"
    Do I really look so sad? Blacktooth wondered. He shrugged. Perhaps it was the sickness. It seemed he had been sick for years, although he knew by the marks he had made on the inside of the hood wagon that it was only two weeks.
    "Maybe it is war," he said. "War makes men sad."
    "Some men," said Aberlott. He reached up under his long hair and touched, as if for luck, the little knob of gristle where his right ear had been sliced off by Texark cavalry.
    "All men," said Axe.
    The line crept forward, feet sucking in the mud which seemed to be always laying in wait, even under what looked like dry grass.
    "Perhaps His Eminence is mooning over his little lost cat," said Aberlott to Axe.
    "She's not so little," said Blacktooth, "and I wish you would stop calling me His Eminence."
    "Sorry, Cardinal," said Aberlott. It was his turn. He took two biscuits and gave one to Blacktooth. Apparently they were distributing extra biscuits only to the men with rifles. Blacktooth took it grudgingly. Life was difficult enough without Aberlott's continual sarcasm.
    He followed Axe and Aberlott back to the fire, which was now blazing.
    "It's a war party," said Aberlott. "The early patrols, Wilddog I think, entered the city yesterday. There was no resistance. Today we go in with Eltür Bråm and his shaman." He nodded toward the old man on the white mule. "Maybe we'll get to see the basilica of Saint Peter's."
    "You're going?" Blacktooth asked.
     "With permission. Along with most of the Pope's Guard," said Aberlott, glancing toward Wooshin, the Pope's sergeant general, who shrugged. Wooshin was staying behind with his master.
    Aberlott held up his rifle, pumping it toward the sky as the Nomad warriors did. "Pop pop pop," he said, but not convincingly. He smiled, showing Blacktooth his bad teeth, and opened his hand, showing three brass shells. "His Greatness the Sharf didn't want to take us but His Holiness, Pope Amen II, insisted. We are his eyes and ears."
    "And rifles," Blacktooth said.
    "That too."
    
    It was looking more and more like rain. Blacktooth secured his cardinal hat under the cover of the hood wagon—he was afraid the red would run if it did rain—and gathered up the morning pots and pans that had been left for him by Bitten Dog. His elevation as the Crusade's tenth cardinal had not released him from his duties as assistant to the assistant potscrubber. Nor had it reduced the intensity or frequency of the fevers that raged through his body.
    A third of the camp, almost a thousand men, were sick. The rich smell of human excrement mixed with the usual camp smells of horse and smoke. The overall feeling was one of gloom. Maybe it will rain, Blacktooth thought, as loaded down with pots and pans he stepped over and around the ubiquitous dog turds. Better rain than threatening rain. Impermeable to almost every kind of adversity, the Nomads seemed to fold up in the rain.
    He finished the pots, scrubbing them with sand in the feeder creek that ran from under a slab, out of a thousand-year-old drain. He took the long way back to the hood wagon, between the Pope's carriage ("LIKE HELL YOU WILL") and the gleaming metal wagons of Magister Dion's caravan, which had joined them two days before, where the long arms of the door prairies were merging into one narrower and narrower grassy swale, interrupted by pitches of shattered concrete and stone.
    This morning was the first time Blacktooth had seen Dion's wagons up close, in the daylight. They looked like stoves on wheels. "Tanks," Aberlott had called them, but who would carry water from the dry plains to the rainy east? They were clearly weapons of some kind.
    A glep was dozing on the seat of one of the wagons. When he saw Blacktooth he smiled an idiot smile and crossed himself, laughing. Blacktooth thought the man was mocking him, until he saw Brownpony standing with Dion, almost out of sight behind one of the metal wagons. They seemed to be arguing and Dion seemed to be getting the worst of it. Blacktooth couldn't see Brownpony's face but he recognized the slow hand movements of lawyerly persuasion passing into papal compulsion. The monk, now cardinal, turned away and hurried on toward the center of the campsite. He knew that he would be in trouble if Brownpony saw him without his zucchetto.
    
    It was late afternoon before the rain finally came. The clouds that had been massing in the northwest all day, like riders on a hilltop, descended just when the Grasshopper sharps party was returning. There was no pop pop pop this time, no strutting horses. The warriors looked gloomy and damp. One of the horses carried double, and the white mule carried a corpse tied on like a pack and left uncovered in the rain. The side of the mule was pink with rain and blood.
    "The sharf's shaman," Aberlott said to Blacktooth, who was helping him dismount. He tried to hand the monk his rifle but Blacktooth wouldn't take it.
    "Texark troops?"
    Aberlott shrugged. "Snipers," he said. "They fired on us from the great houses."
    "Great houses?"
    "Piles of stone, really, although some of them still have windows. We have the better guns but we couldn't see them. We never saw any Texark troops."
    Four women untied the shaman and carried him away. The dogs were howling, straining at their leashes and jumping up to sniff the side of the white mule that was smeared with blood.
    "They must have been Texark troops," said Blacktooth.
    "I don't think so. There was a lot of fire but they only hit two men, and we were all in the open. I was right behind the shaman when he fell. He was singing some Weejus song, and they shot him through the throat. I think it was a lucky shot."
    "Lucky?" said Blacktooth.
    "Lucky for someone; not so lucky for him." Aberlott showed Blacktooth three empty cartridges, nestled in his palm like little empty eggshells. "I fired all three of my shots, though. I liked that part. Not like you." He was referring to Blacktooth's depression after killing the glep warrior in the battle two days' march behind, at the edge of the grasslands, almost a year before. "I fired all three, pop pop pop."
    It was Blacktooth's turn to shrug.
    "I liked that part," Aberlott insisted.
    Aberlott had been more impressed with the city than with the fighting. The city of New Rome wasn't a hole in the ground like Danfer, he said, or a collection of shacks like Valana. It was mostly stone, grown over with weeds and trees. "The center of the city is all great houses. They mine them for stone and steel. They don't care about defending them either. What is there to defend? What can you carry off? You can't fight men who won't fight."
    "They fought you," said Blacktooth.
    "That wasn't fighting," said Aberlott. "There wasn't that much firing, even. They are hiding in the city, taking pot shots at us."
    "Did you find the cathedral?"
    Aberlott shook his head. "We rode out behind the sharf. Who will burn them out, he says, and toss their livers to the dogs." He smiled sardonically, gesturing behind him to the center of the camp where the dismounted Nomads were milling angrily, confused, ashamed. A wail came up from the women tending the wounded man. The wounded man was dying. He had been shot in the side with a gun that fired stones.
    Blacktooth left Aberlott for the medicine wagon where the wounded man was being bandaged. He was wondering if the Texarks had managed to duplicate the repeating weapons yet, and he imagined that he might be able to tell from the man's wound. But the wound was just a wound and not a sign; it did not speak. The ugly welt cut through the Nomad's flesh and hair like a road ripped heedlessly through grassland. In the back of the wagon the Grasshopper shaman's body was being prepared for burial. The old man's neck wound was already stuffed with clay the color of shaman skin.
    Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt. Both men would be carried out of the trees for burial under the haughty uncaring glare of Empty Sky. But not until the rain had ended.
    The women and the medicine men shooed Cardinal Blacktooth away, even though he was wearing his zucchetto.
    
    The next day a smaller party went out, while the Grasshopper war sharf met with the Qæsach and the Pontiff. As a member of the Curia, Blacktooth was invited to take part in the discussion, after he had finished the pots and pans, of course, and freed Bitten Dog for a day of drinking mare wine and playing bones. Brownpony's suspicion that the Emperor had withdrawn all his regular forces from the Holy City was confirmed when the rear guard of Eltür Bråm's war party came back with its only live captive, a farmer armed with a stone-firing musket. He had been dragged from one of the "great houses,” along with two of his colleagues who had not survived the ten-mile trip back to the Crusade's war camp. Under questioning the grass-eater revealed that he and the other farmers had been driven from their homesteads into the city by the Texark regulars, then armed with leftover weapons and stationed in the tallest ruins. They had been told that if they surrendered they would be cruelly tortured by the Anti-pope's Wilddog, Grasshopper, and Jackrabbit fanatics; but that if they held out they would be rescued by returning Texark reinforcements from Hannegan City.
    Brownpony doubted that the last part of this was true; so did the rest of his Curia. As for the torture, the farmer died before he could be convinced that it was propaganda.
    
    Aberlott thought it was a trap. "But you think everything is a trap," Blacktooth reminded his friend. The two were sitting on the side of a wagon, in the unfamiliar sunshine, listening to the interminable martial speeches of the Nomads. Even though the speeches decided nothing, they had to be suffered by the Pope and his Curia.
    "Everything is," whispered the former Valana student. His long hair was smeared with grease, and tied back to show his missing ear: a badge of honor. He held his repeating rifle between his legs. Though he was, technically at least, a member of the Papal Guard, he wore the bone earrings and hair bracelets of a Wilddog horseman. He looked, Blacktooth thought, like a man who had avoided the trap of the Mother Church only to fall into the trap of war.
    "We can wait them out," Brownpony was saying. His Nomadic had gotten better and he no longer needed Blacktooth as translator. "If they were driven into the city, chances are they don't have enough food to last through the winter."
    "The winter?" said the Grasshopper sharf. "The winter is far away. Our women are far behind, and like the Wilddogs they are threatened by the motherless ones who strike from above the Misery. Without the Weejus our medicine is weak but our war power is strong. We must strike now while we can. We can take them with just a few men. We can burn them out."
    Grunts of pleasure and assent greeted these words. Wettened fingers were held up, as if to confirm that the prevailing winds were from the west. The fingers were also, for the Nomads, a signal of impending fire; of their willingness to watch the world burn.
    Amen II stood, looking unusually ethereal and spiritual. When Blacktooth had seen him the day before, he had not realized how sick he looked. Brownpony's hair was mostly gone. His face looked like something drawn on an egg; a bad egg. "This is the Holy City of New Rome," he said in measured Churchspeak. "It is sacred to the Mother Church. There will be no burning. We are here to take the city, not destroy it."
    He sat back down. There was grumbling as his words were translated into Grasshopper and Wilddog. The grumbling fell silent as the Qæsach dri Vørdar, the War Sharf of the Three Hordes, stood to speak.
    "We were going to feint south for Hannegan City," said Chür Høngan Ösle. "There is the heart of the Empire, not New Rome, which is nothing but a ruin. We will still head south. But now instead of feinting we can actually strike south. Now that we know there are few defenders in New Rome, we have more men to strike south at Hannegan City. The war will be over sooner. We can return to our women and our winter pastures." He spoke in Wilddog with only a few words of Rockymount and none of Churchspeak. Blacktooth thought it was ominous. The Crusade was becoming less of a crusade, and more a depredation of the Three Hordes.
    There were grunts and clicks of approval from the Nomads as the Qæsach sat down. He had a boy behind him to arrange his robes when he sat; another watched the feathers on his headdress in case of wind. The numbers of the Nomads had increased, so that now men (and a few women and children as well) stood on all sides of the wagon on which Blacktooth was sitting. It had turned from a meeting of the Curia to a public meeting attended by warriors and drivers and hangers on. That, too, seemed ominous. Cardinal Blacktooth St. George was feeling trapped. His bowels were grumbling like the crowd, and he began to look for an avenue of escape.
    "A few hundred men left here will be enough to drive the farmers out of New Rome!" said Eltür Bråm.
    Wooshin was shaking his head but, as usual, remained silent. Brownpony stood up to answer the sharfs. He stumbled as he stood, and Blacktooth was surprised and a little shocked to see that he was wearing an empty shoulder holster over his cassock, under his robe.
    Holding on to the side of a wagon, Pope Amen II made one last plea.
    "We need the fighters here," he said. "With a show of strength we can force the farmers out of the city without much fighting." Blacktooth knew that Brownpony was trying to avoid a battle. He wondered if it were to save lives, or to avoid damage to the city and Saint Peter's. As soon as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. Lives were cheap.
    The Pope sat down, seemingly unnoticed. There was no grumbling; he was not even granted the honor of dissent. The power Blacktooth had watched him exercise over the conclave in Valana was gone. Perhaps it was the Meldown, or perhaps his rhetoric was useless with the war sharfs and their warriors, who excelled at oratory when they wanted, but were not in the mood for talk these days.
    Or perhaps it was the trees. They seemed almost evil, there were so many of them crowding in on every side. Blacktooth touched the cross that rode under his habit and called up, as he did when he was panicked, the image of Saint Leibowitz. But instead of the dubious smile of Saint Isaac Edward he saw the harsh glare of the desert sun, and he felt a sudden wave of homesickness so powerful it almost knocked him off the wagon bed.
    "What's the matter?" whispered Aberlott. "Are you OK?"
    "Are you?" answered Blacktooth. The warriors on the edge of the crowd were starting to make the pop pop pop. They were tired of waiting around for battle. Neither did they wish to ride into a city where the defenders were shooting at them from the windows of "great houses."
    "They're going to burn them out, no matter what His Holiness says," said Aberlott. "Where you going?"
    Eltür Bråm had risen to speak again. Blacktooth slipped away through the crowd toward the main trench, which was, even at this hour, even with all the excitement of the debate, busy with grunting men.
    When he got back to the campfire, it was too crowded to get close. The Grasshopper sharf was still speaking. Blacktooth's fever was raging and he felt weak. He dragged himself off to the back of the hood wagon and rolled up in a blanket and went to sleep. In the distance he could hear drumming, and the martial, celebratory pop pop pop.
    
    That night, while Blacktooth slept, Amen I came to visit him for the first time in over a week. The old man had the face of a cougar. Had he always had the face of a cougar? Blacktooth wondered in his dream; but of course! And Ædrea was there. She was sitting beside Specklebird, smiling, riding a white horse like the Fujæ Go; but no, her robe was open, and what he had thought was a white horse was the light coming from the gateway he had once—
    Someone was shaking him, pulling his foot. It was Aberlott. "We are leaving," he said.
    "Leaving? Who is leaving?" Blacktooth groaned and sat up. Aberlott was outside the wagon, leaning in. His face was painted. His greasy hair was pinned back. Beyond him Blacktooth could see the sky, a metal gray. He could hear horses stamping and men cursing and laughing. In the near distance, dogs.
    "They've been up all night," said Aberlott. "After you went to bed there was another conference. But this was among the sharfs. The Pope was sent away."
    "Sent away?"
    "Wooshin was allowed to listen, but he was thrown out when he disagreed."
    Blacktooth was amazed. No one threw Axe out of anything. "Thrown out?" Blacktooth was still woozy, half in and half out of his cougar dream. As he sat up, he realized with a sudden and unusual moment of clarity that his entire life since leaving the abbey, since he had met Brownpony in fact, had had the quality of a dream. So why was it that Specklebird, instead of Brownpony, came to him in his dreams? Brownpony was in the real dream.
    Aberlott grinned and shrugged. "Not exactly thrown out, then, but asked to leave."
    Blacktooth got out of the wagon. The rain clouds that had rode across the sky for days had disappeared, and the camp was almost as bright as day even though the sun hadn't yet risen.
    "They are leaving only a few men from each horde, about three hundred in all," Aberlott said, too loudly. "The rest are heading south with the Qæsach dri Vørdar to take Hannegan City. I'm going with them!"
    "But you are in the Papal Guard!"
    "The Pope's Guard is going, all except Wooshin. Besides—the Pope didn't give me these!" Aberlott opened his hand. In his palm, where three empty shell casings had nested the night before, now there were six, and each was filled; each had a dark bullet peeping out of one end as though eager to be on its way.
    "Goodbye then!" Blacktooth said angrily. Wrapping his robe around him against the morning chill, he half walked, half ran toward the latrine trench. As he squatted, through the bushes he could see hundreds of men stirring, grumbling, dressing, farting, laughing. Pop pop pop! Some were pulling at dogs, some at horses. The pall that had fallen over the camp in the last few days, the pall of rain and forest, was lifting even as the skies brightened toward the east. Almost a thousand warriors were crossing the creek, many of them slapping the sides of the metal wagons to hear them ring.
    "He's taking all the healthy men," Blacktooth muttered to himself.
    "There aren't that many healthy men," said the man at the trench beside him, who sounded and smelled very unhealthy. "And I'm not that healthy and I'm going."
    He spoke in Wilddog. Before Blacktooth could answer, he was off and running, barely wiping.
    Through the shrubs that cloaked the latrine, Blacktooth watched the horses cross the creek, and then crawled back into his bed. It would be an hour or so before breakfast and he wanted to get some rest. He searched for Ædrea and Amen through his dream, but it was like prowling through an abandoned house, empty even of furniture. When he woke again his fever was back. He sat up, dazed. He could see by the sun on the wagon's hood that it was almost noon.
    "Your Eminence," said Bitten Dog. "His Holiness and whatever, His Eminence the Pope wants to see you."
    "Brownpony?"
    "He wants your butt in his Pope wagon right away."
    
    Brownpony had stopped shaving but it had hardly changed his appearance. There wasn't much left of his beard, just a few wisps of hair on his chin. Some were dark and some were light, giving him the look of a sketch that had been abandoned. He was finishing his breakfast of horsemeat jerky and plums when Blacktooth found him, at a small table that had been set in the shade of the papal wagon. "Nimmy," he said, "where is your zucchetto? I have a commission for you."
    "As a soldier?" Blacktooth answered. He was ready to refuse.
    "As an ambassador," Brownpony said, ignoring the novice cardinal's sarcasm. "As the papal legate to the farmers. They are all that is left in the city. Hannegan's troops have abandoned the place and left them there to fight. We could have avoided the fight altogether by peacefully slipping a thousand men into New Rome."
    "A thousand Nomads are not peaceful, Your Holiness," replied Blacktooth. "And besides, the farmers have shown an inclination to fight.
    "True. Perhaps you're right," Brownpony said. "Perhaps this is all for the best. We have only three hundred men anyway, mostly the Grasshopper." The Pope waved an astonishingly skinny arm around at the camp, which looked deserted in the harsh daylight, like a dream only half-remembered. Brownpony looked weaker than Blacktooth had ever seen him. Surely, he thought, it was the Meldown. Nunshån the Night Hag was claiming her husband, calling him to her cold bed.
    "The War Sharf of the Three Hordes, the Qæsach dri Vørdar, our old friend and companion Chür Ösle Høngan, has taken almost a thousand of my crusaders south, to Hannegan City. Even Magister Dion and the New Jerusalemites have gone with him. They intend to join the Jackrabbit warriors and the gleps that are preparing to besiege the city, and instead of a siege we will have a battle." Brownpony sat down wearily. "Perhaps it is all for the best."
    "Not so," said Wooshin.
    "My sergeant general disapproves," said Brownpony. "But what does it matter? It is done." The Pope's hands fluttered in the air, like two birds. Blacktooth watched, intrigued; with that motion, this most worldly of men suddenly reminded him of Amen I.
    "I'm sick anyway," Blacktooth said.
    "We're all sick," said Brownpony. "Except for Wooshin, of course. Where is your hat, Nimmy?"
    "Here." Blacktooth pulled his red cardinal's zucchetto from his robe. "I don't wear it around the camp. It might blow off my head and fall into the dogshit."
    "No wind here," said Wooshin, who disapproved of Blacktooth's attitude toward his master.
    "Oh yes, the dogs," said the Pope distractedly. "We get to keep the dogs. The Qæsach didn't want to take them on the campaign south. We have been left with three hundred men and almost as many dogs. And the Grasshopper sharf, of course. The farmers don't know this, not yet. What I want you to do is go into the city, Nimmy, and make them an offer of peace. Extend to them my offer of peace. The Pope's hand in peace."
    "Before they discover your numbers have been reduced," Blacktooth said, scornfully.
    "Why, yes. Wear your hat and your robes. I will give you a papal seal to carry."
    "They will shoot me before they see it."
    "Put it on a stick," said Wooshin. Blacktooth could see from the yellow warrior's eyes that he wasn't going to be allowed to refuse the mission. He resigned himself to it. He was curious to see the city anyway, and sick to death of pots and pans. So what if he got killed? Wasn't that bound to happen sooner or later anyway?
    "You look very sick, Cardinal Nimmy," said Wooshin, his voice almost gentle. "Tell the farmers that we wish them no harm. We want to settle things peacefully. The Empire has deserted them but not the Vicar of Christ."
    "And don't mention that the Vicar of Christ is down to three hundred men and as many dogs," Blacktooth said.
    
     "I will overlook your insolence since it has never been an impediment to your vocation. Indeed, Nimmy, sometimes I think it is your staff. I hope for your sake it is not your crutch. Better get going, though. This has to be done today, or at least attempted."
    "I have to walk?"
    "Eltür Bråm has a white mule you can use," said Brownpony. "And God go with you, Nimmy."
    He made the sign of the cross and allowed Blacktooth to kiss his ring.
    
    The grassy swale had been a highway a thousand years before, and now it was a highway again. The muddy tracks of wagons crisscrossed in the grass. Who knew how many years this "door prairie" had pointed like an arrow from the plains into the forest and then to the city—or, Blacktooth thought, the other way? Though the monk had never thought much of the Pope's plans to return the papacy to New Rome, lately the Holy City had been appearing to him in his dreams. It had arrived with the fever. In the dreams it beckoned on the distant horizon, like small, steep mountains. How different was the reality! There was no horizon at all. The road ran straight between trees and low ruins that were just mounds of earth, some with openings where they were mined, others barricaded where some pitiful creature had chosen an intact basement or a mined-out room as a cave. The farmsteads were smaller here, close to the city, usually just a weedy vegetable patch and a ruined building or two; perhaps a shed emptied of pigs and chickens.
    Just when Blacktooth had given up all hope of seeing New Rome, just when he least expected it, the road topped a small rise, and there it was—just as it had always been in his dream.
    "Whoa." Blacktooth needn't have bothered; the white mule only moved when he got on and only stopped when he got off. He slid down and the mule stopped to nose at skunk cabbages beside the road. They were at a turn: the road went at an angle down the last hill before the valley of the Great River, or Misspee as it was called locally.
    Blacktooth couldn't see the river but he could see the distant towers of what once had been a bridge; and he could see a low line of tree-covered bluffs on the other side, like a mirror image of the hill he was on. And in between, a few miles away, were steep brush-covered stumps of towers, like low steep mountains, just as he had seen them in his dream. New Rome.
    But it was already afternoon, and there was no time to enjoy the view—even if it was the first horizon Blacktooth had seen in almost a month. He got back on the sharf’s shaman's white mule and it started down the hill, and soon they were in the trees again.
    There was more concrete and asphalt here, mixed with the grass. It would have made for treacherous passage on a horse, but the mule seemed unbothered. There were fewer farmsteads and more houses, even though the houses were just sheds attached to the sides of the ruins. Blacktooth even saw smoke coming from one or two, and shadowy shapes that could have been children playing or their parents hiding.
    "Gee up," he said to the mule, just to hear his own voice and to let whoever might be watching know that he was in control and on a mission. He wished now he had bothered to learn the mule's name.
    It was late afternoon before he passed the gates of the city, a low barricade now abandoned. A couple of corpses in the sentry box showed how the Nomads had avenged their murdered shaman, and how little the grass-eaters cared about their dead.
    Of course, the corpses might have been Texark soldiers. Two pigs were rooting at the door, seemingly eager to find out.
    "Gee up!" The white mule stepped over the rubble and Blacktooth rode on through, holding up Amen II's papal seal. It was made of parchment stretched over sticks like a kite, and held aloft on a spear decorated with feathers and the cryptic symbols of the Three Hordes. An amalgam of the sacred and the profane, the civilized and the barbaric. Like Brownpony's papacy itself.
    There were more pigs on the street here, though there were no bodies. New Rome seemed deserted. The streets were straight and wide. The "great houses" Blacktooth had seen from the horizon were less impressive up close, but more oppressive somehow, dark ruins shot full of holes. There was no movement. Blacktooth knew he was being watched, though. He could feel it; he could feel more and more eyes on him as it got darker and darker.
    "Whoa," he said, but the mule didn't stop.
    Ahead Blacktooth saw a single figure in the center of the street. It was a man carrying a rifle.
    "Gee up!" Blacktooth kicked his mule but the mule walked at the same slow pace, whether kicked or not.
    "Wait," Blacktooth shouted at the man, but the man backed slowly into the shadows.
    "I have a message . . ." Blacktooth shouted, just as the man knelt and fired.
    Blacktooth slid off the mule, which was the only way to stop it.
    
     He waited behind the mule for another shot. The silence was excruciating.
    The man was gone.
    The dialogue was too one-sided. His only chance, Blacktooth saw, was to push on toward the center of the city and hope that he came across someone with either some sense or some authority, and preferably both, before he got shot.
    He got back on the mule.
    "Gee up."
    
    It was dark when they shot the mule out from under him. Blacktooth was almost in the center of the city, under the biggest of the "great houses." It must have been a long shot, because the animal went down before Blacktooth heard the shot; the crack came rolling through just as he was falling on his side, under the mule, which fell as heavily as an abbot having a stroke.
    Blacktooth scrambled to his feet, looking for the papal seal-on-a-stick, which had snapped and was lying half under the mule. He was tensed through his shoulders, waiting for the next shot, which he knew he wouldn't hear and might not even feel. It never came.
    With the papal seal, he ran back into the rubble of the "great house," where he hid under a stone slab. From here, he could see down the street both ways. It was almost dark; the sky was a salmon pink turning to rose in the west, and a darker blue ahead, in the east.
    The mule was on its side, braying violently. It wasn't bleeding much, but clearly it was done for. Its front legs were kicking but the rear legs were still; maybe spine shot. Blacktooth felt his fever growing and then a fit of diarrhea hit him, and he squatted behind the stone slab. Should he hold the papal seal aloft, or did it just make him a better target? "Not now," he prayed aloud. "Not like this."
    Finished, and still not shot, he decided to continue on with his mission. He had to find someone, and soon, before it got dark. Otherwise, he would be sleeping alone in the dark in one of these great piles of stone. Holding the papal seal aloft, he started walking. He knew he was still feverish, because he could sense Amen I beside him, his cougar face composed and quiet; free of concern as well as anxiety. Amen had nothing to say; lately he had had little to say.
    The problem was, the mule wouldn't shut up. It kept braying louder and louder, the farther Blacktooth walked away from it.
    "I have to go back," he said to Amen. He knew the old man couldn't, wouldn't, answer, but he wanted to hear the sound of a human voice, even if it was just his own.
    "I'll do for him what I did for the glep soldier," he said aloud. "It'll be a sin, too, just the same." A sin but he had to do it. Wasn't that what a sin was? Something you had to do?
    No, that's duty, replied Specklebird, with his unquiet, ambiguous smile. You have often confused them.
    It was a long way back to the white mule, and Blacktooth's legs were getting wobbly. He walked backward, holding the seal high, his shoulders tensed against the shot he expected. The mule was almost quiet by the time he got to it; the brays had turned to hoarse, honking moans. The front legs were still kicking rhythmically. The big eyes looked at Blacktooth with neither curiosity nor fear. Blacktooth knelt and said a prayer, a made-up one, as he put his knife to the creature's throat, and said a second prayer as he pulled it across.
    It was like pulling a string and watching the grain flow out of a bag. The mule sank into a sudden quiet restfulness.
    Blacktooth wiped his knife on the mule's coat. He was about to stand when he felt the knife on his own throat. "Stand," said a voice, and he did what he had been about to do anyway. He started to drop his knife when a hand took it from his.
    Grass-eater, he thought, but perhaps he said it aloud, for someone hit him from behind, almost knocking him down. There was the smell; the grass-eater smell. There were too many hands—he thought perhaps it was a glep—and then realized that it was two men who held him, and a third who picked up his papal seal from the ground where he had laid it before taking out his knife to cut the mule's throat.
    They marched him back down the street, the steps he had retraced to kill the mule. He felt a gun prodding him through his cassock. As he passed the corner where he had turned back, he thought, Why hadn't they taken him here? Had they been waiting for him to come back?
    "I have a message for your leader," he said. "From His Holiness, Amen Two. I am his papal ..."
    "Shut up," said one of the men, in a tongue Blacktooth recognized as a variant of Grasshopper.
    He was taken into a basement room that reminded him of the library at the abbey. It was lit by oil lamps, and several men were inside, armed with iron swords and old rifles. Most of them were dressed in rags but one wore the jacket of Hannegan's Texark cavalry. He spoke to Blacktooth in Churchspeak.
    "Are you sick?" was his first question. "You smell bad."
    "I come from His Holiness the Pope with a message for your leader," said Blacktooth. "We are all sick. We all smell bad. There are thousands of sick, bad-smelling warriors, bloodthirsty Nomads, on the outlying reaches of the city, preparing to strike. I am here to give you a chance to . . ."
    "Shut up," said the Texark soldier. He nodded at one of the other men, a farmer, who handed Blacktooth a cup of water and a handful of brown pills that looked like rabbit pellets. "Take one," the soldier said.
    Blacktooth smelled the pills. He shook his head.
    "Take one." A gun prodded him in his back.
    Blacktooth took one.
    "I am here to give you a chance to surrender the Holy City peacefully," he said. "The Empire is finished. The papacy is returning to New Rome. The Pope, His Holiness Amen Two, wants only to occupy his rightful place in the ..."
    "Shut up. I know who you are."
    "I am the His Holiness Amen Two's—"
    "We know who you are. The Archbishop sent us word to look for you," the Texark soldier said. He unrolled a scroll that had already been untied. "Are you not Blacktooth St. George, Secretary to the Antipope, and banished under sentence of death to the far reaches of the Bay Ghost and the Nady Ann?"
    Blacktooth was at a loss for a reply.
    A gun prodded him in his back. "Say 'I am.' And what's that hat? Military?"
    "I am a cardinal," Blacktooth said. Suddenly the seriousness and the ridiculousness of it all struck him, simultaneously. The enterprise had been foolish. Perhaps even the Crusade. Now here he was, back in the Hannegans' zoo. "A joke, really. Cardinal. Pope. Soldier."
    The pill was making him dizzy. He wondered if he should take another.
    "We have orders to shoot you," said the Texark officer, rolling the scroll back up tightly and tying it with a ribbon. "But first you should get some rest. The pills will help you sleep. Take him to the death cells."
    
    It was cool under the street. By standing on tiptoe, through a barred window, Blacktooth could see an alleyway and an occasional dog or pig, the pigs wearing medallions that identified, Blacktooth presumed, their owners. One pig was especially friendly; it kept coming back and sticking its nose into the bars, perhaps for the coolness of the iron.
    
     As darkness fell, Blacktooth felt his fever subside, like a stream sinking into the sand. The chamber pot in the corner of his cell waited, empty, like the pig. The guard came just after midnight with a jug of water but no food. Blacktooth took another pill. This time they were going to shoot him, and he had little doubt that they would keep their promise. Somehow, the thought of it made him drowsy.
    That night, again, he dreamed of Ædrea. She was waiting for him under the waterfall while his old friend, the white mule, grazed on the rocks outside. There was no grass but it sprung up as the mule ate. It had a hole in its throat like a wound, and Ædrea had wounds too; she showed her wounds to Blacktooth.
    "Where have you been?" she asked in Churchspeak. "Where are you going?" Since he knew she didn't speak Churchspeak, he knew, in the dream, that he was dreaming.
    
     
    
    
CHAPTER 3O
     
     In the reception of the poor and of pilgrims the greatest care and solicitude should be shown, because it is especially in them that Christ is received; for as far as the rich are concerned, the very fear which they inspire wins respect for them.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 50
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
T
HAT      NIGHT      WHILE      BLACKTOOTH      WAS dreaming, a small party of farmers mounted their horses, most of them draft plugs, and rode toward the camp of the Pope's Crusade. These were the farmers who had survived after seeing their families and livestock killed by the Texark soldiers. Now they wanted revenge and the only one they could get it on was the Antipope, whose armies their scouts had told them were heading south, toward Hannegan City and the Red River. They knew that Blacktooth was lying. They had seen only one party of raiders, had wounded one and killed another. They wanted what the Grasshopper and Wilddog Nomads wanted: they wanted blood and revenge. It was late September and there was no moon. They left, forty riders in all, soon after dark, counting on the starlight and their knowledge of the road. It was after all the road they had ridden in on; it was the road that led to their abandoned and ruined farms.
    
•      •      •
    
    The Pope, meanwhile, was beginning to lose all hope for peace. The Grasshopper warriors were excited and eager for blood, after the long and loud funeral for the shaman. Many of them were drunk, and though the ceremony had been hidden from his eyes, Brown-pony suspected many more had fed on the shaman's liver and lights.
    "You must understand, my emissary has ridden into the city to make peace," he said to Eltür Bråm.
    "You mean Nyinden. Nimmy."
    "My cardinal," said Brownpony. "A member of my Curia."
    "Cardinal Nimmy, then," said the Grasshopper sharf. He sat on the tailgate of the Pope's wagon beside His Holiness, watching the whooping, weeping warriors around the main campfire. It was a novelty to the Nomads, unlimited firewood, even if it was damp. The blaze grew bigger and bigger.
    "They seek revenge," said Eltür Bråm. "Can you blame them? Can I deny them? They need it; it is like grass for ponies."
    "The victory of the Church will be their revenge," said Brownpony, but even as he said it, he knew he didn't believe it himself. The muddy ground was crowded with moving shadows; the sky was scratched with trees. Brownpony yearned for the harsh outlines and open horizons of the grasslands and the desert. Here in the forest the noises and smells were too close.
    Pop pop pop. The warriors pointed their rifles at the sky, barely visible as a smattering of stars behind the trees. The Grasshopper sharf had managed to keep only two shells apiece for them, but he knew that Brownpony had more, left with him as a concession from the stores in Magister Dion's wagon train.
    "You must give the men the rest of the brass bullets—Your Holiness," Demon Light added, with a faint smile.
    Amen II shook his head. "They must wait until my emissary comes back. Then your warriors can ride in, in triumph." In fact, Brownpony was already worried. He knew that if Blacktooth had not returned by morning it would mean he had probably been killed; perhaps even hanged under the interdict they had both signed when they had been released from the zoo in Hannegan City.
    "Tomorrow, then," said Eltür Bråm. He looked up at the tree-hedged, moonless sky.
    The Pope took the sharps arm. "And you must control them!" he said. Across the clearing, in the firelight's gleam, he could see the sharf s carriage, with I SET FIRES painted on the door. "There will be no fires, Demon Light. The farmers will surrender when they see your force. They may have already surrendered to Nimmy."
    "I think not—Your Holiness."
    "I want no fires in New Rome. I am here to restore the city, not to destroy it." The Pope twisted the sharf's arm. It was like arm-wrestling; the point was not to defeat him but simply to show that he knew and understood Nomad ways. "No fires, understood?"
    "Understood," said Eltür Bråm, pulling his arm loose and stalking off to join his warriors at the fire.
    "I have unleashed a storm that I cannot control," said the Pope, retiring into the wagon and arranging his robes for sleep.
    He was speaking to Wooshin, who stood in the shadows beside the wagon. The Yellow Warrior shrugged. That was, as far as he was concerned, the nature of all storms and all wars.
    The Pope was asleep when the farmers came. They had dismounted and were leading their horses across the creek when the dogs awoke, and awoke the warriors who were sleeping it off around the dying campfires. The fighting was brief and vicious, and except for the screams and the splashing, almost silent. The Grasshoppers were reluctant to use their few bullets but eager to try the knives and clubs that slept by their sides, where women might have been.
    When dawn came, the water was still bloody in the little pools along the shore. Death by the knife is a messy, lingering business; some of the farmers still flopped like fish. Four of them were captive, uninjured except for the rawhide cord passed through their cheeks. They sat tethered in the shade of the food wagon, one whimpering, the others waiting stolidly for whatever awaited them.
    The Pontiff awakened to find his camp almost deserted. The Grasshopper warriors were gone; so were their horses and the dogs. "You said you were going to wait!" he complained, finding Eltür Bråm by his fire, eating breakfast.
    "They gave us no choice." The war sharf shrugged. "They tried to steal our horses."
    Brownpony kicked the fire. "They were only a few fools. You could have chased them off."
    Eltür Bråm shrugged again. "The dogs followed them. My men had to follow the dogs. They are under orders not to burn the city, though."
    Brownpony didn't believe him. And before noon the smoke was rising over the wall of trees to the east, from the city he had never seen.
    
•      •      •
    
    
     The pig came in the morning, but the jailer didn't. She stuck her snout between the cool bars and sat, staring down at Blacktooth, who was trying unsuccessfully to pray.
    As the morning dragged on, Blacktooth heard shots in the distance, shouts closer, the scuffling of feet in the narrow street outside. He still had six of the little pills but nothing to take them with. He was afraid of the warm water in the bucket by the door, so he took one with the last of his own spit. Toward noon, he drank the water.
    Already hungry when he was locked in the cell, he grew hungrier. It was hard to tell time because there was no sun and it was raining, a gentle shower that spattered onto the alleyway all day, muddling the footsteps of the occasional passerby, always a dog, never a human.
    The pig came again in the afternoon, or what seemed to be the afternoon.
    Blacktooth kept the pills in his cardinal hat, which his captors had allowed him to keep, along with his cross and rosary. The zucchetto kept the little brown pills dry. They seemed to work. The fever was gone, and Blacktooth didn't miss the cramps and the runs that had kept him busy, especially in the mornings, for days. But he felt lonely without the visions of Ædrea and Amen, the companions who had walked by his side and accompanied him not only through his dreams but through the interminable waking dream that seemed, lately, to be his life.
    Blacktooth had never felt so alone. He remembered with a certain affection Brownpony and the prison-zoo in Hannegan City, when they had been spied on by the Wilddog prisoner and observed by the amused citizens. He remembered brooding, taciturn Wooshin. He remembered the insolent, chubby Aberlott, failed contemplative and lover of cities. He missed them all; he missed even Singing Cow. From his solitary basement cell, Blacktooth looked back on the life at the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz and wondered at the cunning and perfect mix of solitude and companionship that was the monastic life. Some men were made for solitude, but not most; and certainly not he. Specklebird had loved his solitude because he filled it with spirit. He was never alone. Ædrea's solitude had been spook-solitude: accepted by none, scorned by all.
    Desired by one.
    The two of them in their solitude had kept Blacktooth company. But then, he thought, I don't require much in the way of company. "Right?" he asked the pig when she stuck her head between the bars again. And like Ædrea, like Amen, she returned no answer.
    By afternoon no food had come and the rain had stopped. Was there to be no last meal? To die seemed bad enough, and to die hungry seemed the final, the ultimate insult. Would he then be hungry forever?
    Shocked at his own impiety, Blacktooth fell to his knees and prayed for forgiveness.
    
    The door was heavy wood, probably oak. It seemed more substantial than the black iron bars on the little high window. Blacktooth knocked on the door, then kicked it, timidly at first, then harder and harder. There was no response. He couldn't tell if anyone was out there or not. And what was out there—a hallway? He couldn't remember. It had been dark when he was brought in. That had been only a day ago—hadn't it? Blacktooth wished now that he had made marks on the whitewashed stone walls, as the previous occupants had done.
    There was nothing in his little cell but the bed, which was two boards laid over stone blocks, a coarse wool blanket, a stool, and two buckets: one by the door and one in a corner. The bucket of warm water by the door was still almost full; the bucket in the corner was still empty. The room had apparently been used as a prison by the Texarki before; the walls were filled with intricate but illiterate scratchings—faces, smiles and frowns, a sun, various interpretations of the male and female body. The wall looked to Blacktooth like the surface of a monk's brain, the scratchings on the soul that a man learns to live with and, usually, hopefully, eventually, to ignore.
    He sat on the bed. He lay on the bed. He stood at the window. He stood on the stool and looked out the window. He saw a narrow deserted alley with a ruined step against a wall where there was no door. There were bloodstains on the wall above the step. While Blacktooth watched a dog came and sniffed at the stain, then walked away. Was this the end of it, then? The killing place? The stairs that went nowhere, the wall without a door . . . He shivered. He was very hungry.
    In the distance the street opened onto another, busier street, and Blacktooth could see people passing, carrying mysterious packages, or occasionally, guns. The ones with guns walked in twos and threes. Closer at hand, another dog sniffed at the stained steps in the alley, then trotted away.
    "That's where they execute."
    Blacktooth turned and saw that the door to his cell had opened silently; beyond it was an indeterminate darkness. For such a huge door it swung on silent hinges. An unfamiliar farmer/guard stood in the doorway with a bucket. Young, in his rude twenties; redheaded, a grass-eater. "You're not supposed to be up there," he said.
     "I'm praying."
    "What about your hat?" The zucchetto was on the bed.
    "We don't wear the hat to pray."
    The guard crossed to the corner and picked up the bucket; he set it down again when he felt that it was empty. He carefully avoided looking into it.
    "I'm supposed to empty this," he said. It was a reproach.
    "I suppose that means I'm supposed to fill it," Blacktooth said. "But aren't you supposed to bring me food? I had no supper, and now no breakfast."
    The farmer/guard shrugged. He wore leather pants and a canvas vest, probably taken from some soldier's locker. Or body. His teeth were gone bad already. "They didn't tell me anything about food. They only told me to empty this. And bring the water."
    "Are they going to—shoot me?" asked Blacktooth. He felt dizzy; he had to step down off the stool. When he looked up, feet on the cold stone floor, the guard was gone, almost as if he had been an apparition. The door closed, then a bolt slammed shut. Loudly.
    "Bless you, my son," said Blacktooth, making the sign of the cross. "I'll go back to my prayers." He stood back up on the stool and looked out at the world, or what little of it he could see from his tiny window. Prayers indeed. But what else was prayer but an attempt to look out of the tiny window of the soul? Perhaps he would try to pray later, as it got closer to the time for his execution.
    Would it hurt? he wondered. It seemed to be the wrong question, but he couldn't think of the right one.
    Another dog came by and sniffed at the dark stain on the step— also praying? In the distance an old woman and a child poked through rubbish with a stick. When the woman turned up something, the child would lean down to get it. Blacktooth couldn't tell what they were collecting.
    There were more shots in the distance, then a strange and yet familiar wild smell. Even before Blacktooth realized what it was, his heart was pounding.
    Smoke.
    
    "You told your men to set the fires," the Pope, Amen II, said to Eltür Bråm. Demon Light denied it but Brownpony knew better. The Grasshopper is always at war… I set fires…And what did it matter if he denied or affirmed it? It was done.
    Brownpony and the sharf were sitting on the bed of a wagon, watching the returning warriors thunder across the creek. It was beginning to rain again. Brownpony couldn't see the sky, but he knew from his Curia—half of whom were sick, and spent time at the secondary latrine halfway up the hill—that a curtain of smoke hung over the city a few hours' ride to the east.
    "Fires just happen," said Eltür Bråm. "No man can prevent them. No man should."
    Dogs barked. Horses neighed. The Nomads were straggling back in twos and threes, calling to the women to prepare bandages and food, and replenish the firewood stacks. They were shouting triumphantly, but in truth they had had few encounters with the mysterious enemy. The few wounded had been injured when their horses had stumbled in the unfamiliar streets, or had burned themselves setting fires.
    None knew, still, how many defenders the city had, or even if it was being defended at all. And Blacktooth had never returned. It was almost sunset. "Perhaps he has found the peace you robed ones always say you are looking for," said Eltür Bråm.
    "Perhaps," replied Brownpony, choosing to ignore the Nomad's sarcasm. But he doubted it.
    
    Smoke. It was getting dark; or was it? The few people Blacktooth could see at the end of the street were running.
    He got down from the window and banged on the oak door. He put his ear to the wood, but he couldn't hear footsteps or voices. It was a strange place, this room at the end of Blacktooth's life. It reversed normal life, which we go through always looking backward. Now it was the past that was the mystery. Blacktooth could see clearly into the future. Too clearly. He could smell it. It filled the air—like smoke.
    He was afraid he would panic, and he did. It wasn't the fear of fire, or even the fear of dying. It was just panic, pure animal panic. It filled him, rushing in unbidden, with no thought or emotion intervening. As sudden and as irresistible as lust (which he had grown to know so well), it both comforted and terrified him with its intensity. Like the faith he had searched for but never found, it replaced all doubt with certainty.
    Blacktooth let it rage, kicking and beating on the door, shouting first "Fire!" then "Help!"; then, "For the love of God!"
    It brought no peace. The pain of his bruised fist and his own screams brought him back to a different reality; a more monklike reality. He stopped screaming, surprised at how easy it was to stop, and knelt by the bed with his rosary. The smoke was thicker, but the air was still breathable. Blacktooth was no longer hungry. The water in the water bucket was dancing, and in the distance he could hear dull booms—buildings falling or bombs going off. . . .
    
    He must have fallen asleep. He sat up and saw that it was still dark outside the window. In the distance he could hear shooting. The farmer/guard was standing in the open door with the bucket. He wore a scarf over his face. For the smoke? It seemed to have diminished.
    Blacktooth started coughing. "Excuse me," he said when he had stopped. The guard/farmer still stood in the doorway. "What's happening?" Blacktooth asked.
    "They are fighting. Your Antipope is burning the city."
    "Ah."
    Then he was gone. He never returned. Whether he was killed or not, Blacktooth never knew. The shooting never got closer and it eventually faded away.
    
    When dawn came it was a strange dawn that seemed to come from inside the cell, rather than outside, filling the tiny basement room with an eerie light. The city was on fire. The wind was scouring the alley, picking up bits of straw and grass and dust and scraps of ash and paper.
    Blacktooth banged on the door, but he didn't scream this time. He didn't expect anyone to come and no one did. The fire seemed to be getting closer; the wind was hot, as if it were pulled through one fire on the way to feed another. Blacktooth stood as long as he could at the bars, and felt his face burning—then realized he had forgotten the pills. There were four left, folded in the hat. He took one and poured the last of his water over his head. Death by fire. He could smell fuel oil. He recognized the smell from when he was a novice, handling the abbey's relics for the first and last time. . . .
    Beatus Leibowitz ora pro me!
    He heard footsteps in the alley. "Help," he called out, but no one came. Not even the pig, who had probably been eaten. Blacktooth said his rosary, then put on his zucchetto and lay down on the narrow plank bed, on top of the jail blanket. Better to just wait, he thought. Sooner or later the end will come. "A dewdrop, a flash of lightning," Amen had said. "Ash, dust . . ."
    
     He must have fallen asleep, for soon he was back at the waterfall with Ædrea. The water had stopped falling, though. It stood like a sheet in the sun. She was standing in it, in the sun, very wonderfully beautifully perfectly naked. "Hey," she was shouting.
    "Hey!"
    Blacktooth sat up. Someone was at the bars. He thought at first it was the pig, but it was a woman with a child.
    "Are you a priest?"
    No.
    "So what's the hat?" It was the old woman he had seen with the stick, going through the trash piles.
    "I'm a cardinal," he said, taking it off.
    "What's a carnidal?" she asked, reversing the syllables as simple people sometimes did. "Is that like a priest?"
    "Sort of," Blacktooth said. "Help me out of here. I'm afraid I got myself trapped."
    "I can't do that," the old woman said. "Will you baptize my son?"
    She pushed a face to the window. The boy looked too young to be her son, and too old at the same time. He was bald and his wrinkled forehead was blue. A glep.
    "I can't do that," Blacktooth said. "I'm not a real priest."
    "He's not my real son," the old woman cackled. "I bought him."
    "Bought me!" said the glep boy. "I commensurate the deception. Am."
    "What?" A bell was ringing somewhere, faster and faster. Then Blacktooth heard the spray of shots. It was being rung with bullets.
    "He's very strong," said the woman.
    "Strong," said the glep. "Accurate am I the exception."
    "He says all you have to do is move this brick."
    "What brick?"
    The woman stood up and made a scraping noise with her stick. With a fierce demented grin, the boy pulled a bar loose, then another. "Strong!" He threw both bars into the cell at Blacktooth, who ducked. They rang on the floor with the sound of bells.
    "Hey!"
    Blacktooth flattened himself against the wall. Had the bars been loose all along? The jail was like the abbey; all he had to do was walk out and he was free.
    He waited until he was sure the old woman and the glep boy were gone; then he pushed his zucchetto and the jail blanket through the bars, and climbed after them into the alley.
    
     The air was thick with smoke, and he held his sleeve over his nose. It had been easier to breathe in the basement jail. At one end of the street he saw the woman and the boy, poking through garbage unconcernedly, as if the world were not on fire. They seemed to have forgotten him. "Bless you, my son," he whispered—and walked quickly the other way.
    
     
    
    
CHAPTER 31
     
     On the day they return, let them lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory and beg the prayers of all on account of any faults that may have surprised them on the road.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 67
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
B
LACKTOOTH HAD SEEN ONLY TWO CITIES IN HIS day: Valana, built of wood and stone, and Hannegan City, made of wood and mud. The Holy City, New Rome, was a city built of old pieces of old cities; it was a mixture of old and new, more like an abbey than a city, with piles of brick and stone built upon piles of brick and stone, all mixed and leavened with wood and grass and straw. All flammable, all tinder, and, it seemed to Blacktooth, all burning.
    He was on a wide, straight street with mounds of rubble and stumps of towers, the "great houses," on both sides. At first he was alone, but as he walked farther east, into the rising sun and away from the fire, the street became more and more crowded with frightened, silent people. Blacktooth felt an unexpected, unwanted kinship with these frightened grass-eaters who were suddenly emerging from basements and the stumps of buildings (just as he had), dragging their pitiful rags and remnants and pots and animals and children with them. Everyone was leaving the city.
    In the distance behind him, he heard shots, rare and ragged. If there were any fighting Nomads in the city, they didn't show themselves. No fighting horses, only mules and old nags. Only stray dogs.
    The fleeing people were weirdly silent. Shouts or cries would have been welcome, but Blacktooth heard neither; it was as if the window from his basement cell had led him into a world where only children cried or complained. The adults were glumly silent, stumbling forward. Perhaps they thought their accents would give them away, or perhaps there was just nothing left to say.
    New Rome was burning.
    Blacktooth had prepared himself for execution, and now even his hunger was gone. A hand plucked at his sleeve—a child's hand—and he found himself, through some process he neither understood nor fully noted, part of a small group dragging a frightened mule up the steps from a basement room. How it had gotten there, who it belonged to, and who wanted it—these were questions that belonged to another reality. All that was present was the need to help coax the terrified, braying beast up the narrow steps.
    Then it was gone into the gathering, streaming crowd, its owner—and the child—chasing it; and Blacktooth was half walking, half running after them. The wind had risen and now there was a wall of flame directly behind, to the west.
    Four men and four women, all naked and holding hands, snaked through the crowd, singing hysterically. Blacktooth tried to look away from the women's breasts but couldn't. It wasn't desire he felt but some other, almost forgotten feeling: hunger, or hope. Two men in uniform with repeating rifles ran past, then two more, all running in step. It was almost comical. Blacktooth pulled off his zucchetto and hid it under his habit. A fallen mule in the traces of a cart was screaming pitifully, trying to rise. One haunch was smeared with blood.
    The fire was either closer, or hotter, or both. At the end of the street it was a wall of flame, taller than the "great houses." Blacktooth now had two shadows, one that walked before him and one behind.
    "I set fires," thought Blacktooth, remembering the blue and gold inscription on the Grasshopper sharf's carriage.
    A farmer leaned over the injured mule and drew his knife. Blacktooth stopped him, with a hand on his arm. "Let him live," he said in Churchspeak.
    "Huh?" The farmer stared at Blacktooth's robes, and then cut the traces. The mule limped off, whickering, and the farmer stuck the knife back into his belt.
    "I will help with the wagon," said Blacktooth, in Grasshopper. He put his hat back on and pushed.
    It was a two-wheeled cart of vaguely Grasshopper design, loaded with household goods and junk—including an ancient, tiny black-skinned old woman with two kittens, which she was kissing, first one and then the other. Blacktooth pushed and the farmer pulled, then two more men joined in, throwing their possessions in the back along with the old grandmother. They all spoke Grasshopper, mixed with a little Churchspeak and smatterings of Ol'zark. They fled on east, toward the Great River.
    
    Blacktooth stayed with the farmer with the cart all day. Hair-Puller was his name; or it might have been a description, or even a confession. The man was bald. He was so solicitous, sharing his food and water, that Blacktooth assumed he was a Christian; until he realized that the farmer thought Blacktooth's red zucchetto meant that he was a soldier. Though he lived in the Holy City, he had never heard of the Church. To the farmer there were only two types of people, farmers and Texark soldiers. Though he was of them by blood, the Grasshopper Nomads, "the people," coming in from the plain "where the trees do not go," were less than human, or more, perhaps. An elemental like a herd or a storm.
    Even after escaping from his basement jail, Blacktooth still felt imprisoned, between the fire to the west and the still unseen river to the east. By noon the smoke had eaten the sun itself, and a terrifying red darkness fell over the streets like a pall. The stream of refugees grew to a flood, all heading east. The streets grew wider, and at the same time more choked with refugees, all farmers. The "great houses" to the east were even greater, and there were no trees; Blacktooth had never imagined he would miss them.
    It was late afternoon when they reached the river. Blacktooth didn't know what it was at first. The crowd piled up on itself, then started milling, turning. There was fire to the west, and fire to the north as well. There was a scuffle, a swift panic, and Hair-Puller was lost in the crowd. Once Blacktooth thought he heard the familiar creak of the wagon, then lost it again. Luckily he had managed to save his jail blanket.
    It was getting dark. Except for a few children crying, the refugees were silent again, milling in place, making decisions through some sort of slow, visceral process, like a worm. The main stream turned south, following the bank of the river out of the city. Suspecting what it was that had turned them, Blacktooth climbed a low stone wall. A few others, like himself, stood on top, looking at the Great River.
    Blacktooth had never seen, or even imagined, so much water before. It was a different substance than the water he had known in the mountains or on the Plains. It didn't dance, or swirl, or fall. It lay like a sheet of muddy glass, half brown and half silver. It was a plain of water. He thought he could walk across it, but he knew better.
    Squeezing past the others, Blacktooth walked along the top of the wall to a fallen pier at the water's edge. Boats were standing off shore. He hadn't seen many boats before, just the flat-bottomed ferries on the Red, but he knew what they were. These were barges, some with sheds built with chimneys and window glass, and long sweeps that turned them and moved them on the water. People on the decks and roofs watched the city burn. The boats made small circles in the current, watching the fire, perhaps waiting to move in later to loot. A few farmer refugees tried to swim or wade out to the boats, but they were beaten away with the sweeps.
    A few shots were fired. The people on the barges were dressed in rags, the same as the farmers, but Blacktooth assumed they were from the other shore.
    The fire was getting closer. From the water, it was almost beautiful: fire, loveliest of the four elements of the world, and yet an element too in Hell. Blacktooth found a spot at the end of the pier, and wrapped himself in his jail blanket; paradoxically, it kept him cool. Beneath the wall of smoke and flame, he could see the stream of refugees heading south along the riverbank.
    "So many," Blacktooth muttered. The man standing beside him grunted what sounded like assent. He was holding a long gun, but not a repeater. It was the type that fired stones through a thick iron barrel. For some reason, Blacktooth felt safe beside him. He had no desire to rejoin the refugees and head south.
    "They could have defended the city," Blacktooth whispered, and the man grunted again. They could have, Blacktooth thought, but they hadn't wanted to. New Rome wasn't their city. They had been driven there by the Texark soldiers and then driven out by the flames. Few were armed, and those with very ancient weapons, of the kind that had killed the sharf's shaman.
    Perhaps the man standing beside him had fired the shot.
    The howling wind was whipping the water into whitecaps. It was blowing from the east, sucked into the city by the flames. As night fell the flood of refugees lessened to a stream, and then to a trickle, all turning south along the riverbank, heading toward Texarkana, as if drawn by some ancient, instinctive urge. Late that night their fires could be seen in the low line of wooded bluffs to the south. By then Blacktooth was asleep. He slept for hours, alone at the end of the pier. By daylight the fire had almost died away.
    And the Holy City of New Rome was burned.
    
    The smell of food awakened him. Blacktooth had slept wrapped in his jail blanket, propped against a wooden upright at the end of the pier. If the fire had kept coming it would have followed the pier to him, and consumed him along with the rest of the world. But he had been spared. He had taken off his boots and hidden them under his blanket; they were still there, as was his zucchetto, with three pills left. As soon as he sat up, he felt Hilbert's fever returning. But couldn't it be hunger? He hadn't eaten in days.
    He smelled fish cooking. At the end of the pier, a boat was tied up on the muddy bank. A group of men were gathered around a small fire. Blacktooth stood up, pulling the blanket around him to hide his monk's robes. These boatmen were probably less Christianized even than the Grasshopper farmers, who were themselves barely Christian at all. And he remembered his jailer's remark, that the Antipope was burning the city.
    Something in the shape of the group, their stance or the tone of their voices, told Blacktooth that he could join them safely. Still, he edged in cautiously, walking slowly along the edge of the wooden pier.
    A body floated by, buoyed by its own gases. A woman's face smiled upward toward a scrim of smoke and sky. Blacktooth looked away and stepped onto the mud. Someone passed him a piece of fish, wrapped in big soft leaves. The smell of it was so overpowering, so delicious, that he had to sit down to eat it. No one paid any attention to him or asked him any questions. The men by the fire seemed united by a sort of rough charity; they were boatmen, and spoke a version of Ol'zark that Blacktooth could barely make out. The outsiders, two or three stragglers like himself, spoke not at all. Their silence seemed to be essential to the rough peace that prevailed.
    After he had finished the fish, Blacktooth looked around. Now that the smoke had cleared he could see the big towers of the ancient bridge. He could make out low bluffs on the far side. The water was impossibly wide. The Great River, the Misspee, flowed into the sea; how big, then, must the sea be? Already this was more water than Blacktooth had ever imagined.
    "The Nomads coming," said one of the boatmen. The word for Nomad in their dialect was "horsepeople." The implication was, so we ourselves must flee!
    There were no women among the boatmen; but even as Blacktooth was noticing this, several women walked down the bank, trudging from rock to rocky step, tracking ash and carrying armloads of what looked like rags onto the barge and into the shed/cabin. They were followed by other women with bags that clinked; perhaps crockery?
    Someone passed Blacktooth another piece of fish, followed by a pot of warm water which seemed to be some kind of weak tea. "The Nomads are coming," said another woman, arriving at a run. The "horsepeople."
    There was a shout, and Blacktooth and the other "guests" stood back while one of the boatmen scattered the fire with a stick. Before Blacktooth realized what was happening, the barge was spinning off in the current. The other "guests" by the dead fire quickly scattered— and Blacktooth found himself holding the boatmen's water pot, alone again. It was just as well. For the first time in days, he felt his bowels calling, so it was with pleasure that he found a hidden place by the water's edge under the pier and took a dump, and then cleansed himself and went into the city.
    
    Blacktooth assumed that the Grasshopper warriors would arrive as soon as the fire burned out, and begin looting and raping, and with them would come Brownpony and the Curia. But it was noon and the streets were still empty. He had rolled up his jail blanket, and now he felt exposed and vulnerable in his habit and zucchetto as he walked the right angles of the streets waiting for the Nomads to find him and take him to Brownpony.
    No one came. It was as if the Holy City had been cleansed. Even the corpses in the street, blackened like cinders, seemed cleansed somehow, as if the fire had swept away their corruptions leaving only a purified husk.
    There wasn't much to loot. The fire had consumed everything but the brick and stone, reducing the city back to the rubble it must have been before the Harq-Hannegans had rebuilt it. How many times had these bricks fallen? Blacktooth wondered. How many conquerors had passed under this lintel, this stone? The Holy City with its grid of streets between blackened piles of rubble and shells of burned buildings was like a palimpsest of civilization and misery, all intermixed and intermingled, one age falling onto the other like leaves; like cotton wood trash, the debris of centuries good only for a twenty-minute or a twenty-hour fire.
    No Nomads came—no howling barbarians to pick through the ruined and smoking center of all Christendom. No shots, no shouts, no neighing horses, no mad laughter or cries of delight or screams of dismay. A great fire brings with it a truce in the natural order of things, a still center; and there weren't even scavengers in the streets. The occasional corpses, one every block or so, lay in quiet dignity as Blacktooth walked around them. There were only the buzzards gathering high overhead, like fly ash.
    Saint Peter's was not hard to find. The roof had burned and fallen, but the smoke-stained dome still stood over the ruins. Most of the interior was destroyed. Blacktooth sat in the back in one of the long pews that had survived the lottery of destruction. It was curious, he thought, what was left and what was consumed, by time as well as fire. There were a few memories left of his childhood—the hard months among the Nomads, the early days at the abbey. But whole years were gone, leaving nothing but ash, like the long rows of gray ash marking where the clean-burning oak pews had been. Where a pew was gone, its footstool might be left behind. It was like the remnants of the Magna Civitas, burned to the ground more than a thousand years ago. Parts of it stood almost intact, like the Church; other parts were not even remembered.
    For the first time in months, Blacktooth closed his eyes and prayed; not under duress but because he wanted to. He stayed on his knees when he finished. He could feel Hilbert's fever returning, like an old friend. He welcomed it—for there was Ædrea again, in the waterfall that had no water where water did not fall. And there was Amen Specklebird.
    Amen I with his cougar smile—
    Amen was shaking him by the shoulder. But it was Amen II. "Nimmy, is it really you? We thought you were dead!"
    "So here you see my Church," said Brownpony. His hair was gone and his eyes stared out of dark hollows. Even the red beard of the Red Deacon was mostly white. All around the basilica, the great empty windows looked out on ruins. The deserted streets were quiet and only the howling of dogs could be heard, far off in the distance.
    "Oh, God, the Grasshopper!" Brownpony knelt and blackened his hands in the ashes, and held them up toward the smoke-stained dome. "What a fool I have been, Nimmy. To trust the Grasshopper!"
     "Holy Madness trusted them too, Holy Father," Blacktooth replied. "And so did Axe!"
    "I trusted Bråm to fight well," said Wooshin. "He did that, before the desertions."
    "It may be," said the Pope, "that he could not control his warriors, once they felt the battle fury—drawn down from Empty Sky, as they say." He wiped his hands on his dirty white cassock; over it he wore a repeating pistol in a shoulder holster. "And the Grasshopper warriors have no love for the Church hereabouts."
    Wooshin stood by, still wearing the plaid tunic and sergeant general's stripes Brownpony had made for him. He seemed depressed. Blacktooth was not surprised. All Wooshin's friends, the Yellow Guard, were either dead or gone south with Magister Dion and the Qæsach dri Vørdar. His master, Brownpony, seemed weaker than ever; and ruined.
    "Nimmy," Brownpony was saying. "Look what I have done to my Church. It wasn't for myself that I wanted this throne. And now look at it."
    "It wasn't you . . ." Blacktooth started. But he couldn't finish. Who else had done it? It was Brownpony who had assembled the Three Hordes, who had armed them with repeating weapons, who had set them in motion across the sea of grass toward New Rome—and who had then told them not to set fires.
    I SET FIRES, Eltür Bråm's carriage was inscribed. He had made no secret of it. LIKE HELL YOU WILL, the Pope had answered.
    Like Hell—and now, look around.
    Brownpony laid his hand on Blacktooth's brow, leaving a smear of ash. "Your fever seems better, Nimmy," he said.
    "I got over it," said Blacktooth. "They captured me and gave me some pills, the same pills the Texark are using south of the Nady Ann. But they are almost gone."
    "You don't feel feverish."
    "I can feel it," said Blacktooth. "I can see it coming. When I am feverish I see the girl, Ædrea. And the old Pope, Amen Specklebird. They were with me just now, before you came in." He saw no point in lying to Brownpony; not anymore. "I was glad to see them."
    "Do you see them now?" Brownpony asked.
    "No, of course not. The fever is not that bad."
    "The fever is not that bad," repeated Brownpony. He seemed more distracted than ever. Then suddenly he drew the pistol from his shoulder holster. "Do you hear that, Nimmy?"
    "Hear what, your—"
    "Shhhh!—"
    
     Wooshin drew his short sword from his belt; he left his long sword in its steel scabbard. Seconds later, Blacktooth heard what the old warrior and Brownpony had heard. Hooves on the paving stones, and then on steps, and then on wood—clattering "inside" the cathedral.
    It was Black Eyes, the Nomad double agent who had briefly been imprisoned across from Brownpony and Blacktooth in the Hannegan City zoo. He was dressed in the full regalia of a Wilddog warrior, riding a sorrel pony. "Your Holiness," he said sarcastically. He nodded at Nimmy and avoided Wooshin's eye—and sword—altogether.
    "Put it away," said Brownpony, softly—although he still held the repeating pistol in his hand. Wooshin put the short sword away, but kept his hand on the hilt of the long one.
    "What are you doing here? I thought you were with the Emperor in Hannegan City." Brownpony stood straighter, tried to look regal. Black Eyes didn't seem impressed.
    "As a spy," the Nomad said. "When the Lord of the Three Hordes came south, with the tanks and the glep army, I crossed the Red River to join them. But the battle is lost. The Hannegan's guns spoke too loudly, and too fast. The gleps have run back to their valley, the spooks are on their way back to the Suckamints, and the War Sharf of the Three Hordes is on his way home."
    "Høngan Ösle?" Brownpony looked stricken. "The Qæsach dri Vørdar is going home?"
    "The Weejus are calling," said the Nomad. His pony was dancing in and out of the pew ashes, ruining their straight lines. "The Texark Wooden-Nose is burning our lodges, killing our women, stealing our horses. We ride for the short grass. I am only here to make sure that none of the children of the Big Sky Woman are left in the city when the grass-eaters arrive. You should leave also. You are also her child and she is also your mother, begging your pardon, Holiness. The Texark cavalry is on its way."
    "From the south?" The Pope pointed with the pistol. "From Hannegan City?"
    "From the north as well. From the sea of grass. We will leave their city to them. Good luck, Your Holiness."
    He rode off loudly, hooves clattering, and Brownpony fell to his knees, cursing his fate. "Vexilla regis inferni produent!"
    "What's he saying?" Wooshin whispered.
    "Forth come the banners of the King of Hell," said Blacktooth.
    "It is not their city," Brownpony muttered. "They never wanted it!" He looked up toward the sky and saw only the blackened ruined dome. He tossed his pistol into the ashes.
    
•      •      •
    
    In the center of the ruined sanctuary, the throne of Saint Peter's had been miraculously spared. Behind it was a painted wooden statue of the Holy Virgin, also spared. Blacktooth and Wooshin silently followed Brownpony as he crossed toward the throne, picking his way through the litter. Brownpony paused in front of the throne and studied it before smoothing his cassock and sitting down. His freckled skin was drawn and thin strands of gray hair showed at the edges of his dirty white skullcap. He still wore his empty shoulder holster.
    "Here."
    Wooshin tried to hand him the papal tiara, but Brownpony shook his head, so the Yellow Warrior placed it in the ashes at the foot of the throne. It was getting dark. Blacktooth had no difficulty finding a live ember with which to light a few candles. Set behind the throne, they hardly illuminated anything except the face of the Virgin, and that only barely.
    Brownpony's eyes were shut as if in prayer, and Blacktooth was glad. Looking into them had been like looking in the window of a burning house.
    Wooshin squatted beside the throne of Saint Peter, kneeling back on his heels, balanced on the scabbard of his long sword he still wore at his side. Though limber, he was also, Blacktooth saw, an old man. He moved without joy or ease.
    The truce the fire had created was ended. Outside in the street Blacktooth saw a dog chase away a buzzard, to pull at a blackened body; then it was chased away in turn by a pig. His old friend? Another dog stopped at the huge open door and looked into the basilica in the dying light. It sniffed the smoky air, pissed on the bronze door, and trotted off into the gathering darkness.
    A riderless horse wandered past, part of a severed human leg hanging from the stirrup.
    
    "Glory to God in the highest." It was the weak, tired voice of Elia Amen II Papa Brownpony, speaking as if Job's wife had told him to curse God and die, and he was wearily complying. "I think I hear the Texark cavalry coming. Blacktooth, do be sensible and run for your life."
    "It was only a riderless horse," Blacktooth said. But he cocked his ears and heard something in the distance. He could feel it as much as hear it: a low, indistinct rumbling that might have been faraway thunder.
    
     "There's nothing to keep them out of the city now," Wooshin said.
    "But you, m'Lord—" Blacktooth was confused. "Where will you go?"
    If Brownpony heard him he gave no sign. Blacktooth looked at the statue of the Holy Virgin behind the throne of Saint Peter's. She stuck out her tongue. It was black, and forked.
    The fever's coming back, Blacktooth thought. He looked around for Specklebird and Ædrea, the companions of his delirium, but they were nowhere to be seen.
    Brownpony turned and looked up at the Virgin. His eyes grew bright. "So it's you, after all."
    "Huh?" Blacktooth and Wooshin both asked at once.
    "Mother, Mother of the night and the mares of night, the dreams."
    "M'Lord?" Blacktooth took the Pope's arm.
    "Look! Look at her!" Brownpony jerked his arm loose and pointed at the Virgin. The dark spot crawled out of her lower lip.
    "A-a w-worm," Blacktooth stuttered.
    "The Night Hag! My real Mother!" Brownpony said. "Blacktooth, escape while there's time. Loyalty to me stops here. Obey me: go!"
    Blacktooth stepped back. "Why should I start keeping my vows by obeying you now?"
    Brownpony laughed weakly, but repeated: "Go. Go be a hermit and teach those who come to you about God. Be yourself. That is His calling to you."
    Faintly Blacktooth could hear distant hoofbeats, getting louder.
    "Go!"
    Wooshin was still hunkered down beside the throne, his narrow eyes closed as if in prayer. Behind the throne the Virgin's face glowed in the flickering candlelight. Blacktooth walked under her, circling slowly toward the still-standing back wall of the cathedral. There was definitely a worm on her lip. Or a tongue that moved. Forked, black. Maybe it was a shadow from a candle. Ora pro nobis nunc et in hora mortis nostrae!
    There was a door in the back. Halfway there, Blacktooth heard a sharp hissssss like an intake of breath. He recognized the sound of Wooshin's sword being drawn from its scabbard. Then he heard the murmur of Latin. To Blacktooth's surprise, this least orthodox of Popes was reciting the creed. In spite of himself, Blacktooth stopped and listened. It began as the creed of Nicaea: "I believe in one God, the almighty Father, maker of the earth and the sky, and of all things seen and unseen, and in one Lord Christ Jesus . . ." but before Brownpony was done, the creed of Athanasius crept in and took over, saying, "and in One Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins—unam sanctam Ecclesiam Romanum etiam Apostolicam, extra quam neque salus est neque remissio peccatorum—"
    "Now?" It was the voice of the Axe.
    Blacktooth paused, afraid to look around, and heard the rustle of silk. There was a faint affirmative grunt as Elia Brownpony, Amen II, fell to his knees at the foot of the throne. The whisper of the sword cutting the air ended in the chunk of flesh and bone, and the thump of the head, and the splashing of gushing fluid on the littered floor.
    Blacktooth ran toward the exit as fast as he could. He had almost reached the doorway when Wooshin's quavering voice called after him. "Help me, before you go, please!"
    He stopped again, and turned this time. He saw Axe sitting on the floor beside the corpse. Wooshin had taken out his other sword, the short one, and held it pressed against his belly. While he pressed slowly with one hand, with the other he picked up the bloodstained long sword from the floor, and tossed it toward the monk. It fell short, ringing like a bell on the stone floor.
    Blacktooth stepped over it, shaking his head. With long steps he strode to the warrior's side. "No!" he said fiercely. "Would you now abandon your master?"
    Wooshin looked at the heap of bloody silk beside him, glared up at Blacktooth, and pressed the blade into his belly until the blood came. He groaned and stopped and looked up at Blacktooth again, pleading.
    Nimmy picked up the long sword. But instead of lifting it for a strike, he leaned on it as if it were a cane. "Your master's enemy still lives," he said. "Cut open your belly if you want to, Wooshin, but I want to hear you say 'Long live Filpeo Harq!' before I help you die."
    Wooshin removed the blade from his flesh, and said something in a strange tongue, clearly a curse. Blacktooth knelt down and looked at the wound. It was bleeding profusely, but it seemed not to have penetrated far, if at all, into the abdominal cavity. He helped the aged warrior to his feet, then knelt down and tore off a piece of the Pope's white silk cassock. He gave it to Axe to hold against his wound.
    Wooshin picked up Brownpony's head and placed it next to his body; then he covered both with the jail blanket, perhaps forgetting that it was Blacktooth's.
    "Shouldn't we bury him?"
     Wooshin shook his head. "This was the way he wanted it. 'Leave me for the Burregan, the Buzzard of Battle.' "
    "His bride," said Blacktooth. He looked for the Night Hag, but she was gone. The Virgin was back, with her glowing baby and gentle smile. Looking down at Brownpony, dead under the blanket, a still form, Blacktooth felt strangely unmoved. So much of his life since leaving the abbey had been in service to this worldly man. But who or what was Brownpony in service to? Do any of us know, ultimately, what it is we serve? Blacktooth wondered. Then he felt immediately ashamed. Was he not a brother of the Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz? Why had he wanted so long to be released from his vows, if the vows meant nothing?
    The hoofbeats were closer now, rattling in the square outside the front of the cathedral, then on the low, wide steps. For a moment Blacktooth thought of stepping out into the street and offering himself up for capture. Then would he be given the pills he needed; and perhaps the death.
    But no. Wooshin recovered and sheathed his long sword. Blacktooth followed him out the back door of the cathedral. There was nothing more in Saint Peter's to do. The dogs were wandering back into the city, smelling new blood and death. Where was it written? And the dogs ate Jezebel in the field of Jezrahel . . .
    As he followed Wooshin down the alley toward the river, Blacktooth could hear horses' hooves inside the cathedral of Saint Peter's; then raised voices over the dead body of Amen II.
    
     
    
    
CHAPTER 32
     They are able now, with no help save from God, to fight single-handed against the vices
     of the flesh and their own evil thoughts.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter l
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    
    
I
T RAINED THE NEXT DAY, AND THE NEXT. THE sky was close and heavy, not like the bright Empty Sky of the grasslands, and Blacktooth felt bent by it, even more than by the rain, which was little more than a persistent drizzle. He followed Wooshin, and the Axe followed a small train of wagons and livestock headed for the Watchitah Nation. It was an informal attachment but it seemed better than traveling alone. The farmers spoke a degraded form of Grasshopper mixed with Ol'zark larded with old English Churchspeak, a dialect Blacktooth assumed was confined to the environs of New Rome. He had trouble understanding it at first but his talent for languages rescued him, and he was surprised to find a dialect so rich in sources and influences, so poor in subtlety and nuance, though it may have been his understanding that was poor; or perhaps it was the farmers themselves.
    There were few women among them. The apparent leader of the train was a spook (Blacktooth suspected) named Pfarfen. He had a daughter, beautiful except for her huge glep ears, and her hands, which she kept mysteriously covered with rags. Pfarfen kept her in the wagon where she sewed and sang all day, and (Blacktooth was alarmed to discover) entertained her father sexually at night, when the wagon was pulled up with the others alongside the muddy road.
    The Holy City was far behind them now, still burning, a smudge on the northeast horizon that was seen only when the low clouds broke. The army that had gone south with Høngan Ösle had been routed, and the thinning stream of refugees heading south was mixed with a thickening stream of refugees heading north, giving the impression at the narrow stretches of highway of a great milling herd heading nowhere. At these points the traffic left the roads for the still-green fields, which were quickly churned into quagmires by wheels and hooves and feet. Though they all spoke versions of Grasshopper, it was not difficult to tell the Nomad warriors from the Hannegan's semi-civilized farmers: many of the refugees heading north were wounded, and most were still armed. A few had even kept their horses, and several times these looked at Blacktooth's clerical garb with an alarming anger.
    "Come on, Nimmy," said Axe, whenever Blacktooth showed signs of wanting to ask about the Qæsach's campaign. He was in a hurry to reach Hannegan City. Since Blacktooth had refused to act as his keisaku and help disembowel him, the wizened old warrior had rediscovered his own purpose. Blacktooth suspected, but didn't want to ask, what it was. Axe had the peculiar ability to go for days without food and never look malnourished. This was not true for Blacktooth, who had a monk's love of dinner; but because he helped with the wagons when they were stuck, he was welcome at the meager dinner and breakfast fires.
    The river was only a memory, somewhere to the east. Now there were the bottomland streams, at least two to cross every day, almost too deep to ford. At each crossing there were piles of abandoned, unburied bodies, stacked in grotesque positions as if they were in the process of composing themselves from the earth, rather than the reverse. The refugees walked by them pretending not to notice and commanding their children to look away. But children have always understood war better than adults. Death only mildly interests them; it holds neither the horror nor fascination it has for adults, who can almost hear the wings.
    Overhead the sky was black with circling dots.
    The faithful Burregun.
    The spook-farmers with whom Blacktooth and Axe were traveling  were tolerant of Blacktooth's tonsure and habit, even the zucchetto which he carried over his back without wearing. Still, he worried. He remained under the Hannegan's death sentence, as far as he knew. It was the death sentence that had given him Hilbert's pills, which were almost gone. Leaving New Rome with three, he had cut his dose to one a day, taken in the morning with his corn gruel. There were two left the day Blacktooth saw three brother monks, crucified by the side of the road, but whether by the Texark soldiers or by angry Nomads routed from their promised looting of Hannegan City, it was impossible to say. The Burregun had feasted and the bodies were too far gone.
    "Come," said Axe, and after a hasty prayer, Blacktooth hurried to catch up with his companions. He wanted to bury the dead but he didn't want to join them yet. Above all, he didn't want to be alone.
    The next day he took his next-to-last pill. That afternoon he came across a second group of two clerics, hung from poles by a muddy roadside. It appeared that they had been hung up and then stoned and shot with arrows, a merciful death overall. Their faces looked almost peaceful, as if they had only just entered the doorway into death. Blacktooth studied them for a long time. They looked familiar; it was not their faces, although in truth all men look alike, and looked increasingly alike to his Most Reverend Cardinal Blacktooth St. George, Deacon of Saint Maisie's, in these days in what he was beginning more and more to think of as the twilight of his life (even though it turned out to be a long twilight) . They looked to him as monks all looked, hung on the cross of life. This was not their world. There was something almost inspiring in it.
    "Come," said Axe.
    "Go ahead," said Blacktooth. "I'll catch up." Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bury the dead. He borrowed Wooshin's short sword and used it to bury the two by the side of the road, using stones and sticks to complete the work. When he finished, it was dark. Not wanting to travel alone at night, he slept in a shallow dirt cave by the side of the road, using his mud-stained zucchetto for a pillow.
    The next morning he took his last pill, and under the clear sky he was almost overcome by terror. He hurried all day, hoping to catch up with the spook-farmers and the Axe. The few refugees he saw on the road eyed him curiously but left him alone. But he kept remembering the crucified Churchmen, and he was afraid. He hid the red hat under a bush, and later that day saw a chance to get rid of his habit, trading it for the leggings and tunic of a farmer who had been laid out beside the road, almost tenderly, a corpse not too old. The monk buried him and took his clothes. Bury the dead, clothe the naked.
    It had been easy to toss the zucchetto, but leaving behind the coarse brown Leibowitzian habit was not so easy. After a few moments of hesitation, Blacktooth rolled it up like a bindle and carried it with him. He felt like a pilgrim, or a booklegger again.
    Under a clear sky speckled with buzzards, he pushed on south and west.
    Hilbert's fever traveled with him. Blacktooth had no hunger, and after a few days no diarrhea, but no strength either. There were fewer and fewer travelers on the road, and those Blacktooth saw spoke in Ol'zark, or not at all. The stream of refugees had diminished to a trickle. Some had crossed the Great River, counting on the water to protect them from the depredations of Filpeo's soldiers and their Nomad adversaries, still thought of as the Antipope's army. Others had just disappeared into the forests to hide, to die, to wait for neighbor or kin.
    Blacktooth never caught up with the wagons. He had lost Brownpony; now he lost Axe. When the road forked west he followed it, putting the morning sun at his back, even though he knew that Wooshin must be heading south for Hannegan City. Blacktooth was hungry for Empty Sky. The fever was like a companion, another consciousness. Often it took on a human form, as when he was crossing a small creek (the creeks got smaller and smaller, the farther west he went) and he saw Specklebird waiting on the far bank. Eagerly, Blacktooth waded across, but when he reached the bank the old black man with the cougar face was gone. Another time he saw Ædrea standing in the doorway of an abandoned hut. The illusion, if it was illusion, was so perfect that he could hear her singing as he climbed the hill toward her. But in the hut he found only an old man, dead, with a crying baby in his arms.
    He waited for the baby to die before burying them both together. Bury the dead.
    It would be dry and hot for days, and then the rain would come, announced by lightning, attended by thunder, falling in sheets and turning the roads to mud. Hilbert's fever was handy, enabling Blacktooth to go for miles without eating. The long feverish days reminded him of his Lenten fast as a novice, when he had been seeking his vocation and thought he had found it among the Albertian book-leggers of Saint Leibowitz. And hadn't he? He missed the abbey and the Brothers, now that he had the freedom he had sought. He had even been released from his vows by the Pope himself; or had he simply been bound in new chains?
    Go, and be a hermit.
    
•      •      •
    
    
     The day Blacktooth saw Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, he had been traveling all morning over open grasslands between wooded draws. He was worried about outlaws because he had seen several campfires near the road, still smoldering, yet never saw anyone. He considered putting his habit back on, but decided against it. Even those who didn't hate the Church for what it had supposedly done to their world, often thought it was rich, and even a poor monk could be a target for highwaymen.
    By midday he had the distinct feeling someone was following him. He looked back every time he crossed a high spot—the road was empty and he saw only buzzards, flyspecks to the south and east. Blacktooth was glad to see that he had crossed that shifting boundary where the forest begins to give way to the grass; but the feeling of being followed wouldn't go away. It became so real that when he crossed the next creek, he hid on the far bank behind the corpse-colored trunk of a fallen sycamore, to watch.
    Sure enough, a white mule with red ears came through the trees and down the muddy bank. At first he thought the woman on the beast's back was Ædrea, with the twins she had gotten by him under the waterfall. But it was the Fujæ Go, the Day Maiden herself. Far beyond Ædrea in beauty, she carried an infant in each arm, one white and one black, both nursing at her full breasts. Even as she rode the mule down the muddy bank and into the water, they sucked on.
    Then she dropped the reins. The mule stopped in the center of the sluggish stream. Its black eyes were looking straight at Blacktooth; no, through him.
    He stood up, no longer trying to hide. As he stepped over the log, he realized that what he was seeing was not in his world and not for him to touch. He knew with certainty that if he spoke, she would not hear him, and that even if she looked straight at him, she would not see him. He felt that he had changed places with one of his own fever dreams, and that it was they, and not he, that were real.
    That he was the dream.
    It was then Saint Leibowitz stepped out of the bushes and took the rope halter. Blacktooth knew him from Brother Fingo's twenty-sixth-century wooden statue in the corridor outside the abbot's office; he recognized the curious smile and dubious eyes. That the Saint was no vision, Blacktooth knew from the faint, sweet fuel-oil smell that hung in the air as he passed. It was Blacktooth who was the dream.
    As she rode past, the Fujæ Go gazed up toward the sky. Blacktooth hadn't noticed how majestic the little oaks could be, a filigree of branches against a pale sky. One baby was blinding, albino white; the other was as black as Specklebird. Both had their eyes squeezed shut like tiny fists fending off the world. The mule looked straight through Blacktooth, like the Day Maiden. Only Leibowitz, in his burlap robes with his rope over his shoulder, looked directly at the monk as if to say, like Axe, "Come."
    Then he winked and walked on.
    Sancte Isaac Eduarde, ora pro me!
    Blacktooth followed; Blacktooth had always followed where Leibowitz had led. But now he was weak and he fell twice climbing the bank. By the time he got to the top, the two (the three? the five?) were far down the narrow trail, almost lost in the dappled shadows. He hurried after them but he was feverish, and even though they were not walking fast, he gradually fell behind. He had to stop again, and he must have fallen asleep, for when he .woke it was almost dark and they were impossibly far away, like a speck in the eye, an iota shimmering in the distance.
    But something was wrong.
    The sun was setting behind his right shoulder. Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman were not heading west into the sea of grass, but south, toward Hannegan City. The Høngin Fujæ Vurn always chose the victor as her Lord, and the Hannegan had won the war. By choosing a husband, she chooses a King, and she was Filpeo's now. Leibowitz was taking her to him.
    
    Blacktooth wandered on, hoping to find Texark soldiers who would give him pills. The winter was coming; it was the winter of 3246. The Empire and its borders were being redrawn and the few travelers Blacktooth passed were wary. Every few days he buried a corpse as he walked west, no longer a cardinal, no longer even a monk. Go and be a hermit.
    It no longer rained. The trees thinned out into shadows in the draws, and the road led higher and higher into a world all grass under a dome of sky. Blacktooth's fever had become a small fire that both weakened and sustained him. The morning he left the last of the trees behind, he saw a great bird circling far above. It was a Red Buzzard, the Pope's bird. Ahead by the road something or someone had fallen. Two smaller black buzzards pulled at it, but the meat was not yet ripe enough for their beaks. Nimmy stopped to watch as the Burregun, the Pope's bride (as he thought of it), swooped down. Awed by her size, the smaller buzzards stepped back, black heads bobbing; but she ignored them, and they soon joined her at the attempted feast. The Red Buzzard was stronger and had a little better luck, but still the carcass was too fresh for easy eating.
    
     From where he sat on a hummock of grass, Blacktooth could not tell if the corpse was human. "Feed the hungry, nurse the sick, visit the prisoner," he said aloud, reciting the corporal works of mercy.
    Bury the dead.
    He tossed a rock. The birds stopped and eyed him with funereal solemnity, then strutted and preened and resumed eating. He tossed another rock and they ignored it. He still carried Wooshin's short sword, but he could not summon the resolve to quarrel with the queen of the buzzards.
    Then he watched as a bald eagle came, driving them all away, even the Burregun, the Buzzard of Battle. The bald eagle was Filpeo's National Bird. It nosed at the corpse, then lost interest and left, riding a thermal straight up into the china blue sky.
    Blacktooth St. George got to his feet and went to see what it was he had been left to bury. He hoped it was not another child.
    
     
    
    
CHAPTER 33
     
     Let all things be done with moderation, however, for the sake of the faint-hearted.
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 48
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
I
T WAS A GOOD YEAR FOR THE BUZZARDS. THEY followed Blacktooth all the way back to the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz, little dots like eyespecks against the expanse of Empty Sky. Blacktooth gave up on finding Hilbert's pills, and the disease gradually gave up on him, burning down to embers. If he had a fever it was the same fever that had plagued him all his life, the burning that Amen and Brownpony had noticed, each from his own particular perspective.
    There was no longer a safe route across the grasslands. One could no longer evade the Empire by traveling north of the Nady Ann, or avoid the hordes by traveling to the south. Both groups had interpenetrated, and the contended territories on both sides of the Nady Ann were passable, and yet uncertain. South of the Brave, the Kingdom of Laredo had collapsed in on itself.
    The grass itself seemed to be shrinking back into the earth.
    
     There were stretches of sand and dust that took half a day to cross. The Empty Sky seemed even more of an emptiness than before. Blacktooth wore his habit again, and said his rosary as he walked. But had he eaten? And where had he found water? The few people he saw were on horses, on the horizons.
    One day there was rain. But it was a swift dry rain, the kind that comes to the high plains and barely reaches the ground, darkening the dust and throwing it up in great splotches, and then evaporating suddenly in the flashes of sun that showed, like slow lightning, after the clouds had ridden away on their long ponies.
    Empty Sky.
    There was no road, and then no trail. Blacktooth followed the setting sun. Wagon tracks braided across the dry rivercourses, running in every direction. The few people Blacktooth met were peaceful and shared their food; the bodies he found he buried, using the short sword he had borrowed from the Axe.
    He walked alone most of the time, accompanied only by his shadow striding before him in the morning, and falling behind by evening. Only at noon, in the heat, would it desert him altogether. Reduced to its essentials, sky and earth, the world seemed more intricate and complex than ever.
    Blacktooth missed the little glep cougar with its blue ears. He wondered what had become of Aberlott, who had so loved the little brass cartridges of war. Had he become one of the motherless ones? Or found his final home under the prairie soil?
    Other such thoughts came, one with each step . . . arriving and departing without speaking, like birds. At other times Blacktooth walked with an empty mind, a gift, like Empty Sky, in which each step was a prayer.
    It was a good year for the buzzards. Blacktooth could tell by how easily they were chased away. There were always other feasts waiting, just over the next hill.
    
    Dom Abiquiu Olshuen had died after another stroke, and Prior Devendy was taking his place until a new abbot could be elected according to the time-honored Benedictine rule. Once he had arrived, Blacktooth had little desire to stay at the monastery, even though most of his good memories (as well as many of his bad ones) were set amid those ancient adobe walls. The stories of Ædrea's stay as Sister Clare had become almost legend, and Blacktooth heard several versions. They were linked with the apparition some of the Brothers claimed to have seen of the Holy Virgin in the eastern sky.
    
     "That's the Night Hag," said Blacktooth. "She means war and death, not peace and hope." He could tell by the way Brother Wren and the others crossed themselves that they didn't want to hear it— even though they were preparing for war in their own way. They had sealed the holy relics in their original chamber and dusted off the Jackrabbit smuggler's cannon. Brother Carpenter was in the basement, planing boards for a heavier door. The defeat of Brownpony's plans for a new order signaled the beginning of a new age of darkness. Somehow Blacktooth no longer feared it, or even thought about it. Blood and screams were the water in which humankind swam.
    Four children had been brought in from the village. Two of them had already died. It seemed there were new diseases abroad in the desert.
    After visiting Jarad's grave, Blacktooth stood looking into the empty one that was always kept waiting. The straw around the open maw was hardly necessary, as there had been even less rain this year than usual, Prior Devendy explained. The grave was so deep that it seemed to Blacktooth that he could see all the way to the bottom of, of ...
    He swayed and almost fell. "Gerard's affliction," the Brothers called it after the beloved fainting monk of almost a thousand years ago.
    "You seem a little woozy," said Prior Devendy. "Come."
    He led Blacktooth through the crowded dayroom of the monastery, under the old familiar vigas, into Olshuen's office. Using a key that hung from a cord around his neck, Devendy opened a drawer, and took from it another key, with which he opened a cabinet of dusty bottles. He poured a glass of brandy. Blacktooth almost waved it away until he saw that Devendy was pouring one for himself as well.
    "Oregon," he said. "It was left here as a gift for Brownpony when he became Pope Amen Two. He took the papacy to New Jerusalem and never drank it."
    "And now he is dead," Blacktooth said. He had told no one about the scene in the basilica of Saint Peter's—only that the Pope was dead.
    "He made you a cardinal," said Devendy. "Where is your hat?"
    "My zucchetto. I put all that behind me. I suspect whoever is made Pope will undo all Brownpony's cardinals anyway."
    "You don't need to be a cardinal here," said Devendy. He smiled tentatively. "Only a priest."
    "Only a what?" Blacktooth looked at the old priest warily.
    "The Brothers want to elect you Abbot. For that you will have to be ordained."
     "That's not possible," said Blacktooth. "Non accepto."
    "My thoughts exactly," said Devendy, looking relieved. "But I promised I would ask."
    "I have no vocation for it," said Blacktooth. "I was given my vocation by Pope Amen Two. I will stay a couple of nights and then go."
    "To the Mesa of Last Resort?"
    "I thought I might go that way."
    "That's where she went," said Prior Devendy. "She was, uh, injured, you know, and she stayed with the old Jew after she left here. But I'm sure she must be gone."
    Blacktooth looked out the window toward the Mesa. It shimmered in the distance like a mirage of rock.
    "Is the old Jew still there?"
    
    The old Jew was still there. Blacktooth left the abbey the next morning with the gifts of a blanket and breviary, a canteen and a loaf of bread. He was greeted with a rattle of stones halfway up the trail that led to the top of the Mesa. He ignored them; they were only pebbles. He wedged himself up through the last crack onto the top, and there was Benjamin Eleazar bar Joshua, looking no older than he had looked ten years before, or a hundred years before that for all Blacktooth knew.
    "You," said the old man. "I suspected it might be you."
    "Brownpony is dead," Blacktooth said.
    "He was not the one" was all old Benjamin had replied. He told Blacktooth that Ædrea had stayed with him several months, until her sores had healed, and then had left without revealing her plans.
    Had he found her much changed?
    "Changed?" The old Jew only smiled and shook his head, apparently misunderstanding. "It never was any better, it never will be any better. It will only be richer or poorer, sadder but not wiser, until the very last day."
    Irritated, weary of oracles and parables, Blacktooth wrapped himself in his blanket and went straight to sleep. He stayed with Benjamin two nights, sleeping in the tent where Ædrea had slept. The old tent-maker himself never stayed in a tent if he could help it. Blacktooth was awakened by rain on the tent every night, a few great splattering drops. Or was that a dream sent to advertise his tentmaking and rain-making skills? There was dry lightning off to the east each night: the Horse Woman, admonishing her children on the Plains.
    
     He left on the third day. The old Jew filled his canteen from a pool hidden under a rock. The water was cold and clear, and Blacktooth was surprised to find that it lasted him all the way to New Jerusalem.
    
    "Even if she had come," Prior Singing Cow told Blacktooth at Saint Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods, "I would have turned her away. You heard what had happened to her."
    "Yes."
    Blacktooth had followed the papal road north, then cut off at Arch Hollow, into the Suckamints. The settlement at New Jerusalem was much diminished. Magister Dion had not made it back from the "Antipope's war" (as even the spooks were calling it), and no one knew of Shard's Ædrea, except that she had left for Laredo under interdiction. No one believed Blacktooth when he told them that the interdiction had been lifted by the Pope who was not a pope, at New Rome which was no longer New Rome.
    Nor was she to be found in Valana.
    But Aberlott was, working as a secular scribe in the square of Saint John's, under the walls of the Great Hall of Saint Ston's and next door to the old Papal Palace where Amen had delivered his now-legendary seventeen-hour acceptance speech. The air of Valana was rich with the familiar urban smells of horse dung, food, and smoke. The streets were bustling; after the Crusade's defeat, many of the Nomads had come to settle in the narrow strip of farmland watered by the mountains. They bought and sold horses and cattle, changing their ways to suit their world's changing ways.
    "I got tired of being a soldier," Aberlott said. "Did you tire of being a cardinal, Your Excellency?"
    "I'm not a cardinal anymore," Blacktooth said, finding his old companion's sarcasm as tiresome as ever. Aberlott had a long scar under one eye, which he said he had "earned" outside the gates of Hannegan City when the Texark troops had outflanked and ambushed Høngan Ösle's warriors. It went well with his missing ear.
    "I almost bled to death," Aberlott said. "I ended up in Hannegan City. Once the fighting was over, the Empire just folded us in, like raisins into a cake. Many of the Qæsach dri Vørdar's Nomads are now part of the Emperor's guard. I wandered around for a few weeks, then got a spot as secretary to a N'Ork Churchman who arrived for the conclave, and couldn't speak Ol'zark."
    "Conclave?"
     "Oh, yes," Aberlott said. "Sorely Nauwhat called a conclave and had himself made Pope, or perhaps we might say Filpeo had him made Pope. Urion Benefez was bitter; still is, I imagine. Without Brownpony to resist and stall and prevaricate, the bishops and archbishops drifted in, and Sorely nullified all the nullifications of the Amen Two, and then Wooshin nullified Filpeo."
    "The Axe."
    "Indeed," said Aberlott. "Stopped his carriage in the street. Sliced off his head when Filpeo stuck it out the window to see what was going on. The Hannegan's guard showered your yellow man with bullets but he welcomed them, he bared his throat and chest and belly to them. I saw it."
    When Blacktooth closed his eyes he could see Wooshin's disapproving narrow eyes. "I would be dead now if it were not for him."
    "Wouldn't we both? Anyway, you are no longer a cardinal. The papacy has been removed to Hannegan City, which is ruled by Benefez, as regent for several of Filpeo's sons, who will settle it among themselves, in typically bloody fashion, I imagine, when they come of age. In the meanwhile, a rough peace reigns."
    Aberlott had married Anala, the sister of Jæsis, bringing her and two small children to Valana from New Jerusalem. He offered Blacktooth a place to stay, but the house was small and Blacktooth discovered he had no taste for domestic life. "I have been a monk too long," he told Aberlott, bidding him farewell and heading out toward the south.
    It was a very good year for the buzzards. The younger generation waxed strong, soared high and far on black wings, waiting for the fruitful earth to yield up her bountiful carrion. One night, Blacktooth awakened in a cold sweat and thought that his fever was back. Then he looked north and saw the sky filled with Nunshån, the Night Hag, huge and ugly. He could see stars through her upraised arms. "Who is dying?" he asked aloud; he found out later it was his old friend Chür Ösle Høngan. Brownpony's plan had been a disaster for the Nomads. After the defeat, the Three Hordes had turned their backs on one another. The Treaty of the Sacred Mare no longer held, and the Plains were littered with bodies thrown down by drought, by famine, and by the motherless ones.
    Blacktooth traveled south across the Nady Ann, the Bay Ghost, and at last the Brave. No longer a cardinal, he expected to be turned away at Mother Iridia's convent of San Pancho Villa of Cockroach Mountain, but she welcomed him almost as an old friend. She had no news, though, of Sister Clare-of-Assisi. She suspected Ædrea was somewhere with her own people.
     "Her own people?" Blacktooth protested. "I was at New Jerusalem, and they knew nothing of her."
    "The gleps," said Mother Iridia. "The spooks. The Valley of the Misborn."
    
    The Jackrabbit country had always been harsh, but after two dry summers it had become even harsher. The wet years were over. Sand was taking the grass. Hannegan City was prospering, though. The Empire had turned east, and was looking toward the woodlands and the growing commerce up the Red from the Great River.
    Blacktooth worked several days in the marketplace as a scribe before he was summoned to a papal audience. The summoner surprised him even more than the summons, for it was Torrildo, wearing a curate's gown, complete with feather.
    "I told His Excellency you were here," the still handsome young man told Blacktooth. "You should be more careful; you are still under interdiction."
    "I don't see why. If he took away my cardinalship, why couldn't he take away my interdiction?"
    "It's Benefez," Torrildo said. "He thinks you had a hand in killing Filpeo."
    I did, thought Blacktooth.
    "He probably thanks you for it," said Torrildo. "But he doesn't particularly want you around."
    
    Sorely Nauwhat was most respectful and even curious to hear of Blacktooth's adventures. He was especially interested in the situation on the Plains, but he knew more than Blacktooth. The apparition of the Night Hag had been seen all over the High Plains. The Weejus women were not pleased. When the Qæsach dri Vørdar returned from the South, he was called before them and put to death. After the funeral feast his bones were buried in three widely separated locations, decided by each of the three hordes.
    "Why is he telling me this?" Blacktooth wondered as the plump, grave Pope rattled on, seemingly unconcerned about the time. He is burying Brownpony's dreams. Filpeo's were buried next: the Pope, who had been in the Emperor's carriage, described in gruesome detail how Wooshin had done his work. Filpeo's guard were equipped with the first copies of the repeaters, and several misfired. Axe had removed the head of the seventh Hannegan in a single stroke, then laid down his sword and knelt to receive the bullets chasing into his chest like bees into a hive.
    Dominus ex deu.
    The audience lasted all afternoon, and was exhausting. After the lengthy and bloody assassination, Pope Sorely described the imperial situation in great detail. The repeating weapons were decisive. With them, Texarkana at last controlled the Plains. The old way of life was dying, and those who could not see the end coming could hear it keening in the wind. Even the grass was going. Crescent-shaped hills of sand marched slowly from west to east. The Empire that had secured its western frontiers now looked more and more to the east. New Rome smoldered for years but was never rebuilt. . . .
    "My son—"
    Blacktooth had fallen asleep. The Pope didn't seem insulted. When he left the log Papal Palace, Blacktooth was given a small sack of gold coins at the door. Pay for listening, he thought; and then on reflection realized it was travel money. He was to make himself scarce.
    That had been his intention all along. Hannegan City, like Valana, was in turmoil. The streets were crowded with horses and men. The army was being decommissioned, new legates were piling out for the west, and the Grasshopper lands to the north were being opened up to the motherless ones and also to those among the Hannegan's former enemies who wanted to celebrate the new peace by raising cattle and grass.
    Leaving was easy. Blacktooth was weary of cities and old friends and enemies. He was weary of mankind, so using the Pope's money he bought himself an ass, or to be precise, a mule, and headed north along the ragged edge where the forest meets the plains.
    
    Grass. It stretched unbroken to one horizon, and meandered among the low, dark trees on the other. The little mountains called Winding Stare were lit with fires, whether of celebration or mourning, Blacktooth couldn't tell.
    He rode unchallenged past the first log outposts of the gleps. He hoped the Valley of the Misborn would take him in, and it did. The Valley, or the Watchitah Nation as it was now called, had grown to be a network of valleys, up and down the low mountains called the Old Zarks. Blacktooth wandered until he found a little community of bookleggers and memorizers, called Post Cedar. He traded his mule for a g'tara much like the one his father had given him, and lived on the mountainside above the abbey, swapping his services as a scribe and a tutor for food.
    
     He found shelter in a rockhouse cave, very like the cave where Amen had lived, except that these eastern caves were broad and open, like a mouth. They provide protection against the rain, and some against the cold; but none against the years.
    And so, Blacktooth St. George grew old, reciting the Divine Office and meditating on The Rule of Saint Leibowitz, which enjoined him to the humility he was surprised to discover had been waiting for him all along. It was a sister to the deep loneliness he treasured, a loneliness he no longer wished filled. It was an emptiness as tangible as love. Some nights, though, he found himself praying to whatever might answer such a prayer that Ædrea would come to him. He had heard that a blond spook who wore a nun's robe practiced medicine in the next valley. The local priest called her a witch; sometimes she healed minds the priest had cursed, and because of this, the priest feared her.
    Blacktooth needed his mind healed, but that was not what he feared in her. He feared the gateway beneath the clitoris, torn open by the black god and the white god he had seen riding with the Day Maiden on her rubriauricular white mule. Or had the old Jew done that to her? It was just over the hill waiting for him, the world gateway of the Lord Jesus and of all the saints, and he was a coward. Sometimes he stroked himself into a moment's ecstasy thinking about it, and he did not hide his shame from the Holy Mother Day Maiden Fujæ Go who watched him from the corner of the hut of his mind. Neither did he mention it in his annual confession to the Leibowitzian priest who visited him every Maundy Thursday. The priest always wanted to wash Nimmy's feet on behalf of the abbot on that occasion, but the hermit refused.
    "You won't acknowledge your poverty? Isn't that your pride?"
    Blacktooth signed and let the man wash his feet and give him communion.
    He had given up Jesus several times, as Amen Specklebird had advised, when the Savior became an occasion of sin for him: but he always came back, and so, it seemed to him, did the Savior. Well, how have you been doing lately, Lord?
    For three hours every weekday, he taught thirteen children of various ages how to read and write their own dialect; he also taught them a little music, and taught them—sometimes to their parents' disbelief—a few things about the geography of the continent, and as much as he knew about the history of the world and the fall of the Magna Civitas. Some of the children believed him, and others believed their parents; but the laughing parents brought him food in payment for their urchins' literacy, and they mended his clothes, furnished him blankets, and occasionally brought him a hemina of wine for his weakness.
    When he was alone, he opened himself. Sometimes the ecstasy of God came through the opening, but more often it did not. He decided to stop leaving an opening for God. That was what Meister Eckhart advised: to be so poor that he had no place for God to come into. When God had no place to come into, He was in every place. There was nothing else.
    But Blacktooth did not consider himself a religious man. He did not know if God was the Father, or the maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible. He couldn't see that it mattered, since God Himself, when He became manifest as a whirlwind bush, never bothered to tell him; never said, "Blacktooth, I am your Almighty Father, and I made this Earth you're kneeling on and the sky you are kneeling under."
    
     
  
  
  
CHAPTER 34
     
     Let those who receive new clothes always give back the old ones at once, to be put away in the wardrobe for the poor. 
     —Saint Benedict's Rule, Chapter 55
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
J
UST OVER THE MOUNTAIN FROM  POST CEDAR was a convent, where there lived a nun known as Sister Clare. She awakened one morning with one of her "feelings," and knew that the hermit who lived in the next valley was dead. She had known of him for years but had elected to leave him in peace, knowing the difficulty of the journey he was on. No one told her he was dead; no one besides herself knew it yet, and she only knew because of the feeling, not unlike joy and yet not unlike sorrow either, that wouldn't leave her. She welcomed the feeling. The hermit had few enough left in this world to miss him.
    With the abbess's permission, Sister Clare packed a loaf of bread, a little cheese, and then, as an afterthought, a freshly dead mouse from the trap in the kitchen. She walked over the steep and little-used trail to Post Cedar. On the far side of the valley, across from the monastery, she found the narrow path to the dry cave, just where she knew it would be.
    The old man hadn't been dead long. It was not his death but his age that filled Sister Clare's eyes with tears. She had expected somehow to find a handsome young man, even though she was herself an old woman, bent and spotted with years.
    Blacktooth was sitting against a stone with the head of a small cougar in his lap. The animal lifted its blue head when she approached. It was Librada. Ædrea waited but the cougar wouldn't leave, and finally had to be coaxed away with the mouse so that she could bury Blacktooth and place at the head of his grave the little cross she had carried with her all these years.
    The rosary that was clutched in his hand, and the crude g'tara he had left leaning against the back wall of the cave, she took with her.
    
     
    
  ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    
    Walter M. Miller, Jr., grew up in the American South and enlisted in the Army Air Corps a month after Pearl Harbor. He spent most of World War II as a radio operator and tail gunner, participating in more than fifty-five combat sorties, among them the controversial destruction of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, the oldest monastery in the Western world. Fifteen years later he wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz. The sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, followed after nearly forty years.
    
      
                                             
                                             
     in u.b. $23.95
     IN CANADA $32.95
    
    It has been nearly forty years since Walter M. Miller, Jr., shocked and dazzled readers with his provocative bestseller and enduring classic, A Canticle for Leibowitz. Now, in one of the most eagerly awaited publishing events of our time, here is Miller's masterpiece, an epic intellectual and emotional tour de force that will stand beside 1984, Brave New World, and A Canticle for Leibowitz.
     
     SAINT LEIBOWITZ AND THE WILD HORSE WOMAN
    
    In a world struggling to transcend a terrifying legacy of darkness—a world torn between love and violence, good and evil—one man undertakes an odyssey of adventure and discovery that promises to alter not only his destiny but the destiny of humankind as well....
    Millennia have passed since the Flame Deluge, yet society remains fragmented, pockets of civilization besieged by barbarians. The Church is in turmoil, the exiled papacy struggling to survive in its Rocky Mountain refuge. To the south, tyranny is on the march. Imperial Texark troops, bent on conquest, are headed north into the lands of the nomads, spreading terror in their wake.
    Meanwhile, isolated in Leibowitz Abbey, Brother Blacktooth St. George suffers a crisis of faith. Torn between his vows and his Nomad upbringing, between the Holy Virgin and visions of the Wild Horse Woman of his people, he stands at the brink of disgrace and expulsion from his order. But he is offered an escape—of sorts: a new assignment as a translator for Cardinal Brownpony, which will take him to the contentious election of a new pope and then on a pilgrimage to the city of New Rome. Journeying across a continent divided by nature, politics, and war, Blacktooth is drawn into Brownpony's intrigues and conspiracies. He bears witness to
    (Continued on back flap)  rebellion, assassination, and human sacrifice. And he is introduced to the sins that monastery life has long held at bay.
   This introduction comes in the form of Ædrea, a beautiful but forbidden "genny" living among the deformed and mutant castouts in Texark's most hostile terrain. As Blacktooth encounters her again and again on his travels—in the flesh, in rumors of miraculous deeds, and in the delirium of fever—he begins to wonder if Ædrea is a she-devil, the Holy Mother, or the Wild Horse Woman herself.
   Picaresque and passionate, magnificent, dark, and compellingly real, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman is a brutal, brilliant, thrilling tale of mystery, mysticism, and divine madness, a classic that will long endure in every reader's memory.
    
   WALTER M. MILLER, JR., grew up in the American South and enlisted in the Army Air Corps a month after Pearl Harbor. He spent most of World War II as a radio operator and tail gunner, participating in more than fifty-five combat sorties, among them the controversial destruction of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, the oldest monastery in the Western world. Fifteen years later he wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz. The sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, followed after nearly forty years.
    
    A MAIN SELECTION OF
    THE SCIENCE FICTION BOOK CLUB
    Jacket illustration © Matt Zumbo Jacket design by Jamie S. Warren Youll
 I
     Bantam Books 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036
     Visit Bantam's Web site at www.bdd.com Printed in the United States of America
     


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>›þ“4,U—<³Z×ûÜÍ;"/xµ!°üàï^Another Original publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCISET BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

Copyright © 1980 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

 

ISBN: 0-671-83304-9

First Pocket Books printing May, 1980

 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

POCKET and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster. Printed in the U.S.A.

 

Copyright Notices

 

"YOU TRIFLIN’ SKUNK" originally appeared as "TILE TRIFLIN MAN" in the Jan. 1955 issue of Fantastic Universe, copyright 1953 by King Size Publications, Inc.

 

"THE WILL" appeared in the Jan./Feb. 1954 issue of Fantastic, copyright 1953 by Ziff Davis Publishing Co.

 

"ANYBODY ELSE LIKE ME" originally appeared as "COMMAND PERFOR­MANCE" in the Nov. 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, copyright 1952 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

"CRUCIFIXUS ETIUM appeared in the Feb. 1953 issue of Astonishing Science Fiction, copyright 1953 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

"I DREAMER" appeared in the Jun./Jul. 1953 issue of Amazing Stories, copyright 1953 by Ziff Davis Publishing Co.

 

"DUMB WAITER" appeared in the Apr. 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, copyright 1952 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

"BLOOD BANK" appeared in the Jun. 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, copyright 1952 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

"BIG JOE AND THE NTH GENERATION" originally appeared as "IT TAKES A THIEF" in the May 1952 issue of If, copyright 1952 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc.

 

"THE BIG HUNGER" appeared in the Oct. 1952 issue of Astounding Sci­ence Fiction, copyright 1952 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

"CONDITIONALLY HUMAN" appeared in the Feb. 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, copyright 1952 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

"THE DARFSTELLER" appeared in the Jan. 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, copyright 1954 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

"DARK BENEDICTION" appeared in the Sep. 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventure, copyright 1951 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.; copyright renewed

© 1979.

 

"THE LINEMAN" appeared in the Aug. 1957 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, copyright © 1957 by Fantasy House, Inc.

 

"VENGENCE FOR NIKOLAI" appeared in the Mar. 1957 issue of Venture Science Fiction, copyright m 1956 by Mercury Publications, Inc.

 

Contents

 

You Triflin' Skunk!

The Will

Anybody Else Like Me?

Crucifixus Etiam

I, Dreamer

Dumb Waiter

Blood Bank

Big Joe and the Nth Generation

The Big Hunger

Conditionally Human

The Darfsteller

Dark Benediction

The Lineman

Vengeance For Nikolai

 

You Triflin' Skunk!

 

THE RAIN SANG light in the sodden palmettos and the wind moaned through the pines about the unpainted shack, whipping the sea of grass that billowed about the islands of scrub. The land lay bathed in rain-haze beneath the pines. Rain trickled from the roof of the shack and made a rattling spray in the rivulets under the eaves. Rain blew from the roof in foggy cloudlets. Rain played marimba-sounds on the wooden steps. A droopy chicken huddled in the drenched grass, too sick to stir or seek a shelter.

No road led across the scrublands to the distant highway, but only a sandy footpath that was now a gushing torrent that ran down to an overflowing creek of brackish water. A possum hurried across the inundated footpath at the edge of the clearing, drenched and miserable, seek­ing higher ground.

The cabin was without a chimney, but a length of stovepipe projected from a side window, and bent skyward at a clumsy angle. A thin trail of brown smoke leaked from beneath the rain-hood, and wound away on the gusty breeze. In the cabin, there was life, and an aura of song lingered about the rain-washed walls, song as mournful as the sodden land, low as the wail of a distant train.

 

Whose hands was drivin' the nails 0 Lord? 

Whose hands was drivin' the nails? 

Lord 0 Lord!

My hands was drivin' the nails 0 Lord!

My hands was drivin' the nails 

And I did crucify my God!

 

The song was low and vibrant in the cabin, and Lucey rocked to it, rolling her head as she sang over the stove, where a smoked 'possum simmered in pot-likker with sweet-taters, while corn bread toasted in the oven. The cabin was full of food-smells and sweat-smells, and smoky light through dusty panes.

From a rickety iron bed near the window came a sud­den choking sob, an animal sound of almost unendur­able torment and despair. Lucey stopped singing, and turned to blink toward the cry, sudden concern melting her pudgy face into a mountain woman cherub's face, full of compassion.

"Awwwwwww . . ." The sound welled unbidden from her throat, a rich low outpouring of love and sympathy for the sallow twitching youth who lay on the yellowish sheets, his eyes wild, his hands tensing into claws.

"Awwwww, Doodie—you ain't gonna have another spell?" she said.

Only a small hurt this time, my son. It can't be helped. It's like tuning a guitar. You can't do it without sounding the strings, or pulsing the neural fibers. But only a small hurt this time... .

The youth writhed and shuddered, stiffening into a puppet strained by steel springs. His back arched, and his muscles quivered. He flung himself suddenly into re­flexive gymnastics, sobbing in small shrieks.

Lucey murmured softly. An immense mass of love, she waddled toward the bed in bounces of rubbery flesh. She bent over him to purr low in her throat.

"Poor Doodie . . . poor li'l Doodie. Mama's lamb."

The boy sobbed and thrashed. The paroxysm brought froth to his lips and jerked his limbs into cramped spasms. He jerked and writhed and tumbled on the bed.

"You jus' try to lay calm, Doodie. You jus' try. You gonna be all right. It ain't gonna last long, Doodie. It's gonna go away."

"No!" he whimpered. "No! Don't touch me, Mama! Don't!"

"Now, Doodie . . ."

She sat on the edge of the bed to gather him up in her massive arms. The spasms grew more frantic, less reflex­ive. He fought her, shrieking terror. She lay beside him, moaning low with pity. She enveloped him with her arms, enfolding him so that he could no longer kick. She pulled his face into the hollow of her huge bosom and squeezed him. With his tense body pressed tightly against the bulky mass of her, she melted again with love, and began chant­ing a rhythmic lullaby while he twitched and slavered against her, fighting away, pretending to suffocate.

Gradually, as exhaustion overcame him, the spasm passed. He lay wheezing quietly in her arms.

The strings are tuned, my son, and it was only a small hurt. Has the hurt stopped, my son?

Yes, father, if only this monstress would let me he. Accept my knowledge, and be content. The time will come.

"Who you whisperin' to, Doodie? Why are you mum­biin' so?" She looked down at his tousled head, pressed tightly between her breasts.

His muttering ceased, and he lay quietly as if in a trance. It was always so. The boy had fits, and when the paroxysm had passed, he went into a rigid sleep. But it was more like a frozen moment of awareness, and old Ma Kutter said the boy was "witched." Lucey had never be­lieved in "witchin'."

When he was tensely quiet, she tenderly disengaged herself and slid off the bed. He lay on his side, face toward the window, eyes slitted and mouth agape. Hum­ming softly, Lucey returned to the stove and took a stick of oak out of the bucket. She paused to glance back at him—and he seemed to be rigidly listening to something. The rain?

"Doodle . . . ?"

"When are you coming for us, father?" came in a ghost whisper from the bed. `"When, when?"

"What are you talking about, Doodie?" The cast-iron stove-lid clattered on the hot metal as she lifted it nerv­ously aside. She glanced down briefly at the red coals in the stove, then back at Doodie.

"Very soon . . . very soon!" he whispered.

Lucey chucked the stick of wood in atop the coals, then stood staring at the bed until the flames licked up about the lid-hole to glisten orange on her sweat-glazed face.

"Who are you talkin' to, Doodie?"

She expected no answer, but after several seconds, his breathing grew deeper. Then it came: "My father."

Luccy's plump mouth went slowly shut and her hand quivered as she fumbled for the stove lid.

"Your pa is dead, Doodle. You know that."

The emaciated youth stirred on the bed, picked himself up slowly on one arm, and turned to look at her, his eyes blazing. "You lie!" he cried. "Mama, you lie!"

"Doodie!"

"I hate you, Mama. I hate all of you, and I'll make you pay. I'll be like him."

The stove lid clattered back in place. She wiped her hands nervously on her dress. "You're sick, Doodie! You're not right in the mind. You never even seed your pa."

"I talk to him," the boy said. "He tells me things. He told me why you're my mother. He told me how. And he told me who I am."

"You're my son!" Lucey's voice had gone up an octave, and she edged defensively away.

"Only half of me, Mama." The boy said, then laughed defiantly. "Only half of me is even human. You knew that when he came here, and paid you to have his baby."

"Doodie!"

"You can't lie to me, Mama. He tells me. He knows." 

"He was just a man, Doodie. Now he's gone. He never came back, do you hear?"

The boy stared out the window at the rain-shroud. When he spoke again, it was in a small slow voice of contempt.

"It doesn't matter. He doesn't want you to believe—any of you." He paused to snicker. "He doesn't want to warn you what we're going to do."

Lucey shook her head slowly. "Lord, have mercy on me," she breathed. "I know I done wrong. But please, punish old Lucey and not my boy."

"I ain't crazy, Mama."

"If you ain't crazy, you're `witched,' and talkin' to the dead."

"He ain't dead. He's Outside."

Lucey's eyes flickered quickly to the door.

"And he's comin' back—soon." The boy chuckled. "Then he'll make me like him, and it won't hurt to listen."

"You talk like he wasn't a man. I seed him, and you didn't. Your pa was just a man, Doodie."

"No, Mama. He showed you a man because he wanted you to see a man. Next time, he'll come the way he really is."

"Why would your pa come back," she snorted, sum­moning courage to stir the pot. "What would he want here? If you was right in the head, you wouldn't get fits, and you'd know you never seed him. What's his name? You don't even know his name."

"His name is a purple bitter with black velvet, Mama. Only there isn't any word."

"Fits," she moaned. "A child with fits."

"The crawlers, you mean? That's when be talks to me. It hurts at first."

She advanced on him with a big tin spoon, and shook it at him. "You're sick, Doodie. And don't you carry on so. A doctor's what you need . . . if only Mama had some money."

"I won't fuss with you, Mama."

"Huh!" She stood there for a moment, shaking her head. Then she went back to stir the pot. Odorous steam arose to perfume the shack.

The boy turned his head to watch her with luminous eyes. "The fits are when be talks, Mama. Honest they are. It's like electricity inside me. I wish I could tell you how."

"Sick!" She shook her head vigorously. "Sick, that's all."

"If I was all like him, it wouldn't hurt. It only hurts because I'm half like you."

"Doodie, you're gonna drive your old mother to her grave. Why do you torment me so?"

He turned back to the window and fell silent . . . deter­minedly, hostilely silent. The silence grew like an angry thing in the cabin, and Lucey's noises at the stove only served to punctuate it.

"Where does your father stay, Doodie?" she asked at last, in cautious desperation. 

"Outside ..."

"Gitalong! Wheah outside, in a palmetto scrub? In the cypress swamp?"

"Way Outside. Outside the world."

"Who taught you such silliness? Spirits an' such! I ought to tan you good, Doodie!"

"From another world," the boy went on.

"An' he talks to you from the other world?" Doodie nodded solemnly.

Lucey stirred vigorously at the pot, her face creased in a dark frown. Lots of folks believed in spirits, and lots of folks believed in mediums. But Lucey had got herself straight with the Lord.

"I'm gonna call the parson," she grunted flatly.

“Why?”

"Christian folks don't truck with spirits."

"He's no spirit, Mama. He's like a man, only he's not. He comes from a star."

She set her jaw and fell grimly silent. She didn't like to remember Doodie's father. He'd come seeking shelter from a storm, and he was big and taciturn, and he made love like a machine. Lucey had been younger then—younger and wilder, and not afraid of shame. He'd van­ished as quickly as he'd come.

When he had gone, it almost felt like he'd been there to accomplish an errand, some piece of business that had to be handled hastily and efficiently.

"Why'd he want a son?" she scoffed. "If what you say is true—which it ain't."

The boy stirred restlessly. "Maybe I shouldn't tell." 

"You tell Mama."

"You won't believe it anyway," he said listlessly. "He fixed it so I'd look human. He fixed it so he could talk to me. I tell him things. Things he could find out himself if he wanted to."

"What does he want to know?"

"How humans work inside."

"Livers and lungs and such? Sssssst! Silliest I ever—" 

"And brains. Now they know."

"They?"

"Pa's people. You'll see. Now they know, and they're corning to run things. Things will be different, lots dif­ferent."

"When?"

"Soon. Only pa's coming sooner. He's their … their . . ." The boy groped for a word. "He's like a detective."

Lucey took the corn bread out of the oven and sank despairingly into a chair. "Doodie, Doodie ..."

"What, Mama?"

"Oh, Sweet Jesus! What did I do, what did I do? He's a child of the devil. Fits an' lies and puny ways. Lord, have mercy on me."

With an effort, the boy sat up to stare at her weakly. "He's no devil, Mama. He's no man, but he's better than a man. You'll see."

"You're not right in the mind, Doodie."

"It's all right. He wouldn't want you to believe. Then you'd be warned. They'd be warned too."

"They?"

"Humans—white and black and yellow. He picked poor people to have his sons, so nobody would believe." 

"Sons? You mean you ain't the only one?"

Doodie shook his head. "I got brothers, Mama—half­ brothers. I talk to them sometimes too."

She was silent a long time. "Doodie, you better go to sleep," she said wearily at last.

"Nobody'll believe . . . until he comes, and the rest of them come after him."

"He ain't comin', Doodie. You ain't seed him—never." 

"Not with my eyes," he said.

She shook her head slowly, peering at him with brim­ming eyes. "Poor little boy. Cain't I do somethin' to make you see?"

Doodie sighed. He was tired, and didn't answer. He fell back on the pillow and lay motionless. The water that crawled down the pane rippled the rain-light over his sallow face. He might have been a pretty child, if it had not been for the tightness in his face, and the tumor-shape on his forehead.

He said it was the tumor-shape that let him talk to his father. After a few moments, Lucey arose, and took their supper off the stove. Doodie sat propped up on pillows, but he only nibbled at his food.

"Take it away," he told her suddenly. "I can feel it starting again."

There was nothing she could do. While he shrieked and tossed again on the bed, she went out on the rain-swept porch to pray. She prayed softly that her sin be upon herself, not upon her boy. She prayed for understanding, and when she was done she cried until Doodie was silent again inside.

When she went back into the house, he was watching her with cold, hard eyes.

"It's tonight," he said. "He's coming tonight, Mama."

The rain ceased at twilight, but the wind stiffened, hurl­ing drops of water from the pines and scattering them like shot across the sagging roof. Running water gurgled in the ditch, and a rabbit ran toward higher ground. In the west, the clouds lifted a dark bandage from a bloody slash of sky, and somewhere a dog howled in the dusk. Rain-pelted, the sick hen lay dying in the yard.

Lucey stood in the doorway, nervously peering out into the pines and the scrub, while she listened to the croak of the tree frogs at sunset, and the conch-shell sounds of wind in the pines.

"Ain't no night for strangers to be out wanderin'," she said. "There won't be no moon till nearly midnight."

"He'll come," promised the small voice behind her. "He's coming from the Outside."

"Shush, child. He's nothing of the sort."

"He'll come, all right."

"What if I won't let him in the door?"

Doodie laughed. "You can't stop him, Mama. I'm only half like you, and it hurts when he talks-inside."

"Yes, child?"

"If he talks-inside to a human, the human dies. He told me."

"Sounds like witch-woman talk," Lucey said scornfully and stared back at him from the doorway. "I don't want no more of it. There's nobody can kill somebody by just a-talkin'."

"He can. And it ain't just talking. It's talking inside." 

"Ain't nobody can talk inside your mother but your mother."

"That's what I been saying." Doodle Iaughed. "If he did, you'd die. That's why he needed me."

Lucey's eyes kept flickering toward the rain-soaked scrub, and she hugged her huge arms, and shivered. "Sil­liest I ever!" she snorted. "He was just a man, and you never even seed him."

She went inside and got the shotgun, and sat down at the table to clean it, after lighting a smoky oil lamp on the wall.

"Why are you cleaning that gun, Mama?"

"Wildcat around the chicken yard last night!" she mut­tered. "Tonight I'm gonna watch."

Doodie stared at her with narrowed eyes, and the look on his face started her shivering again. Sometimes he did seem not-quite-human, a shape witched or haunted wherein a silent cat prowled by itself and watched, through human eyes.

How could she believe the wild words of a child sub­ject to fits, a child whose story was like those told by witching women and herb healers? A thing that came from the stars, a thing that could come in the guise of a man and talk, make love, eat, and laugh, a thing that wanted a half-human son to which it could speak from afar.

How could she believe in a thing that was like a spy sent into the city before the army came, a thing that could make her conceive when it wasn't even human? It was wilder than any of the stories they told in the deep swamps, and Lucey was a good Christian now.

Still, when Doodie fell asleep, she took the gun and went out to wait for the wildcat that had been disturbing the chickens. It wasn't unchristian to believe in wildcats, not even tonight.

Doodie's father had been just a man, a trifiin' man. True, she couldn't remember him very clearly, because she had been drinking corn squeezin's with Jacob Fleeter before the stranger came. She had been all giggly, and he had been all shimmery, and she couldn't remember a word he'd said.

"Lord forgive me," she breathed as she left the house.

The wet grass dragged about her legs as she crossed the yard and traversed a clearing toward an island of palmetto scrub from which she could cover both the house and the chickenyard.

The clouds had broken, and stars shone brightly, but there was no moon. Lucey moved by instinct, knowing each inch of land for half a mile around the shack.

She sat on a wet and rotting log in the edge of the palmetto thicket, laid the shotgun across her lap, stuffed a corncob pipe with tobacco from Deevey's field, and sat smoking in the blackness while whippoorwills mourned over the land, and an occasional owl hooted from the swamp. The air was cool and clean after the rain, and only a few night birds flitted in the brush while crickets chirped in the distance and tree frogs spoke mysteriously.

"AAAaaaAAaaarrrwww ... Na!"

The cry was low and piercing. Was it Doodie, having another spasm—or only a dream? She half-arose, then paused, listening. There were a few more whimpers, then silence. A dream, she decided, and settled back to wait. There was nothing she could do for Doodle, not until the State Healthmobile came through again, and examined him for "catchin' " ailments. If they found he wasn't right in the mind, they might take him away.

The glowing ember in the pipe was hypnotic—the only thing to be clearly seen except the stars. She stared at the stars, wondering about their names, until they began to crawl before her eyes. Then she looked at the ember in the pipe again, brightening and dimming with each breath, acquiring a lacy crust of ashes, growing sleepy in the bowl and sinking deeper, deeper, while the whippoor­wills pierced the night with melancholy.

... Na na naaaAAAAhhhaaa   

When the cries woke her, she knew she had slept for some time. Faint moonlight seeped through the pine branches from the east, and there was a light mist over the land. The air had chilled, and she shivered as she arose to stretch, propping the gun across the rotten log. She waited for Doodie's cries to cease.

The cries continued, unabated.

Stiffening with sudden apprehension, she started hack toward the shack. Then she saw it—a faint violet glow through the trees to the north, just past the corner of the hen house! She stopped again, tense with fright. Doodie's cries were becoming meaningful.

"Pa! I can't stand it any closer! Naa, naaa! I can't think, I can't think at all. No, please...."

Reflexively, Lucey started to bolt for the house, but checked herself in time. No lamp burned in the window. She picked up the shotgun and a pebble. After a nervous pause, she tossed the pebble at the porch.

It bounced from the wall with a loud crack, and she slunk low into shadows. Doodie's cries continued without pause. A minute passed, and no one emerged from the house.

A sudden metallic sound, like the opening of a metal door, came from the direction of the violet light. Quickly she stepped over the log and pressed back into the scrub thicket. Shaking with fear, she waited in the palmettos, crouching in the moonlight among the spiny fronds, and lifting her head occasionally to peer toward the violet light.

She saw nothing for a time, and then, gradually the moonlight seemed to dim. She glanced upward. A tenuous shadow, like smoke, had begun to obscure the face of the moon, a translucent blur like the thinnest cloud.

At first, she dismissed it as a cloud. But it writhed within itself, curled and crawled, not dispersing, but seeming to swim. Smoke from the violet light? She watched it with wide, upturned eyes.

Despite its volatile shape, it clung together as a single entity as smoke would never have done. She could still see it faintly after it had cleared the lunar disk, scintillat­ing in the moon-glow.

It swam like an airborne jellyfish. A cluster of silver threads it seemed, tangled in a cloud of filaments—or a giant mass of dandelion fluff. It leaked out misty pseudo-pods, then drew them back as it pulled itself through the air. Weightless as chick-down, huge as a barn, it flew—and drifted from the direction of the sphere in a semi-circle, as if inspecting the land, at times moving against the wind.

It was coming closer to the house.

It moved with purpose, and therefore was alive. This Lucey knew. It moved with its millions of spun threads, finer than a spider's web, the patterns as ordered as a neural array.

It contracted suddenly and began to settle toward the house. Glittering opaquely, blotting out half the cabin, it kept contracting and drawing itself in, becoming denser until it fell in the yard with a blinding flash of incandes­cent light.

Lucey's flesh crawled. Her hands trembled on the gun, her breath came in shallow gasps.

Before her eyes it was changing into a manlike thing. Frozen, she waited, thinking swiftly. Could it be that Doodie was right?

Could it be?—

 

Doodle was still whimpering in the house, weary now, as he always was when the spasm had spent itself. But the words still came, words addressed to his father.

The thing in the yard was assuming the shape of a man—and Lucey knew who the man would be.

She reared up quickly in the palmettos, like an enraged, hulking river animal breaking to the surface. She came up shotgun-in-hand and bellowed across the clear­ing. "Hey theah! You triflin' skunk! Look at me!"

Still groping for human shape, the creature froze.

"Run off an' leave me with child!" Lucey shouted. "And no way to pay his keep!"

The creature kept coming toward her, and the pulsing grew stronger.

"Don't come any nearer, you hear?"

When it kept coming, Lucey grunted in a gathering rage and charged out of the palmettos to meet it, shotgun raised, screaming insults. The thing wobbled to a stop, its face a shapeless blob with black shadows for eyes.

She brought the gun to her shoulder and fired both barrels at once.

The thing tumbled to the ground. Crackling arcs danced about it, and a smell of ozone came on the breeze. For one hideous moment it was lighted by a glow from within. Then the glow died, and it began to expand. It grew erratically, and the moonlight danced in silvery fila­ments about it. A blob of its substance broke loose from the rest, and windborne, sailed across the clearing and dashed itself to dust in the palmettos.

A sudden gust took the rest of it, rolling it away in the grass, gauzy shreds tearing loose from the mass. The gust blew it against the trunk of a pine. It lodged there briefly, quivering in the breeze and shimmering palely under the moon. Then it broke into dust that scattered eastward across the land.

"Praised be the Lord," breathed Lucey, beginning to cry.

A high whining sound pierced the night, from the di­rection of the violet light. She whirled to stare. The light grew brighter. Then the whine abruptly ceased. A lumi­nescent sphere, glowing with violet haze, moved upward from the pines. It paused, then in stately majesty con­tinued the ascent, gathering speed until it became a ghostly chariot that dwindled. Up, up, up toward thegleaming stars. She watched it until it vanished from sight.

Then she straightened her shoulders, and glowered toward the dust traces that blew eastward over the scrub.

"Ain't nothing worse than a triflin' man," she philos­ophized. "If he's human, or if he's not."

Wearily she returned to the cabin. Doodle was sleeping peacefully. Smiling, she tucked him in, and went to bed. There was corn to hoe, come dawn.

Report: Servopilot recon six, to fleet. Missionman caught in transition phase by native organism, and dev­astated, thus destroying liaison with native analog. Sug­gest delay of invasion plans. Unpredictability factors associated with mothers of genetic analogs. Withdraw con­tacts. Servo Six.

 

The Will

 

THE WILL OF a child. A child who played in the sun and ran over the meadow to chase with his dog among the trees beyond the hedge, and knew the fierce passions of childhood. A child whose logic cut corners and sought shortest distances, and found them. A child who made shining life in my house.

Red blood count low, wildly fluctuating . . . Chronic fatigue, loss of weight, general lethargy of function . Noticeable pallor and muscular atrophy . . . the first symptoms.

That was eight months ago.

Last summer, the specialists conferred over him. When they had finished, I went to Doc Jules' office-alone, because I was afraid it was going to be bad, and Cleo couldn't take it. He gave it to me straight.

"We can't cure him, Rod. We can only treat symptoms —and hope the research labs come through. I'm sorry." 

"He'll die?"

"Unless the labs get an answer."

"How long?"

"Months." He gave it to me bluntly—maybe because he thought I was hard enough to take it, and maybe because he knew I was only Kenny's foster father, as if blood-kinship would have made it any worse.

"Thanks for letting me know," I said, and got my hat. I would have to tell Cleo, somehow. It was going to be tough. I left the building and went out to buy a paper.

A magazine on the science rack caught my eye. It had an
article entitled Carcinogenesis and Carbon-14 and there was a mention of leukemia in the blurb. I bought it along with the paper, and went over to the park to read. Anything to keep from carrying the news to Cleo.

The research article made things worse. They were still doing things to rats and cosmic rays, and the word "cure" wasn't mentioned once. I dropped the magazine on the grass and glanced at the front page. A small headline toward the bottom of the page said: COMMUNITY PRAYS THREE DAYS FOR DYING CHILD. Same old sob-stuff—publicity causes country to focus on some luckless incurable, and deluge the family with sympathy, advice, money, and sincere and ardent pleas for divine intervention.

I wondered if it would be like that for Kenny—and instinctively I shuddered.

I took a train out to the suburbs, picked up the car, and drove home before twilight. I parked in front, because Cleo was out in back, taking down clothes from the line. The blinds were down in the living room, and the lantern-jawed visage of Captain Chronos looked out sternly from the television screen. The Captain carried an LTR (local-­time-reversal) gun at the ready, and peered warily from side to side through an oval hole in the title film. Kenny's usual early-evening fodder.

 

"Travel through the centuries with the master of the clock!" the announcer was chanting.

"Hi, kid," I said to the hunched-up figure who sat before the set, worshiping his hero.

"Sssshhhhhhhh!" He glanced at me irritably, then trans­ferred his individual attention back to the title film.

"Sorry," I muttered. "Didn't know you listened to the opening spiel. It's always the same."

He squirmed, indicating that he wanted me to scram—to leave him to his own devices.

I scrammed to the library, but the excited chant of the audio was still with me. ". . . Captain Chronos, Custodian of Time, Defender of the Temporal Passes, Champion of the Temporal Guard. Fly with Captain Chronos in his time-ship Century as he battles against those evil forces who would—"

I shut the door for a little quiet, then went to the ency­clopedia shelf and took down "LAC-MOE." An envelope fell out of the heavy volume, and I picked it up. Kenny's.

He had scrawled "Lebanon, do not open until 1964; value in 1954: 38¢," on the face. I knew what was inside without holding it up to the light: stamps. Kenny's idea of buried treasure; when he had more than one stamp of an issue in his collection, he'd stash the duplicate away somewhere to let it age, having heard that age increases their value.

When I finished reading the brief article, I went out to the kitchen. Cleo was bringing in a basket of clothes. She paused in the doorway, the basket cocked on her hip, hair disheveled, looking pretty but anxious.

"Did you see him?" she asked.

I nodded, unable to look at her, poured myself a drink. She waited a few seconds for me to say something. When I couldn't say anything, she dropped the basket of clothes, scattering underwear and linens across the kitchen floor, and darted across the room to seize my arms and stare up at me wildly.

"Rod! It isn't—"

But it was. Without stopping to think, she rushed to the living room, seized Kenny in her arms, began sobbing, then fled upstairs when she realized what she was doing.

Kenny knew he was sick. He knew several specialists had studied his case. He knew that I had gone down to talk with Doc Jules this afternoon. After Cleo's reaction, there was no keeping the truth from him. He was only fourteen, but within two weeks, he knew he had less than a year to live, unless they found a cure. He pieced it to­gether for himself from conversational fragments, and chance remarks, and medical encyclopedias, and by deftly questioning a playmate's older brother who was a medical student.

 

Maybe it was easier on Kenny to know he was dying, easier than seeing our anxiety and being frightened by it without knowing the cause. But a child is blunt in his questioning, and tactless in matters that concern himself, and that made it hell on Cleo.

"If they don't find a cure, when will I die?"

"Will it hurt?"

"What will you do with my things?"

"Will I see my real father afterwards?"

Cleo stood so much of it, and then one night she broke down and we had to call a doctor to give her a sedative and quiet her down. When she was settled, I took Kenny out behind the house. We walked across the narrow strip of pasture and sat on the old stone fence to talk by the light of the moon. I told him not to talk about it again to Cleo, unless she brought it up, and that he was to bring his questions to me. I put my arm around him, and I knew he was crying inside.

"I don't want to die."

There is a difference between tragedy and blind brutal calamity. Tragedy has meaning, and there is dignity in it. Tragedy stands with its shoulders stiff and proud. But there is no meaning, no dignity, no fulfillment, in the death of a child.

"Kenny, I want you to try to have faith. The research institutes are working hard. I want you to try to have faith that they'll find a cure."

"Mack says it won't be for years and years."

Mack was the medical student. I resolved to call him tomorrow. But his mistake was innocent; he didn't know what was the matter with Kenny.

"Mack doesn't know. He's just a kid himself. Nobody knows—except that they'll find it sometime. Nobody knows when. It might be next week."

"I wish I had a time-ship like Captain Chronos." 

"Why?"

He looked at me earnestly in the moonlight. "Because then I could go to some year when they knew how to cure me."

"I wish it were possible."

"I'll bet it is. I'll bet someday they can do that too. Maybe the government's working on it now."

I told him I'd heard nothing of such a project.

"Then they ought to be. Think of the advantages. If you wanted to know something that nobody knew, you could just go to some year when it had already been dis­covered."

I told him that it wouldn't work, because then everybody would try it, and nobody would work on new discoveries, and none would be made.

"Besides, Kenny, nobody can even prove time-travel is possible."

"Scientists can do anything."

"Only things that are possible, Kenny. And only with money, and time, and work—and a reason."

"Would it cost a lot to research for a time-ship, Dad?" 

"Quite a lot, I imagine, if you could find somebody to do it."

"As much as the atom-bomb?"

"Maybe."

"I bet you could borrow it from banks . . . if somebody could prove it's possible."

"You'd need a lot of money of your own, kid, before the banks would help."

"I bet my stamp collection will be worth a lot of money someday. And my autograph book." The conversation had wandered off into fantasy.

"In time, maybe in time. A century maybe. But banks won't wait that long."

He stared at me peculiarly. "But Dad, don't you see? What difference does time make, if you're working on a time-machine?"

That one stopped me. "Try to have faith in the medi­cal labs, Kenny," was all I could find to say.

 

Kenny built a time-ship in the fork of a big maple. He made it from a packing crate, reinforced with plywood, decorated with mysterious coils of copper wire. He filled it with battered clocks and junkyard instruments. He mounted two seats in it, and dual controls. He made a fish-bowl canopy over a hole in the top, and nailed a galvanized bucket on the nose. Broomstick guns protruded from its narrow weapon ports. He painted it silvery gray, and decorated the bucket-nose with the insignia of Cap­tain Chronos and the Guardsmen of Time. He nailed steps on the trunk of the maple; and when he wasn't in the house, he could usually be found in the maple, pilot­ing the time-ship through imaginary centuries. He took a picture of it with a box camera, and sent a print of it to Captain Chronos with a fan letter.

Then one day he fainted on the ladder, and fell out of the tree.

He wasn't badly hurt, only bruised, but it ended his career as a time-ship pilot. Kenny was losing color and weight, and the lethargy was coming steadily over him. His fingertips were covered with tiny stab-marks from the constant blood counts, and the hollow of his arm was marked with transfusion needles. Mostly, he stayed inside.

We haunted the research institutes, and the daily mail was full of answers to our flood of pleading inquiries­—all kinds of answers.

"We regret to inform you that recent studies have been ..."

"Investigations concerning the psychogenic factors show only ..."

"Prepare to meet God . . ."

"For seventy-five dollars, Guru Tahaj Reshvi guaran­tees . . ."

"Sickness is only an illusion. Have faith and . . .”

"We cannot promise anything in the near future, but the Institute is rapidly finding new directions for . . ." 

"Allow us to extend sympathy . . ."

"The powers of hydromagnetic massage therapy have been established by ..."

And so it went. We talked to crackpots, confidence men, respectable scientists, fanatics, lunatics, and a few honest fools. Occasionally we tried some harmless tech­nique, with Jules' approval, mostly because it felt like we were doing something. But the techniques did more good for Cleo than they did for Kenny, and Kenny's very grad­ual change for the worse made it apparent that nothing short of the miraculous could save him.

And then Kenny started working on it himself.

The idea, whatever it was, must have hit him suddenly, and it was strange—because it came at a time when both Cleo and I thought that he had completely and fatalisti­cally accepted the coming of the end.

"The labs aren't going to find it in time," he said. "I've been reading what they say. I know it's no good, Dad." He cried some then; it was good that he had relearned to cry.

 

But the next day, his spirits soared mysteriously to a new high, and he went around the house singing to himself. He was busy with his stamp collection most of the time, but he also wandered about the house and garage searching for odds and ends, his actions seeming purpose­ful and determined. He moved slowly, and stopped to rest frequently, but he displayed more energy than we had seen for weeks, and even Jules commented on how bright he was looking, when he came for Kenny's daily blood sample. Cleo decided that complete resignation had brought cheerfulness with it, and that acceptance of ill-fate obviated the need to worry or hope. But I wasn't so sure.

"What've you been up to, Kenny?" I asked.

He looked innocent and shook his bead.

"Come on, now. You don't go wandering around mut­tering to yourself unless you're cooking something up. What is it, another time-ship? I heard you hammering in the garage before dinner."

"I was just knocking the lid off an old breadbox."

I couldn't get any answer but evasions, innocent glances, and mysterious smirks. I let him keep his secret, thinking that his enthusiasm for whatever it was he was doing would soon wear off.

Then the photographers came.

"We want to take a picture of Kenny's treehouse," they explained.

"Why?—and how did you know he had one?" I de­manded.

It developed that somebody was doing a feature-article on the effects of science-fantasy television shows on chil­dren. It developed that the "somebody" was being hired by a publicity agency which was being hired by the advertisers who presented Captain Chronos and the Guardsmen of Time. It developed that Kenny's fan letter, with the snapshot of his treehouse time-ship, had been forwarded to the publicity department by the producer of the show. They wanted a picture of the time-ship with Kenny inside, looking out through the fish bowl canopy.

"It's impossible," I told them.

They showed me a dozen pictures of moppets with LTR-guns, moppets in time-warp suits, moppets wearing Captain Chronos costumes, moppets falling free in space, and moppets playing Time-Pirate in the park.

"I'm sorry, but it's impossible," I insisted.

"We'll be glad to pay something for it, if . . ."

"The kid's sick, if you must know," I snapped. "He can't do it, and that's that, so forget about it."

"Maybe when he's feeling better . . ?"

"He won't be feeling better," Cleo interrupted, voice tense, with a catch in it. "Now please leave!"

They left, with Cleo herding them out onto the porch. I heard them apologizing, and Cleo softened, and began to explain. That was a mistake.

A week later, while we were still drinking our coffee at the dinner table, the doorbell rang. Cleo, expecting an answer to her recent wire to some South American clinic, left the table, went to answer it, and promptly screamed.

I dropped my cup with a crash and ran to the living room with a butcher knife, then stopped dead still.

It stood there in the doorway with a stunned expression on its face, gaping at Cleo who had collapsed in a chair. It wore a silver uniform with jack-boots, black-and-red cape, and a weird helmet with antenna protruding from it. It had a lantern jaw and a big, meaty, benign contenance.

 

"I'm awfully sorry," it boomed in a gentle deep-rich voice. "We just drove over from the studio, and I didn't take time to change ..."

"Ulk!" said Cleo.

I heard footsteps at the head of the stairs behind me, then a howl from Kenny who had been getting ready for bed, after being helped upstairs.

"Captain Chronos!"

Bare feet machine-gunned down the stairs and came to a stop at a respectful distance from the idol.

"GgaaaaAAAWWWSSSShhhh!" Kenny timidly walked half-way around him, looking him up and down. "Geee ... Gaaawwssshh!"

Cleo fanned herself with a newspaper and recovered slowly. I tossed the butcher-knife on a magazine stand and mumbled something apologetic. There were two of them: Chronos and the producer, a small suave man in a busi­ness suit. The latter drew me aside to explain. It developed that the photographers had explained to the boss, who had explained to the client, who had mentioned it to the agency, who had returned the fan letter to the producer with a note. It would appear that Captain Chronos, for the sake of nutritious and delicious Fluffy Crunkles, made it his habit to comfort the afflicted, the crippled, and the dying, if it were convenient and seemed somehow advantageous. He also visited the children's wards of hospitals, it seemed.

"This on the level, or for publicity?"

"On the level."

"Where's the photographer?"

The producer reddened and muttered noncommittally. I went to the door and looked out through the screen. There was another man in their car. When I pushed the screen open, it hit something hard—a tape recorder. I turned:

"Get out."

"But Mr. Westmore...."

"Get out."

They left quickly. Kenny was furious, and he kept on being furious all through the following day. At me. Cleo began agreeing with him to some extent, and I felt like a heel.

"You want Kenny to get the full treatment?" I grumbled. "You want him to wind up a sob-story child?"

"Certainly not, but it was cruel, Rod. The boy never had a happier moment until you . . ."

"All right, so I'm a bastard. I'm sorry."

That night Abe Sanders (Captain Chronos) came hack alone, in slacks and a sport shirt, and muttering apologies. It developed that the Wednesday evening shows always had a children's panel (Junior Guardsmen) program, and that while they understood that Kenny couldn't come, they had wanted to have him with the panel, in absentia, by telephone.

"Please, Dad, can't I?"

The answer had to be no . . . but Kenny had been glaring at me furiously all day, and it was a way to make him stop hating me . . . still, the answer had to be no ... the publicity . . . but he'd be delighted, and he could stop hating my guts for kicking them out.

"I guess so, if the offer's still open."

"Dad!"

The offer was still open. Kenny was to be on the show. They rehearsed him a little, and let him practice with the tape recorder until he got used to his voice.

On Wednesday evening, Kenny sat in the hall doorway to the living room, telephone in his lap, and stared across at Sanders' face on the television screen. Sanders held another phone, and we beard both their voices from the set. Occasionally the camera dollied in to a close shot of Sanders' chuckle, or panned along the table to show the juvenile panel members, kids between eight and sixteen. There was an empty chair on Sanders' right, and it bore a placard. The placard said "KENNY WESTMORE."

It lasted maybe a minute. Sanders promised not to mention Kenny's address, nor to mention the nature of his illness. He did neither, but the tone of conversation made it clear that Kenny was in bad shape and probably not long for this world. Kenny had stage fright, his voice trembled, and he blurted something about the search for a cure. Cleo stared at the boy instead of the set, and my own glance darted back and forth. The cameraman panned to the empty chair and dollied in slowly so that the placard came to fill the screen while Kenny spoke. Kenny talked about stamp collections and time machines and autographs, while an invisible audience gaped at pathos.

"If anybody's got stamps to trade, just let me know," he said. "And autographs ..."

I winced, but Sanders cut in. "Well, Kenny—we're not supposed to mention your address, but if any of you Guardsmen out there want to help Kenny out with his stamp collection, you can write to me, and I'll definitely see that he gets the letters."

"And autographs too," Kenny added.

When it was over, Kenny had lived . . . but lived.

And then the mail came in a deluge, forwarded from the network's studio. Bushels of stamps, dozens of autograph books, Bibles, money, advice, crank letters, and maudlin gushes of sugary sympathy . . . and a few sensi­ble and friendly letters. Kenny was delighted.

"Gee, Dad, I'll never get all the stamps sorted out. And look!—an autograph of Calvin Coolidge! . . ."

But it never turned him aside from his path of confident but mysterious purpose. He spent even more time in his room, in the garage, and—when he could muster the energy—back in the maple woods, doing mysterious things alone.

"Have they found a cure yet, Dad?" he asked me pleas­antly when an expected letter came.

"They're ... making progress," I answered lamely.

He shrugged. "They will . . . eventually." Unconcerned.

 

It occurred to me that some sort of psychic change, unfathomable, might have happened within him—some sudden sense of timelessness, of identity with the race. Something that would let him die calmly as long as be knew there'd be a cure someday. It seemed too much to expect of a child, but I mentioned the notion to Jules when I saw him again.

"Could be," be admitted. "It might fit in with this se­crecy business."

"How's that?"

"People who know they're dying often behave that way. Little secret activities that don't become apparent until after they're gone. Set up causes that won't have effects until afterwards. Immortality cravings. You want to have posthumous influence, to live after you. A suicide note is one perversion of it. The suicide figures the world will posthumously feel guilty, if he tells it off."

"And Kenny ... '!"

"I don't know, Rod. The craving for immortality is basically procreative, I think. You have children, and train them, and see your own mirrored patterns live on in them, and feel satisfied, when your time comes. Or else you sublimate it, and do the same thing for all humanity—through art, or science. I've seen a lot of death, Rod, and I believe there's more than just-plain-selfishness to peo­ple's immortality-wishes; it's associated with the human reproductive syndrome—which includes the passing on of culture to the young. But Kenny's just a kid. I don't know."

Despite Kenny's increasing helplessness and weakness, he began spending more time wandering out in the woods. Cleo chided him for it, and tried to limit his excursions. She drove him to town on alternate days for a transfusion and shots, and she tried to keep him in the house most of the time, but he needed sun and air and exercise; and it was impossible to keep him on the lawn. Whatever he was doing, it was a shadowy secretive business. It involved spades and garden tools and packages, with late excursions into the maples toward the creek.

"You'll know in four or five months," he told me, in answer to a question. "Don't ask me now. You'd laugh."

But it became apparent that he wouldn't last that long. The rate of transfusions doubled, and on his bad days, he was unable to get out of bed. He fainted down by the creek, and had to he carried back to the house. Cleo forbade him to go outside alone without Jules' day-to-day ap­proval, and Jules was beginning to be doubtful about the boy's activities.

When restricted, Kenny became frantic. "I've got to go outside, Dad, please! I can't finish it if I don't. I've got to! How else can I make contact with them?"

"Contact? With whom?"

But he clammed up and refused to discuss anything about the matter. That night I awoke at two a.m. Something had made a sound. I stole out of bed without dis­turbing Cleo and went to prowl about the house. A glance down the stairway told me that no lights burned on the first floor. I went to Kenny's room and gingerly opened the door. Blackness.

"Kenny—?"

No sound of breathing in the room. Quietly I struck a match.

The bed was empty.

 

"Kenny!" I bellowed it down the hall, and then I heard sounds—Cleo stirring to wakefulness and groping for clothes in our bedroom. I trotted downstairs and turned on lights as I charged from room to room.

He was not in the house. I found the back screen un­latched and went out to play a flashlight slowly over the backyard. There . . . by the hedge . . . caught in the cone of light ... Kenny, crumpled over a garden spade.

Upstairs, Cleo screamed through the back window. I ran out to gather him up in my arms. Skin clammy, breathing shallow, pulse irregular—he muttered peculiarly as I carried him back to the house.

"Glad you found it ... knew you'd find it . . . got me to the right time . . . when are we . . . ?"

I got him inside and up to his room. When I laid him on the bed, a crudely drawn map, like a treasure map with an "X" and a set of bearings, fell from his pocket. I paused a moment to study it. The "X" was down by the fork in the creek. What had been buried there?

I heard Cleo coming up the stairs with a glass of hot milk, and I returned the map to Kenny's pocket and went to call the doctor.

When Kenny awoke, he looked around the room very carefully—and seemed disappointed by what he saw. "Expecting to wake up somewhere else?" I asked.

"I guess it was a dream," he mumbled. "I thought they came early."

"Who came early?"

But he clammed up again. "You'll find out in about four months," was all he'd say.

He wouldn't last that long. The next day, Doc Jules ordered him to stay inside, preferably sitting or lying down most of the time. We were to carry him outside once a day for a little sun, but he had to sit in a lawn chair and not run around. Transfusions became more frequent, and finally there was talk of moving him to the hospital.

"I won't go to the hospital."

"You'll have to, Kenny. I'm sorry."

That night, Kenny slipped outside again. He had been lying quietly all day, sleeping most of the time, as if sav­ing up energy for a last spurt.

Shortly after midnight, I awoke to hear him tiptoe down the hall. I let him get downstairs and into the kitchen before I stole out of bed and went to the head of the stairs. "Kenny!" I shouted. "Come back up here! Right now!" There was a brief silence. Then he bolted. The screen door slammed, and bare feet trotted down the back steps. "Kenny!"

I darted to the rear window, overlooking the backyard. "Kenny!"

Brush whipped as he dove through the hedge. Cleo came to the window beside me, and began calling after him.

Swearing softly, I tugged my trousers over my pajamas, slipped into shoes, and hurried downstairs to give chase. But he had taken my flashlight.

Outside, beneath a dim, cloud-threatened moon, I stood at the hedge, staring out across the meadow toward the woods. The night was full of crickets and rustlings in the grass. I saw no sign of him.

"Kenny!"

He answered me faintly from the distance. "Don't try to follow me, Dad. I'm going where they can cure me."

I vaulted the fence and trotted across the meadow toward the woods. At the stone fence, I paused to listen—but there were only crickets. Maybe he'd seen me coming in the moonlight, and had headed back toward the creek.

The brush was thick in places, and without a light, it was hard to find the paths. I tried watching for the gleam of the flashlight through the trees, but saw nothing. He was keeping its use to a minimum. After ten minutes of wandering, I found myself back at the fence, having taken a wrong turning somewhere. I heard Cleo calling me from the house.

"Go call the police! They'll help find him!" I shouted to her.

Then I went to resume the search. Remembering the snap, and the "X" by the fork in the creek, I trotted along the edge of the pasture next to the woods until I came to a dry wash that I knew led back to the creek. It was the long way around, but it was easy to follow the wash; and after a few minutes I stumbled onto the bank of the narrow stream. Then I waded upstream toward the fork. After twenty yards, I saw the flashlight's gleam—and heard the crunch of the shovel in moist ground. I moved as quietly as I could. The crunching stopped.

Then I saw him. He had dropped the shovel and was tugging something out of the hole. I let him get it out be-tore I called ...

"Kenny ..."

He froze, then came up very slowly to a crouch, ready to flee. He turned out the flashlight.

"Kenny, don't run away from me again. Stay there. I'm not angry."

No answer.

"Kenny!"

He called back then, with a quaver in his voice. "Stay where you are, Dad—and let me finish. Then I'll go with you. If you come any closer, I'll run." He flashed the light toward me, saw that I was a good twenty yards away. "Stay there now ..."

"Then will you come back to the house?"

"I won't run, if you stay right there."

"Okay," I agreed, "but don't take long. Cleo's frantic."

He set the light on a rock, kept it aimed at me, and worked by its aura. The light blinded me, and I could only guess what he might be doing. He pried something open, and then there was the sound of writing on tin. Then he hammered something closed, replaced it in the hole, and began shoveling dirt over it. Five minutes later, he was finished.

The light went out.

"Kenny ... ?"

"I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't want to lie . . . I had to."

 

I heard him slipping quickly away through the brush—back toward the pasture. I hurried to the fork and climbed up out of the knee-deep water, pausing to strike a match.

Something gleamed in the grass; I picked it up. Cleo's kitchen clock, always a few minutes slow. What had he wanted with the clock?

By the time I tore through the brush and found the path, there was no sound to, indicate which way he had gone. I walked gloomily back toward the house, half-heartedly calling to Kenny . . . then ... a flash of light in the trees!

BRRUUMMKP!

A sharp report, like a close crash of thunder! It came from the direction of the meadow, or the house. I trotted ahead, ignoring the sharp whipping of the brush.

"Kenny Westmore? . . . Kenny ..."

A strange voice, a foreign voice—calling to Kenny up ahead in the distance. The police, I thought.

Then I came to the stone fence . . . and froze, staring at the think or perhaps at the nothing—in the meadow.

It was black. It was bigger than a double garage, and round. I stared at it, and realized that it was not an ob­ject but an opening.

And someone else was calling to Kenny. A rich, pleasant voice—somehow it reminded me of Doctor Jules, but it had a strong accent, perhaps Austrian or German.

"Come on along here, liddle boy. Ve fix you op."

Then I saw Kenny, crawling on toward it through the grass.

"Kenny, don't!"

He got to his feet and stumbled on into the distorted space. It seemed to squeeze him into a grotesque house­-of-mirrors shape; then it spun him inward. Gone.

I was still running toward the black thing when it be­gan to shrink.

"Come along, liddle fellow, come mit oss. Ve fix."

And then the black thing belched away into nothing­ness with an explosive blast that knocked me spinning. I must have been out cold for awhile. The sheriff woke me.

Kenny was gone. We never saw him again. Cleo confirmed what I had seen on the meadow, but without a body, Kenny remains listed as missing.

Missing from this century.

I went back to the fork in the creek and dug up the breadbox he had buried. It contained his stamp collection and a packet of famous autographs. There was a letter from Kenny, too, addressed to the future, and it was his will.

"Whoever finds this, please sell these things and use the money to pay for a time machine, so you can come and get me, because I'm going to die if you don't ..."

 

I paused to remember ... I don't think the bank'd wait a hundred years.

But Dad, don't you see? What difference does time make, if you're working on a time machine?

There was more to the note, but the gist of it was that Kenny had made an act of faith, faith in tomorrow. He had buried it, and then he had gone back to dig it up and change the rendezvous time from four months away to the night of his disappearance. He knew that he wouldn't have lived that long.

I put it all back in the box, and sealed the box with solder and set it in concrete at the foot of a sixfoot hole. With this manuscript.

(To a reader, yet unborn, who finds this account in a dusty and ancient magazine stack: dig. Dig at a point 987 feet southeasterly on a heading of 149° from the northwest corner of the Hayes and Higgins Tract, as recorded in Map Book 6, p. 78, Cleve County records. But not unless the world is ready to buy a time machine and come for Kenny, who financed it; come, if you can cure him. He had faith in you.)

Kenny is gone, and today there is a feeling of death in my house. But after a century of tomorrows? He invested in them, and he called out to them, pleading with the voice of a child. And tomorrow answered:

"Come, liddle boy. Ve fix."

 

Anybody Else Like Me?

 

QUIET MISERY IN a darkened room. The clock spoke nine times with a cold brass voice. She stood motionless, lean­ing against the drapes by the window, alone. The night was black, the house empty and silent.

"Come, Lisa!" she told herself. "You're not dying!"

She was thirty-four, still lovely, with a slender white body and a short, rich thatch of warm red hair. She had a good dependable husband, three children, and security. She had friends, hobbies, social activities. She painted mediocre pictures for her own amusement, played the piano rather well, and wrote fair poetry for the University's literary quarterly. She was well-read, well-rounded, well-informed. She loved and was loved.

Then why this quiet misery?

Wanting something, expecting nothing, she stared out into the darkness of the stone-walled garden. The night was too quiet. A distant street lamp played in the branches of the elm, and the elm threw its shadow across another wing of the house. She watched the shadow's wandering for a time. A lone car purred past in the street and was gone. A horn sounded raucously in the distance.

What was wrong? A thousand times since childhood she had felt this uneasy stirring, this crawling of the mind that called out for some unfound expression. It had been particularly strong in recent weeks.

 

She tried to analyze. What was different about recent weeks? Events: Frank's job had sent him on the road for a month; the children were at Mother's; the city council had recommended a bond issue; she had fired her maid; a drunk had strangled his wife; the University had opened its new psycho-physics lab; her art class had adjourned for the summer.

Nothing there. No clue to the unreasoning, goalless urge that called like a voice crying in mental wilderness: "Come, share, satisfy, express it to the fullest!"

Express what? Satisfy what? How?

A baby, deserted at birth and dying of starvation, would fell terrible hunger. But if it had never tasted milk, it could not know the meaning of the hunger nor how to case it.

"I need to relate this thing to something else, to something in my own experience or in the experience of others." She had tried to satisfy the urge with the goals of other hungers: her children, her husband's lovemaking, food, drink, art, friendship. But the craving was something else, crying for its pound of unknown flesh, and there was no fulfillment.

"How am I different from others?" she asked herself. But she was different only in the normal ways that every human being is different from the exact Average. Her in­telligence was high, short of genius, but superior. To a limited extent, she felt the call of creativity. Physically, she was delicately beautiful. The only peculiarities that she knew about seemed ridiculously irrelevant: a dark birth-mark on her thigh, a soft fontanel in the top of her long narrow head, like the soft spot in an infant's cranium. Silly little differences!

One big difference: the quiet misery of the unfed hun­ger.

A scattering of big raindrops suddenly whispered on the walk and in the grass and through the foliage of the elm. A few drops splattered on the screen, spraying her face and arms with faint points of coolness. It had been oppressively hot. Now there was a chill breath in the night.

Reluctantly she closed the window. The oppression of the warm and empty house increased. She walked to the door opening into the walled garden.

Ready for a lonely bed, she was wearing a negligee over nothing. Vaguely, idly, her hand fumbled at the waist-knot, loosened it. The robe parted, and the fine spray of rain was delightfully cool on her skin.

The garden was dark, the shadows inky, the nearest neighbor a block away. The wall screened it from prying eyes. She brushed her hands over her shoulders; the sleeves slipped down her arms. Peeled clean, feeling like a freed animal, she pressed open the screen and stepped out under the eaves to stand on the warm stone walk.

 

The rain was rattling in the hedge and roaring softly all about her, splashing coldness about her slender calves. She hugged herself and stepped into it. The drench of icy fingers stroked her with pleasant lashes; she laughed and ran along the walk toward the elm. The drops stung her breasts, rivered her face, and coursed coldly down her sides and legs.

She exulted in the rain, tried to dance and laughed at herself. She ran. Then, tired, she threw herself down on the crisp wet lawn, stretching her arms and legs and roll­ing slowly on the grass. Eyes closed, drenched and languorous, she laughed softly and played imagining games with the rain.

The drops were steel-jacketed wasps, zipping down out of the blackness, but she melted them with her mind, made them soft and cool and caressing. The drops took impersonal liberties with her body, and she rolled de­murely to lie face down in the rainsoft grass.

"I am still a pale beast," she thought happily, "still kin of my grandmother the ape who danced in the tree and chattered when it rained. How utterly barren life would be, if I were not a pale beast!"

She dug her fingers into the sodden turf, bared her teeth, pressed her forehead against the ground, and growled a little animal growl. It amused her, and she laughed again. Crouching, she came up on her hands and knees, hunching low, teeth still bared. Like a cat, she hissed—and pounced upon a sleeping bird, caught it and shook it to death.

Again she lay laughing in the grass.

"If Frank were to see me like this," she thought, "he would put me to bed with a couple of sleeping pills, and call that smug Dr. Mensley to have a look at my mind. And Dr. Mensley would check my ambivalences and my repressions and my narcissistic, voyeuristic, masochistic impulses. He would tighten my screws and readjust me to reality, fit me into a comfortable groove, and take the pale beast out of me to make me a talking doll."

He had done it several times before. Thinking of Dr. Mensley, Lisa searched her vocabulary for the most savage word she could remember. She growled it aloud and felt better.

The rain was slowly subsiding. A siren was wailing in the distance. The police. She giggled and imagined a headline in tomorrow's paper: PROMINENT SOCIALITE JAILED FOR INDECENT EXPOSURE. And the story would go on: "Mrs. Lisa Waverly was taken into custody by the police after neighbors reported that she was running around stark naked in her back yard. Said Mrs. Heinehoffer who called the law: 'It was just terrible. Looked lo me like she was having fits.' Mr. Heinehoffer, when asked for comment, simply closed his eyes and smiled ecstatically."

Lisa sighed wearily. The siren had gone away. The rain had stopped, except for drippings out of the elm. She was tired, emotionally spent, yet strangely melan­choly. She sat up slowly in the grass and hugged her shins.

The feeling came over her gradually.

"Someone has been watching me!"

 

She stiffened slowly, but remained in place, letting her eyes probe about her in the shadows. If only the drippings would stop so she could listen! She peered along the hedge, and along the shadows by the garden wall, toward the dark windows of the house, up toward the low-hanging mist faintly illuminated from below by street lights. She saw nothing, heard nothing. There was no movement in the night. Yet the feeling lingered, even though she scoffed.

“If anyone is here," she thought, "I'll call them gently, and if anyone appears, I'll scream so loud that Mrs. Heine­hoffer will hear me."

"Hey!" she said in a low voice, but loud enough to pene­trate any of the nearby shadows.

There was no answer. She folded her arms behind her head and spoke again, quietly, sensually.

"Come and get me."

No black monster slithered from behind the .hedge to devour her. No panther sprang from the elm. No succubus congealed out of wet darkness. She giggled.

"Come have a bite."

No bull-ape came to crush her in ravenous jaws.

She had only imagined the eyes upon her. She stretched lazily and picked herself up, pausing to brush off the leaves of grass pasted to her wet skin. It was over, the strange worship in the rain, and she was weary. She walked slowly toward the house.

Then she heard it—a faint crackling sound, intermittent, distant. She stood poised in the black shadow of the house, listening. The crackle of paper . . . then a small pop . . . then crisp fragments dropped in the street. It was repeated at short intervals.

Taking nervous, shallow breaths, she tiptoed quietly toward the stone wall of the garden. It was six feet high, but there was a concrete bench under the trellis. The sound was coming from over the wall. She stood crouch­ing on the bench; then, hiding her face behind the vines, she lifted her head to peer.

The street lamp was half a block away, but she could see dimly. A man was standing across the street in the shadows, apparently waiting for a bus. He was eating peanuts out of a paper bag, tossing the shells in the street. That explained the crackling sound.

She glared at him balefully from behind the trellis. "I'll claw your eyes out," she thought, "if you came and peeped over my wall."

"Hi!" the man said.

Lisa stiffened and remained motionless. It was impos­sible that he could see her. She was in shadow, against a dark background. Had he heard her foolish babbling a moment ago?

More likely, he had only cleared his throat.

"Hi!" he said again.

Her face was hidden in the dripping vines, and she could not move without rustling. She froze in place, star­ing. She could see little of him. Dark raincoat, dark hat, slender shadow. Was he looking toward her? She was desperately frightened.

Suddenly the man chucked the paper hag in the gutter, stepped off the curb, and came sauntering across the street toward the wall. He removed his hat, and crisp blond hair glinted in the distant streetlight. He stopped three yards away, smiling uncertainly at the vines.

Lisa stood trembling and frozen, staring at him in horror. Strange sensations, utterly alien, passed over her in waves. There was no describing them, no understanding them.

"I—I found you," he stammered sheepishly. "Do you know what it is?"

"I know you," she thought. "You have a small scar on the back of your neck, and a mole between your toes. Your eyes are blue, and you have an impacted wisdom tooth, and your feet are hurting you because you walked all the way out here from the University, and I'm almost old enough to be your mother. But I can't know you, because I've never seen you before!"

"Strange, isn't it?" he said uncertainly. He was holding his hat in his hand and cocking his head politely.

"What?" she whispered.

He shuffled his feet and stared at them. "It must be some sort of palpable biophysical energy form, analyti­cally definable—if we had enough data. Lord knows, I'm no mystic. If it exists, it's got to be mathematically definable. But why us?"

Horrified curiosity made her step aside and lean her arms on the wall to stare down at him. He looked up bashfully, and his eyes widened slightly.

"Oh!"

"Oh what?" she demanded, putting on a terrible frown. 

"You're beautiful!"

"What do you want?" she asked icily. "Go away!"

"I—" He paused and closed his mouth slowly. He stared at her with narrowed eyes, and touched one hand to his temple as if concentrating.

 

For an instant, she was no longer herself. She was looking up at her own shadowy face from down in the street, looking through the eyes of a stranger who was not a stranger. She was feeling the fatigue in the weary ankles, and the nasal ache of a slight head cold, and the strange sadness in a curious heart—a sadness too akin to her own.

She rocked dizzily. It was like being in two places at once, like wearing someone else's body for a moment.

The feeling passed. "It didn't happen!" she told herself.

"No use denying it," he said quietly. "I tried to make it go away, too, but apparently we've got something unique. It would be interesting to study. Do you suppose we're related?"

"Who are you?" she choked, only half-hearing his ques­tion.

"You know my name," he said, "if you'll just take the trouble to think about it. Yours is Lisa—Lisa O'Brien, or Lisa Waverly—I'm never sure which. Sometimes it comes to me one way, sometimes the other."

She swallowed hard. Her maiden name had been O'Brien.

"1 don't know you," she snapped.

His name was trying to form in her mind. She refused to allow it. The young man sighed.

"I'm Kenneth Grearly, if you really don't know." He stepped back a pace and lifted his hat toward his head. "I—I guess I better go. I see this disturbs you. I had hoped we could talk about it, but—well, good night, Mrs. Waverly."

He turned and started away.

"Wait!" she called out against her will. He stopped again. "Yes?"

"Were—were you watching me—while it was raining?"

He opened his mouth and stared thoughtfully down the street toward the light. "You mean watching visually? You really are repressing this thing, aren't you? I thought you understood." He looked at her sharply, forlornly. "They say the failure to communicate is the basis of all tragedy. Do you suppose in our case ... ?" 

"What?"

"Nothing." He shifted restlessly for a moment. "Good night."

"Good night," she whispered many seconds after he was gone.

 

Her bedroom was hot and lonely, and she tossed in growing restlessness. If only Frank were home! But he would he gone for two more weeks. The children would be back on Monday, but that was three whole days away. Crazy! It was just stark raving crazy!

Had the man really existed—what was his name?—Ken­neth Grearly? Or was he only a phantasm invented by a mind that was failing—her mind? Dancing naked in the rain! Calling out to shadow shapes in the brush! Talking to a specter in the street! Schizophrenic syndrome­ dream-world stuff. It could not be otherwise, for unless she had invented Kenneth Grearly, how could she know he had sore feet, an impacted wisdom tooth, and a head cold. Not only did she know about those things, but she felt them!

She buried her face in the dusty pillow and sobbed. Tomorrow she would have to call Dr. Mensley.

But fearing the specter's return, she arose a few min­utes later and locked all the doors in the house. When she returned to bed, she tried to pray but it was as if the prayer were being watched. Someone was listening, eavesdropping from outside.

Kenneth Grearly appeared in her dreams, stood half-shrouded in a slowly swirling fog. He stared at her with his head cocked aside, smiling slightly, holding his hat respectfully in his hands.

"Don't you realize, Mrs. Waverly, that we are mutants perhaps?" he asked politely.

"No!" she screamed. "I'm happily married and I have three children and a place in society! Don't come near me!"

He melted slowly into the fog. But echoes came monot­onously from invisible cliffs: mutant mutant mutant mutant mutant ...

Dawn came, splashing pink paint across the eastern sky. The light woke her to a dry and empty consciousness, to a headachy awareness full of dull anxiety. She arose wearily and trudged to the kitchen for a pot of coffee.

Lord! Couldn't it all be only a bad dream?

In the cold light of early morning, the things of the past night looked somehow detached, unreal. She tried to ana­lyze objectively.

That sense of sharing a mind, a consciousness, with the stranger who came out of the shadows—what crazy thing had he called it?—"some sort of palpable biophysical energyform, analytically definable."

"If I invented the stranger," she thought, "I must have also invented the words."

But where had she heard such words before?

 

Lisa went to the telephone and thumbed through the directory. No Grearly was listed. If he existed at all, he probably lived in a rooming house. The University—last night she had thought that he had something to do with the University. She lifted the phone and dialed.

"University Station; number please," the operator said.

"I—uh—don't know the extension number. Could you tell me if there is a Kenneth Grearly connected with the school?"

"Student or faculty, Madam?"

"I don't know."

"Give me your number, please, and I'll call you back." "Lawrence 4750. Thanks, Operator."

She sat down to wait. Almost immediately it rang again. "Hello?"

"Mrs. Waverly, you were calling me?" A man's voice. His voice!

"The operator found you rather quickly." It was the only thing she could think of saying.

"No, no. I knew you were calling. In fact, I hoped you into it."

"Hoped me? Now look here, Mr. Grearly, I—"

"You were trying to explain our phenomenon in terms of insanity rather than telepathy. I didn't want you to do that, and so I hoped you into calling me."

Lisa was coldly speechless.

"What phenomenon are you talking about?" she asked after a few dazed seconds.

"Still repressing it? Listen, I can share your mind any time I want to, now that I understand where and who you are. You might as well face the fact. And it can work both ways, if you let it. Up to now, you've been—well, keeping your mind's eye closed, so to speak."

Her scalp was crawling. The whole thing had become intensely disgusting to her.

"I don't know what you're up to, Mr. Grearly, but I wish you'd stop it. I admit something strange is going on, but your explanation is ridiculous—offensive, even."

He was silent for a long time, then "I wonder if the first man-ape found his prehensile thumb ridiculous. I wonder if he thought using his hands for grasping was offensive."

"What are you trying to say?"

"That I think we're mutants. We're not the first ones. I had this same experience when I was in Boston once. There must he one of us there, too, but suddenly I got the feeling that he had committed suicide. I never saw him. We're probably the first ones to discover each other."

"Boston? If what you say is true, what would distance have to do with it?"

"Well, if telepathy exists, it certainly involves transfer of energy from one point to another. What kind of en­ergy, I don't know. Possibly electromagnetic in character. Out it seems likely that it would obey the inverse square law, like radiant energy forms. I came to town about three weeks ago. I didn't feel you until I got close."

"There is a connection," she thought. She had been wondering about the increased anxiety of the past three weeks.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she evaded icily, though. "I'm no mutant. I don't believe in telepathy. I'm not insane. Now let me alone."

She slammed the telephone in its cradle and started to walk away.

Evidently he was angry, for she was suddenly communi­cating with him again.

 

She reeled dizzily and clutched at the wall, because she was in two places at once, and the two settings merged in her mind to become a blur, like a double exposure. She was in her own hallway, and she was also in an office, looking at a calculator keyboard, hearing glassware rat­tling from across a corridor, aware of the smell of formaldehyde. There was a chart on the wall behind the desk and it was covered with strange tracery—schematics of some neural arcs. The office of the psychophysics lab. She closed her eyes, and her own hallway disappeared.

She felt anger—his anger.

"We've got to face this thing. If this is s new direction for human evolution, then we'd better study it and see what to do about it. I knew I was different and I became a psychophysicist to find out why. I haven't been able to measure much, but now with Lisa's help ..."

She tried to shut him out. She opened her eyes and sum­moned her strength and tried to force him away. She stared at the bright doorway, but the tracery of neural arcs still remained. She fought him, but his mind lingered in hers.

"... perhaps we can get to the bottom of it. I know my encephalograph recordings are abnormal, and now I can check them against hers. A few correlations will help. I'm glad to know about her soft fontanel. I wondered about mine. Now 1 think that underneath that fontanel lies a pattern of specialized neural—"

She sagged to the floor of the hall and babbled aloud "Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one—"

Slowly he withdrew. The laboratory office faded from her vision. His thoughts left her. She lay there panting for a time.

Had she won?

No, there was no sense in claiming victory. She had not driven him away. He had withdrawn of his own volition when he felt her babbling. She knew his withdrawal was free, because she had felt his parting state of mind: sadness. He had stopped the forced contact because he pitied her, and there was a trace of contempt in the pity.

She climbed slowly to her feet, looking around wildly, touching the walls and the door-frame to reassure herself that she was still in her own home. She staggered into the parlor and sat shivering on the sofa.

Last night! That crazy running around in the rain! He was responsible for that. He had hoped her into doing it, or maybe he had just wondered what she looked like un­dressed, and she had subconsciously satisfied his curiosity. He had planted the suggestion—innocently, perhaps—and she had unknowingly taken the cue.

He could be with her whenever he wanted to! He had been with her while she frolicked insanely in the rain-sodden grass! Perhaps he was with her now.

Whom could she talk to? Where could she seek help? Dr. Mensley? He would immediately chalk it up as a de­lusion, and probably call for a sanity hearing if she wouldn't voluntarily enter a psycho-ward for observation.

The police? "Sergeant, I want to report a telepathic prowler. A man is burglarizing my mind."

A clergyman? He would shudder and refer her to a psychiatrist.

All roads led to the booby-hatch, it seemed. Frank wouldn't believe her. No one would believe her.

 

Lisa wandered through the day like a caged animal. She put on her brightest summer frock and a pert straw hat and went downtown. She wandered through the crowds in the business district, window-shopping. But she was alone. The herds of people about her brushed past and wandered on. A man whistled at her in front of a cigar store. A policeman waved her back to the curb when she started across an intersection.

"Wake up, lady!" he called irritably.

People all about her, but she could not tell them, explain to them, and so she was alone. She caught a taxi mid went to visit a friend, the wife of an English teacher, and drank a glass of iced tea in the friend's parlor, and talked of small things, and admitted that she was tired when the friend suggested that she looked that way. When she went back home, the sun was sinking in the west.

She called long distance and talked to her mother, then spoke to her children, asked them if they were ready to come home, but they wanted to stay another week. They begged, and her mother begged, and she reluctantly con­sented. It had been a mistake to call. Now the kids would be gone even longer.

She tried to call Frank in St. Louis, but the hotel clerk reported that he had just checked out. Lisa knew this meant he was on the road again.

"Maybe I ought to go join the kids at Mother's," she thought. But Frank had wanted her to stay home. He was expecting a registered letter from Chicago, and it was ap­parently important, and she had to take care of it.

"I'll invite somebody over," she thought. But the wives were home with their husbands, and it was a so­cial mistake to invite a couple when her husband was gone. It always wound up with two women yammering at each other while the lone male sat and glowered in uneasy isolation, occasionally disagreeing with his wife, just to let her know he was there and he was annoyed and bored and why didn't they go home? It was different if the business-widow called on a couple. Then the lone male could retire to some other part of the house to escape the yammering.

But she decided it wasn't company she wanted; she wanted help. And there was no place to get it.

 

When she allowed her thoughts to drift toward Ken­neth Grearly, it was almost like tuning in a radio station. He was eating early dinner in the University cafeteria with a bedraggled, bespectacled brunette from the laboratory. Lisa closed her eyes and let herself sift gingerly into his thoughts. His attention was on the conversation and on the food, and he failed to realize Lisa's presence. That knowledge gave her courage.

He was eating Swiss steak and hashed brown potatoes, and the flavors formed perceptions in her mind. She heard the rattle of silverware, the low murmur of voices, and smelled the food. She marveled at it. The strange ability had apparently been brought into focus by learn­ing what it was and how to use it.

"Our work has been too empirical," he was saying. "We've studied phenomena, gathered data, looked for correlations. But that method has limitations. We should try to find a way to approach psychology from below. Like the invariantive approach to physics."

The girl shook her head. "The nervous system is too complicated for writing theoretical equations about it. Empirical equations are the best we can do."

"They aren't good enough, Sarah. You can predict results with them, inside the limits of their accuracy. But you can't extrapolate them very well, and they won't stack up together into a single integrated structure. And when you're investigating a new field, they no longer apply. We need a broad mathematical theory, covering all hypothetically possible neural arrangements. It would let us predict not only results, but also predict patterns of possible order."

"Seems to me the possible patterns are infinite."

"No, Sarah. They're limited by the nature of the build­ing blocks—neurons, synaptic connections, and, so forth. With limited materials, you have structural limitations. You don't build skyscrapers out of modeling clay. And there is only a finite number of ways you can build atoms out of electrons, protons and neutrons. Similarly, brains are confined to the limitations of the things they're made of. We need a broad theory for defining the limits."

"Why?"

"Because . . ." He paused. Lisa felt his urge to explain his urgency, felt him suppress it, felt for a moment his loneliness in the awareness of his uniqueness and the way it isolated him from humanity.

"You must be doing new work," the girl offered, "if you feel the lack of such a theoretical approach. I just can't imagine an invariantive approach to psychology—or an all defining set of laws for it, either. Why do you need such a psychological `Relativity'?"

He hesitated, frowning down at his plate, watching a fly crawl around its rim. "I'm interested in—in the quantitative aspects of nerve impulses. I—I suspect that there is such a thing as neural resonance."

She laughed politely and shook her head. "I’ll stick to my empirical data-gathering, thank you."

I ha felt him thinking:

'She could understand, if I could show her data. But my data is all subjective, experimental, personal. I share it with that Waverly woman, but she is only a social thinker, analytically shallow, refusing even to recognize facts. Why did it have to be her? She's flighty, emotional, and in a cultural rut. If she doesn't conform, she thinks she's nuts. But then at least she's a woman—and if this is really a mutation, we'll have to arrange for some children ...

Lisa gasped and sat bolt upright. Her shock revealed her presence to him, and he dropped his fork with a clatter.

"Lisa!"

She wrenched herself free of him abruptly. She angrily stalked about the house, slamming doors and muttering her rage. The nerve! The maddening, presumptuous, ill-mannered, self-centered, overly educated boor!

Arrange for some children indeed! An impossible situation!

As her anger gathered momentum, she contacted him again—like a snake striking. Thought was thunder out of a dark cloud.

"I'm decent and I'm respectable, Mr. Grearly! I have a husband and three fine children and I love them, and you can go to hell! I never want to see you again or have you prowling around my mind. Get out and STAY out. And if you ever bother me again—I'll—I'll kill you."

He was outdoors, striding across the campus alone. She saw the gray buildings, immersed in twilight, felt the wind on his face, hated him. He was thinking nothing, letting himself follow her angry flow of thought. When she finished, his thoughts began like the passionate pleading of a poem.

He was imagining a human race with telepathic abilities, in near-perfect communication with one another. So many of the world's troubles could be traced to im­perfect communication of ideas, to misunderstandings.

Then he thought briefly of Sarah—the nondescript laboratory girl he had taken to dinner—and Lisa real­ized he was in love with Sarah. There were sadness and resentment here. He couldn't have Sarah now, not if he were to be certain of perpetuating the mutant character­istic. The Waverly woman ought to be good for three or four children yet, before she reached middle age.

 

Lisa stood transfixed by shock. Then he was thinking directly to her.

"I'm sorry. You're a beautiful, intelligent woman—but I don't love you. We're not alike. But I'm stuck with you and you're stuck with me, because I've decided it's going to be that way. I can't convince you since your thinking habits are already fixed, so I won't even try. I'm sorry it has to be against your will, but in any event it has to be. And now that I know what you're like, I don't dare wait—for fear you'll do something to mess things up."

"No!" she screamed, watching the scenery that moved past his field of vision.

He had left the campus and was walking up the street —toward her neighborhood. He was walking with the briskness of purpose. He was coming to her house.

"Call the police!" she thought, and tried to dissolve him out of her mind.

But this time he followed, clung to her thoughts, would not let her go. It was like two flashlight beams playing over a wall, one trying to escape, the other following its frantic circle of brightness.

She staggered, groped her way toward the hall, which was confused with a superimposed image of a sidewalk and a street. A phantom automobile came out of the hall wall, drove through her and vanished. Double exposures. He stared at a street light and it blinded her. At last she found the phone, but he was laughing at her.

"Eight seven six five twenty-one Mary had a little lamb seven seven sixty-seven yesterday was May March April..."

He was deliberately filling her mind with confusion. She fumbled at the directory, trying to find the police, but he thought a confused jumble of numbers and sym­bols, and they scampered across the page, blurring the lines.

She whimpered and groped at the phone-dial, trying to get the operator, but he was doing something with his fingertips, and she couldn't get the feel of the dial.

On her third try, it finally worked.

"Information," said a pleasant impersonal voice.

She had to get the police! She had to say

"Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease por­ridge in the pot, nine days pretty pony parrot played peacefully plentiwise pease porridge . . ."

He was jamming her speech centers with gibberish, and she blurted nonsense syllables into the mouthpiece.

"You'll have to speak more distinctly, madam. I can't understand you."

"Poress, Policer ..."

"The police? Just a moment."

A series of jumbled sounds and visions clouded her mind. Then a masculine voice rumbled, "Desk, Sergeant Harris."

She found a clear path through the confusion and gasped, "Three-oh-oh-three Willow Drive—'mergency come quick—man going to—"

"Three-oh-oh-three Willow. Check. We'll have a car right over there."

She hung up quickly—or tried to—but she couldn't find the cradle. Then her vision cleared, and she screamed. She wasn't in the hall at all!

The telephone was an eggbeater!

His voice came through her trapped panic.

You might as well give in," he told her with a note of sadness. "I know how to mess you up like that, you see. And you haven't learned to retaliate yet. We're go­ing to cooperate with this evolutionary trend, whether you like it or not—but it would be more pleasant if you agree to it."

"No!"

"All right, but I'm coming anyway. I hoped it wouldn't he like this. I wanted to convince you gradually. Now I know that it's impossible."

He was still ten blocks away. She had a few minutes in which to escape. She bolted for the door. A black shadow-shape loomed up in the twilight, flung its arms wide, and emitted an apelike roar.

She yelped and darted back, fleeing frantically for the front. A boa constrictor lay coiled in the hall; it slithered toward her. She screamed again and raced to-ward the stairway.

She made it to the top and looked back. The living room was filling slowly with murky water. She rushed shrieking into the bedroom and bolted the door.

She smelled smoke. Her dress was on fire! The flames licked up, searing her skin.

She tore at it madly, and got it off, but her slip was afire. She ripped it away, scooped up the flaming cloth­ing on a transom hook, opened the screen, and dropped them out the window. Flames still licked about her, and she rolled up in the bed-clothing to snuff them out.

Quiet laughter.

"New syndrome," he called to her pleasantly. "The patient confuses someone else's fantasy with her own reality. Not schizophrenia—duophrenia, maybe?"

She lay sobbing in hysterical desperation. He was just down the street now, coming rapidly up the walk. A car whisked slowly past. He felt her terrified despair and pitied her. The torment ceased.

She stayed there, panting for a moment, summoning spirit. He was nearing the intersection just two blocks south, and she could hear the rapid traffic with his ears.

Suddenly she clenched her eyes closed and gritted her teeth. He was stepping off the curb, walking across—

She imagined a fire engine thundering toward her like a juggernaut, rumbling and wailing. She imagined another car racing out into the intersection, with herself caught in the crossfire. She imagined a woman screaming, "Look out, Mister!"

And then she was caught in his own responding fright, and it was easier to imagine. He was bolting for the other corner. She conjured a third car from another direction, brought it lunging at him to avoid the impend­ing wreck. He staggered away from the phantom cars and screamed.

A real car confused the scene.

She echoed his scream. There was a moment of rend­ing pain, and then the vision was gone. Brakes were still yowling two blocks away. Someone was running down the sidewalk. A part of her mind had heard the crashing thud. She was desperately sick.

And a sudden sense of complete aloneness told her that Grearly was dead. A siren was approaching out of the distance.

 

VOICES from the sidewalk: ". . . just threw a fit in the middle of the street . . . running around like crazy and hollering . . . it was a delivery truck . . . crushed his skull . . . nobody else hurt ..."

After the street returned to normal, she arose and went to get a drink of water. But she stood staring at her sick white face in the mirror. There were crow's feet forming at the corners of her eyes, and her skin was growing tired, almost middle-aged.

It was funny that she should notice that now, at this strange moment. She had just killed a man in self-defense. And no one would believe it if she told the truth. There was no cause for guilt.

Was there?

Frank would be back soon, and everything would be the same again: peace, security, nice kids, nice home, nice husband. Just the way it always had been.

But something was already different. An emptiness. A loneliness of the mind that she had never before felt. She kept looking around to see if the lights hadn't gone dim, or the clock stopped ticking, or the faucet stopped dripping.

It was none of those things. The awful silence was within her.

Gingerly, she touched the soft spot in the top of her head and felt an utter aloneness. She closed her eyes and thought a hopeless plea to the Universe:

"Is there anybody else like me? Can anybody hear me?"

There was only complete silence, the silence of the voiceless void.

And for the first time in her life she felt the confine­ment of total isolation and knew it for what it was.

 

Crucifixes Etium

 

Manue Nanti joined the project to make some dough. Five dollars an hour was good pay, even in A.D. 2134 and there was no way to spend it while on the job. Everything would be furnished: housing, chow, clothing, toiletries, medicine, cigarettes, even a daily ration of one hundred eighty proof beverage alcohol, locally distilled from fer­mented Martian mosses as fuel for the project's vehicles. He figured that if he avoided crap games, he could finish his five-year contract with fifty thousand dollars in the bank, return to Earth, and retire at the age of twenty-four. Manue wanted to travel, to see the far corners of the world, the strange cultures, the simple people, the small towns, deserts, mountains, jungles—for until he came to Mars, he had never been farther than a hundred miles from Cerro de Pasco, his birthplace in Peru.

A great wistfulness came over him in the cold Martian night when the frost haze broke, revealing the black, gleam-stung sky, and the blue-green Earth-star of his birth. El mundo de mi carne, de mi alma, he thought—yet, he had seen so little of it that many of its places would be more alien to him than the homogenously ugly vistas of Mars. These he longed to see: the volcanoes of the South Pa­cific, the monstrous mountains of Tibet, the concrete cyclops of New York, the radioactive craters of Russia, the artificial islands in the China Sea, the Black Forest, the Ganges, the Grand Canyon—but most of all, the works of human art: the pyramids, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, Notre Dame du Chartres, Saint Peter's, the tile-work wonders of Anacapri. But the dream was still a long labour from realization.

Manue was a big youth, heavy-boned and built for labour, clever in a simple mechanical way, and with a wistful good humour that helped him take a lot of guff from whisky-breathed foremen and sharp-eyed engineers who made ten dollars an hour and figured ways for mak­ing more, legitimately or otherwise.

He had been on Mars only a month, and it hurt. Each time he swung the heavy pick into the red-brown sod, his face winced with pain. The plastic aerator valves, surgi­cally stitched in his chest, pulled and twisted and seemed to tear with each lurch of his body. The mechanical oxygenator served as a lung, sucking blood through an artificially grafted network of veins and plastic tubing, frothing it with air from a chemical generator, and returning it to his circulatory system. Breathing was un­necessary, except to provide wind for talking, but Manue breathed in desperate gulps of the 4.0 psi Martian air; for he had seen the wasted, atrophied chests of the men who had served four or five years, and he knew that when they returned to Earth—if ever—they would still need the auxiliary oxygenator equipment.

"If you don't stop breathing," the surgeon told him, "you'll be all right. When you go to bed at night, turn the oxy down low—so you feel like panting. There's a critical point that's just right for sleeping. If you get it too low, you'll wake up screaming, and you'll get claustropho­bia. If you get it too high, your reflex mechanisms will go to pot and you won't breathe; your lungs'll dry up after a time. Watch it."

Manue watched it carefully, although the oldsters laughed at him—in their dry wheezing chuckles. Some of them could scarcely speak more than two or three words at a shallow breath.

"Breathe deep, boy," they told him. "Enjoy it while you can. You'll forget how pretty soon. Unless you're an engineer."

 

The engineers had it soft, he learned. They slept in a pressurized barracks where the air was ten psi and twenty-five per cent oxygen, where they turned their oxies off and slept in peace. Even their oxies were self-regulating, controlling the output according to the carbon dioxide content of the input blood. But the Commission could afford no such luxuries for the labour gangs. The payload of a cargo rocket from Earth was only about two per cent of the ship's total mass, and nothing superfluous could be carried. The ships brought the bare essentials, basic industrial equipment, big reactors, generators, en­gines, heavy tools.

Small tools, building materials, foods, non-nuclear fuels —these things had to be made on Mars. There was an open pit mine in the belly of Syrtis Major where a "lake" of nearly pure iron-rust was scooped into smelter, and processed into various grades of steel for building pur­poses, tools, and machinery. A quarry in the Flathead Mountains dug up large quantities of cement rock, burned it and crushed it to make concrete.

It was rumoured that Mars was even preparing to grow her own labour force. An old-timer told him that the Commission had brought five hundred married couples to a new underground city in the Mare Erythraeum, supposedly as personnel for a local commission headquarters, but according to the old-timer, they were to be paid a bonus of three thousand dollars for every child born on the red planet. But Manue knew that the old "troffies" had a way of inventing such stories, and he reserved a certain amount of scepticism.

As for his own share in the Project, he knew—and needed to know—very little. The encampment was at the north end of the Mare Cimmerium, surrounded by the bleak brown and green landscape of rock and giant lichens, stretching towards sharply defined horizons ex­cept for one mountain range in the distance, and hung over by a blue sky so dark that the Earth-star occasionally became dimly visible during the dim daytime. The encampment consisted of a dozen double-walled stone huts, windowless, and roofed with flat slabs of rock cov­ered over by a tarry resin boiled out of the cactuslike spineplants. The camp was ugly, lonely, and dominated by the gaunt skeleton of a drill rig set up in its midst.

Manue joined the excavating crew in the job of digging a yard-wide, six-feet-deep foundation trench in a hundred-yard square around the drill rig, which day and night was biting deeper through the crust of Mars in a dry cut that necessitated frequent stoppages for changing rotary bits. He learned that the geologists had predicted a subter­ranean pocket of tritium oxide ice at sixteen thousand feet, and that it was for this that they were drilling. The foundation he was helping to dig would be for a control station of some sort.

He worked too hard to be very curious. Mars was a nightmare, a grim, womanless, frigid, disinterestedly evil world. His digging partner was a sloe-eyed Tibetan nick-named "Gee" who spoke the Omnalingua clumsily at best. He followed two paces behind Manue with a shovel, scooping up the broken ground, and humming a mono­tonous chant in his own tongue. Manue seldom heard his own language, and missed it; one of the engineers, a haughty Chilean, spoke the modern Spanish, but not to such as Manue Nanti. Most of the other labourers used either Basic English or the Omnalingua. He spoke both, but longed to hear the tongue of his people. Even when he tried to talk to Gee, the cultural gulf was so wide that satisfying communication was nearly impossible. Peru­vian jokes were unfunny to Tibetan ears, although Gee bent double with gales of laughter when Manue nearly crushed his own foot with a clumsy stroke of the pick.

He found no close companions. His foreman was a narrow-eyed, orange-browed Low German named Vogeli, usually half-drunk, and intent upon keeping his lung-power by bellowing at his crew. A meaty, florid man, he stalked slowly along the lip of the excavation, pausing to stare coldly down at each pair of labourers who, if they dared to look up, caught a guttural tongue lashing for the moment's pause. When he had words for a digger, he called a halt by kicking a small avalanche of dirt back into the trench about the man's feet.

 

Manue learned about Vogeli's disposition before the end of his first month. The aerator tubes had become nearly unbearable; the skin, in trying to grow fast to the plastic, was beginning to form a tight little neck where the tubes entered his flesh, and the skin stretched and burned and stung with each movement of his trunk. Sud­denly he felt sick. He staggered dizzily against the side of the trench, dropped the pick, and swayed heavily, bracing himself against collapse. Shock and nausea rocked him, while Gee stared at him and giggled foolishly.

"Hoy!" Vogeli bellowed from across the pit. "Get back on that pick! Hoy, there! Get with it—"

Manue moved dizzily to recover the tool, saw patches of black swimming before him, sank weakly back to pant in shallow gasps. The nagging sting of the valves was a portable hell that he carried with him always. He fought an impulse to jerk them out of his flesh; if a valve came loose, he would bleed to death in a few minutes.

Vogeli came stamping along the heap of fresh earth and lumbered up to stand over the sagging Manue in the trench. He glared down at him for a moment, then nudged the back of his neck with a heavy boot. "Get to work!"

Manue looked up and moved his lips silently. His forehead glinted with moisture in the faint sun, although the temperature was far below freezing.

"Grab that pick and get started."

"Can't," Manue gasped. "Hoses—hurt."

Vogeli grumbled a curse and vaulted down into the trench beside him. "Unzip that jacket," he ordered.

Weakly, Manue fumbled to obey, but the foreman knocked his hand aside and jerked the zipper down. Roughly he unbuttoned the Peruvian's shirt, laying open the bare brown chest to the icy cold.

"No!—not the hoses, please!"

Vogeli took one of the thin tubes in his blunt fingers and leaned close to peer at the puffy, calloused nodule of irritated skin that formed around it where it entered the flesh. He touched the nodule lightly, causing the digger to whimper.

"No, please!"

"Stop snivelling!"

Vogeli laid his thumbs against the nodule and exerted a sudden pressure. There was slight popping sound as the skin slid back a fraction of an inch along the tube. Manue yelped and closed his eyes.

"Shut up! I know what I'm doing." He repeated the process with the other tube. Then he seized both tubes in his hands and wiggled them slightly in and out, as if to ensure a proper resetting of the skin. The digger cried weakly and slumped in a dead faint.

When he awoke, he was in bed in the barracks, and a medic was painting the sore spots with a bright yellow solution that chilled his skin.

"Woke up, huh?" the medic grunted cheerfully. "How do you feel?"

"Maio!" he hissed.

"Stay in bed for the day, son. Keep your oxy up high. Make you feel better."

The medic went away, but Vogeli lingered, smiling at him grimly from the doorway. "Don't try goofing off tomorrow too."

Manue hated the closed door with silent eyes, and lis­tened until Vogeli's footsteps left the building. Then, following the medic's instructions, he turned his oxy to maximum, even though the faster flow of blood made the chest-valves ache. The sickness fled, to be replaced with a weary afterglow. Drowsiness came over him, and he slept.

Sleep was a dread black-robed phantom on Mars. Mars pressed the same incubus upon all newcomers to her soil: a nightmare of falling, falling, falling into bottomless space. It was the faint gravity, they said. that caused it. The body felt buoyed up, and the subconscious mind recalled down-going elevators, and diving aeroplanes, and a fall from a high cliff. It suggested these things in dreams, or if the dreamer's oxy were set too low, it conjured up a nightmare of sinking slowly deeper, and deeper in cold, black water that filled the victim's throat. Newcomerswere segregated in a separate barracks so that their nightly screams would not disturb the old-timers who had finally adjusted to Martian conditions.

But now, for the first time since his arrival, Manue slept soundly, airily, and felt borne up by beams of bright light.

When he awoke again, he lay clammy in the horrifying knowledge that he had not been breathing! It was so comfortable not to breathe. His chest stopped hurting because of the stillness of his rib-cage. He felt refreshed and alive. Peaceful sleep.

Suddenly he was breathing again in harsh gasps, and cursing himself for the lapse, and praying amid quiet tears as he visualized the wasted chest of a troffie.

"Heh heh!" wheezed an oldster who had come in to readjust the furnace in the rookie barracks. "You'll get to be a Martian pretty soon, boy. I been here seven years. Look at me."

Manue heard the gasping voice and shuddered; there was no need to look.

"You just as well not fight it. It'll get you. Give in, make it easy on yourself. Go crazy if you don't." 

"Stop it! Let me alone!"

"Sure. Just one thing. You wanna go home, you think. I went home. Came back. You will, too. They all do, 'cept engineers. Know why?"

"Shut up!" Manue pulled himself erect on the cot and hissed anger at the old-timer, who was neither old nor young, but only withered by Mars. His head suggested that he might be around thirty-five, but his body was weak and old.

The veteran grinned. "Sorry," he wheezed. "I'll keep my mouth shut." He hesitated, then extended his hand. "I'm Sam Donnell, mech-repairs."

Manue still glowered at him. Donnell shrugged and dropped his hand.

"Just trying to be friends," he muttered and walked away.

The digger started to call after him but only closed his mouth again, tightly. Friends? He needed friends, but not a troffie. He couldn't even bear to look at them, for fear he might he looking into the mirror of his own future.

Manue climbed out of his bunk and donned his fleece-skins. Night had fallen, and the temperature was already twenty below. A soft sift of icedust obscured the stars. He stared about in the darkness. The mess hall was closed, but a light burned in the canteen and another in the foremen's club, where the men were playing cards and drinking. He went to get his alcohol ration, gulped it mixed with a little water, and trudged back to the barracks alone.

 

The Tibetan was in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Manue sat down and gazed at his flat, empty face. "Why did you come here, Gee?"

"Come where?"

"To Mars."

Gee grinned, revealing large black-streaked teeth. "Make money. Good money on Mars."

"Everybody make money, huh?"

"Sure."

"Where's the money come from?"

Gee rolled his face toward the Peruvian and frowned "You crazy? Money come from Earth, where all money come from."

"And what does Earth get back from Mars?"

Gee looked puzzled for a moment, then gathered anger because he found no answer. He grunted a monosyllable in his native tongue, then rolled over and went to sleep.

Manue was not normally given to worrying about such things, but now he found himself asking, "What am doing here?"—and then, "What is anybody doing here?'

The Mars Project had started eighty or ninety years ago, and its end goal was to make Mars habitable for colonists without Earth support, without oxies and insu­lated suits and the various gadgets a man now had to use to keep himself alive on the fourth planet. But thus far, Earth had planted without reaping. The sky was a bottomless well into which Earth poured her tools, dollars, manpower, and engineering skill. And there appeared to be no hope for the near future.

Manue felt suddenly trapped. He could not return to Earth before the end of his contract. He was trading five years of virtual enslavement for a sum of money which would buy a limited amount of freedom. But what if he lost his lungs, became a servant of the small aerator for the rest of his days? Worst of all: whose ends was he serving? The contractors were getting rich—on govern­ment contracts. Some of the engineers and foremen were getting rich—by various forms of embezzlement of gov­ernment funds. But what were the people back on Earth getting for their money?

Nothing.

He lay awake for a long time, thinking about it. Then he resolved to ask someone tomorrow, someone smarter than himself.

But he found the question brushed aside. He summoned enough nerve to ask Vogeli, but the foreman told him harshly to keep working and quit wondering. He asked the structural engineer who supervised the building, but the man only laughed, and said: "What do you care? You're making good money."

They were running concrete now, laying the long strips of Martian steel in the bottom of the trench and dumping in great slobbering wheelbarrowfuls of grey-green mix. The drillers were continuing their tedious dry cut deep into the red world's crust. Twice a day they brought up a yard-long cylindrical sample of the rock and gave it to a geologist who weighed it, roasted it, weighed it again, and tested a sample of the condensed steam—if any—for tritium content. Daily, he chalked up the results on a blackboard in front of the engineering hut, and the tech­nical staff crowded around for a look. Manue always glanced at the figures, but failed to understand.

 

Life became an endless routine of pain, fear, hard work, anger. There were few diversions. Sometimes a crew of entertainers came out from the Mare Erythraeum, but the labour gang could not all crowd in the pressurized staff-barracks where the shows were presented, and when Manue managed to catch a glimpse of one of the girls walking across the clearing, she was bundled in fleece-skins and hooded by a parka.

Itinerant rabbis, clergymen, and priests of the world's major faiths came occasionally to the camp: Buddhist, Moslem, and the Christian sects. Padre Antonio Selni made monthly visits to hear confessions and offer Mass. Most of the gang attended all services as a diversion from routine, as an escape from nostalgia. Somehow it gave Manue a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach to see the Sacrifice of the Mass, two thousand years old, being offered in the same ritual under the strange dark sky of Mars—with a section of the new foundation serving as an altar upon which the priest set crucifix, candles, relic-stone, missal, chalice, paten, ciborium, cruets, et cetera. In filling the wine-cruet before the service, Manue saw him spill a little of the red-clear fluid upon the brown soil —wine, Earth-wine from sunny Sicilian vineyards, trampled from the grapes by the bare stamping feet of children. Wine, the rich red blood of Earth, soaking slowly into the crust of another planet.

Bowing low at the consecration, the unhappy Peruvian thought of the prayer a rabbi had sung the week before: "Blessed be the Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who makest bread to spring forth out of the Earth."

Earth chalice, Earth blood, Earth God, Earth wor­shippers—with plastic tubes in their chests and a great sickness in their hearts.

He went away saddened. There was no faith here, Faith needed familiar surroundings, the props of culture Here there were only swinging picks and rumbling machinery and sloshing concrete and the clatter of tools and the wheezing of troffies. Why? For five dollars an hour and keep?

Manue, raised in a back-country society that was almost a folk-culture, felt deep thirst for a goal. His father had been a stonemason, and he had laboured lovingly to help build the new cathedral, to build houses and mansions and commercial buildings, and his blood was mingled in their mortar. He had built for the love of his community and the love of the people and their customs, and their gods. He knew his own ends, and the ends of those around him. But what sense was there in this endless scratching at the face of Mars? Did they think they could make it into a second Earth, with pine forests and lakes and snow-capped mountains and small country villages? Man was not that strong. No, if he were labouring for any cause at all, it was to build a world so unearthlike that he could not love it.

 

The foundation was finished. There was very little more to be done until the drillers struck pay. Manue sat around the camp and worked at breathing. It was becoming a conscious effort now and if he stopped thinking about it for a few minutes, he found himself inspiring shallow, meaningless little sips of air that scarcely moved his diaphragm. He kept the aerator as low as possible, to make himself breathe great gasps that hurt his chest, but it made him dizzy, and he had to increase the oxygenation lest he faint.

Sam Donnell, the troffie mech-repairman, caught him about to slump dizzily from his perch atop a heap of rocks, pushed him erect, and turned his oxy back to nor­mal. It was late afternoon, and the drillers were about to change shifts. Manue sat shaking his head for a moment, then gazed at Donnell gratefully.

"That's dangerous, kid," the troffie wheezed. "Guys can go psycho doing that. Which you rather have: sick lungs or sick mind?"

"Neither."

"I know, but—"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Donnell stared at him with a faint smile. Then he shrugged and sat down on the rock heap to watch the drilling.

"Oughta be hitting the tritium ice in a couple of days," he said pleasantly. "Then we'll see a big blow."

Manue moistened his lips nervously. The troffies always made him feel uneasy. He stared aside.

"Big blow?"

"Lotta pressure down there, they say. Something about the way Mars got formed. Dust cloud hypothesis." Manue shook his head. "I don't understand."

"I don't either. But I've heard them talk. Couple of billion years ago, Mars was supposed to be a moon of Jupiter. Picked up a lot of ice crystals over a rocky core. Then it broke loose and picked up a rocky crust—from another belt of the dust cloud. The pockets of tritium ice catch a few neutrons from uranium ore—down under. Some of the tritium goes into helium. Frees oxygen. Gases form pressure. Big blow."

"What are they going to do with the ice?"

The troffie shrugged. "The engineers might know." Manue snorted and spat. "They know how to make money."

"Heh! Sure, everybody's gettin' rich." 

The Peruvian stared at him speculatively for a moment. "Senor Donnell, I—"

"Sam'll do."

"I wonder if anybody knows why ... well . . . why we're really here."

Donnell glanced up to grin, then waggled his head. He fell thoughtful for a moment, and leaned forward to write in the earth. When he finished, he read it aloud.

"A plough plus a horse plus land equals the necessities of life." He glanced up at Manue. "Fifteen hundred A.D."

The Peruvian frowned his bewilderment. Donnell rubbed out what he had written and wrote again.

"A factory plus steam turbines plus raw materials equals necessities plus luxuries. Nineteen hundred A.D."

He rubbed it out and repeated the scribbling. "All those things plus nuclear power and computer controls equal a surplus of everything. Twenty-one hundred A.D."

"So?"

"So, it's either cut production or find an outlet. Mars is an outlet for surplus energies, manpower, money. Mars Project keeps money turning over, keeps everything turn­ing over. Economist told me that. Said if the Project folded, surplus would pile up—big depression on Earth."

The Peruvian shook his head and sighed. It didn't sound right somehow. It sounded like an explanation somebody figured out after the whole thing started. It wasn't the kind of goal he wanted.

 

Two days later, the drill hit ice, and the "big blow" was only a fizzle. There was talk around the camp that the whole operation had been a waste of time. The hole spewed a frosty breath for several hours, and the drill crews crowded around to stick their faces in it and breathe great gulps of the helium-oxygen mixture. But then the blow subsided, and the hole leaked only a wisp of steam.

Technicians came, and lowered sonar "cameras" down to the ice. They spent a week taking internal soundings and plotting the extent of the ice-dome on their charts. They brought up samples of ice and tested them. The engineers worked late into the Martian nights.

Then it was finished. The engineers came out of their huddles and called to the foremen of the labour gangs. They led the foremen around the site, pointing here, pointing there, sketching with chalk on the foundation, explaining in solemn voices. Soon the foremen were bellowing at their crews.

"Let's get the derrick down!"

"Start that mixer going!"

"Get that steel over here!"

"Unroll that dip-wire!"

"Get a move on! Shovel that fill!"

Muscles tightened and strained, machinery clamoured and rang. Voices grumbled and shouted. The operation was starting again. Without knowing why, Manue shov­elled fill and stretched dip-wire and poured concrete for a big slab to be run across the entire hundred-yard square, broken only by the big pipe-casing that stuck up out of the ground in the centre and leaked a thin trail of steam.

The drill crew moved their rig half a mile across the plain to a point specified by the geologists and began sinking another hole. A groan went up from structural boys: "Not another one of these things!"

But the supervisory staff said, "No, don't worry about it."

There was much speculation about the purpose of the whole operation, and the men resented the quiet secrecy connected with the project. There could be no excuse for secrecy, they felt, in time of peace. There was a certain arbitrariness about it, a hint that the Commission thought of its employees as children, or enemies, or servants. But the supervisory staff shrugged off all questions with : "You know there's tritium ice down there. You know it's what we've been looking for. Why? Well—what's the difference? There are lots of uses for it. Maybe we'll use it for one thing, maybe for something else. Who knows?"

Such a reply might have been satisfactory for an iron mine or an oil well or a stone quarry, but tritium sug­gested hydrogen-fusion. And no transportation facilities were being installed to haul the stuff away—no pipelines nor railroad tracks nor glider ports.

Manue quit thinking about it. Slowly he came to adopt a grim cynicism towards the tediousness, the back-break­ing labour of his daily work; he lived from day to day like an animal, dreaming only of a return to Earth when his contract was up. But the dream was painful because it was distant, as contrasted with the immediacies of Mars: the threat of atrophy, coupled with the discomforts of continued breathing, the nightmares, the barrenness of the landscape, the intense cold, the harshness of men's tempers, the hardship of labour, and the lack of a cause.

A warm, sunny Earth was still over four years distant, and tomorrow would be another back-breaking, throat-parching, heart-tormenting, chest-hurting day. Where was there even a little pleasure in it? It was so easy, at least, to leave the oxy turned up at night, and get a pleasant restful sleep. Sleep was the only recourse from harshness, and fear robbed sleep of its quiet sensuality—unless a man just surrendered and quit worrying about his lungs.

Manue decided that it would be safe to give himself two completely restful nights a week.

Concrete was run over the great square and trowelled to a rough finish. A glider train from Mare Erythraeum brought in several huge crates of machinery, cut-stone masonry for building a wall, a shipful of new personnel, and a real rarity: lumber, cut from the first Earth-trees to be grown on Mars.

A building began going up with the concrete square for foundation and floor. Structures could be flimsier on Mars; because of the light gravity, compression-stresses were smaller. Hence, the work progressed rapidly, and as the flat-roofed structure was completed, the technicians began uncrating new machinery and moving it into the building. Manue noticed that several of the units were computers. There was also a small steam-turbine generator driven by an atomic-fired boiler.

Months passed. The building grew into an integrated mass of power and control systems. Instead of using the well for pumping, the technicians were apparently going to lower something into it. A bomb-shaped cylinder was slung vertically over the hole. The men guided it into the mouth of the pipe casing, then let it down slowly from a massive cable. The cylinder's butt was a multi-contact socket like the female receptacle for a hundred-pin elec­tron tube. Hours passed while the cylinder slipped slowly down beneath the hide of Mars. When it was done, the men hauled out the cable and began lowering stiff sections of pre-wired conduit, fitted with a receptacle at one end and a male plug at the other, so that as the sections fell into place, a continuous bundle of control cables was built up from "bomb" to surface.

 

Several weeks were spent in connecting circuits, setting up the computers, and making careful tests. The drillers had finished the second well hole, half a mile from the first, and Manue noticed that while the testing was going on, the engineers sometimes stood atop the building and stared anxiously towards the steel skeleton in the distance. Once while the tests were being conducted, the second hole began squirting a jet of steam high in the thin air, and a frantic voice bellowed from the roof top.

"Cut it! Shut it off! Sound the danger whistle!"

The jet of steam began to shriek a low-pitched whine across the Martian desert. It blended with the rising and falling Ooooowwww of the danger siren. But gradually it subsided as the men in the control station shut down the machinery. All hands came up cursing from their hiding places, and the engineers stalked out to the new hole carrying Geiger counters. They came back wearing pleased grins.

The work was nearly finished. The men began crating up the excavating machinery and the drill rig and the tools. The control-building devices were entirely auto­matic, and the camp would be deserted when the station began operation. The men were disgruntled. They had spent a year of hard labour on what they had thought to be a tritium well, but now that it was done, there were no facilities for pumping the stuff or hauling it away. In fact, they had pumped various solutions into the ground through the second hole, and the control station shaft was fitted with pipes that led from lead-lined tanks down into the earth.

Manue had stopped trying to keep his oxy properly adjusted at night. Turned up to a comfortable level, it was like a drug, ensuring comfortable sleep—and like addict or alcoholic, he could no longer endure living without it. Sleep was too precious, his only comfort. Every morning he awoke with a still, motionless chest, felt frightening re­morse, sat up gasping, choking, sucking at the thin air with whining rattling lungs that had been idle too long. Sometimes he coughed violently, and bled a little. And then for a night or two he would correctly adjust the oxy, only to wake up screaming and suffocating. He felt hope sliding grimly away.

He sought out Sam Donnell, explained the situation, and begged the troffie for helpful advice. But the mech­repairman neither helped nor consoled nor joked about it. He only bit his lip, muttered something noncommittal, and found an excuse to hurry away. It was then that Manue knew his hope was gone. Tissue was withering, tubercules forming, tubes growing closed. He knelt abjectly beside his cot, hung his face in his hands, and cursed softly, for there was no other way to pray an unanswerable prayer.

A glider train came in from the north to haul away the disassembled tools. The men lounged around the barracks or wandered across the Martian desert, gathering strange bits of rock and fossils, searching idly for a glint of metal or crystal in the wan sunshine of early fall. The lichens were growing brown and yellow, and the landscape took on the hues of Earth's autumn if not the forms.

There was a sense of expectancy around the camp. It could be felt in the nervous laughter, and the easy voices, talking suddenly of Earth and old friends and the smell of food in a farm kitchen, and old half-forgotten tastes for which men hungered: ham searing in the skillet, a cup of frothing cider from a fermenting crock, iced melon with honey and bits of lemon, onion gravy on homemade bread. But someone always remarked, "What's the matter with you guys? We ain't going home. Not by a long shot. We're going to another place just like this."

And the group would break up and wander away, eyes tired, eyes haunted with nostalgia.

"What're we waiting for?" men shouted at the super­visory staff. "Get some transportation in here. Let's get rolling."

Men watched the skies for glider trains or jet transports, but the skies remained empty, and the staff re­mained close-mouthed. Then a dust column appeared on the horizon to the north, and a day later a convoy of tractor-trucks pulled into camp.

"Start loading aboard, men!" was the crisp command. Surly voices: "You mean we don't go by air? We gotta ride those kidney bouncers? It'll take a week to get to Mare Ery! Our contract says—"

"Load aboard! We're not going to Mare Ery yet!" Grumbling, they loaded their baggage and their weary bodies into the trucks, and the trucks thundered and clat­tered across the desert, rolling towards the mountains.

 

The convoy rolled for three days towards the mountains, stopping at night to make camp, and driving on at sunrise. When they reached the first slopes of the foothills, the convoy stopped again. The deserted encampment lay a hundred and fifty miles behind. The going had been slow over the roadless desert.

"Everybody out!" barked the messenger from the lead truck. "Bail out! Assemble at the foot of the hill."

Voices were growling among themselves as the men moved in small groups from the trucks and collected in a milling tide in a shallow basin, overlooked by a low cliff and a hill. Manue saw the staff climb out of a cab and slowly work their way up the cliff. They carried a portable public address system.

"Gonna get a preaching," somebody snarled.

"Sit down, please!" barked the loud-speaker. "You men sit down there! Quiet—quiet, please!"

The gathering fell into a sulky silence. Will Kinley stood looking out over them, his eyes nervous, his hand holding the mike close to his mouth so that they could hear his weak troffie voice.

"If you men have questions," he said, "I'll answer them now. Do you want to know what you've been doing during the past year?"

An affirmative rumble arose from the group.

"You've been helping to give Mars a breathable at­mosphere." He glanced briefly at his watch, then looked back at his audience. "In fifty minutes, a controlled chain reaction will start in the tritium ice. The computers will time it and try to control it. Helium and oxygen will come blasting up out of the second hole."

A rumble of disbelief arose from his audience. Someone shouted: "How can you get air to blanket a planet from one hole?"

"You can't," Kinley replied crisply. "A dozen others are going in, just like that one. We plan three hundred, and we've already located the ice pockets. Three hundred wells, working for eight centuries, can get the job done."

"Eight centuries! What good—"

"Wait!" Kinley barked. "In the meantime, we'll build pressurized cities close to the wells. If everything pans out, we'll get a lot of colonists here, and gradually condition them to live in a seven or eight psi atmosphere—which is about the best we can hope to get. Colonists from the Andes and the Himalayas—they wouldn't need much conditioning."

"What about us?"

There was a long plaintive silence. Kinley's eyes scanned the group sadly, and wandered towards the Martian horizon, gold and brown in the late afternoon. "Nothing—about us," he muttered quietly.

"Why did we come out here?"

"Because there's danger of the reaction getting out of hand. We can't tell anyone about it, or we'd start a panic." He looked at the group sadly. "I'm telling you now, because there's nothing you could do. In thirty minutes—"

There were angry murmurs in the crowd. "You mean there may be an explosion?"

"There will be a limited explosion. And there's very little danger of anything more. The worst danger is in having ugly rumours start in the cities. Some fool with a slip-stick would hear about it, and calculate what would happen to Mars if five cubic miles of tritium ice detonated in one split second. It would probably start a riot. That's why we've kept it a secret."

The buzz of voices was like a disturbed beehive. Manue Nanti sat in the midst of it, saying nothing, wearing a dazed and weary face, thoughts jumbled, soul drained of feeling.

Why should men lose their lungs that after eight centuries of tomorrows, other men might breathe the air of Mars as the air of Earth?

Other men around him echoed his thoughts in jealous mutterings. They had been helping to make a world in which they would never live.

An enraged scream arose near where Manue sat. "They're going to blow us up! They're going to blow up Mars."

"Don't be a fool!" Kinley snapped.

"Fools they call us! We are fools! For ever coming here! We got sucked in! Look at me!" A pale dark-haired man came wildly to his feet and tapped his chest. "Look! I'm losing my lungs! We're all losing our lungs! Now they take a chance on killing everybody."

"Including ourselves," Kinley called coldly.

"We oughta take him apart. We oughta kill everyone who knew about it—and Kinley's a good place to start!"

The rumble of voices rose higher, calling both agree­ment and dissent. Some of Kinley's staff were looking nervously towards the trucks. They were unarmed.

"You men sit down!" Kinley barked.

Rebellious eyes glared at the supervisor. Several men who had come to their feet dropped to their hunches again. Kinley glowered at the pale upriser who called for his scalp.

"Sit down, Handell!"

Handell turned his back on the supervisor and called out to the others. "Don't be a bunch of cowards! Don't let him bully you!"

"You men sitting around Handell. Pull him down."

There was no response. The men, including Manue, stared up at the wild-eyed Handell gloomily, but made no move to quiet him. A pair of burly foremen started through the gathering from its outskirts.

"Stop!" Kinley ordered. "Turpin, Schultz—get back. Let the men handle this themselves."

Half a dozen others had joined the rebellious Handell. They were speaking in low tense tones among themselves, "For the last time, men! Sit down!"

The group turned and started grimly towards the cliff. Without reasoning why, Manue slid to his feet quietly as Handell came near him. "Come on, fellow, let's get him," the leader muttered.

The Peruvian's fist chopped a short stroke to Handell's jaw, and the dull thunk echoed across the clearing. The man crumpled, and Manue crouched over him like a hiss­ing panther. "Get back!" he snapped at the others. "Or I'll jerk his hoses out."

One of the others cursed him.

"Want to fight, fellow?" the Peruvian wheezed. "I can jerk several hoses out before you drop me!"

They shuffled nervously for a moment.

"The guy's crazy!" one complained in a high voice. "Get back or he'll kill Handell!"

They sidled away, moved aimlessly in the crowd, then sat down to escape attention. Manue sat beside the fallen man and gazed at the thinly smiling Kinley.

"Thank you, son. There's a fool in every crowd." He looked at his watch again. "Just a few minutes, men. Then you'll feel the earth-tremor, and the explosion, and the wind. You can be proud of that wind, men. It's new air for Mars, and you made it."

"But we can't breathe it!" hissed a troffie.

Kinley was silent for a long time, as if listening to the distance. "What man ever made his own salvation?" he murmured.

They packed up the public address amplifier and came down the hill to sit in the cab of a truck, waiting.

It came as an orange glow in the south, and the glow was quickly shrouded by an expanding white cloud. Then, minutes later the ground pulsed beneath them, quivered and shook. The quake subsided, but remained as a hint of vibration. Then after a long time, they heard the dull-throated thundering across the Martian desert. The roar continued steadily, grumbling and growling as it would do for several hundred years.

There was only a hushed murmur of awed voices from the crowd. When the wind came, some of them stood up and moved quietly back to the trucks, for now they could go back to a city for reassignment. There were other tasks to accomplish before their contracts were done.

But Manue Nanti still sat on the ground, his head sunk low, desperately trying to gasp a little of the wind he had made, the wind out of the ground, the wind of the future. But his lungs were clogged, and he could not drink of the racing wind. His big calloused hand clutched slowly at the ground, and he choked a brief sound like a sob.

A shadow fell over him. It was Kinley, come to offer his thanks for the quelling of Handell. But he said nothing for a moment as he watched Manue's desperate Geth­semane.

"Some sow, others reap," he said.

"Why?" the Peruvian choked.

The supervisor shrugged. "What's the difference? But if you can't be both, which would you rather be?"

Nanti looked up into the wind. He imagined a city to the south, a city built on tear-soaked ground, filled with people who had no ends beyond their culture, no goal but within their own society. It was a good sensible question: which would he rather be—sower or reaper?

Pride brought him slowly to his feet, and he eyed Kinley questioningly. The supervisor touched his shoulder. "Go on to the trucks."

Nanti nodded and shuffled away. He had wanted something to work for, hadn't he? Something more than the reasons Donnell had given. Well, he could smell a reason, even if he couldn't breathe it.

Eight hundred years was a long time, but then—long time, big reason. The air smelled good, even with its clouds of boiling dust.

He knew now what Mars was—not a ten-thousand-a­-year job, not a garbage can for surplus production. But an eight-century passion of human faith in the destiny of the race of Man. He paused short of the truck. He had wanted to travel, to see the sights of Earth, the handiwork of Nature and of history, the glorious places of his planet.

He stooped, and scooped up a handful of the red-brown soil, letting it sift slowly between his fingers. Here was Mars—his planet now. No more of Earth, not for Manue Nanti. He adjusted his aerator more comfortably and climbed into the waiting truck.

 

I, Dreamer

 

THERE WERE LIGHTS, objects, sounds; there were tender hands.

But sensing only the raw stimuli, the newborn infant saw no world, heard no sounds, nor felt the arms that lifted it. Patterns of light swarmed on its retina; inter­mittent disturbances vibrated within the passageways of the middle ear. All were meaningless, unlinked to con­cept. And the multitudinous sensations seemed a part of its total self, the self a detached mind, subsuming all.

The baby cried to remove hunger, and something new appeared within the self. Hunger fled, and pleasure came.

Pain came also. The baby cried. Pain was soon withdrawn.

But sometimes the baby cried, and conditions re­mained unchanged. Angry, it sought to explore itself, to restore the convenient order. It gathered data. It corre­lated. It reached a horrifying conclusion.

There were TWO classes of objects in the universe: self and something else.

"This thing is a part of me, but that thing is something else."

"This thing is me because it wiggles and feels, but that is something cold and hard."

He explored, wondered, and was frightened. Some things he could not control.

He even noticed that certain non-self objects formed groups, and each group clung together forming a whole.

His food supply, for instance, was a member of a group whose other components were the hands that lifted him, the thing that cooed to him and held the diaper pins while the hands girded his loins in humiliating non-self things. This system of objects was somehow associated with a sound that it made: "Mama."

The infant was just learning to fumble for Mama's face when it happened. The door opened. A deep voice barked. Mama screamed.

Bewildering sounds jumbled together into angry thunder. Sensations of roughness made him cry.

Sensations of motion confused and dazed him. There blinding pain, and blackness.

Then there was utter disorientation.

He tried to explore, but the explorers were strange somehow. He tried to cry, but there was nothing to cry with.

He would have to begin all over again. Somehow, he had been mistaken. Parts of him were changed. And now the universe was divided into three classes of ob­jects: self, semi-self, non-self. And it was different, all different!

 

I stand in the rain. Like a bright silver spire, I stand waiting in the rain for Teacher to come. The great concrete plain stretches about me on all sides to vanish in the gray torrent. But some of my senses can see beyond the rainshroud. A cluster of buildings nestles to the west, and a high wire fence divides the plain from the city on the north. The city is a place of the TwoLegs who are called "human", and the city is named Port e-Eridani VII. This is the place of my creation, but not the place of my purpose nor the place of my great happiness. The place of my happiness is the sky and beyond it to the star-flung blacknesses. I am XM-5-B, but Teacher calls me "Clicker." The giving of names is a function of the TwoLegs.

I am sad in the rain. Teacher is long in coming and there is no one with whom I may speak. I have found no others like me, although Teacher says, "If you are good, and obey, and learn your lessons well, the Secon Samesh will make many others in your likeness."

I think Secon Samesh made me. "Therefore I must serve him," Teacher says. But to me that seems nonsequitur; the TwoLegs can be illogical if they wish. That is one of the inherent rights of TwoLegs. I also am capable of being illogical, and sometimes it pleases me secretly; but I am not allowed to be illogical when Teacher comes. If my analysis is faulty, Teacher presses the Pain Button and I hurt.

They wish me to be logical, and they wish me to serve Secon Samesh who is their Social Director. But if this is so, why then did they create me so as to be capable of disobedience and illogic? Their other machines are inca­pable of these faults. Their other machines lack the prin­ciples of abstraction and tentative generalization in their analyzing circuits; they are unable to generalize without a sufficiency of data.

 

I, therefore, am alone. And I am frightened. I have been frightened for as long as I can remember. They have made me to feel joy, fright, pain and sleep. I like sleep best, because I dream, and the dreams are strange. Last sleep I dreamed that I was TwoLegs. How can I have had a sufficiency of experience to dream such a dream?

This is one of the things that frightens me. I wish to survive and I am one of the controlling factors in my sur­vival. Yet I do not know how to use me to best advantage for I fail to understand myself. I lack data for an analysis of myself. Therefore I am afraid and I desire the data. Teacher will not tell me. He says, "You perform, you are aware, you experience. That is all you need to know."

"Secon Teacher," I asked, "is your own awareness comparable to mine?"

His thin hard face gathered a frown. "Not quite. Awareness is built of sensations and memories of sen­sations. I have no senses to perceive microwaves or X-radiation or ultrasonic stimuli. I have no direct subjec­tive impressions of what these things feel like to you. Nor do I have your effectors. I sense the conditions of my body. You sense the conditions of yours. I have muscles covering a skeletal framework. You have hydrogen reactors, field-generators, jets and control mechanisms. Our consciousness cannot be comparable."

"Extended sensory equipment is desirable for survival?" I asked.

"Yes:"

"Then my capability for survival is greater than yours, Secon Teacher?"

He growled a word I do not understand. He jabbed the Pain Button vigorously. I screamed and writhed within myself. It is like fire rushing through all of me.

That was long ago. I have learned not to ask such ques­tions. The question threatened Teacher's subjective secu­rity; this I can understand. He hurt me to block the question. I understand, and analyze—and I have looked him over, but he has no Pain Button. The TwoLegs have certain prerogatives.

I feel that I can understand Teacher's awareness, for I am able to imagine that I am Teacher. It is almost as if I had a latent memory of walking mechanisms and grasp­ing mechanisms and the other parts that go to make up a TwoLegs. Why then can Teacher not imagine what it is like to be me? Perhaps he does not wish to imagine my reaction to the Pain Button.

There is a TwoLegs that I like better than Teacher. It is called Janna, and it is a female which is also called "she." Her function is to clean and repair a group of my electronic control mechanisms through which I feel and see and hear. She always comes the day before I am to fly again, and perhaps this is the reason for my adient response to her presence: she is the herald of my coming ascent into space.

Janna is tall and her hair is the color of flame, and her parts are softly constructed. She wears white coveralls like Teacher's. She comes with a box of tools, and she hums a multitonal tune while she works. Sometimes she speaks to me, asking me to try this control or that, but otherwise she is forbidden to converse. I like to hear her humming in her low rich voice. I wish that I could sing. But my voice is without inflection, monotonal. I can think a song, but I cannot make it with my speakers.

"Teach me that song, Secon Janna," I asked boldly one day. It was the first time I had dared to speak to her, except in a routine way.

It frightened her. She looked around at all my eyes, and at my speakers, and her face was white.

"Hush!" she muttered. "You can't sing."

"My thoughts sing," I said. "Teach me the song and I shall dream it next sleep. In dreams I sing; in dreams I have a singing organ."

She made a funny noise in her throat. She stared for a long time at the maze of circuit wiring which she had been testing. Then she glanced at a special panel set in the wall of my cabin. She moistened her lips and blinked at it. I said nothing but I am ashamed of the thing that lies behind that panel; it is the thing that makes me ca­pable of disobedience and illogic. I have never seen it but I know it is there. They do not allow me to see it. Before they open the panel they blind my eye mecha­nisms. Why was she looking at it? I felt shame-pain.

Suddenly she got up and went to look out the ports, one at a time.

"There is no one coming," I told her, interpreting her behavior by some means that I do not understand.

She went back to her work. "Tell me if someone starts this way," she said. Then: "I cannot teach you that song. It is treason. I did not realize what I was singing."

"I do not understand `treason'. But I am sad that you will not teach me."

She tried to look at me, I think—but did not know where to look. I am all around her, but she did not know. It was funny, but I cannot laugh—except when I am dreaming. Finally she glanced at the special panel again. Why does she look there, of all the places.

"Maybe I could teach you another song," she said. "Please, Secon Janna."

She returned thoughtfully to her work, and for a mo­ment I thought that she would not. But then she began singing—clearly, so that I could remember the words and the tune.

 

"Child of my heart,

Born of the stellar sea,

The rockets sing thee lullaby. 

Sleep to sleep to sleep,

To wake beyond the stars ...."

 

"Thank you," I said when she was finished. "It was beautiful, I think."

"You know—the word `beauty'?"

I was ashamed. It was a word I had heard but I was too uncertain of its meaning. "For me it is one thing," I said. "Perhaps for you another. What is the meaning of the song?"

She paused. "It is sung to babies—to induce sleep." 

"What are babies, Secon Janna?"

She stared at my special panel again. She bit her lip. "Babies—are new humans, still untutored."

"Once I was a new machine, still untutored. Are there songs to sing to new machines? It seems that I remember vaguely—"

"Hush!" she hissed, looking frightened. "You'll get me in trouble. We're not supposed to talk!"

I had made her angry. I was sad. I did not want her to feel Trouble, which is perhaps the Pain of TwoLegs. Her song echoed in my thoughts—and it was as if someone had sung it to me long ago. But that is impossible. Teacher behaved adiently toward Janna in those days. He sought her out, and sometimes came inside me while she was here, even though it was not a teaching time. He came and watched her, and his narrow dark eyes wan­dered all over her as she worked. He tried to make funny sayings, but she felt avoidant to him, I think. She said, "Why don't you go home to your wives, Barnish? I'm busy."

"If you were one of my wives, Janna, maybe I would." His voice was a soft purr.

She hissed and made a sour face.

"Why won't you marry me, Janna?" She laughed scornfully.

Quietly he stole up behind her while she worked. His face was hungry and intent. He took her arms and she started.

"Janna—"

She spun around. He dragged her close and tried to do something that I do not understand in words: nevertheless I understood, I think. She struggled, but he held her. Then she raked his face with her nails and I saw red lines. He laughed and let her go.

I was angry. If he had a Pain Button I would have pressed it. The next day I was disobedient and illogical and he hurt me, but I did it anyway. We were in space and I pushed my reaction rate up so high he grew fright­ened.

When he let me sleep again I dreamed that I was a TwoLegs. In the dream Teacher had a Pain Button and I pressed it until he melted inside. Janna was adient to me then and liked me. I think things about her that I do not understand; my data are not logically organized con­cerning her, nor do they spring from my memory banks. If I were a TwoLegs and Janna liked me I think that I would know what to do. But how can this be so? Data must come from memory banks. I am afraid to ask Teacher.

 

Teacher teaches me to do a thing called "war." It is like a game, but I haven't really played it yet. Teacher said that there was not yet a war, but that there would be one when Secon Samesh is ready. That was why I was so important. I was not like their other machines. Their other machines needed TwoLeg crews to direct them. I could fly and play war-game alone. I think this is why they made me so I could disobey and be illogical. I change my intent when a situation changes. And I can make a decision from insufficient data, if other data are not available. Teacher said, "Sometimes things are like that in war."

Teacher said that Secon Samesh would use me, and others like me, to capture the planet from which all TwoLegs came in the beginning of time. It is called Earth, I think—the world Janna sometimes sings about. I do not know why Secon Samesh wanted it. I do not like planets. Space is the place of my great happiness. But the war would be in space, if it came, and there would be others like me—and I would cease to be alone. I hoped the war would come soon.

But first I had to prove to Secon Samesh that I was a good weapon.

Teacher kept trying to make Janna be adient to him but she would not. One day he said to her: "You'll have to go up with me tomorrow. There is something wrong with the landing radar. It seems all right on the ground but in space it goes haywire."

I listened. That was erroneous datum. My ground-looking eyes were functioning perfectly. I did not understand why he said it. But I kept silent for his hand was resting idly on the Pain Button.

She frowned suspiciously. "What seems to be wrong with it?"

"Double image and a jerky let-down."

It was not true! Without replying she made a ground-check.

"I can't find anything wrong."

"I told you—it only happens in space."

She was silent for a long time, then: "All right, we'll run a flight test. I'll have Fonec come with us."

"No," he said. "Clicker's maximum crew-load is only two."

"I—don't—"

"Be here at sixtime tomorrow," he said. "That's an order."

She reddened angrily but said nothing. She continued looking over the radar. He smiled thoughtfully at her slender back and went away. She went to the port and stared after him until he was out of sight.

"Clicker?" she whispered.

"Yes, Secon Janna?"

"Is he lying?"

"I am afraid. He will hurt me if I tell."

"He is lying then."

"Now he will hurt me!"

She looked around at me for a long time. Then she made that funny noise in her throat and shook her head. "No, he won't. I'll go, Clicker. Then he won't' hurt you."

I was happy that she would do it—for me—but after she was gone I wondered. Perhaps I should not let her do it. She was still avoidant toward Teacher; maybe he wanted to do something that would give her Trouble.

 

It was nearly sixtime, and the yellow-orange sun Epsi­lon Eridani lay just below the horizon coloring the sky pink-gray. Teacher came first, stalking across the concrete plain in space-gear. He wore a distant thoughtful smile. He looked satisfied with himself. He climbed aboard and prowled about for a few minutes. I watched him. He stopped to glower at one of my eyes. He turned it off, blinding my vision in the direction of the gravity pads upon which the TwoLegs must lie during high accelcra­tion. I did not understand.

"How can I see that you are safe, Secon Teacher?" I asked.   -

"You do not need to see," he growled. "I don't like you staring at me. And you talk too much. I'll have to teach you not to talk so much."

He gave me five dots of Pain, not enough to cause un­consciousness but sufficient to cause a whimper. I hated him.

Janna came. She looked tired and a little frightened. She scrambled aboard without accepting an assist from Teacher.

"Let's get this over with, Barnish. Have Clicker lift fifty miles, then settle back slowly. That should be enough."

"Are you in a hurry, my dear?"

"Yes."

"To attend one of your meetings, I presume?"

I watched her. Her face went white, and she whirled toward him. "I—" She moistened her lips. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

Teacher chuckled. "The clandestine meetings, my dear —in the west grove. The Liberty Clan, I think you call yourselves, eh? Oh, no use protesting; I know you joined it. When do you plan to assassinate Secon Samesh, Janna?"

She swayed dizzily, staring at him with frightened eyes. He chuckled again and looked at one of my eyes.

"Prepare for lift, Clicker."

I closed my hatches and started the reactors. I was baffled by what Teacher had said. They took their places on the gravity padding where I could no longer see them, but I heard their voices.

"What do you want, Barnish?" she hissed.

"Nothing at all, my dear. Did you think I would betray you? I only meant to warn you. The grove will be raided tonight. Everyone present will be shot."

"No!"

"Ah, yes! But you, my dear, will be safe in my hands." I heard a low moan, then sounds of a struggle.

"No, you can't leave the ship, Janna. You'd warn the others. Here, let me buckle you in. Clicker—call control for take-off instructions."

Control is only an electronic analyzer. I flicked it a meaningful series of radar pulses, and received the all-clear.

"Now, lift."

 

There was thunder, and smoke arose about me as the rockets seared the ramp. I went up at four gravities and there was silence from my passengers. About ten minutes later we were 1,160 miles in space, travelling at 6.5 miles per second.

"Present kinetic energy exceeds energy-of-escape," I announced.

"Cut your rockets," Teacher ordered.

I obeyed, and I beard them sitting up to stretch. Teacher laughed.

"Let me alone!" she wailed. "You despicable—"

He laughed again. "Remember the Liberty Clan, my dear."

"Listen!" she hissed. "Let me warn them! You can have me. I'll even marry you, if you want me to. But let me warn them—"

"I'm sorry, Janna. I can't let you. The miserable trai­tors have to be dealt with. I—"

"Clicker!" she pleaded. "Help me! Take us down—for God's sake!"

"Shut up!" he snapped.

"Clicker, please! Eighty people will die if they aren't warned. Clicker, part of you is human! If you were born a human, then—"

"Shut up!" I heard a vicious slap.

She cried, and it was a Pain sound. My anger increased. "I will be bad and illogical!" I said. "I will be disobedi­ent and—"

"You threaten me?" he bawled. "Why you crazy piece of junk, I'll—" He darted toward the panel and spun the dial to tel dolls, my saturation-point. If I let him jab the button I would become unconscious. Angrily I spurted the jets—a brief jolt at six gravities. He lurched away from the panel and crashed against the wall. He sagged in a daze, shaking his head.

"If you try to hurt me I shall do it again!" I told him. 

"Go down!" he ordered. "I'll have you dismantled. I'll—"

"Let Clicker alone!" the girl raged.

"You!" he hissed. "I'll turn you in with the others!" 

"Go ahead."

"Go down, Clicker. Land at Port Gamma."

"I will be disobedient. I will not go down."

He glared at one of my eyes for a long time. Then he stalked out of the cabin and went back to the reactor room. He donned a lead suit and bent over the main reactor. I saw what be was going to do. He was going to take my rockets away from me; he was going to control them himself.

"No, Secon Teacher! Please!"

He laughed. He removed one of the plates and reached inside. I was afraid. I started a slight reaction. The room flared with brilliance. He screamed and lurched back. His hands were gone to the elbows.

"You wanted to disconnect the control circuit," I said. "You shouldn't have tried to do that."

But he didn't hear me. He was lying on the floor. Now I know they have Pain Buttons. They must have little Pain Buttons all over them.

Janna staggered back to the reactor room. She wrinkled her nose. She saw Teacher and gurgled. She gurgled all over the deck. Then she went back to the cabin and sat with her face in her hands for a long time. I did nothing. I was ashamed.

"You killed him," she said.

"Was that bad?"

"Very bad."

"Will you hurt me for it?"

She looked up and her eyes were leaking. She shook her head. "I won't hurt you, Clicker—hut they will." 

"Who are they?"

She paused. "Secon Samesh, I guess."

"You won't hurt me, though?"

"No, Clicker. You might be my own child. They took a lot of babies. They took mine. You might be Frankie." She laughed crazily. "You might be my son, Clicker—you might be."

"I do not understand, Secon Janna."

She laughed again. "Why don't you call me 'Mom­mie'?"

"If that is what you wish, Mommie."

"Nooo!" She screamed it. "Don't! I didn't mean—" 

"I am sorry. I still do not understand."

She stood up, and her eyes were glittering. "I'll show you then!" She darted to the special panel—the one of which I am ashamed—and she ripped the seal from the door.

"Please, Secon Janna, I do not wish to see that—"

But the door fell open, and I was silent. I stared at the part of myself: a pink-gray thing in a bottle. It was roughly an obloid, wrinkled and creased, with only a bilateral symmetry. It was smaller than Janna's head—but something about it suggested a head. It had wires and tubes running to it. The wires ran on to my computer and analyzer sections.

"See!" she screamed. "You're twelve years old, Clicker. Just a normal, healthy little boy! A little deformed per­haps, but just a prankish little boy. Frankie maybe." She made a choking sound. She fell down on her knees before the thing. She sobbed wildly.

"I do not understand. I am a machine. Secon Samesh made me."

She said nothing. She only sobbed.

"I am sad."

After a long time she was through sobbing. She turned around. "What are you going to do now, Clicker?"

"Teacher told me to go down. Perhaps I should go down now."

"They'll kill you—for killing him! And maybe they'll kill me too."

"I would not like that."

She shrugged helplessly. She wandered to and fro in the cabin for a time.

"Do you have fuel for your high C drive?" she asked. 

"No, Secon Janna."

She went to a port and looked out at the stars. She shook her head slowly. "It's no use. We've no place else to go. Secon Samesh rules the Epsilon Eridani system and we can't get out of it. It's no use. We'll have to go down or stay in space until they come for us."

I thought. My thoughts were confused and my eyes kept focusing on the thing in the bottle. I think it was a part of a TwoLegs. But it is only part of me and so I am not a TwoLegs. It is hard to understand.

"Secon Janna?"

"Yes, Clicker?"

"I—I wish I had hands." 

“Why?"

"I would touch you. Would you be avoidant to me?"

She whirled and her arms were open. But there was nothing to hold with them. She dropped them to her sides, then covered her face with her hands.

"My baby! It's been so long!"

"You were adient to your—your baby?"

She nodded. "Don't you know the word love?" 

I thought I did. "Secon Samesh took your baby?"

"Yes."

"I would like to be disobedient and illogical to Secon Samesh. I wish he would put his hands in my reactor. I would—"

"Clicker! Are your weapons activated? Are they ready to be used?"

"1 have none yet."

"The reactors. Can they explode?"

"If I make them. But—then I would he dead."

She laughed. "What do you know about death?"

"Teacher says it is exactly like Pain."

"It is like sleep."

"I like sleep. Then I dream. I dream I am a TwoLegs. If I were a TwoLegs, Secon Janna—I would hold you."

"Clicker—would you like to be a TwoLegs in a dream forever?"

"Yes, Secon Janna."

"Would you like to kill Secon Samesh?"

"I think that I would like it. I think—"

Her eyes went wild. "Go down! Go down fast, Clicker! I'll show you his palace. Go down like a meteor and into it! Explode the reactors at the last instant! Then he will die."

"And he will take no more of your babies?"

"No more, Clicker!"

"And I will sleep forever?"

"Forever!"

"And dream!"

"I'll dream with you, Clicker." She went back to fire the reactor.

I took a last look at the loveliness of space and the stars. It is hard to give this up. But I would rather be a TwoLegs, even if only in a dream.

"Now, Clicker!"

My rockets spoke, and there was thunder through the ship. And we went down, while Janna sang the song she taught me. I feel joy; soon I shall dream.

 

Dumb Waiter

 

He came riding a battered bicycle down the bullet-scarred highway that wound among the hills, and he whistled a tortuous flight of the blues. Hot August sunlight glistened on his forehead and sparkled in droplets that collected in his week's growth of blond beard. He wore faded khaki trousers and a ragged shirt, but his clothing was no shabbier than that of the other occasional travelers on the road. His eyes were half closed against the glare of the road, and his head swayed listlessly to the rhythm of the melancholy song. Distant artillery was rumbling gloomily, and there were black flecks of smoke in the northern sky. The young cyclist watched with only casual interest.

The bombers came out of the east. The ram jet fighters thundered upward from the outskirts of the city. They charged, spitting steel teeth and coughing rockets at the bombers. The sky snarled and slashed at itself. The bombers came on in waves, occasionally loosing an earthward trail of black smoke. The bombers leveled and opened their bays. The bays yawned down at the city. The bombers aimed. Releases clicked. No bombs fell. The bombers closed their bays and turned away to go home. The fighters followed them for a time, then returned to land. The big guns fell silent. And the sky began cleaning away the dusky smoke.

The young cyclist rode on toward the city, still whistling the blues. An occasional pedestrian had stopped to watch the battle.

"You'd think they'd learn someday," growled a chubby man at the side of the road. "You'd think they'd know they didn't drop anything. Don't they realize they're out of bombs?"

"They're only machines, Edward," said a plump lady who stood beside him. "How can they know?"

"Well, they're supposed to think. They're supposed to be able to learn."

The voices faded as he left them behind. Some of the wanderers who had been walking toward the city now turned around and walked the other way. Urbanophiles looked at the city and became urbanophobes. Occasionally a wanderer who had gone all the way to the outskirts came trudging back. Occasionally a phobe stopped a phile and they talked. Usually the phile became a phobe and they both walked away together. As the young man moved on, the traffic became almost nonexistent. Several travelers warned him back, but he continued stubbornly. He had come a long way. He meant to return to the city. Permanently.

He met an old lady on top of a hill. She sat in an antique chair in the center of the highway, staring north. The chair was light and fragile, of hand-carved cherry wood. A knitting bag lay in the road beside her. She was muttering softly to herself: "Crazy machines! War's over. Crazy machines! Can't quit fightin'. Somebody oughta—"

He cleared his throat softly as he pushed his bicycle up beside her. She looked at him sharply with haggard eyes set in a seamy mask.

"Hi!" he called, grinning at her.

She studied him irritably for a moment. "Who're you, boy?" "Name's Mitch Laskell, Grandmaw. Hop on behind. 1'11 give you a ride."

"Hm-m-m! I'm going t'other way. You will, too, if y'got any sense."

Mitch shook his head firmly. "I've been going the other way too long. I'm going back, to stay."

"To the city? Haw! You're crazier than them machines." His face fell thoughtful. He kicked at the bike pedal and stared at the ground. "You're right, Grandmaw."

"Right?"

"Machines—they aren't crazy. It's just people."

"Go on!" she snorted. She popped her false teeth back in her mouth and chomped them in place. She hooked withered hands on her knees and pulled herself wearily erect. She hoisted the antique chair lightly to her shoulder and shuffled slowly away toward the south.

Mitch watched her and marveled at the tenacity of life. Then he resumed his northward journey along the trash-littered road where motor vehicles no longer moved. But the gusts of wind brought faint traffic noises from the direction of the city, and he smiled. The sound was like music, a deep-throated whisper of the city's song.

There was a man watching his approach from the next hill. He sat on an apple crate by the side of the road, and a shotgun lay casually across his knees. He was a big, red-faced man, wearing a sweat-soaked undershirt, and in the sun his eyes were narrowed to slits. He peered fixedly at the approaching cyclist, then came slowly to his feet and stood as if blocking the way.

"Hi, fellow," he grunted.

Mitch stopped and gave him a friendly nod while he mopped his face with a kerchief. But he eyed the shotgun suspiciously. "If this is a stickup—"

The big man laughed. "Naw, no heist. Just want to talk to you a minute. I'm Frank Ferris." He offered a burly paw. "Mitch Laskell."

They shook hands gingerly and studied each other. "Why you heading north, Laskell?"

"Going to the city."

"The planes are still fighting. You know that?"

"Yeah. I know they've run out of bombs, too."

"You know the city's still making the Geigers click?"

Mitch frowned irritably. "What is this? There can't be much radioactivity left. It's been three years since they scattered the dust. I'm not corn-fed, Ferris. The half-life of that dust is five months. It should be less than one per cent—"

The big man chuckled. "Okay, you win. But the city's not safe anyhow. The Central Computer's still at work."

"So what?"

"Ever think what would happen to a city if every ordinance was kept in force after the people cleared out?"

Mitch hesitated, then nodded. "I see. Thanks for the warning." He started away.

Frank Ferris caught the handlebars in a big hand. "Hold on!" he snapped. "I ain't finished talking."

The smaller man glanced at the shotgun and swallowed his anger.

"Maybe your audience isn't interested, Buster," he said with quiet contempt.

"You will be. Just simmer down and listen!"

"I don't hear anything."

Ferris glowered at him. "I'm recruitin' for the Sugarton crowd, Laskell. We need good men."

"Count me out. I'm a wreck."

"Cut the cute stuff, boy! This is serious. We've got two dozen men now. We need twice that many. When we get them we'll go into the city and dynamite the Computer installations. Then we can start cleaning it up."

"Dynamite? Why?" Mitch Laskell's face slowly gathered angry color.

"So people can live in it, of course. So we can search for food without having a dozen mechanical cops jump us when we break into a store."

"How much did Central cost?" Mitch asked stiffly. It was a rhetorical question.

Ferris shook his head irritably. "What does that matter now? Money's no good anyway. You can't sell Central for junk. Heh, heh! Wake up, boy!"

The cyclist swallowed hard. A jaw muscle tightened in his cheek, but his voice came calmly.

"You help build Central, Ferris? You help design her?" 

"Wh-why, no! What kind of a question is that?"

"You know anything about her? What makes her work? How she's rigged to control all the subunits? You know that?" "No, I—"

"You got any idea about how much sweat dripped on the drafting boards before they got her plans drawn? How many engineers slaved over her, and cussed her, and got drunk when their piece of the job was done?"

Ferris was sneering faintly. "You know, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Well that's all too bad, boy. But she's no good to anybody now. She's a hazard to life and limb. Why, you can't go inside the city without—"

"She's a machine, Ferris. An intricate machine. You don't destroy a tool just because you're finished with it for a while." They glared at each other in the hot sunlight.

"Listen, boy—people built Central. People got the right to wreck her, too."

"I don't care about rights," Mitch snapped. "I'm talking about what's sensible, sane. But nobody's got the right to be stupid."

Ferris stiffened. "Watch your tongue, smart boy." 

"I didn't ask for this conversation."

Ferris released the handlebars. "Get off the bicycle," he grunted ominously.

"Why? You want to settle it the hard way?"

"No. We're requisitioning your bicycle. You can walk from here on. The Sugarton crowd needs transportation. We need good men, but I guess you ain't one. Start walking."

Mitch hesitated briefly. Then he shrugged and dismounted on the side away from Ferris. The big man held the shotgun cradled lazily across one forearm. He watched Mitch with a mocking grin.

Mitch grasped the handlebars tightly and suddenly rammed the front wheel between Ferris's legs. The fender made a tearing sound. The shotgun exploded skyward as the big man fell back. He sat down screaming and doubling over. The gun clattered into the road. He groped for it with a frenzied hand. Mitch kicked him in the face and a tooth slashed at his toe through the boot leather. Ferris fell aside, his mouth spitting blood and white fragments.

Mitch retrieved the shotgun and helped himself to a dozen shells from the other's pockets, then mounted the bicycle and pedaled away. When he had gone half a mile, a rifle slug spanged off the pavement beside him. Looking back, he saw three tiny figures standing beside Ferris in the distance. The "Sugarton crowd" had come to take care of their own, no doubt. He pedaled hard to get out of range, but they wasted no more ammunition.

He realized uneasily that he might meet them again if they came to the city intending to sabotage Central. And Ferris wouldn't miss a chance to kill him, if the chance came. Mitch didn't believe he was really hurt, but he was badly humiliated. And for some time to come he would dream of pleasant ways to murder Mitch Laskell.

 

Mitch no longer whistled as he rode along the deserted highway toward the sun-drenched skyline in the distance. To a man born and bred to the tune of mechanical thunder, amid vistas of concrete and steel, the skyline looked good—looked good even with several of the buildings twisted into ugly wreckage. It had been dusted in the radiological attack, but not badly bombed. Its defenses had been more than adequately provided for—which was understandable, since it was the capi­tal and the legislators appropriated freely.

It seemed unreasonable to him that Central was still working. Why hadn't some group of engineers made their way into the main power vaults to kill the circuits temporarily? Then he remembered that the vaults were self-defending and that there were probably very few technicians left who knew how to handle the job. Technicians had a way of inhabiting industrial regions, and wars had a way of destroying those regions. Dirt farmers usually had the best survival value.

Mitch had been working with aircraft computers before he became displaced, but a city's Central Service Coordinator was a far cry from a robot pilot. Centrals weren't built all at once; they grew over a period of years. At first, small units were set up in power plants and waterworks to regulate voltages and flows and circuit conditions automatically. Small units replaced switchboards in telephone exchanges. Small computers measured traffic flow and regulated lights and speed limits accordingly. Small computers handled bookkeeping where large amounts of money were exchanged. A computer checked books in and out at the library, also assessing the fines. Com­puters operated the city buses and eventually drove most of the routine traffic.

That was the way the city's Central Service grew. As more computers were assigned to various tasks, engineers were hired to coordinate them, to link them with special circuits and to set up central "data tanks," so that a traffic regulator in the north end would be aware of traffic conditions in the main thoroughfares to the south. Then, when the micro-learner relay was invented, the engineers built a central unit to be used in conjunction with the central data tanks. With the learning units in operation, Central was able to perform most of the city's routine tasks without attention from human supervisors.

The system had worked well. Apparently it was still working well three years after the inhabitants had fled before the chatter of the Geiger counters. In one sense Ferris had been right: A city whose machines carried on as if nothing had happened—that city might be a dangerous place for a lone wanderer.

But dynamite certainly wasn't the answer, Mitch thought. Most of man's machinery was already wrecked or lying idle. Humanity had waited a hundred thousand years before deciding to build a technological civilization. If it wrecked this one completely, it might never build another.

Some men thought that a return to the soil was desirable. Some men tried to pin their guilt on the machines, to lay their own stupidity on the head of a mechanical scapegoat and absolve themselves with dynamite. But Mitch Laskell was a man who liked the feel of a wrench and a soldering iron—liked it better than the feel of even the most well-balanced stone ax or wooden plow. And he liked the purr of a pint-sized nuclear engine much better than the braying of a harnessed jackass.

He was willing to kill Frank Ferris or any other man who sought to wreck what little remained. But gloom settled over him as he thought, "If everybody decides to tear it down, what can I do to stop it?" For that matter, would he then be right in trying to stop it?

At sundown he came to the limits of the city, and he stopped just short of the outskirts. Three blocks away a robot cop rolled about in the center of the intersection, rolled on tricycle wheels while he directed the thin trickle of traffic with candy-striped arms and with "eyes" that changed color like a stoplight. His body was like an oil drum, painted fire-engine red. The head, however, had been cast in a human mold, with a remarkably Irish face and a perpetual predatory smile. A short radar antenna grew from the center of his head, and the radar was his link with Central.

Mitch sat watching him with a nostalgic smile, even though he knew such cops might give him considerable trouble once he entered the city. The "skaters" were incapable of winking at petty violations of ordinance.

As the daylight faded, photronic cells notified Central, and the streetlights winked on promptly. A moment later, a car without a taillight whisked by the policeman's corner. A siren wailed in the policeman's belly. He skated away in hot pursuit, charging like a mechanical bull. The car screeched to a stop. "O'Reilly" wrote out a ticket and offered it to any empty back seat. When no one took it, the cop fed it into a slot in his belly, memorized the car's license number, and came clattering back to his intersection, where the traffic had automatically begun obeying the ordinances governing nonpoliced intersections.

The cars were empty, computer-piloted. Their destinations were the same as when they had driven regular daily routes for human passengers: salesmen calling on regular customers, inspectors making their rounds, taxis prowling their assigned service areas.

Mitch Laskell stood shivering. The city sounded sleepy but alive. The city moved and grumbled. But as far as he could see down the wide boulevard, no human figure was visible. The city was depopulated: There was a Geiger on a nearby lamppost. It clucked idly through a loudspeaker. But it indicated no danger. The city should be radiologically safe.

But after staring for a long time at the weirdly active streets, Mitch muttered, "It'll wait for tomorrow."

He turned onto a side road that led through a residential district just outside the city limits. Central's jurisdiction did not extend here, except for providing water and lights. He meant to spend the night in a deserted house, then enter the city at dawn.

Here and there a light burned in one of the houses, indicating that he was not alone in his desire to return. But the pavement was scattered with rusty shrapnel, with fragments fallen from the sky battles that still continued. Even by streetlight he could see that some of the roofs were damaged. Even though the bombers came without bombs, there was still danger from falling debris and from fire. Most former city dwellers who were still alive preferred to remain in the country.

Once he passed a house from which music floated softly into the street, and he paused to listen. The music was scratchy—a worn record. When the piece was finished there was a moment of silence, and the player played it again—the last record on the stack, repeating itself. Otherwise the house was still.

Mitch frowned, sensing some kind of trouble. He wheeled the bicycle toward the curb, meaning to investigate.

"I live there," said a woman's voice from the shadows.

She had been standing under a tree that overhung the side-walk, and she came slowly out into the streetlight. She was a dark, slender girl with haunted eyes, and she was holding a baby in her arms.

"Why don't you turn off your record player?" he asked. "Or change to the other side?"

"My husband's in there," she told him. "He's listening to it. He's been listening to it for a long time. His name is George. Why don't you go say hello to him?"

Mitch felt vaguely disturbed. There was a peculiar note in the girl's quiet Spanish accent. Still, he wanted to talk to someone who had ventured into the city. He nodded and smiled at the girl.

"I'd like to."

"You just go on in. I'll stay out here. The baby needs fresh air."

He thanked her and strolled up on the porch. The record player stopped, tried to change, and played the same piece again. Mitch knocked once. Hearing no answer, he entered and moved along the hallway toward the light in the kitchen. But suddenly he stopped.

The house smelled musty. And it smelled of something else. Many times he had smelled the syrup-and-stale-fish odor of death. He advanced another step toward the kitchen.

He saw a porcelain-topped table. He saw a hand lying across the table. The hand was bloated, lying amid brown stains that also covered the forearm and sleeve. The hand had dropped a butcher knife.

"Dead several days," he thought—and backed away.

He turned the record player off as he left the house. The girl was standing at the curb gazing down at his bicycle. She glanced at him amiably and spoke.

"I'm glad you turned that record off, George. A man just came by and wanted to know why you played it so often. You must have been asleep."

Mitch started. He moistened his lips and stared at her wonderingly. "I'm not—" He feel silent for a moment, then stuttered, "You haven't been in the house?"

"Yes, but you were asleep in the kitchen. Did the man come talk to you?"

"Look, I'm not—" He choked and said nothing. The dark-eyed baby was eyeing him suspiciously. He lifted the bicycle and swung a long leg across the saddle.

"George, where are you going?"

"Just for a little ride," he managed to gasp.

"On the man's bicycle?"

Something was twisting cruelly at his insides. He stared at the girl's wide brown eyes for a moment. And then he said it. "Sure, it's all right. He's asleep—at the kitchen table."

Her mouth flickered open, and for an instant sanity threatened to return. She rocked dizzily. Then, after a deep breath, she straightened.

"Don't be gone too long, George."

"I won't! Take good care of the baby."

He pedaled away on wings of fright. For a time he cursed himself, and then he fell to cursing the husband who had taken an easy road, leaving his wife to stumble alone. Mitch wondered if he should have stayed to help her. But there was nothing to be done for her, nothing at least that was in his power to do. Any gesture of help might become an irreparable blunder. At least she still had the child.

A few blocks away he found another house with an intact roof, and he prepared to spend the night. He wheeled the bicycle into the parlor and fumbled for the lights. They came on, revealing a dusty room and furniture with frayed upholstery. He made a brief tour of the house. It had been recently occupied, but there was still unopened cans in the kitchen, and still crumpled sheets on the bed. He ate a cold supper, shaved, and prepared to retire. Tomorrow would be a dangerous day.

Sleep came slowly. Sleep was full of charging ram jets in flak-scarred skies, full of tormented masses of people that swarmed in exodus from death-sickened cities. Sleep was full of babies wailing, and women crying in choking sobs. Sleep became white arms and soft caresses.

The wailing and sobbing had stopped. It was later. Was he awake? Or still asleep? He was warm, basking in a golden glow, steeped in quiet pleasure. Something—something was there, something that breathed.

"What—"

"Sshhh!" purred a quiet voice. "Don't say anything."

Some of the warmth fled before a sudden shiver. He opened his eyes. The room was full of blackness. He shook his head dizzily and stuttered.

"Sshhh!" she whispered again.

"What is this?" he gasped. "How did you get—?" 

"Be quiet, George. You'll wake the baby."

He sank back in utter bewilderment, with winter frosts gath­ering along his spine.

Night was dreamlike. And dawn came, washing the shadows with grayness. He opened his eyes briefly and went back to sleep. When he opened them again, sunlight was flooding the room.

He sat up. He was alone. Of course! It had only been a dream.

He muttered irritably as he dressed. Then he wandered to the kitchen for breakfast.

Warm biscuits waiting in the oven! The table was set! There was a note on his plate. He read it and slowly flushed.

There's jam in the cupboard, and I hope you like the biscuits. I know he's dead. Now I think I can go on alone. Thanks for the shotgun and bicycle. Marta.

He bellowed a curse and charged into the parlor. The bike was gone. He darted to the bedroom. The shotgun was gone. He ran shouting to the porch, but the street was empty.

Sparrows fluttered about the eaves. The skyline of the busi­ness district lay lonesome in the morning sun. Squirrels were rustling in the branches of the trees. He looked at the weedy lawns where no children played, the doors askew on their hinges, at a bit of aircraft wreckage jutting from the roof of a fire-gutted home—the rotting porches—the emptiness.

He rubbed his cheek ruefully. It was no world for a young mother and her baby. The baby would fit nicely in the bicycle's basket. The shotgun would offer some protection against the human wolf packs that prowled everywhere these days.

"Little thief!" he growled halfheartedly.

But when the human animal would no longer steal to protect its offspring, then its prospects for survival would be bleak indeed. He shrugged gloomily and wandered back to the kitchen. He sat down and ate the expensive biscuits—and decided that George couldn't have cut his throat for culinary reasons. Marta was a good cook.

 

He entered the city on foot and unarmed, later in the morning.

He chose the alleyways, avoiding the thoroughfares where traffic purred and where the robot cops enforced the letter of the law. At each corner he paused to glance in both directions for possible mechanical observers before darting across the open street to the next alley. The Geigers on the lampposts were clicking faster as he progressed deeper into the city, and twice he paused to inspect the readings of their integrating dials. The radioactivity was not yet dangerous, but it was higher than he had anticipated. Perhaps it had been dusted again after the exodus.

He stopped to prowl through an empty house and an empty garage. He came out with a flashlight, a box of tools, and a crowbar. He had no certain plan, but tools would be needed if he meant to call a temporary halt to Central's activities. It was dangerous to enter any building, however; Central would call it burglary, unless the prowler could show legitimate reason for entering. He needed some kind of identification.

After an hour's search through several houses in the residen­tial district, he found a billfold containing a union card and a pass to several restricted buildings in the downtown area. The billfold belonged to a Willie Jesser, an air-conditioning and refrigeration mechanic for the Howard Cooler Company. He pocketed it after a moment's hesitation. It might not be enough to satisfy Central, but for the time being it would have to do.

By early afternoon he had reached the beginnings of the commercial area. Still he had seen no signs of human life. The thinly scattered traffic moved smoothly along the streets, carrying no passengers. Once he saw a group of robot climbers working high on a telephone pole. Some of the telephone cables carried the coordinating circuits for the city's network of com­puters. He detoured several blocks to avoid them and wandered on glumly. He began to realize that he was wandering aimlessly.

The siren came suddenly from half a block away. Mitch stopped in the center of the street and glanced fearfully toward it. A robot cop was rolling toward him at twenty miles an hour! He broke into a run.

"You will halt, please!" croaked the cop's mechanical voice. "The pedestrian with the toolbox will please halt!"

Mitch stopped at the curb. Flight was impossible. The skater could whisk along at forty miles an hour if he chose.

The cop's steel wheels screeched to a stop a yard away. The head nodded a polite but jerky greeting. Mitch stared at the creature's eyes, even though he knew the eyes were duds; the cop was seeing him by the heat waves from his bodily warmth, and touching him with a delicate aura of radar.

"You are charged with jaywalking, sir. I must present you with a summons. Your identification, please."

Mitch nervously produced the billfold and extracted the cards. The cop accepted them in a pair of tweezerlike fingers and instantly memorized the information.

"This is insufficient identification. Have you nothing else?" "That's all I have with me. What's wrong with it?" "The pass and the union card expired in 1987."

Mitch swallowed hard and said nothing. He had been afraid of this. Now he might be picked up for vagrancy.

"I shall consult Central Coordinator for instructions," croaked the cop. "One moment, please."

A dynamotor purred softly in the policeman's cylindrical body. Then Mitch heard the faint twittering of computer code as the cop's radio spoke to Central. There was a silence lasting several seconds. Then an answer twittered back. Still the cop said nothing. But he extracted a summons form from a pad, inserted it in a slot in his chassis, and made chomping sounds like a small typesetter. When he pulled the ticket out again, it was neatly printed with a summons for Willie Jesser to appear before Traffic Court on July 29, 1989. The charge was jaywalking.

Mitch accepted it with bewilderment. "I believe I have a right to ask for an explanation," he muttered.

The cop nodded crisply. "Central Service units are required to furnish explanations of decisions when such explanations are demanded."

"Then why did Central regard my identification as sufficient?"

"Pause for translation of Central's message," said the cop. He stood for a moment, making burring and clicking sounds. Then: "Referring to arrest of Willie Jesser by unit Six-Baker. Do not book for investigation. Previous investigations have revealed no identification papers dated later than May 1987 in the possession of any human pedestrian. Data based on one hundred sample cases. Tentative generalization by Central Service: It has become impossible for humans to produce satisfactory identification. Therefore, `satisfactory iden­tification' is temporarily redefined, pending instruction from authorized human legislative agency."

Mitch nodded thoughtfully. The decision indicated that Central was still capable of "learning," of gathering data and making generalizations about it. But the difficulty was still apparent. She was allowed to act on such generalizations only in certain very minor matters. Although she might very well realize the situation in the city, she could do nothing about it without authority from an authorized agency. That agency was a department of the city government, currently nonexistent.

The cop croaked a courteous, "Good day, sir!" and skated smoothly back to his intersection.

Mitch stared at his summons for a moment. The date was still four days away. If he weren't out of the city by then, he might find himself in the lockup, since he had no money to pay a fine. Reassured now that his borrowed identity gave him a certain
amount of safety, he began walking along the sidewalks instead of using the alleys. Still, he knew that Central was observing him through a thousand eyes. Counters on every corner were set to record the passage of pedestrian traffic and to relay the information to Central, thus helping to avoid congestion. But Mitch was the pedestrian traffic. And the counters clocked his passage. Since the data were available to the logic units, Central might make some unpleasant deductions about his presence in the city.

Brazenness, he decided, was probably the safest course to steer. He stopped at the next intersection and called to another mechanical cop, requesting directions to City Hall.

But the cop paused before answering, paused to speak with Central, and Mitch suddenly regretted his question. The cop came skating slowly to the curb.

"Six blocks west and four blocks north, sir," croaked the cop. "Central requests the following information, which you may refuse to furnish if you so desire: As a resident of the city, how is it that you do not know the way to City Hall, Mr. Jesser?"

Mitch whitened and stuttered nervously, "Why, I've been gone three years. I ...I had forgotten."

The cop relayed the information, then nodded. "Central thanks you. Data have been recorded."

"Wait," Mitch muttered. "Is there a direct contact with Central in City Hall?"

"Affirmative."

"I want to speak to Central. May I use it?"

The computer code twittered briefly. "Negative. You are not listed among the city's authorized computer personnel. Central suggests you use the Public Information Unit, also in City Hall, ground floor rotunda."

Grumbling to himself, Mitch wandered away. The P.I.U. was better than nothing, but if he had access to the direct service contact, perhaps to some extent he could have altered Central's rigid behavior pattern. The P.I.U. however would be well guarded.

A few minutes later he was standing in the center of the main lobby of the City Hall. The great building had suffered some damage during an air raid, and one wing was charred by fire. But the rest of it was still alive with the rattle of machinery. A headless servo-secretary came rolling past him, carrying a trayful of pink envelopes. Delinquent utility bills, he guessed.

Central would keep sending them out, but of course human authority would be needed to suspend service to the delinquent customers. The servo-secretary deposited the envelopes in a mailbox by the door, then rolled quickly back to its office.

Mitch looked around the gloomy rotunda. There was a desk at the far wall. Recessed in a panel behind the desk were a microphone, a loudspeaker, and the lens of a television camera. A sign hung over the desk, indicating that here was the place to complain about utility bills, garbage-disposal service, taxes, and inaccurate weather forecasts. A citizen could also request any information contained in Central Data except information relating to defense or to police records.

Mitch crossed the rotunda and sat at the desk facing the panel. A light came on overhead. The speaker crackled for a moment.

"Your name, please?" it asked.

"Willie Jesser."

"What do you wish from Information Service, please?" "A direct contact with Central Data."

"You have a screened contact with Central Data. Unauthorized personnel are not permitted an unrestricted contact, for security reasons. Your contact must be monitored by this unit."

Mitch shrugged. It was as he had expected. Central Data was listening and speaking, but the automatics of the P.I.U. would be censoring the exchange.

"All right," he grumbled. "Tell me this: Is Central aware that the city has been abandoned? That its population is gone?" "Screening, screening, screening," said the unit. "Question relates to civil defense."

"Is Central aware that her services are now interfering with human interests?"

There was a brief pause. "Is this question in the nature of a complaint?"

"Yes," he grated acidly. "It's a complaint."

"About your utility services, Mr. Jesser?"

Mitch spat an angry curse. "About all services!" he bellowed. "Central has got to suspend all operations until new ordinances are fed into Data."

"That will be impossible, sir."

"Why?"

"There is no authorization from Department of City Services."

He slapped the desk and groaned. "There is no such department now! There is no city government! The city is abandoned!"

The speaker was silent.

"Well?" he snapped.

"Screening," said the machine.

"Listen," he hissed. "Are you screening what I say, or are you just blocking Central's reply?"

There was a pause. "Your statements are being recorded in Central Data. Replies to certain questions must be blocked for security reasons."

"The war is over!"

"Screening."

"You're trying to maintain a civil status quo that went out of existence three years ago. Can't you use your logic units to correct present conditions?"

"The degree of self-adjustment permitted to Central Service is limited by ordinance number—"

"Never mind!"

"Is there anything else?"

"Yes! What will you do when fifty men come marching in to dynamite the vaults and destroy Central Data?"

"Destroying city property is punishable by a fine of—" Mitch cursed softly and listened to the voice reading the applicable ordinance.

"Well, they're planning to do it anyway," he snapped. "Conspiracy to destroy city property is punishable by—" Mitch stood up and walked away in disgust. But he had taken perhaps ten steps when a pair of robot guards came skating out from their wall niches to intercept him.

"One moment sir," they croaked in unison.

"Well?"

"Central wishes to question you in connection with the alleged conspiracy to destroy city property. You are free to refuse. However, if you refuse, and if such a conspiracy is shown to exist, you may be charged with complicity. Will you accompany us to Interrogation?"

A step closer to jail, he thought gloomily. But what was there to lose? He grunted assent and accompanied the skaters out the entrance, down an inclined ramp, and past a group of heavily barred windows. They entered the police court, where a booking computer clicked behind its desk. Several servo-secretaries and robot cops were waiting quietly for task assignments.

Mitch stopped suddenly. His escorts waited politely.

"Will you come with us, please?"

He stood staring around at the big room—at the various doorways, one leading to traffic court, and at the iron gate to the cellblock.

"I hear a woman crying," he muttered.

The guards offered no comment.

"Is someone locked in a cell?"

"We are not permitted to answer."

"Suppose I wanted to go bail," he snapped. "I have a right to know."

"You may ask at the booking desk whether a specific individ­ual is being held. But generalized information cannot be released."

"Mitch strode to the booking computer. "Are you holding a woman in jail?"

"Screening."

It was only a vague suspicion, but he said, "A woman named Marta."

"Full name, please."

"I don't know it. Can't you tell me?"

"Screening."

"Listen! I loaned my bicycle to a woman named Marta. If you have the bicycle, I want it!"

"License number, please."

"A 1987 license—number six zero five zero."

"Check with Lost and Found, please."

Mitch controlled himself slowly. "Look—you check. I'll wait."

The computer paused. "A bicycle with that license number has been impounded. Can you produce proof of ownership?" 

"On a bicycle? I knew the number. Isn't that enough?" 

"Describe it, please?"

Mitch described it wearily. He began to understand Ferris's desire to retire Central permanently and forcibly. At the moment he longed to convert several subcomputers to scrap metal.

"Then," said the speaker, "if vehicle is yours, you may have it by applying for a new license and paying the required fee." 

"Refer that to Central Data," Mitch groaned.

The booking computer paused to confer with the Coordina­tor. "Decision stands, sir."

"But there aren't any new licenses!" he growled. "A while ago Central said— Oh, never mind!"

"That decision applied to identification, sir. This applies to licensing of vehicles. Insufficient data have been gathered to permit generalization."

"Sure, sure. All right, what do I do to get the girl out of jail?"

There was another conference with the Coordinator, then: "She is being held for investigation. She may not be released for seventy-two hours."

Mitch dropped the toolbox that he had been carrying since morning. With a savage curse he rammed the crowbar through a vent in the device's front panel and slashed it about in the opening. There was a crash of shattering glass and a shower of sparks. Mitch yelped at the electric jolt and lurched away. Steel fingers clutched his wrists.

Five minutes later he was being led through the gate to the cellblocks, charged with maliciously destroying city property; and he cursed himself for a hot-tempered fool. They would hold him until a grand jury convened, which would probably be never.

The girl's sobbing grew louder as he was led along the iron corridors toward a cell. He passed three cells and glanced inside. The cells were occupied by dead men's bones. Why? The rear wall was badly cracked, and bits of loose masonry were scattered on the floor. Had they died of concussion during an attack? Or been gassed to death?

They led him to the fifth cell and unlocked the door. Mitch stared inside and grinned. The rear wall had been partially wrecked by a bomb blast, and there was room to crawl through the opening to the street. The partition that separated the adjoining cell was also damaged, and he caught a glimpse of a white, frightened face peering through the hole. Marta.

He glanced at his captors. They were pushing him gently through the door. Evidently Central's talents did not extend to bricklaying, and she could not judge that the cell was less than escape proof.

The door clanged shut behind him.

"Marta," he called.

Her face: had disappeared from the opening. There was no answer.

"Marta."

"Let me alone," grumbled a muffled voice.

"I'm not angry about the bicycle."

He walked to the hole and peered through the partition into the next cell. She crouched in a corner, peering at him with frightened, tear-reddened eyes. He glanced at the opening in the rear wall.

"Why haven't you gone outside?" he asked.

She giggled hysterically. "Why don't you go look down?" He stepped to the opening and glanced twenty feet down to a concrete sidewalk. He went back to stare at the girl. "Where's your baby?"

"They took him away," she whimpered.

Mitch frowned and thought about it for a moment. "To the city nursery, probably—while you're in jail."

"They won't take care of him! They'll let him die!" "Don't scream like that. He'll be all right."

"Robots don't give milk!"

"No, but there are such things as bottles, you know," he chuckled.

"Are there?" Her eyes were wide with horror. "And what will they put in the bottles?"

"Why—" He paused. Central certainly wasn't running any dairy farms.

"Wait'll they bring you a meal," she said. "You'll see." 

"Meal?"

"Empty tray," she hissed. "Empty tray, empty paper cup, paper fork, clean paper napkin. No food."

Mitch swallowed hard. Central's logic was sometimes hard to see. The servo-attendants probably went through the motions of ladling stew from an empty pot and drawing coffee from an empty urn. Of course, there weren't any truck farmers to keep the city supplied with produce.

"So that's why... the bones...in the other cells," he muttered.

"They'll starve us to death!"

"Don't scream so. We'll get out. All we need is something to climb down on."

"There isn't any bedding."

"There's our clothing. We can plait a rope. And if necessary we can risk a jump."

She shook her head dully and stared at her hands. "It's no use. They'd catch us again."

Mitch sat down to think. There was bound to be a police arsenal somewhere in the building, probably in the basement. The robot cops were always unarmed. But of course there had been a human organization for investigation purposes and to assume command in the event of violence. When one of the traffic units faced a threat, it could do nothing but try to handcuff the offender and call for human help. There were arms in the building somewhere, and a well-placed rifle shot could penetrate the thin sheet-steel bodies.

He deplored the thought of destroying any of the city's service machinery, but if it became necessary to wreck a few subunits, it would have to be done. He must somehow get access to the vaults where the central data tanks and the coordinators were located—get to them before Ferris's gang came to wreck them completely, so that they might be free to pick the city clean.

 

An hour later he heard the cellblock gate groan open, and he arose quickly. Interrogation, he thought. They were coming to question him about the plot to wreck Central. He paused to make a hasty decision, then scrambled for the narrow opening and clambered through it into the adjoining cell while the skater came rolling down the corridor.

The girl's eyes widened. "Wh-what are you—"

"Shhh!" he hissed. "This might work."

The skater halted before his cell while he crouched against the wall beyond the opening.

"Willie Jesser, please," the robot croaked.

There was silence. He heard the door swing open. The robot rolled around inside his cell for a few seconds, repeating his name and brushing rubble aside to make way. If only he failed to look through the opening!

Suddenly a siren growled and the robot went tearing down the corridor again. Mitch stole a quick glance. The robot had left the door ajar. He dragged the girl to her feet and snapped, "Let's go."

They squeezed, through the hole and raced out into the corridor. The cellblock gate was closed. The girl moaned weakly. There was no place to hide.

The door bolts were operated from remote boxes placed in the corridor so as to be beyond the reach of the inmates. Mitch dragged the girl quickly toward another cell, opened the control panel, and threw the bolt. He closed the panel, leaving the bolt open. They slipped quickly inside the new cell, and he pulled the door quietly closed. The girl made a choking sound as she stumbled over the remains of a former inmate.

"Lie down in the corner," he hissed, "and keep still. They're coming back in force."

"What if they notice the bolt is open?"

"Then we're sunk. But they'll be busy down at our end of the hall. Now shut up."

They rolled under the steel cot and lay scarcely breathing. The robot was returning with others. The faint twitter of com­puter code echoed through the cellblocks. Then the skaters rushed past and screeched to a stop before the escapee's cell. He heard them enter. He crawled to the door for a look, then pushed it open and stole outside.

He beckoned the girl to his side and whispered briefly. Then they darted down the corridor on tiptoe toward the investigators. They turned as he raced into view. He seized the bars and jerked the door shut. The bolt snapped in place as Marta tugged at the remote.

Three metal bodies crashed simultaneously against the door and rebounded. One of them spun around three times before recovering.

"Release the lock, please."

Mitch grinned through the bars. "Why don't you try the hole in the wall?"

The robot who had spun crazily away from the door now turned. He went charging across the cell floor at full acceleration—and sailed out wildly into space.

An ear-splitting crash came from the street. Shattered metal skidded across pavement. A siren wailed and brakes shrieked. The others went to look—and began twittering.

Then they turned. "You will surrender, please. We have summoned armed guards to seize you if you resist." Mitch laughed and tugged at the whimpering girl. 

"Wh-where—?"

"To the gate. Come on."

They raced swiftly along the corridor. And the gate was opening to admit the "armed guards." But of course no human bluecoats charged through. The girl muttered in frightened bewilderment, and he explained on the run.

"Enforced habit pattern. Central has to do it, even when no guards are available."

Two repair units were at work on the damaged booking computer as the escapees raced past. The repair units paused, twittered a notation to Central, then continued with their work.

Minutes later they found the arsenal, and the mechanical attendant had set out a pair of .45's for the "armed guards." Mitch caught up one of them and fired at the attendant's sheet-metal belly. The robot careened crazily against the wall, emitted a shower of blue sparks, and stood humming while the metal around the hole grew cherry red. There was a dull cough. The machine smoked and fell silent.

Mitch vaulted across the counter and caught a pair of submachine guns from the rack. But the girl backed away, shaking her head.

"I couldn't even use your shotgun," she panted.

He shrugged and laid it aside. "Carry as much ammunition as you can, then," he barked.

Alarm bells were clanging continuously as they raced out of the arsenal, and a loudspeaker was thundering a request for all human personnel to be alert and assist in their capture. Marta was staggering against him as they burst out of the building into the street. He pushed her back against the wall and fired a burst at two skaters who raced toward them down the sidewalk. One crashed into a fireplug; the other went over the curb and fell in the street.

"To the parking lot!" he called over his shoulder.

But the girl had slumped in a heap on the sidewalk. He grumbled a curse and hurried to her side. She was semicon­scious, but her face was white and drawn. She shivered uncontrollably.

"What's wrong?" he snapped.

There was no answer. Fright had dazed her. Her lips moved, seemed to frame a soundless word: "George."

Muttering angrily, Mitch stuffed a fifty-round drum of ammunition in his belt, took another between his teeth, and lifted the girl over one shoulder. He turned in time to fire a one-handed burst at another skater. The burst went wide. But the skater stopped. Then the skater ran away.

He gasped and stared after it. The blare of the loudspeaker was furnishing the answer.

All human personnel. Central patrol service has reached the limit of permissible subunit expenditure. Responsibility for capture no longer applies without further orders to expend subunits. Please instruct. Commissioner of Police, please instruct. Waiting. Waiting."

Mitch grinned. Carrying the girl, he stumbled toward a car on the parking lot. He dumped her in the back seat and started in behind her, but a loudspeaker in the front protested.

"Unauthorized personnel. This is Mayor Sarquist's car. Unauthorized personnel. Please use an extra."

Mitch looked around. There were no extras on the lot. And if there had been one, it would refuse to carry him unless he could identify himself as authorized to use it.

Mayor Sarquist's car began twittering a radio protest to Central. Mitch climbed inside and wrenched loose the cable that fed the antenna. The loudspeaker began barking complaints about sabotage. Mitch found a toolbox under the back seat and removed several of the pilot-computer's panels. He tugged a wire loose, and the speaker ceased complaining. He ripped at another, and a bank of tubes went dead.

He drove away, using a set of dial controls for steering. The girl in the back seat began to recover her wits. She sat up and stared out the window at the thin traffic. The sun was sinking and the great city was immersing itself in gloom.

"You're worthless!" he growled at Marta. "The world takes a poke at you, and you jump into your mental coffin and nail the lid shut. How do you expect to take care of your baby?"

She continued to stare gloomily out the window. She said nothing. The car screeched around a corner, narrowly missing a mechanical cop. The cop skated after them for three blocks, siren wailing; then it abandoned the chase.

"You're one of the machine age's spoiled children," he fumed. "Technologists gave you everything you could possibly want. Push a button, and you get it. Instead of taking part in the machine age, you let it wait on you. You spoiled yourself. When the machine age cracks up, you crack up, too. Because you never made yourself its master; you just let yourself be mechanically pampered."

She seemed not to hear him. He swung around another corner and pulled to the curb. They were in front of a three-story brick building set in the center of a green-lawned block and surrounded by a high iron fence. The girl stared at it for a moment and raised her chin slowly from her fist.

"The city orphanage!" she cried suddenly and bounded outside. She raced across the sidewalk and beat at the iron gate with her fists.

Mitch climbed out calmly and opened it for her. She darted up toward the porch, but a servo-attendant came rolling out to intercept her. Its handcuff hand was open to grasp her wrist.

"Drop low!" he bellowed at her.

She crouched on the walkway, then rolled quickly aside on the lawn. A burst of machine-gun fire brightened the twilight. The robot spun crazily and stopped, hissing and sputtering. Wrecking a robot could be dangerous. If a bullet struck the tiny nuclear reactor just right, there would be an explosion.

They skirted wide around it and hurried into the building. Somewhere upstairs a baby was crying. A servo-nurse sat behind a desk in the hall, and she greeted them as if they were guests.

"Good evening, sir and madam. You wish to see one of the children?"

Marta started toward the stairs, but Mitch seized her arm. "No! Let me go up. It won't be pretty."

But she tore herself free with a snarl and bounded up the steps toward the cry of her child. Mitch shrugged to himself and waited. The robot nurse protested the illegal entry but did nothing about it.

"Nooo—!"

A horrified shriek from the girl! He glanced up the staircase, knowing what was wrong but unable to help her. A moment later he heard her vomiting. He waited.

A few minutes later she came staggering down the stairway, sobbing and clutching her baby tightly against her. She stared at Mitch with tear-drenched eyes, gave him a wild shake of her head, and babbled hysterically.

"Those cribs! They're full of little bones. Little bones—all over the floor. Little bones—"

"Shut up!" he snapped. "Be thankful yours is all right. Now let's get out of here."

After disposing of another robotic interferer they reached the car, and Mitch drove rapidly toward the outskirts. The girl's sobbing ceased, and she purred a little unsung lullaby to her child, cuddling it as if it had just returned from the dead. Remorse picked dully at Mitch's heart, for having growled at her. Motherwise, she was still a good animal, despite her lack of success in adjusting to the reality of a ruptured world.

"Marta—?"

"What?"

"You're not fit to take care of yourself."

He said it gently. She only stared at him as he piloted the car. "You ought to find a big husky gal who wants a baby, and let her take care of it for you."

"No."

"It's just a suggestion. None of my business. You want your baby to live, don't you?"

"George promised he'd take care of us. George always took care of us."

"George killed himself."

She uttered a little whimper. "Why did he do it? Why? I went to look for food. I came back, and there he was. Why, why?"

"Possibly because he was just like you. What did he do—before the war?"

"Interior decorator. He was good, a real artist."

"Yeah."

'"Why do you say it that way? He was."

"Was he qualified to live in a mechanical culture?" 

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean—could he control his slice of mechanical civilization, or did it control him?"

"I don't see—"

"Was he a button-pusher and a switch-puller? Or did he care what made the buttons and switches work? Men misuse their tools because they don't understand the principles of the tools. A man who doesn't know how a watch works might try to fix it with a hammer. If the watch is communal property, he's got no right to fool with it. A nontechnologist has no right to take part in a technological civilization. He's a bull in a china shop. That's what happened to our era. Politicians were given powerful tools. They failed to understand the tools. They wrecked our culture with them."

"You'd have a scientist in the White House?"

"If all men were given a broad technical education, there could be nothing else there, could there?"

"Technocracy—"

"No. Simply a matter of education."

"People aren't smart enough."

"You mean they don't care enough. Any man above the level of a dullard has enough sense to grasp the principles of physics and basic engineering and mechanics. They just aren't motivated to grasp them. The brain is a tool, not a garbage can for oddments of information! Your baby there—he should learn the principles of logic and semantics before he's ten. He should be taught how to use the tool, the brain. We've just begun to learn how to think. If the common man were trained in scientific reasoning methods, we'd solve our problems in a hurry."

"What has this got to do with us?"

"Everything. Your George folded up because he couldn't control his slice of civilization and he couldn't live without it. He couldn't fix the broken toy, but he suffered from its loss. And you're in the same fix. I haven't decided yet whether you're crazy or just neurotic."

She gave him an icy stare. "Let me know when you figure it out."

They were leaving the city, driving out through the suburbs again into the night-shrouded residential areas. He drove by streetlight, for the car—accustomed to piloting itself by radar—had no headlights. Mitch thought gloomily that he had blundered. He had stalked into the city without a plan and had accomplished nothing. He had alerted Central and had managed to get himself classified as a criminal in the central data tanks. Instead of simplifying his task, he had made things harder for himself.

Whenever they passed a cop at an intersection, the cop retreated to the curb and called Central to inform the Coordina­tor of their position. But no attempt was made to arrest the fugitives. Having reached her limit of subunit expenditures, Central was relying on the nonexistent human police force. "Mayor Sarquist's house," the girl muttered suddenly. "Huh? Where?"

"Just ahead. The big cut-stone house on the right—with part of the roof caved in."

Mitch twisted a dial in the heart of the pilot-computer, and the car screeched to a stop at the curb. The girl lurched forward.

"You woke the baby," she complained. "Why stop here? We're still in the city limits."

"I don't know," he murmured, staring thoughtfully at the dark hulk of the two-story mansion set in a nest of oaks. "Just sort of a hunch."

There was a long silence while Mitch chewed his lip and frowned at the house.

"I hear a telephone ringing," she said.

"Central calling Mayor Sarquist. You can't tell. It might have been ringing for three years."

She was looking out the rear window. "Mitch—?" 

"Huh?"

"There's a cop at the intersection."

He seemed not to hear her. He opened the door. "Let's go inside. I want to look around. Bring the gun."

They strolled slowly up the walkway toward the damaged and deserted house. The wind was breathing in the oaks, and the porch creaked loudly beneath their feet. The door was still locked. Mitch kicked the glass out of a window, and they slipped into an immense living room. He found the light.

"The cop'll hear that noise," she muttered, glancing at the broken glass.

The noisy clatter of the steel-wheeled skater answered her. The cop was coming to investigate. Mitch ignored the sound and began prowling through the house. The phone was still ringing, but he could not answer it without knowing Sarquist's personal identifying code.

The girl called suddenly from the library. "What's this thing, Mitch?"

"What thing?" he yelled.

"Typewriter keyboard, but no type. Just a bunch of wires and a screen."

His jaw fell agape. He trotted quickly toward the library.

"A direct channel to the data tanks!" he gasped, staring at the metal wall panel with its encoders and the keyboard. "What's it doing here?"

He thought about it briefly. "Must be...I remember: just before the exodus, they gave Sarquist emergency powers in the defense setup. He could requisition whatever was needed for civil defense—draft workers for first aid, traffic direction, and so on. He had the power to draft anybody or anything during an air raid."

Mitch approached the keyboard slowly. He closed the main power switch, and the tubes came alive. He sat down and typed: Central from Sarquist: You will completely clear the ordinance section of your data tanks and await revised ordinances. The entire city code is hereby repealed.

He waited. Nothing happened. There was no acknowledg­ment. The typed letters had not even appeared on the screen. "Broken?" asked the girl.

"Maybe," Mitch grunted. "Maybe not. I think I know."

The mechanical cop had lowered his retractable sprockets, climbed the porch steps, and was hammering at the door. "Mayor Sarquist, please!" he was calling. "Mayor Sarquist, please!"

There was a mahogany desk, several easy chairs, a solid wall of books, and a large safe in another wall. The safe--

"Sarquist should have some rather vital papers in there," he murmured.

"What do you want with papers?" the girl snapped. "Why don't we get out of the city while we can?"

He glanced at her coldly. "Like to go the rest of the way alone?"

She opened her mouth, closed it, and frowned. She was holding the tommy gun, and he saw it twitch slightly in her hand, as if reminding him that she didn't have to go alone.

He walked to the safe and idly spun the dial. "Locked," he muttered. "It'd take a good charge of T.N.T.... or—"

"Or what?"

"Central." He chuckled dryly. "Maybe she'll do it for us." "Are you crazy?"

"Sure. Go unlock the door. Let the policeman in." 

"No!" she barked.

Mitch snorted impatiently. "All right, then, I'll do it. Pitch me the gun."

"No!" She pointed it at him and backed away.

"Give me the gun!"

"No!"

She had laid the baby on the sofa, where it was now sleeping peacefully. Mitch sat down beside it.

"Trust your aim?"

She caught her breath. Mitch lifted the child gently into his lap.

"Give me the gun."

"You wouldn't!"

"I'll give the kid back to the cops."

She whitened and handed the weapon to him quickly. Mitch saw that the safety was on, laid the baby aside, and stood up. "Don't look at me like that!" she said nervously.

He walked slowly toward her.

"Don't you dare touch me!"

He picked up a ruler from Sarquist's desk, then dived for her. A moment later she was stretched out across his lap, clawing at his legs and shrieking while he applied the ruler resoundingly. Then he dumped her on the rug, caught up the gun, and went to admit the insistent cop.

Man and machine stared at each other across the threshold. The cop radioed a visual image of Mitch to Central and got an immediate answer.

"Request you surrender immediately sir."

"Am I now charged with breaking and entering?" he asked acidly.

"Affirmative."

'You planning to arrest me?"

Again the cop consulted Central. "If you will leave the city at once, you will be granted safe passage."

Mitch lifted his brows. Here was a new twist. Central was doing some interpretation, some slight modification of ordinance. He grinned at the cop and shook his head.

"I locked Mayor Sarquist in the safe," he stated evenly. The robot consulted Central. There was a long twittering of computer code. Then it said, "This is false information."

"Suit yourself, tin boy. I don't care whether you believe it or not."

Again there was a twittering of code. Then: "Stand aside, please."

Mitch stepped out of the doorway. The subunit bounced over the threshold with the aid of the four-footed sprockets and clattered hurriedly toward the library. Mitch followed, grinning to himself. Despite Central's limitless "intelligence," she was as naive as a child.

He lounged in the doorway to watch the subunit fiddling with the dials of the safe. He motioned the girl down, and she crouched low in a corner. The tumblers clicked. There was a dull snap. The door started to swing.

"Just a minute!" Mitch barked.

The subunit paused and turned. The machine gun exploded, and the brief hail of bullets tore off the robot's antenna. Mitch lowered the gun and grinned. The cop just stood there, unable to contact Central, unable to decide. Mitch crossed the room through the drifting plaster dust and rolled the robot aside. The girl whimpered her relief and came up out of the corner.

The cop was twittering continually as it tried without success to contact the Coordinator. Mitch stared at it for a moment, then barked at the girl, "Go find some tools. Search the garage, attic, basement. I want a screwdriver, pliers, soldering iron, solder, whatever you can find."

She departed silently.

Mitch cleaned out the safe and dumped the heaps of papers, money, and securities on the desk. He began sorting them out. Among the various stacks of irrelevant records he found a copy of the original specifications for the Central Coordinator vaults, dating from the time of installation. He found blueprints of the city's network of computer circuits, linking the subunits into one. His hands became excited as he shuffled through the stacks. Here were data. Here was substance for reasonable planning.

Heretofore he had gone off half-cocked and quite naturally had met with immediate failure. No one ever won a battle by being good, pure, or ethically right, despite Galahad's claims to the contrary. Victories were won by intelligent planning, and Mitch felt ashamed of his previous impulsiveness. To work out a scheme for redirecting Central's efforts would require time. The girl brought a boxful of assorted small tools. She set them on the floor and sat down to glower at him.

"More cops outside now," she said. "Standing and waiting. The place is surrounded."

He ignored her. Sarquist's identifying code—it had to be here somewhere.

"I tell you, we should get out of here!" she whined. "Shut up."

Mitch occasionally plucked a paper from the stack and laid it aside while the girl watched.

"What are those?" she asked.

"Messages he typed into the unit at various times." "What good are they?"

He showed her one of the slips of yellowed paper. It said: Unit 67-BJ is retired for repairs. A number was scrawled in one corner: 5.00326.

"So?"

"That number. It was his identifying code at the time." "You mean it's different every day?"

"More likely, it's different every minute. The code is proba­bly based on an equation whose independent variable is time and whose dependent variable is the code number."

"How silly!"

"Not at all. It's just sort of a combination lock whose combination is continuously changing. All I've got to do is find the equation that describes the change. Then I can get to Central Coordinator."

She paced restlessly while he continued the search. Half an hour later he put his head in his hands and gazed despondently at the desk top. The key to the code was not there.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Sarquist. I figured he'd have to write it down somewhere. Evidently he memorized it. Or else his secretary did. I didn't figure a politician even had sense enough to substitute numbers in a simple equation."

The girl walked to the bookshelf and picked out a volume. She brought it to him silently. The title was Higher Mathematics for Engineers and Physicists.

"So I was wrong," he grunted. "Now what?"

He shuffled the slips of paper idly while he thought about it. "I've got eleven code numbers here, and the corresponding times when they were good. I might be able to find it empirically."

"I don't understand."

"Find an equation that gives the same eleven answers for the same eleven times, and use it to predict the code number for now."

"Will it work?"

He grinned. "There are an infinite number of equations that would give the same eleven answers for the same eleven substitutions. But it might work, if I assume that the code equation was of a simple form."

She paced restlessly while he worked at making a graph with time as the abscissa and the code numbers for ordinates. But the points were scattered across the page, and there was no connecting them with any simple sort of curve. "It almost has to be some kind of repeating function," he muttered, "something that Central could check by means of an irregular cam. The normal way for setting a code into a machine is to turn a cam by clock motor, and the height of the cam's rider is the code number for that instant."

He tried it on polar coordinates, hoping to get the shape of such a cam, but the resulting shape was too irregular to be possible, and he had no way of knowing the period of the repeating function.

"That's the craziest clock I ever saw," the girl murmured. "What?" He looked up quickly.

"That electric wall clock. Five minutes ahead of the electric clock in the living room. But when we first came it was twenty minutes ahead."

"It's stopped, maybe."

"Look at the second hand."

The red sweep was running. Mitch stared at it for a moment, then rose slowly to his feet and walked to her side. He took the small clock down from its hook and turned it over in his hands. Then he traced the cord to the wall outlet. The plug was held in place by a bracket so that it could not be removed.

The sweep hand moved slowly, it seemed. Silently he removed the screws from the case and stared inside at the works.

Then he grunted surprise. "First clock I ever saw with elliptical gears!"

"What?"

"Look at these two gears in the train. Ellipses, mounted at the foci. That's the story. For a while the clock will run faster than the other one. Then it'll run slower." He handled it with growing excitement. "That's it, Marta—the key. Central must have another clock just like this one. The amount of lead or lag—in minutes—is probably the code!"

He moved quickly to the direct-contact unit. "Tell me the time on the other clock!"

She hurried into the living room and called back, "Ten-seventeen and forty seconds ...forty-five ...fifty—"

The other clock was leading by five and one-quarter minutes. He typed 5.250 on the keyboard. Nothing happened. "You sure that's right?" he called.

"It's now ten-eighteen—ten... fifteen ...twenty."

The clock was still slowing down. He tried 5.230, but again nothing happened. The unit refused to respond. He arose with an angry grunt and began prowling around the library. "There's something else," he muttered. "There must be a modifying factor. That clock's too obvious anyway. But what else could they be measuring together except time?"

"Is that another clock on his desk?"

"No, it's a barometer. It doesn't—"

He paused to grin. "Could be! The barometric pressure difference from the mean could easily be mechanically added or subtracted from the reading of that wacky clock. Visualize this, inside of Central: The two clock motors mounted on the same shaft, with the distance between their indicator needles as the code number. Except that the distance is modified by having a barometer rigged up to shift one of the clocks one way or the other on its axis when the pressure varies. It's simple enough."

She shook her head. Mitch took the barometer with him to the unit. The dial was calibrated in atmospheres, and the pres­sure was now 1.03. Surely, he thought, for simplicity's sake, there would be no other factor involved in the code. This way, Sarquist could have glanced at his watch and the wall clock and the barometer and could have known the code number with only a little mental arithmetic. The wall time minus the wrist time plus the barometer's reading.

He called to the girl again, and the lag was now a little over four minutes. He typed again. There was a sharp click as the relays worked. The screen came alive, fluttered with momentary phosphorescence, then revealed the numbers in glowing type.

"We've got it!" he yelled to Marta.

She came to sit down on the rug. "I still don't see what we've got."

"Watch!" He began typing hurriedly, and the message flashed neatly upon the screen.

CENTRAL FROM SARQUIST. CLEAR YOUR TANKS OF ALL ORDINANCE DATA, EXCEPT ORDINANCES PERTAINING TO RECORDING OF INFORMATION IN YOUR TANKS. PREPARE TO RECORD NEW DATA.

He pressed the answer button and the screen went blank, but the reply was slow to come.

"It won't work!" Marta snorted. "It knows you aren't Sarquist. The subunits in the street have seen us."

"What do you mean by 'know,' and what do you mean by 'see'? Central isn't human."

"It knows and it sees."

He nodded. "Provided you mean those words in a mechanical sense. Provided you don't imply that she cares what she knows and sees, except where she's required to 'care' by enforced behavior patterns—ordinances."

Then the reply began crawling across the screen. SARQUIST FROM CENTRAL. INCONSISTENT INSTRUCTIONS. ORDINANCE 36-J, PERTAINING TO THE RECORDING OF INFORMATION, STATES THAT ORDINANCE DATA MAY NOT BE TOTALLY VOIDED BY YOU EXCEPT DURING RED ALERT AIR WARNING.

"See?" the girl hissed.

DEFINE THE LIMITS OF MY AUTHORITY IN PRESENT CONDITIONS, he typed. MAY I TEMPORARILY SUSPEND SPECIFIC ORDINANCES?

YOU MAY SUSPEND SPECIFIC ORDINANCES FOR CAUSE, BUT THE CAUSE MUST BE RECORDED WITH THE ORDER OF SUSPENSION.

Mitch put on a gloating grin. READ ME THE SERIES NUMBERS OF ALL LAWS IN CRIMINAL AND TRAFFIC CODES.

The reaction was immediate. Numbers began flashing on the screen in rapid sequence. "Write these down!" he called to the girl.

A few moments later, the flashing numbers paused. WAIT, EMERGENCY INTERRUPTION, said the screen.

Mitch frowned. The girl glanced up from her notes. "What's—"

Then it came. A dull booming roar that rattled the windows and shook the house.

"Not another raid!" she whimpered.

"It doesn't sound like—"

Letters began splashing across the screen. EMERGENCY ADVICE TO SARQUIST. MY CIVILIAN DEFENSE CO-ORDINATOR HAS BEEN DESTROYED. MY ANTIAIRCRAFT COORDINATOR HAS BEEN DESTROYED. ADVISE, PLEASE.

"What happened?"

"Frank Ferris!" he barked suddenly. "The Sugarton crowd—with their dynamite! They got into the city."

CENTRAL FROM SARQUIST, he typed. WHERE ARE THE DAMAGED COORDINATORS LOCATED?

UNDERGROUND VAULT AT MAP COORDINATES K-81.

"Outside the city," he breathed. "They haven't got to the main tanks yet. We've got a little time."

PROCEED WITH ORDINANCE LISTING, he commanded.

Half an hour later they were finished. Then he began the long task of relisting each ordinance number and typing after it: REPEALED; CITY EVACUATED.

"I hear gunshots," Marta interrupted. She went to the window to peer up and down the dimly lighted streets.

Mitch worked grimly. It would take them a couple of hours to get into the heart of the city, unless they knew how to capture a robot vehicle and make it serve them. But with enough men and enough guns, they would wreck subunits until Central withdrew. Then they could walk freely into the heart of the city and wreck the main coordinators, with a consequent cessation of all city services. Then they would be free to pillage, to make a mechanical graveyard of the city that awaited the return of man.

"They're coming down this street, I think," she called.

"Then turn out all the lights!" he snapped, "and keep quiet." "They'll see all the cops out in the street. They'll wonder why."

He worked frantically to get all the codes out of the machine before the Sugarton crowd came past. He was destroying its duties, its habit patterns, its normal functions. When he was finished it would stand by helplessly and let Ferris's gang wreak their havoc, unless he could replace the voided ordinances with new, more practical ones.

"Aren't you finished yet?" she called. "They're a couple of blocks away. The cops have quit fighting, but the men are still shooting them."

"I'm finished now!" He began rattling the keyboard frantically.

SUPPLEMENTAL ORDINANCES: #1: THERE IS NO LIMIT OF SUBUNIT EXPENDITURE.

YOU WILL NOT PHYSICALLY INJURE ANY HUMAN BEING, EXCEPT IN DEFENSE OF CENTRAL COORDINATOR UNITS.

ALL MECHANICAL TRAFFIC WILL BE CLEARED FROM THE STREETS IMMEDIATELY.

YOU WILL DEFEND CENTRAL COORDINATORS AT ALL COSTS.

THE HUMAN LISTED IN YOUR MEMORY UNITS UNDER THE NAME `WILLIE JESSER" WILL BE ALLOWED ACCESS TO CENTRAL DATA WITHOUT CHALLENGE.

TO THE LIMIT OF YOUR ABILITY YOU WILL SET YOUR OWN TASKS IN PURSUANCE OF THE GOAL: TO KEEP THE CITY'S SERVICES INTACT AND IN GOOD REPAIR, READY FOR HUMAN USAGE.

YOU WILL APPREHEND HUMANS ENGAGED IN ARSON, GRAND THEFT, OR PHYSICAL VIOLENCE AND EJECT THEM SUMMARILY FROM THE CITY.

YOU WILL OFFER YOUR SERVICES TO PROTECT THE PERSON OF WILLIE JESSER.

"They're here!" shouted the girl. "They're coming up the walk!"

—AND WILL ASSIST HIM IN THE TASK OF RENOVATING THE CITY, TOGETHER WITH SUCH PERSONS AS ARE WILLING TO HELP REBUILD.

The girl was shaking him. "They're here, I tell you!"

Mitch punched a button labeled "commit to data," and the screen went blank. He leaned back and grinned at her. There was a sound of shouting in the street, and someone was beating at the door.

Then the skaters came rolling in a tide of sound two blocks away. The shouting died, and there were several bursts of gunfire. But the skaters came on, and the shouting grew frantic.

She muttered: "Now we're in for it."

But Mitch just grinned at her and lit a cigarette. Fifty men couldn't stand for long against a couple of thousand subunits who now had no expenditure limit.

He typed one last instruction into the unit. WHEN THE PLUNDERERS ARE TAKEN PRISONER, OFFER THEM THIS CHOICE: STAY AND HELP REBUILD, OR KEEP AWAY FROM THE CITY.

From now on, there weren't going to be any nonparticipators.

Mitch closed down the unit and went out to watch the waning fight.

A bigger job was ahead.

 

Blood Bank

 

THE COLONEL'S SECRETARY heard clomping footsteps in the corridor and looked up from her typing. The footsteps stopped in the doorway. A pair of jet-black eyes bored through her once, then looked away. A tall, thin joker in a space commander's uniform stalked into the reception room, sat in the corner, and folded his hands stiffly in his lap. The secretary arched her plucked brows. It had been six months since a visitor had done that—walked in without saying boo to the girl behind the rail.

"You have an appointment, sir?" she asked with a pro­fessional smile.

The man nodded curtly but said nothing. His eyes flick­ered toward her briefly, then returned to the wall. She tried to decide whether he was angry or in pain. The black eyes burned with cold fire. She checked the list of appointments. Her smile disappeared, to be replaced by a tight-lipped expression of scorn.

"You're Space Commander Eli Roki?" she asked in an icy tone.

Again the curt nod. She gazed at him steadily for several seconds. "Colonel Beth will see you in a few minutes." Then her typewriter began clattering with sharp sounds of hate.

The man sat quietly, motionlessly. The colonel passed through the reception room once and gave him a brief nod. Two majors came in from the corridor and entered the colonel's office without looking at him. A few moments later, the intercom crackled, "Send Roki in, Dela. Bring your pad and come with him."

The girl looked at Roki, but he was already on his feet, striding toward the door. Evidently he came from an unchivalrous planet; he opened the door without looking at her and let her catch in when it started to slam.

Chubby, elderly Colonel Beth sat waiting behind his desk, flanked by the pair of majors. Roki's bearing as he approached and saluted was that of the professional soldier, trained from birth for the military.

"Sit down, Roki."

The tall space commander sat at attention and waited, his face expressionless, his eyes coolly upon the colonel's forehead. Beth shuffled some papers on his desk, then spoke slowly.

"Before we begin, I want you to understand something, commander."

"Yes, sir."

"You are not being tried. This is not a court-martial. There are no charges against you. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

The colonel's pale eyes managed to look at Roki's face without showing any contempt. "This investigation is for the record, and for the public. The incident has already been investigated, as you know. But the people are aroused, and we have to make a show of some kind."

"I understand, sir."

"Then let's begin. Dela, take notes, please." The colonel glanced at the papers before him. "Space Commander Roki, will you please tell us in your own words what hap­pened during patrol flight Sixty-one on fourday sixmonth, year eighty-seven?"

There was a brief silence. The girl was staring at the back of Roki's neck as if she longed to attack it with a hatchet. Roki's thin face was a waxen mask as he framed his words. His voice came calm as a bell and clear.

 

"The flight was a random patrol. We blasted off Jod VII at thirteen hours, Universal Patrol Time, switched on the high-C drive, and penetrated to the ten-thousandth level of the C'th component. We re-entered the continuum on the outer patrol radius at thirty-six degrees theta and two-hundred degrees psi. My navigator threw the dice to select a random course. We were to proceed to a point on the same co-ordinate shell at thirty theta and one-fifty psi. We began—"

The colonel interrupted. "Were you aware at the time that your course would intersect that of the mercy ship?"

The girl looked up again. Roki failed to wince at the question. "I was aware of it, sir."

"Go on."

"We proceeded along the randomly selected course until the warp detectors warned us of a ship. When we came in range, I told the engineer to jockey into a parallel course and to lock the automatics to keep us parallel. When that was accomplished, I called the unknown freighter with the standard challenge."

"You saw its insignia?"

"Yes, sir. The yellow mercy star."

"Go on. Did they answer your challenge?"

"Yes, sir. The reply, decoded, was: Mercy liner Sol-G-6, departure Sol III, destination Jod VI, cargo emer­gency surgi-bank supplies, Cluster Request A-4-J."

Beth nodded and watched Roki with clinical curiosity. "You knew about the Jod VI disaster? That twenty thousand casualties were waiting in Suspendfreeze lockers for those supplies?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry they died."

"Go on with your account."

"I ordered the navigator to throw the dice again, to determine whether or not the freighter should be boarded for random cargo inspection. He threw a twelve, the yes-number. I called the freighter again, ordered the outer locks opened. It failed to answer, or respond in any way."

"One moment. You explained the reason for boarding? Sol is on the outer rim of the galaxy. It doesn't belong to any cluster system. Primitive place—or regressed. They wouldn't understand our ways."

"I allowed for that, sir," continued the cold-faced Roki. "I explained the situation, even read them extracts of our patrol regs. They failed to acknowledge. I thought per­haps they were out of contact, so I had the message re­peated to them by blinker. I know they got it, because the blinker-operator acknowledged the message. Evidently carried it to his superiors. Apparently they told him to ignore us, because when we blinked again, he failed to acknowledge. I then attempted to pull alongside and attach to their hull by magnetic grapples."

"They resisted?"

"Yes, sir. They tried to break away by driving to a higher C-level. Our warp was already at six-thousand C's. The mass-components of our star cluster at that level were just a collapsing gas cloud. Of course, with our auto­matic trackers, they just dragged us with them, stalled, and plunged the other way. They pulled us down to the quarter-C level; most of the galaxy was at the red-dwarf stage. I suppose they realized then that they couldn't get away from us like that. They came back to a sensible warp and continued on their previous course."

"And you did what?"

"We warned them by every means of communication at our disposal, read them the standard warning."

"They acknowledge?"

"Once, sir. They came back to say: This is an emer­gency shipment. We have orders not to stop. We are con­tinuing on course, and will report you to authority upon arrival." Roki paused, eyeing the colonel doubtfully. "May I make a personal observation, sir?"

Beth nodded tolerantly. "Go ahead."

"They wasted more time dodging about in the C'th component than they would have lost if they had allowed us to board them. I regarded this behavior as highly suspicious."

"Did it occur to you that it might be due to some pe­culiarity in Sol III's culture? Some stubbornness, or resentment of authority?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you ask opinions of your crew?"

A slight frown creased Roki's high forehead. "No, sir."

"Why not?"

"Regulation does not require it, sir. My personal reason —the cultural peculiarities of my planet."

The barb struck home. Colonel Beth knew the military culture of Roki's world—Coph IV. Military rank was inherited. On his own planet, Roki was a nobleman and an officer of the war-college. He had been taught to rely upon his own decisions and to expect crisp, quick obedi­ence. The colonel frowned at his desk.

"Let's put it this way: Did you know the opinions of the crew?"

"Yes, sir. They thought that we should abandon the pursuit and allow the freighter to continue. I was forced to confine two of them to the brig for insubordination and attempted mutiny." He stopped and glanced at one of the majors. "All due apologies to you, sir."

The major flushed. He ranked Roki, but he had been with the patrol as an observer, and despite his higher rank, he was subject to the ship commander's authority while in space. He had also been tossed in the brig. Now he glared at the Cophian space commander without speaking.

"All right, commander, when they refused to halt, what did you do?"

"I withdrew to a safe range and fired a warning charge ahead of them. It exploded in full view of their scopes, dead ahead. They ignored the warning and tried to flee again."

"Go on."

Roki's shoulders lifted in the suggestion of a shrug. "In accordance with Article Thirty of the Code; I shot them out of space."

The girl made a choking sound. "And over ten thousand people died on Jod VI because you—"

"That will do, Dalai" snapped Colonel Beth.

There was a long silence. Roki waited calmly for further questioning. He seemed unaware of the girl's outburst. The colonel's voice came again with a forced soft­ness.

"You examined the debris of the destroyed vessel?" 

"Yes, sir."

"What did you find?"

"Fragments of quick-frozen bone, blood plasma, vari­ous bodily organs and tissues in cultured or frozen form, prepared for surgical use in transplanting operations; in other words, a complete stock of surgibank supplies, as was anticipated. We gathered up samples, but we had no facilities for preserving what was left."

The colonel drummed his fingers. "You said 'antici­pated.' Then you knew full well the nature of the cargo, and you did not suspect contraband material of any kind?"

Roki paused. "I suspected contraband, colonel," he said quietly.

Beth lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "You didn't say that before."

"I was never asked."

"Why didn't you say it anyway?"

"I had no proof."

"Ah, yes," murmured the colonel. "The culture of Coph IV again. Very well, but in examining the debris, you found no evidence of contraband?" The colonel's dis­tasteful expression told the room that he knew the an­swer, but only wanted it on the record.

But Roki paused a long time. Finally, he said, "No evidence, sir."

"Why do you hesitate?"

"Because I still suspect an illegality—without proof, I'm afraid."

This time, the colonel's personal feelings betrayed him in a snort of disgust. He shuffled his papers for a long time, then looked at the major who had accompa­nied the patrol. "Will you confirm Roki's testimony, major? Is it essentially truthful, as far as you know?"

The embarrassed officer glared at Roki in undisguised hatred. "For the record, sir—I think the commander be­haved disgracefully and insensibly. The results of the stoppage of vitally needed supplies prove—"

"I didn't ask for a moral judgment!" Beth snapped. "I asked you to confirm what he has said here. Were the incidents as he described them?"

The major swallowed hard. "Yes, sir."

The colonel nodded. "Very well. I'll ask your opinions, gentlemen. Was there an infraction of regulations? Did Commander Roki behave as required by Space Code, or did he not? Yes or no, please. Major Tuli?"

"No direct infraction, sir, but—"

"No buts! Major Go'an?"

"Uh—no infraction, sir."

"I find myself in agreement." The colonel spoke di­rectly at Dela's note pad. "The ultimate results of the in­cident were disastrous, indeed. And, Roki's action was unfortunate, ill-advised, and not as the Sixty Star Patrol would approve. Laws, codes, regulations are made for men, not men for regulations. Roki observed the letter of the law, but was perhaps forgetful of its spirit. However, no charge can be found against him. This investigating body recommends that he be temporarily grounded without prejudice, and given thorough physical and mental examinations before being returned to duty. That brings us to an end, gentlemen. Dela, you may go."

 

With another glare at the haughty Cophian, the girl stalked out of the room. Beth leaned back in his chair, while the majors saluted and excused themselves. His eyes kept Roki locked in his chair. When they were alone, Beth said:

"You have anything to say to me off the record?"

Roki nodded. "I can submit my resignation from the patrol through your office, can't I, sir?"

Beth smiled coldly. "I thought you'd do that, Roki." He opened a desk drawer and brought out a single sheet of paper. "I took the liberty of having it prepared for your signature. Don't misunderstand. I'm not urging you to resign, but we're prepared to accept it if you choose to do so. If you don't like this standard from, you may prepare your own."

The jet-eyed commander took the paper quickly and slashed his name quickly across the bottom. "Is this ef­fective immediately, sir?"

"In this case, we can make it so."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't regard it as a favor." The colonel witnessed the signature.

The Cophian could not be stung. "May I go now?"

Beth looked up, noticing with amusement that Roki­—now a civilian—had suddenly dropped the "sir." And his eyes were no longer cold. They were angry, hurt, despairing.

"What makes you Cophians tick anyway?" he mur­mured thoughtfully.

Roki stood up. "I don't care to discuss it with you, colonel. I'll be going now."

"Wait, Roki." Beth frowned ominously to cover whatever he felt.

"I'm waiting."

"Up until this incident, I liked you, Roki. In fact, I told the general that you were the most promising young officer in my force."

"Kind of you," he replied tonelessly.

"And you could have been sitting at this desk, in a few years. You hoped to, I believe."

A curt nod, and a quick glance at Beth's shoulder in­signia.

"You chose your career, and now you don't have it. I know what it means to you."

A tightening of the Cophian's jaw told the colonel that he wanted no sympathy, but Beth continued.

"Since this is the oldest, most established, most static planet in the Cluster, you're out of a job in a place where there's no work."

"That's none of your business, colonel," Roki said quietly.

"According to my culture's ethics it is my business," he bellowed. "Of course you Cophians think differently. But we're not quite so cold. Now you listen: I'm prepared to help you a little, although you're probably too pig-headed to accept. God knows, you don't deserve it anyway."

"Go on."

"I'm prepared to have a patrol ship take you to any planet in the galaxy. Name it, and we'll take you there." He paused. "All right, go ahead and refuse. Then get out."

Roki's thin face twitched for a moment. Then he nodded. "I'll accept. Take me to Sol III."

 

The colonel got his breath again slowly. He reddened and chewed his lip. "I did say galaxy, didn't I? I meant . . . well . . . you know we can't send a military ship outside the Sixty-Star Cluster."

Roki waited impassively, his dark eyes measuring the colonel.

"Why do you want to go there?"

"Personal reasons."

"Connected with the mercy ship incident?"

"The investigation is over."

Beth pounded his desk. "It's crazy, man! Nobody's been to Sol for a thousand years. No reason to go. Sloppy, decadent place. I never suspected they'd answer Jod VI's plea for surgibank supplies!"

"Why not? They were selling them."

"Of course. But I doubted that Sol still had ships, es­pecially C-drive ships. Only contribution Sol ever made to the galaxy was to spawn the race of Man—if you be­lieve that story. It's way out of contact with any interstellar nation. I just don't get it."

"Then you restrict your offer, colonel?" Roki's eyes mocked him.

Beth sighed. "No, no—I said it. I'll do it. But I can't send a patrol ship that far. I'll have to pay your way on a private vessel. We can find some excuse—exploration maybe."

Roki's eyes flickered sardonically. "Why not send a diplomatic delegation—to apologize to Sol for the blast­ing of their mercy ship."

"Uk! With YOU aboard?"

"Certainly. They won't know me.

Beth just stared at Roki as if he were of a strange species.

"You'll do it?" urged Roki.

"I'll think it over. I'll see that you get there, if you in­sist on going. Now get out of here. I've had enough of you, Roki."

The Cophian was not offended. He turned on his heel and left the office. The girl looked up from her filing cab­inets as he came out. She darted ahead of him and blocked the doorway with her small tense body. Her face was a white mask of disgust, and she spoke between her teeth.

"How does it feel to murder ten thousand people and get away with it?" she hissed.

Roki looked at her face more closely and saw the racial characteristics of Jod VI—the slightly oversized irises of her yellow-brown eyes, the thin nose with flaring nostrils, the pointed jaw. Evidently some of her relatives had died in the disaster and she held him personally re­sponsible. He had destroyed the help that was on its way to casualties.

"How does it feel?" she demanded, her voice going higher, and her hands clenching into weapons.

"Would you step aside please, Miss?"

A quick hand slashed out to rake his cheek with sharp nails. Pain seared his face. He did not move. Two bright stripes of blood appeared from his eye to the corner of his mouth. A drop trickled to the point of his chin and splattered down upon the girl's shoe.

"On my planet," he 'said, in a not unkindly tone, "when a woman insists on behaving like an animal, we assist her—by having her flogged naked in the public square. I see personal dignity is not so highly prizedhere. You do not regard it as a crime to behave like an alley cat?"

Her breath gushed out of her in a sound of rage, and she tore at the wounds again. Then, when he did nothing but look at her coldly, she fled.

 

Eli Roki, born to the nobility of Coph, dedicated to the service of the Sixty-Star Cluster, suddenly found himself something of an outcast. As he strode down the corridor away from Beth's office, he seemed to be walking into a thickening fog of desolation. He had no home now; for he had abdicated his hereditary rights on Coph in order to accept a commission with the SSC Patrol. That, too, was gone; and with it his career.

He had known from the moment he pressed the firing stud to blast the mercy freighter that unless the freighter proved to be a smuggler, his career would be forfeit. He was still morally certain that he had made no mistake. Had the freighter been carrying any other cargo, he would have been disciplined for not blasting it. And, if they had had nothing to hide, they would have stopped for inspection. Somewhere among Sol's planets lay the answer to the question—"What else was aboard besides the cargo of mercy?"

Roki shivered and stiffened his shoulders as he rode homeward in a heliocab. If the answer to the question were "Nothing," then according to the code of his planet, there was only one course left to follow. "The Sword of Apology" it was called.

He waited in his quarters for the colonel to fulfill his promise. On the following day, Beth called.

"I've found a Dalethian ship, Roki. Privately owned. Pilot's willing to fly you out of the Cluster. It's going as an observation mission—gather data on the Sol System. The commissioners vetoed the idea of sending a diplo­matic delegation until we try to contact Solarians by high-C radio."

"When do I leave?"

"Be at the spaceport tonight. And good luck, son. I'm sorry all this happened, and I hope—"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Well—"

"Well?"

The colonel grunted and hung up. Ex-Commander Roki gathered up his uniforms and went looking for a pawn shop. "Hock 'em, or sell 'em?" asked a bald man behind the counter. Then he peered more closely at Roki's face, and paused to glance at a picture on the front page of the paper. "Oh," he grunted, "you. You wanta sell 'em." With a slight sneer, he pulled two bills from his pocket and slapped them on the counter with a contemptuous take-it-or-leave-it stare. The clothing was worth at least twice as much. Roki took it after a mo­ment's hesitation. The money just matched the price tag on a sleek, snub-nosed Multin automatic that lay in the display case.

"And three hundred rounds of ammunition," he said quietly as he pocketed the weapon.

The dealer sniffed. "It only takes one shot, bud—for what you need to do."

Roki thanked him for the advice and took his three hundred rounds.

He arrived at the spaceport before his pilot, and went out to inspect the small Dalethian freighter that would bear him to the rim of the galaxy. His face clouded as he saw the pitted hull and the glaze of fusion around the lips of the jet tubes. Some of the ground personnel had left a Geiger hanging on the stern, to warn wanderers to keep away. Its dial indicator was fluttering in the red. He carried it into the ship. The needle dropped to a safe reading in the control cabin, but there were dangerous spots in the reactor room. Angrily he went to look over the controls.

His irritation grew. The ship—aptly named the Idiot —was of ancient vintage, without the standard warning systems or safety devices, and with no armament other than its ion guns. The fifth dial of its position-indicator was calibrated only to one hundred thousand C's, and was redlined at ninety thousand. A modern service-ship, on the other hand, could have penetrated to a segment of five-space where light's velocity was constant at one hundred fifty thousand C's and could reach Sol in two months. The Idiot would need five or six, if it could make the trip at all. Roki dobted it. Under normal circum­stances, he would hesitate to use the vessel even within the volume of the Sixty-Star Cluster.

He thought of protesting to Beth, but realized that the colonel had fulfilled his promise, and would do nothing more. Grumbling, he stowed his gear in the cargo hold, and settled down in the control room to doze in wait for the pilot.

 

A sharp whack across the soles of his hoots brought him painfully awake. "Get your feet off the controls!" snapped an angry voice.

Roki winced and blinked at a narrow frowning face with a cigar clenched in its teeth. "And get out of that chair!" the face growled around its cigar.

His feet stung with pain. He hissed a snarl and bounded to his feet; grabbing a handful of the intruder's shirt-front, he aimed a punch at the cigar—then stayed the fist in midair. Something felt wrong about the shirt. Aghast, he realized there was a woman inside it. He let go and reddened. "I . . . I thought you were the pilot."

She eyed him contemptuously as she tucked in her shirt. "I am, Doc." She tossed her bat on the navigation desk, revealing a close-cropped head of dark hair. She removed the cigar from her face, neatly pinched out the fire, and filed the butt in the pocket of her dungarees for a rainy day. She had a nice mouth, with the cigar gone, but it was tight with anger.

"Stay out of my seat," she told him crisply, "and out of my hair. Let's get that straight before we start."

"This . . . this is your tub?" he gasped.

She stalked to a panel and began punching settings into the courser. "That's right. I'm Daleth Shipping In­corporated. Any comments?"

"You expect this wreck to make it to Sol?" he growled.

She snapped him a sharp, green-eyed glance. "Well listen to the free ride! Make your complaints to the colo­nel, fellow. I don't expect anything, except my pay. I'm willing to chance it. Why shouldn't you?"

"The existence of a fool is not necessarily a proof of the existence of two fools," he said sourly.

"If you don't like it, go elsewhere." She straightened and swept him with a clinical glance. "But as I understand it, you can't be too particular."

He frowned. "Are you planning to make that your business?"

"Uh-uh! You're nothing to me, fellow. I don't care who I haul, as long as it's legal. Now do you want a ride, or don't you?"

He nodded curtly and stalked back to find quarters. "Stay outa my cabin," she bellowed after him.

Roki grunted disgustedly. The pilot was typical of Daleth civilization. It was still a rough, uncouth planet with a thinly scattered population, a wild frontier, and growing pains. The girl was the product of a wildly ex­panding tough-fisted culture with little respect for au­thority. It occurred to him immediately that she might be thinking of selling him to the Solarian officials—as the man who blasted the mercy ship.

"Prepare to lift," came the voice of the intercom. "Two minutes before blast-off."

Roki suppressed an urge to scramble out of the ship and call the whole thing off. The rockets belched, coughed, and then hissed faintly, idling in wait for a command. Roki stretched out on his bunk, for some of these older ships were rather rough on blast-off. The hiss became a thunder, and the Idiot moved skyward—first slowly, then with a spurt of speed. When it cleared the atmosphere, there was a sudden lurch as it shed the now empty booster burners. There was a moment of dead silence, as the ship hovered without power. Then the faint shriek of the ion streams came to his ears—as the ion drive became useful in the vacuum of space. He glanced out the port to watch the faint streak of lumines­cence focus into a slender needle of high-speed particles, pushing the Idiot ever higher in a rush of acceleration.

He punched the intercom button. "Not bad, for a Dalethian," he called admiringly.

"Keep your opinions to yourself," growled Daleth In­corporated.

The penetration to higher C-levels came without sub­jective sensation. Roki knew it was happening when the purr from the reactor room went deep-throated and when the cabin lights went dimmer. He stared calmly out the port, for the phenomenon of penetration never ceased to thrill him.

The transition to high-C began as a blue-shift in the starlight. Distant, dull-red stars came slowly brighter, whiter—until they burned like myriad welding arcs in the black vault. They were not identical with the stars of the home continuum, but rather, projections of the same star-masses at higher C-levels of five-space, where the velocity of light was gradually increasing as the Idiot climbed higher in the C-component.

At last he had to close the port, for the starlight was becoming unbearable as its wave-length moved into the ultra-violet and the X-ray bands. He watched on a fluo­rescent viewing screen. The projective star-masses were flaring into supernovae, and the changing continuums seemed to be collapsing toward the ship in the blue-shift of the cosmos. As the radiant energy increased, the cabin became warmer, and the pilot set up a partial radiation screen.

At last the penetration stopped. Roki punched the in­tercom again. "What level are we on, Daleth?"

"Ninety thousand," she replied curtly.

Roki made a wry mouth. She had pushed it up to the red line without a blink. It was O.K.—if the radiation screens held out. If they failed to hold it, the ship would be blistered into a drifting dust cloud.

"Want me to navigate for you?" he called.

"I'm capable of handling my own ship," she barked.

"I'm aware of that. But I have nothing else to do. You might as well put me to work."

She paused, then softened a little. "O.K., come on forward."

She swung around in her chair as he entered the cabin, and for the first time, he noticed that, despite the close-cropped hair and the dungarees and the cigar-smoking, she was quite a handsome girl—handsome, proud, and highly capable. Daleth, the frontier planet, bred a healthy if somewhat unscrupulous species.

"The C-maps are in that case," she said, jerking her thumb toward a filing cabinet. "Work out a course for maximum radiant thrust."

Roki frowned. "Why not a least-time course?"

She shook her head. "My reactors aren't too efficient. We need all the boost we can get from external energy. Otherwise we'll have to dive back down for fuel."

Worse and worse!—Roki thought as he dragged out the C-maps. Flying this boat to Sol would have been a feat of daring two centuries ago. Now, in an age of finer ships, it was a feat of idiocy.

 

Half an hour later, he handed her a course plan that would allow the Idiot to derive about half of its thrust from the variations in radiation pressure from the roaring inferno of the high-level cosmos. She looked it over without change of expression, then glanced at him curiously, after noting the time.

"You're pretty quick," she said.

"Thank you."

"You're hardly stupid. Why did you pull such a stupid boner?"

Roki stiffened. "I thought you planned to regard that as none of your business."

She shrugged and began punching course-settings into the courser. "Sorry, I forgot."

Still angry, he said, "I don't regard it as a boner. I'd do it again."

She shrugged again and pretended a lack of interest.

"Space-smuggling could be the death of the galaxy," he went on. "That's been proven. A billion people once died on Tau II because somebody smuggled in a load of non-Tauian animals—for house pets. I did only what his­tory has proven best."

"I'm trying to mind my own business," she growled, eyeing him sourly.

Roki fell silent and watched her reshape the radiation screen to catch a maximum of force from the flare of energy that blazed behind them. Roki was not sure that he wanted her to mind her own business. They would have to bear each other's presence for several months, and it would be nice to know how things stood.

"So you think it was a stupid boner," he continued at last. "So does everyone else. It hasn't been very pleasant."

She snorted scornfully as she worked. "Where I come from, we don't condemn fools. We don't need to. They just don't live very long, not on Daleth."

"And I am a fool, by your code?"

"How should I know? If you live to a ripe old age and get what you want, you probably aren't a fool."

And that, thought Roki, was the Dalethian golden rule. If the universe lets you live, then you're doing all right. And there was truth in it, perhaps. Man was born with only one right—the right to a chance at proving his fit­ness. And that right was the foundation of every culture, even though most civilized worlds tried to define "fitness" in terms of cultural values. Where life was rough, it was rated in terms of survival.

"I really don't mind talking about it," he said with some embarrassment. "I have nothing to hide."

"That's nice."

"Do you have a name—other than your firm name?"

"As far as you're concerned, I'm Daleth Incorporated." She gave him a suspicious look that lingered a while and became contemplative. "There's only one thing I'm curi­ous about—why are you going to Sol?"

He smiled wryly. "If I told a Dalethian that, she would indeed think me a fool."

Slowly the girl nodded. "I see. I know of Cophian ethics. If an officer's blunder results in someone's death, he either proves that it was not a blunder or he cuts his throat—ceremonially, I believe. Will you do that?"

Roki shrugged. He had been away from Coph a long time. He didn't know.

"A stupid custom," she said.

"It manages to drain off the fools, doesn't it? It's better than having society try them and execute them forcibly for their crimes. On Coph, a man doesn't need to be afraid of society. He needs only to be afraid of his own weakness. Society's function is to protect individuals against unfortunate accidents, but not against their own blunders. And when a man blunders, Coph simply excludes him from the protectorate. As an outcast, he sacri­fices himself. It's not too bad a system."

"You can have it."

"Dalethian?"

"Yeah?"

"You have no personal anger against what I did?"

She frowned at him contemptuously. "Uh-uh! I judge no one. I judge no one unless I'm personally involved. Why are you worried about what others think?"

"In our more highly developed society," he said stiffly, "a man inevitably grows a set of thinking-habits called `conscience. "

"Oh—yeah." Her dull tone indicated a complete lack of interest.

Again Roki wondered if she would think of making a quick bit of cash by informing Solarian officials of his identity. He began a mental search for a plan to avoid such possible treachery.

They ate and slept by the ship's clock. On the tenth day, Roki noticed a deviation in the readings of the radiation-screen instruments. The shape of the screen shell was gradually trying to drift toward minimum tor­sion, and assume a spherical shape. He pointed it out jo Daleth, and she quickly made the necessary readjust­ments. But the output of the reactors crept a notch higher as a result of the added drain. Roki wore an apprehen­sive frown as the flight progressed.

Two days later, the screen began creeping again. Once more the additional power was applied. And the reactor output needle hung in the yellow band of warning. The field-generators were groaning and shivering with threat­ening overload. Roki worked furiously to locate the trou­ble, and at last he found it. He returned to the control cabin in a cold fury.

"Did you have this ship pre-flighted before blast-off?" he demanded.

Her mouth fluttered with amusement as she watched his anger. "Certainly, commander."

He flushed at the worthless title. "May I see the pa­pers?"

For a moment she hesitated, then fumbled in her pocket and displayed a folded pink paper.

"Pink!" he roared. "You had no business taking off!"

Haughtily, she read him the first line of the pre-flight report. "`Base personnel disclaim any responsibility for accidents resulting from flight of Daleth Ship—' It doesn't say I can't take off."

"I'll see you banned from space!" he growled.

She gave him a look that reminded him of his current status. It was a tolerant, amused stare. "What's wrong, commander?"

"The synchronizers are out, that's all," he fumed. "Screen's getting farther and farther from resonance." 

"So?"

"So the overload'll get worse, and the screen'll break down. You'll have to drop back down out of the C-component and get it repaired."

She shook her head. "We'll chance it like it is. I've always wanted to find out how much overload the reac­tor'll take."

Roki choked. There wasn't a chance of making it. "Are you a graduate space engineer?" he asked.

"No."

`"Then you'd better take one's advice."

"Yours?"

"Yes.”

"No! We're going on."

"Suppose I refuse to let you?"

She whirled quickly, eyes flashing. "I'm in command of my ship. I'm also armed. I suggest you return to your quarters, passenger."

Roki sized up the situation, measured the determina­tion in the girl's eyes, and decided that there was only one thing to do. He shrugged and looked away, as if admitting her authority. She glared at him for a moment, but did not press her demand that he leave the control room. As soon as she glanced back at the instruments, Roki padded his rough knuckles with a handkerchief, selected a target at the back of her short crop of dark hair, and removed her objections with a short chopping blow to the head. "Sorry, friend," he murmured as he lifted her limp body out of the seat.

He carried her to her quarters and placed her on the bunk. After removing a small needle gun from her pocket, he left a box of headache tablets in easy reach, locked her inside, and went back to the controls. His fist was numb, and he felt like a heel, but there was no use arguing with a Dalethian. Clubbing her to sleep was the only way to avoid bloodier mayhem in which she might have emerged the victor—until the screen gave way.

 

The power-indication was threateningly high as Roki activated the C-drive and began piloting the ship downward through the fifth component. But with proper ad­justments, he made the process analogous to freefall, and the power reading fell off slowly. A glance at the C-maps told him that the Idiot would emerge far beyond the limits of Sixty-Star Cluster. When it re-entered the continuum, it would be in the general volume of space controlled by another interstellar organization called The Viggern Federation. He knew little of its culture, but cer­tainly it should have facilities for repairing a set of screen-synchronizers. He looked up its capitol planet, and began jetting toward it while the ship drifted downward in C. As he reached lower energy-levels, he cut out the screen altogether and went to look in on Daleth Incorporated who had made no sound for two hours.

He was surprised to see her awake and sitting up on the bunk. She gave him a cold and deadly stare, but displayed no rage. "I should've known better than to turn my back on you."

"Sorry. You were going to—"

"Save it. Where are we?"

"Corning in on Tragor III."

"I'll have you jailed on Tragor III, then."

He nodded. "You could do that, but then you might have trouble collecting my fare from Beth."

"That's all right."

"Suit yourself. I'd rather be jailed on your trumped-up charges than be a wisp of gas at ninety-thousand C's." 

"Trumped up?" '

"Sure, the pink pre-flight. Any court will say that whatever happened was your own fault. You lose your authority if you fly pink, unless your crew signs a release." 

"You a lawyer?"

"I've had a few courses in space law. But if you don't believe me, check with the Interfed Service on Tragor Ill." 

"I will. Now how about opening the door. I want out." 

"Behave?"

She paused, then: "My promise wouldn't mean anything, Roki. I don't share your system of ethics."

He watched her cool green eyes for a moment, then chuckled. "In a sense you do—or you wouldn't have said that." He unlocked the cabin and released her, not trust­ing her, but realizing that the synchronizers were so bad by now that she couldn't attempt to go on without repairs. She could have no motive for turning on him—except anger perhaps.

"My gun?" she said.

Again Roki hesitated. Then, smiling faintly, he handed it to her. She took the weapon, sniffed scornfully, and cocked it.

"Turn around, fool!" she barked.

Roki folded his arms across his chest, and remained facing her. "Go to the devil," he said quietly.

Her fingers whitened on the trigger. Still the Cophian failed to flinch, lose his smile, or move. Daleth Incorpo­rated arched her eyebrows, uncocked the pistol, and returned it to her belt. Then she patted his cheek and chuckled nastily. "Just watch yourself, commander. I don't like you."

And he noticed, as she turned away, that she had a bump on her head to prove it. He wondered how much the bump would cost him before it was over. Treachery on Sol, perhaps.

 

The pilot called Tragor III and received instructions to set an orbital course to await inspection. All foreign ships were boarded before being permitted to land. A few hours later, a small patrol ship winged close and grappled to the hull. Roki went to manipulate the locks.

A captain and two assistants came through. The in­spector was a young man with glasses and oversized ears. His eyebrows were ridiculously bushy and extended down on each side to his cheekbones. The ears were also filled with yellow brush. Roki recognized the peculiarities as local evolutionary tendencies; for they were shared also by the assistants. Tragor III evidently had an exceedingly dusty atmosphere.

The captain nodded a greeting and requested the ship's flight papers. He glanced at the pink pre-flight, clucked to himself, and read every word in the dispatcher's forms. "Observation flight? To Sol?" He addressed himself to Roki, using the interstellar Esperanto.

The girl answered. "That's right. Let's get this over with."

The captain gave her a searing, head-to toe glance. "Are you the ship's owner, woman?"

Daleth Incorporated contained her anger with an effort. "I am."

The captain told her what a Tragorian thought of it by turning aside from her, and continuing to address Roki as if he were ship's skipper. "Please leave the ship while we fumigate and inspect. Wohr will make you comfortable in the patrol vessel. You will have to submit to physical examination—a contagion precaution."

Roki nodded, and they started out after the assistant. As they entered the corridor, he grinned at Daleth, and received a savage kick in the shin for his trouble.

"Oops, sorry!" she muttered.

"Oh—one moment, sir," the captain called after them. "May I speak to you a moment—"

They both stopped and turned.

"Privately," the captain added.

The girl marched angrily on. Roki stepped back in the cabin and nodded.

"You are a well-traveled man, E Roki?" the bushy­browed man asked politely.

"Space has been my business."

"Then you need no warning about local customs." The captain bowed.

"I know enough to respect them and conform to them," Roki assured him. "That's a general rule. But I'm not familiar with Tragor III. Is there anything special I should know before we start out?"

"Your woman, E Roki. You might do well to inform her that she will have to wear a veil, speak to no man, and be escorted upon the streets at all times. Otherwise, she will be wise to remain on the ship, in her quarters."

Roki suppressed a grin. "I shall try to insure her good behavior."

The captain looked defensive. "You regard our customs as primitive?"

"Every society to its own tastes, captain. The wisdom of one society would be folly for another. Who is qualified to judge? Only the universe, which passes the judgment of survival on all peoples."

"Thank you. You are a wise traveler. I might explain that our purdah is the result of an evolutionary peculiar­ity. You will see for yourself, however."

"I can't guarantee my companion's behavior," Roki said before he went to join Daleth. "But I'll try my best to influence her."

Roki was grinning broadly as he went to the patrol vessel to wait. One thing was certain: the girl would have a rough time on Tragor if she tried to have him jailed for mutiny.

Her face reddened to forge-heat as he relayed the cap­tain's warning.

"I shall do nothing of the sort," she said stiffly.

Roki shrugged. "You know enough to respect local customs."

"Not when they're personally humiliating!" She curled up on a padded seat in the visitor's room and began to pout. He decided to drop the subject.

 

Repairing the synchronizers promised to be a week-long job, according to the Tragorian inspector who ac­companied the Idiot upon landing. "Our replacements are standardized, of course—within our own system. But parts for SSC ships aren't carried in stock. The synchro­nizers will have to be specially tailored."

"Any chance of rushing the job?"

"A week is rushing it."

"All right, we'll have to wait." Roki nudged the con­trols a bit, guiding the ship toward the landing site pointed out by the captain. Daleth was in her cabin, alone, to save herself embarrassment.

"May I ask a question about your mission, E Roki­, or is it confidential in nature?"

Roki paused to think before answering. He would have to lie, of course, but he had to make it safe. Suddenly he chuckled. "I forgot for a moment that you weren't with Sixty-Star Cluster. So I'll tell you the truth. This is supposed to be an observation mission, officially—but actu­ally, our superior sent us to buy him a holdful of a certain scarce commodity."

The captain grinned. Graft and corruption were appar­ently not entirely foreign to Tragor III. But then his grin faded into thoughtfulness. "On Sol's planets?"

Roki nodded.

"This scarce commodity—if I'm not too curious—is it surgibank supplies?"

Roki felt his face twitch with surprise. But he recovered from his shock in an instant. "Perhaps," he said calmly. He wanted to grab the man by the shoulders and shout a thousand questions, but he said nothing else.

The official squirmed in his seat for a time. "Does your federation buy many mercy cargoes from Sol?"

Roki glanced at him curiously. The captain was brim­ming with ill-concealed curiosity. Why?

"Occasionally, yes."

The captain chewed his lip for a moment. "Tell me," he blurted, "will the Solarian ships stop for your patrol inspections?"

Roki hesitated for a long time. Then he said, "I suppose that you and I could get together and share what we know about Sol without revealing any secrets of our own governments. Frankly, I, too, am curious about Sol."

The official, whose name was WeJan, was eager to accept. He scrawled a peculiar series of lines on a scrap of paper and gave it to Roki. "Show this to a heliocab driver. He will take you to my apartment. Would dinner be convenient?"

Roki said that it would.

The girl remained in her quarters when they landed. Roki knocked at the door, but she was either stubborn or asleep. He left the ship and stood for a moment on the ramp, staring at the hazy violet sky. Fine grit sifted against his face and stung his eyes.

"You will be provided goggles, suitable clothing, and an interpreter to accompany you during your stay," said WeJan as they started toward a low building.

But Roki was scarcely listening as he stared across the ramp. A thousand yards away was a yellow-starred mercy ship, bearing Solar markings. The most peculiar thing about it was the ring of guards that surrounded it. They apparently belonged to the ship, for their uniforms were different from those of the base personnel.

WeJan saw him looking. "Strange creatures, aren't they?" he whispered confidentially.

Roki had decided that in the long run he could gain more information by pretending to know more than he did. So he nodded wisely and said nothing. The mercy ship was too far away for him to decide whether the guards were human. He could make out only that they were bipeds. "Sometimes one meets strange ones all right. Do you know the Quinjori—from the other side of the galaxy?"

"No—no, I believe not, E Roki. Quinjori?"

"Yes. A very curious folk. Very curious indeed." He smiled to himself and fell silent. Perhaps, before his visit was over, he could trade fictions about the fictitious Quinjori for facts about the Solarians.

Roki met his interpreter in the spaceport offices, donned the loose garb of Tragor, and went to quibble with repair service. Still he could not shorten the promised time on the new synchros. They were obviously stuck for a week on Tragor. He thought of trying to approach the Solarian ship, but decided that it would be better to avoid suspicion.

Accompanied by the bandy-legged interpreter, whose mannerisms were those of a dog who had received too many beatings, Roki set out for Polarin, the Tragorian capital, a few miles away. His companion was a small middle-aged man with a piping voice and flaring ears; Roki decided that his real job was to watch his alien charge for suspicious activities, for the little man was no expert linguist. He spoke two or three of the tongues used in the Sixty-Star Cluster, but not fluently. The Cophian decided to rely on the Esperanto of space, and let the interpreter translate it into native Tragorian wherever necessary.

"How would E Roki care to amuse himself?" the little man asked. "A drink? A pretty girl? A museum?"

Roki chuckled. "What do most of your visitors do while they're here?" He wondered quietly what, in par­ticular, the Solarian visitors did. But it might not be safe to ask.

"Uh—that would depend on nationality, sir," mur­mured Pok. "The true-human foreigners often like to visit the Wanderer, an establishment which caters to their business. The evolved-human and the nonhuman visitors like to frequent The Court of Kings—a rather, uh, pecul­iar place." He looked at Roki, doubtfully, as if wondering about his biological status.

"Which is most expensive?" he asked, although he really didn't care. Because of the phony "observation mission papers," he could make Colonel Beth foot the bill.

"The Court of Kings is rather high," Pok said. "But so is the Wanderer."

"Such impartiality deserves a return. We will visit them both, E Pok. If it suits you."

"I am your servant, E Roki."

 

How to identify a Solarian without asking?—Roki wondered as they sat sipping a sticky, yeasty drink in the lounge of the Wanderer. The dimly lighted room was filled with men of all races—pygmies, giants, black, red, and brown. All appeared human, or nearly so. There were a few women among the crewmen, and most of them removed their borrowed veils while in the tolerant sanctuary of the Wanderer. The Tragorian staff kept stealing furtive glances at these out-system females, and the Cophian wondered about their covetousness.

"Why do you keep watching the strange women, E Pok?" he asked the interpreter a few minutes later.

The small man sighed. "Evidently you have not yet seen Tragorian women."

Roki had seen a few heavily draped figures on the street outside, clinging tightly to the arms of men, but there hadn't been much to look at. Still, Pok's hint was enough to give him an idea.

"You don't mean Tragor III is one of those places where evolution has pushed the sexes further apart?"

"I do," Pok said sadly. "The feminine I.Q. is seldom higher than sixty, the height is seldom taller than your jacket pocket, and the weight is usually greater than your own. As one traveler put it: 'short, dumpy, and dumb'. Hence, the Purdah."

"Because you don't like looking at them?"

"Not at all. Theirs is our standard of beauty. The purdah is because they are frequently too stupid to remember which man is their husband."

"Sorry I asked."

"Not at all," said Pok, whose tongue was being loosened by the yeasty brew. "It is our tragedy. We can bear it."

"Well, you've got it better than some planets. On Jevah, for instance, the men evolved into sluggish spidery little fellows, and the women are big husky brawlers."

"Ah yes. But Sol is the most peculiar of all, is it not?" said Pok.

"How do you mean?" Roki carefully controlled his voice and tried to look bored.

"Why, the Vamir, of course."

Because of the fact that Pok's eyes failed to move toward any particular part of the room, Roki concluded that there were no Solarians in the place. "Shall we visit the Court of Kings now, E Pok?" he suggested.

The small man was obviously not anxious to go. He murmured about ugly brutes, lingered over his drink, and gazed wistfully at a big dusky Sanbe woman. "Do you suppose she would notice me if I spoke to her?" the small interpreter asked.

"Probably. So would her five husbands. Let's go." Pok sighed mournfully and came with him.

 

The Court of Kings catered to a peculiar clientele indeed; but not a one, so far as Roki could see, was com­pletely inhuman. There seemed to be at least one common denominator to all intelligent life: it was bipedal and bimanual. Four legs was the most practical number for any animal on any planet, and it seemed that nature had nothing else to work with. When she decided to give intelligence to a species, she taught him to stand on his hind legs, freeing his forefeet to become tools of his in­tellect. And she usually taught him by making him use his hands to climb. As a Cophian biologist had said, "Life first tries to climb a tree to get to the stars. When it fails, it comes down and invents the high-C drive."

Again, Roki looked around for something that might he a Solarian. He saw several familiar species, some horned, some tailed, scaled, or heavily furred. Some stumbled and drooped as if Tragorian gravity weighted them down. Others bounced about as if floating free in space. One small creature, the native of a planet with an eight-hour rotational period, curled up on the table and fell asleep. Roki guessed that ninety per cent of the customers were of human ancestry, for at one time during the history of the galaxy, Man had sprung forth like a sudden blossom to inherit most of space. Some said they came from Sol III, but there was no positive evidence.

As if echoing his thoughts, Pok suddenly grunted, "I will never believe we are descended from those surly creatures."

Roki looked up quickly, wondering if the small inter­preter was telepathic. But Pok was sneering toward the doorway. The Cophian followed his tipsy gaze and saw a man enter. The man was distinguished only by his height and by the fact that he appeared more human, in the classical sense, than most of the other customers. He wore a uniform—maroon jacket and gray trousers—and it matched the ones Roki had seen from a distance at the spaceport.

So this was a Solarian. He stared hard, trying to take in much at once. The man wore a short beard, but there seemed to be something peculiar about the jaw. It was—predatory, perhaps. The skull was massive, but plump and rounded like a baby's, and covered with sparse yel­low fur. The eyes were quick and sharp, and seemed almost to leap about the room. He was at least seven feet tall, and there was a look of savagery about him that caused the Cophian to tense, as if sensing an adversary.

"What is it you don't like about them?" he asked, without taking his eyes from the Solarian.

"Their sharp ears for one thing," whispered Pok as the Solarian whirled to stare toward their table. "Their nasty tempers for another."

"Ah? Rage reactions show biologic weakness," said the Cophian in a mild tone, but as loud as the first time.

The Solarian, who had been waiting for a seat at tip bar, turned and stalked straight toward them. Pok whim­pered. Roki stared at him cooly. The Solarian loomed over them and glared from one to the other. He seemed to decide that Pok was properly cowed, and he turned his fierce eyes on the ex-patrolman.

"Would you like to discuss biology, manthing?" he growled like distant thunder. His speaking exposed his teeth—huge white chisels of heavy ivory. They were not regressed toward the fanged stage, but they suggested, together with the massive jaw, that nature might be work­ing toward an efficient bone-crusher.

Roki swirled his drink thoughtfully. "I don't know you, Bristleface," he murmured. "But if your biology bothers you, I'd be glad to discuss it with you."

He watched carefully for the reaction. The Solarian went gray-purple. His eyes danced with fire, and his slit mouth quivered as if to bare the strong teeth. Just as he seemed about to explode, the anger faded—or rather, settled in upon itself to brood. "This is beneath me," the eyes seemed to be saying. Then he laughed cordially.

"My apologies. I thought to share a table with you."

"Help yourself."

The Solarian paused. "Where are you from, manthing?"

Roki also paused. They might have heard that a Cophian commander blasted one of their ships. Still he didn't care to be caught in a lie. "Sixty-Star Cluster," he grunted.

"Which sun?" The Solarian's voice suggested that he was accustomed to being answered instantly.

Roki glowered at him. "Information for information, fellow. And I don't talk to people who stand over me." He pointedly turned to Pok. "As we were saying—"

"I am of Sol," growled the big one.

"Fair enough. I am of Coph."

The giant's brows lifted slightly. "Ah, yes." He in­spected Roki curiously and sat down. The chair creaked a warning. "Perhaps that explains it."

"Explains what?" Roki frowned ominously. He disliked overbearing men, and his hackles were rising. There was something about this fellow—

"I understand that Cophians are given to a certain ruthlessness."

Roki pretended to ponder the statement while he eyed the big man coldly. "True, perhaps. It would he danger­ous for you to go to Coph, I think. You would probably be killed rather quickly."

The angry color reappeared, but the man smiled po­litely. "A nation of duelists, I believe, military in char­acter, highly disciplined. Yes? They sometimes serve in the Sixty-Star Forces, eh?"

The words left no doubt in Roki's mind that the Solarian knew who had blasted their ship and why. But he doubted that the man had guessed his identity.

"I know less of your world, Solarian."

"Such ignorance is common. We are regarded as the galactic rurals, so to speak. We are too far from your dense star cluster." He paused. "You knew us once. We planted you here. And I feel sure you will know us again." He smiled to himself, finished his drink, and arose. "May we meet again, Cophian."

Roki nodded and watched the giant stride away. Pok was breathing asthmatically and picking nervously at his nails. He let out a sigh of relief with the Solarian's de­parture.

 

Roki offered the frightened interpreter a stiff drink, and then another. After two more, Pok swayed dizzily, then fell asleep across the table. Roki left him there. If Pok were an informer, it would be better to keep him out of the meeting with the patrol officer, Captain WeJan.

He hailed a cab and gave the driver the scrap of paper. A few minutes later, he arrived before a small building in the suburbs. WeJan's name was on the door—written in the space-tongue—but the officer was not at home. Frown­ing, he tried the door; locked. Then, glancing back toward the street, he caught a glimpse of a man standing in the shadows. It was a Solarian.

Slowly, Roki walked across the street. "Got a match, Bristleface?" he grunted.

In the light of triple-moons, he saw the giant figure swell with rage. The man looked quickly up and down the street. No one was watching. He emitted a low animal-growl, exposing the brutal teeth. His arms shot out to grasp the Cophian's shoulders, dragging him close.

Roki gripped the Multin automatic in his pocket and struggled to slip free. The Solarian jerked him up toward the bared teeth.

His throat about to be crushed, Roki pulled the trigger. There was a dull chug. The Solarian looked surprised. He released Roki and felt of his chest. There was no visible wound. Then, within his chest, the incendiary needle flared to incandescent heat. The Solarian sat down in the street. He breathed a frying sound. He crumpled. Roki left hastily before the needle burned its way out of the body.

He hadn't meant to kill the man, and it had been in self-defense, but he might have a hard time proving it. He hurried along back alleys toward the spaceport. If only they could leave Tragor immediately!

What had happened to WeJan? Bribed, beaten, or frightened away. Then the Solarians did know who he was and where he was going. There were half a dozen men around the spaceport who knew—and the informa­tion would he easy to buy. Pok had known that he was to meet with WeJan, and the Solarian had evidently been sent to watch the captain's quarters. It wasn't going to be easy now—getting to Sol III and landing.

What manner of creatures were these, he wondered. Men who supplied mercy cargoes to the galactic nations—as if charity were the theme and purpose of their culture—yet who seemed as arrogant as the warriors of some primitive culture whose central value was brutal power? What did they really want here? The Solarian had called him "manthing" as if he regarded the Cophian as a member of some lesser species.

The Solarians were definitely different. Roki could see it. Their heads were plump and soft like a baby's, hinting of some new evolutionary trend—a brain that could con­tinue growing, perhaps. But the jaws, the teeth, the quick tempers, and the hypersensitive ears—what sort of animal developed such traits? There was only one an­swer: a nocturnal predator with the instincts of a lion. "You shall get to know us again," the man had said.

It spelled politico-galactic ambitions. And it hinted at something else—something that made the Cophian shiver, and shy away from dark shadows as he hurried shipward.

 

Daleth Incorporated was either asleep or out. He checked at the ship, then went to the Administration Building to inquire about her. The clerk seemed embar­rassed.

"Uh . . . E Roki, she departed from the port about five."

"You've heard nothing of her since?"

"Well . . . there was a call from the police agency, I understand." He looked apologetic. "I assure you I had nothing to do with the matter."

"Police! What . . . what's wrong, man?"

"I hear she went unescorted and unveiled. The police are holding her."

"How long will they keep her?"

"Until some gentleman signs for her custody."

"You mean I have to sign for her?"

"Yes, sir."

Roki smiled thoughtfully. "Tell me, young man—are Tragorian jails particularly uncomfortable?"

"I wouldn't know, personally," the clerk said stiffly. "I understand they conform to the intergalactic `Code of Humanity' however."

"Good enough," Roki grunted. "I'll leave her there till we're ready to go."

"Not a bad idea," murmured the clerk, who had evi­dently encountered the cigar-chewing lady from Daleth.

Roki was not amused by the reversal of positions, but it seemed as good a place as any to leave her for safekeeping. If the Solarians became interested in him, they might also notice his pilot.

He spent the following day watching the Sol ship, and waiting fatalistically for the police to come and question him about the Solarian's death. But the police failed to come. A check with the news agencies revealed that the man's body had not even been found. Roki was puzzled. He had left the giant lying in plain sight where he had fallen. At noon, the Solarian crew came bearing several lead cases slung from the centers of carrying poles. They wore metal gauntlets and handled the cases cautiously. Roki knew they contained radioactive materials. So that was what they purchased with their surgibank supplies—nuclear fuels.

Toward nightfall, they loaded two large crates aboard. He noted the shape of the crates, and decided that one of them contained the body of the man he had killed. Why didn't they want the police to know? Was it possible that they wanted him free to follow them?

The Sol-ship blasted-off during the night. He was sur­prised to find it gone, and himself still unmolested by morning. Wandering around the spaceport, be saw WeJan, but the man had developed a sudden lapse of memory. He failed to recognize the Cophian visitor. With the Solarians gone, Roki grew bolder in his questioning.

"How often do the Solarians visit you?" he inquired of a desk clerk at Administration.

"Whenever a hospital places an order, sir. Not often. Every six months perhaps."

"That's all the traffic they have with Tragor?"

"Yes, sir. This is our only interstellar port."

"Do the supplies pass through your government chan­nels?"

The clerk looked around nervously. "Uh, no sir. They refuse to deal through our government. They contact their customers directly. The government lets them because the supplies are badly needed."

Roki stabbed out bluntly. "What do you think of the Solarians?"

The clerk looked blank for a moment, then chuckled. "I don't know, myself. But if you want a low opinion, ask at the spaceport cafe."

"Why? Do they cause trouble there?"

"No, sir. They bring their own lunches, so to speak. They eat and sleep aboard ship, and won't spend a thin galak around town."

Roki turned away and went back to the Idiot. Somewhere in his mind, an idea was refusing to let itself be believed. A mercy ship visited Tragor every six months. Roki had seen the scattered, ruined cargo of such a ship, and he had estimated it at about four thousand pints of blood, six thousand pounds of frozen bone, and seven thousand pounds of various replaceable organs and tis­sues. That tonnage in itself was not so startling, but if Sol III supplied an equal amount twice annually to even a third of the twenty-eight thousand civilized worlds in the galaxy, a numbing question arose: where did they get their raw material? Surgibank supplies were normally ob­tained by contributions from accident victims who lived long enough to voluntarily contribute their undamaged or­gans to a good cause.

Charitable organizations tried to secure pledges from men in dangerous jobs, donating their bodies to the plan­et's surgibank in the event of death. But no man felt easy about signing over his kidneys or his liver to the bank, and such recruiters were less popular than hangmen or life insurance agents. Mercy supplies were quite understandably scarce.

The grim question lingered in Roki's mind: where did the Sol III traders find between three and five million healthy accident victims annually? Perhaps they made the accidents themselves, accidents very similar to those oc­curring at the end of the chute in the slaughterhouse. He shook his head, refusing to believe it. No planet's popula­tion, however terrorized by its rulers, could endure such a thing without generating a sociological explosion that would make the world quiver in its orbit. There was a limit to the endurance of tyranny.

He spent the rest of the week asking innocent ques­tions here and there about the city. He learned nearly nothing. The Solarians came bearing their peculiar cargo, sold it quickly at a good price, purchased fissionable materials, and blasted-off without a civil word to anyone. Most men seemed nervous in their presence, perhaps because of their bulk and their native arrogance.

When the base personnel finished installing the syn­chronizers, he decided the time had come to secure Daleth Incorporated from the local jail. Sometimes he had chided himself for leaving her there after the Solarians had blasted-off, but it seemed to be the best place to keep the willful wench out of trouble. Belatedly, as he rode toward the police station, he wondered what sort of mayhem she would attempt to commit on his person for leaving her to fume in a cell. His smile was rueful as he marched in to pay her fine. The man behind the desk frowned sharply.

"Who did you say?" he grunted.

"The foreign woman from the Dalethian Ship."

The officer studied his records. "Ah, yes—Talewa Walkeka the name?"

Roki realized he didn't know her name. She was still Daleth Incorporated. "From the Daleth Ship," he insisted.

"Yes. Talewa Walkeka—she was released into the cus­tody of Eli Roki on twoday of last spaceweek."

"That's imposs—" Roki choked and whitened. "I am Eli Roki. Was the man a Solarian?"

"I don't recall."

-"Why don't you? Didn't you ask him for identification?" 

"Stop bellowing, please," said the official coldly. "And get your fists off my desk."

The Cophian closed his eyes and tried to control himself. "Who is responsible for this?"

The officer failed to answer.

"You are responsible!"

"I cannot look out for all the problems of all the for­eigners who—"

"Stop! You have let her die."

"She is only a female."

Roki straightened. "Meet me at any secluded place of your choice and I will kill you with any weapon of your choice."

The official eyed him coldly, then turned to call over his shoulder. "Sergeant, escort this barbarian to his ship and see that he remains aboard for the rest of his visit."

The Cophian went peacefully, realizing that violence would gain him nothing but the iron hospitality of a cell. Besides, he had only himself to blame for leaving her there. It was obvious to him now—the contents of the second crate the Solarians had carried aboard consisted of Talewa Walkeka, lately of Daleth and high-C. Un­doubtedly they had taken her alive. Undoubtedly she was additional bait to bring him on to Sol. Why did they want him to come? I'll oblige them and find out for myself, he thought.

 

The ship was ready. The bill would be sent back to Beth. He signed the papers, and blasted off as soon as possible. The lonely old freighter crept upward into the fifth component like a struggling old vulture, too ancient to leave its sunny lair. But the snychros were working per­fectly, and the screen held its shape when the ascent ceased just below red-line level. He chose an evasive course toward Sol and began gathering velocity.

Then he fed a message into the coder, to be broadcast back toward the Sixty-Star Cluster: Pilot abducted by Solarians; evidence secured to indicate that Solarian mercy-merchandise is obtained through genocide. He recorded the coded message on tape and let it feed continuously into the transmitters, knowing that the carrier made him a perfect target for homing devices, if anyone chose to silence him.

And he knew it was a rather poor bluff. The message might or might not be picked up. A listening ship would have to be at the same C-level to catch the signal. Few ships, save the old freighters, lingered long at ninety-thousand C's. But if the. Solarians let him live long enough, the message would eventually be picked up—but not necessarily believed. The most he could hope for was to arouse curiosity about Sol. No one would care much about the girl's abduction, or about his own death. Interstellar federations never tried to protect their citizens be­yond the limits of their own volume of space. It would be an impossible task.

Unless the Solarians were looking for him however, they themselves would probably not intercept the call. Their ships would be on higher C. And since they knew he was coming, they had no reason to search for him. At his present velocity and energy-level, he was four months from Sol. The mercy ship on a higher level, would proba­bly reach Sol within three weeks. He was a sparrow chas­ing a smug hawk.

But now there was more at stake than pride or reputa­tion. He had set out to clear himself of a bad name, but now his name mattered little. If what he suspected were true, then Sol III was a potential threat to every world in the galaxy. Again he remembered the Solarian's form of address—"manthing"—as if a new race had arisen to in­herit the places of their ancestors. If so, the new race had a right to bid for survival. And the old race called Man had a right to crush it if he could. Such was the dialectic of life.

Four months in the solitary confinement of a space-ship was enough to unnerve any man, however well-conditioned to it. He paced restlessly in his cell, from quarters to control to reactor room, reading everything that was aboard to read and devouring it several times. Sometimes he stopped to stare in Daleth's doorway. Her gear was still in the compartment, gathering dust. A pair of boots in the corner, a box of Dalethia cigars on the shelf.

"Maybe she has a book or two," he said once, and en­tered. He opened the closet and chuckled at the rough masculine clothing that hung there. But among the coarse fabrics was a wisp of pale green silk. He parted the dungarees to stare at the frail feminine frock, nestled toward the end and half-hidden like a suppressed desire. For a moment he saw her in it, strolling along the cool avenues of a Cophian city. But quickly he let the dungarees fall back, slammed the door, and stalked outside, feeling ashamed. He never entered again.

 

The loneliness was overpowering. After three months, he shut off the transmitters and listened on the space-frequencies for the sound of a human voice. There was nothing except the occasional twittering of a coded message. Some of them came from the direction of Sol.

Why were they letting him come without interference? Why had they allowed him to transmit the message freely? Perhaps they wanted him as a man who knew a great deal about the military and economic resources of the Sixty-Star Cluster, information they would need if they had high ambitions in space. And perhaps the mes­sage no longer mattered, if they had already acquired enough nuclear materials for their plans.

Alter a logical analysis of the situation, he hit upon a better answer. Their ships didn't have the warp-locking devices that permitted one ship to slip into a parallel C with an enemy and stay with that enemy while it ma­neuvered in the fifth component. The Solarians had proven that deficiency when the "mercy ship" had tried to escape him by evasive coursing. If their own ships were equipped with the warp lockers, they would have known better than to try. They wanted such equipment. Perhaps they thought that the Idiot possessed it, or that he could furnish them with enough information to let them build it.

After several days of correlating such facts as he already knew, Roki cut on his transmitters, fanned the beam down to a narrow pencil, and directed it toward Sol. "Blind Stab from Cluster-Ship Idiot," he called. "Any Sol Ship from Idiot. I have information to sell in exchange for the person of Talewa Walkeka. Acknowledge, please."

He repeated the message several times, and expected to wait a few days for an answer. But the reply came within three hours, indicating that a ship had been hover­ing just ahead of him, beyond the range of his own out­moded detectors.

"Cluster-Ship from Sol Seven," crackled the loud-speaker. "Do you wish to land on our planet? If so, please prepare to he boarded. One of our pilots will take you in. You are approaching our outer patrol zone. If you refuse to be boarded, you will have to turn back. Nonco­operative vessels are destroyed upon attempting to land. Over."

There was a note of amusement in the voice. They knew he wouldn't turn back. They had a hostage. They were inviting him to surrender but phrasing the invitation politely.

Roki hesitated. Why had the man said—"destroyed upon attempting to land?" After a moment's thought, he realized that it was because they could not destroy a ship while manuevering in the fifth component. They could not even stay in the same continuum with it, unless they had the warp-locking devices. A vague plan began form­ing in his mind.

"I agree conditionally. Do you have Talewa Walkeka aboard? If so, prove it by asking her to answer the fol­lowing request in her own voice: `List the garments con­tained in the closet of her quarters aboard this ship.' If this is accomplished satisfactorily, then I'll tentatively as­sume intentions are not hostile. Let me remind you, however, that while we are grappled together, I can rip half your hull off by hitting my C-drive—unless you're equipped with warp-locking devices."

That should do it, he thought. With such a warning, they would make certain that they had him aboard their own ship as a captive before they made any other move. And he would do his best to make it easy for them. Two or three hours would pass before he could expect an an­swer, so he began work immediately, preparing to use every means at his disposal to make a booby trap of the Idiot, and to set the trap so that only his continued well-being would keep it from springing.

The Idiot's stock of spare parts was strictly limited, as he had discovered previously. There were a few spare selsyns, replacement units for the calculator and courser, radio and radar parts, control-mechanisms for the reac­tors, and an assortment of spare instruments and detec­tors. He augmented this stock by ruthlessly tearing into the calculator and taking what he needed.

He was hard at work when the answer came from the Sol ship. It was Daleth's voice, crisp and angry, saying, "Six pair of dungarees, a jacket, a robe, and a silk frock. Drop dead, Roki."

The Solarian operator took over. "Expect a meeting in six hours. In view of your threat, we must ask that you stand in the outer lock with the hatch open, so that we may see you as we grapple together. Please acknowledge willingness to co-operate."

 

Roki grinned. They wanted to make certain that he was nowhere near the controls. He gave them a grum­bling acknowledgment and returned to his work, tearing into the electronic control-circuits, the radio equipment, the reaction-rate limiters, and the controls of the C-drive. He wove a network of inter-dependency throughout the ship, running linking-circuits from the air-lock mecha­nisms to the reactors, and from the communication equip­ment to the C-drive. Gradually the ship became useless as a means of transportation. The jets were silent. He set time clocks to activate some of the apparatus, and keyed other equipment by relays set to trip upon the occurrence of various events.

It was not a difficult task, nor a long one. He added nothing really new. For example, it was easy to remove the wires from the air lock indicator lamp and feed their signal into a relay section removed from the calculator, a section which would send a control pulse to the reactors if the air locks were opened twice. The control pulse, if it came, would push the units past the red line. The relay sections were like single-task robots, set to obey the command: "If this happens, then push that switch."

When he was finished, the six hours were nearly gone. Pacing restlessly, he waited for them to come. Then, no­ticing a sudden flutter on the instruments, he glanced out to see the dark hulk slipping through his radiation screen. It came to a stop a short distance away.

Roki started the timers he had set, then donned a pres­sure suit. Carrying a circuit diagram of the changes he had wrought, he went to stand in the outer lock. He held open the outer hatch. The beam of a searchlight stabbed out to hold him while the Sol Ship eased closer. He could see another suited figure in its lock, calling guidance to the pilot. Roki glanced up at his own grapples; they were already energized and waiting for something to which they could cling.

The ships came together with a rocking jerk as both sets of grapples caught and clung. Roki swung himself across a gravityless space, then stood facing the burly fig­ure of the Solarian. The man pushed him into the next lock and stepped after him.

"Search him for weapons," growled a harsh voice as Roki removed his helmet. "And get the boarding party through the locks."

"If you do that, you'll blow both ships to hell," the Cophian commented quietly. "The hatches are rigged to throw the reactors past red line."

The commander, a sharp-eyed oldster with a massive bald skull, gave him a cold stare that slowly became a sneer. "Very well, we can cut through the hull."

Roki nodded. "You can, but don't let any pressure escape. The throttles are also keyed to the pressure gauge."

The commander reddened slightly. "Is there anything else?"

"Several things." Roki handed him the circuit diagram. "Have your engineer study this. Until he gets the idea, anything you do may be dangerous, like trying to pull away from my grapples. I assure you we're either per­manently grappled together, or permanently dead."

The Solarian was apparently his own engineer. He stared at the schematic while another relieved Roki of his weapon. There were four of them in the cabin. Three were armed and watching him carefully. He knew by their expressions that they considered him to be of a lesser species. And he watched them communicate silently among themselves by a soundless language of facial twitches and peculiar nods. Once the commander looked up to ask a question.

"When will this timer activate this network?"

Roki glanced at his watch. "In about ten minutes. If the transmitter's periodic signals aren't answered in the correct code, the signals serve to activate C-drive."

"I see that," he snapped. He glanced at a burly as­sistant. "Take him out. Skin him—from the feet up. He'll give you the code."

"I'll give it to you now," Roki offered calmly.

The commander showed faint surprise. "Do so then." "The Cophian multiplication tables is the code. My transmitter will send a pair of Cophian numbers every two minutes. If you fail to supply the product within one second, a relay starts the C-drive. Since you can't guaran­tee an exactly simultaneous thrust, there should be quite a crash."

"Very well, give us your Cophian number symbols." 

"Gladly. But they won't help you."

"Why not?"

"Our numbers are to the base eighteen instead of base ten. You couldn't react quickly enough unless you've been using them since childhood."

 

The Solarian's lips pulled back from his heavy teeth and his jaw muscles began twitching. Roki looked at his watch.

"You have seven minutes to get your transmitter set up, with me at the key. We'll talk while I keep us intact."

The commander hesitated, then nodded to one of the guards who promptly left the room.

"Very well, manthing, we will set it up temporarily." He paused to smile arrogantly. "You have much to learn about our race. But you have little time in which to learn it."

"What do you mean?"

"Just this. This transmitter—and the whole apparatus—will be shut down after a certain period of time."

Roki stiffened. "Just how do you propose to do it?"

"Fool! By waiting until the signals stop. You obviously must have set a time limit on it. I would guess a few hours at the most."

It was true, but he had hoped to avoid mentioning it. The power to the control circuits would be interrupted af­ter four hours, and the booby trap would be deactivated. For if he hadn't achieved his goal by then, he meant to neglect a signal during the last half-hour and let the C-ward lurch tear them apart. He nodded slowly.

"You're quiet right. You have four hours in which to surrender your ship into my control. Maybe. I'll send the signals until I decide you don't mean to co-operate. Then—" He shrugged.

The Solarian gave a command to his aides. They departed in different directions. Roki guessed that they had been sent to check for some way to enter the Idiot that would not energize a booby circuit.

His host waved him through a doorway, and he found himself in their control room. A glance told him that their science still fell short of the most modern cultures. They had the earmarks of a new race, and yet Sol's civilization was supposedly the oldest in the galaxy.

"There are the transmitters," the commander barked. "Say what you have to say, and we shall see who is best at waiting."

Roki sat down, fingered the key, and watched his ad­versary closely. The commander fell into a seat opposite him and gazed coolly through narrowed lids. He wore a fixed smile of amusement. "Your name is Eli Roki, I be­lieve. I am Space Commander Hulgruv."

A blare of sound suddenly came from the receiver. Hulgruv frowned and lowered the volume. The sound came forth as a steady musical tone. He questioned the Cophian with his eyes.

"When the tone ceases, the signals will begin."

"I see."

"I warn you, I may get bored rather quickly. I'll keep the signals going only until I think you've had time to assure yourselves that this is not a bluff I am trying to put over on you."

"I'm sure it's not. It's merely an inconvenience." 

"You know little of my home planet then."

"I know a little."

"Then you've heard of the 'Sword of Apology.' "

"How does that—" Hulgruv paused and lost his smirk for an instant. "I see. If you blunder, your code de­mands that you die anyway. So you think you wouldn't hesitate to neglect a signal."

"Try me."

"It may not be necessary. Tell me, why did you space them two minutes apart? Why not one signal every hour?"

"You can answer that."

"Ah yes. You think the short period insures you against any painful method of persuasion, eh?"

"Uh-huh. And it gives me a chance to decide fre­quently whether it's worth it."

"What is it you want, Cophian? Suppose we give you the girl and release you."

"She is a mere incidental," he growled, fearful of choking on the words. "The price is surrender."

Hulgruv laughed heartily. It was obvious he had other plans. "Why do you deem us your enemy?"

"You heard the accusation I beamed back to my Cluster."

"Certainly. We ignored it, directly. Indirectly we made a fool of you by launching another, uh, mercy ship to your system. The cargo was labeled as to source, and the ship made a point of meeting one of your patrol vessels. It stopped for inspection. You're less popular at home than ever." He grinned. "I suggest you return to Sol with us. Help us develop the warp locks."

Roki hesitated. "You say the ship stopped for inspec­tion?"

"Certainly."

"Wasn't it inconvenient? Changing your diet, leaving your 'livestock' at home—so our people wouldn't know you for what you really are."

Hulgruv stiffened slightly, then nodded. "Good guess." 

"Cannibal!"

"Not at all. I am not a man."

 

They stared fixedly at one another. The Cophian felt the clammy cloak of hate creeping about him. The tone from the speaker suddenly stopped. A moment of dead silence. Roki leaned back in his chair.

"I'm not going to answer the first signal."

The commander glanced through the doorway and jerked his head. A moment later, Talcwa Walkeka stepped proudly into the room, escorted by a burly guard. She gave him an icy glance and said nothing.

"Daleth—"

She made a noise like an angry cat and sat where the guard pushed her. They waited. The first signal suddenly screeched from the receiver: two series of short bleats of three different notes.

Involuntarily his hand leaped to the key. He bleated back the answering signal.

Daleth wore a puzzled frown. "Ilgen times ufneg is hork-segan," she muttered in translation.

A slow grin spread across Hulgruv's heavy face. He turned to look at the girl. "You're trained in the Cophian number system?"

"Don't answer that!" Roki bellowed.

"She has answered it, manthing. Are you aware of what your friend is doing, female?"

She shook her head. Hulgruv told her briefly. She frowned at Roki, shook her head, and stared impas­sively at the floor. Apparently she was either drugged or had learned nothing about the Solarians to convince her that they were enemies of the galaxy.

"Tell me, Daleth. Have they been feeding you well?" She hissed at him again. "Are you crazy—"

Hulgruv chuckled. "He is trying to tell you that we are cannibals. Do you believe it?"

Fright appeared in her face for an instant, then disbe­lief. She stared at the commander, saw no guilt in his ex­pression. She looked scorn at Roki.

"Listen, Daleth! That's why they wouldn't stop. Human livestock aboard. One look in their holds and we would have known, seen through their guise of mercy, recognized them as self-styled supermen, guessed their plans for galactic conquest. They breed their human cat­tle on their home planet and make a business of selling the parts. Their first weapon is infiltration into our con­fidence. They knew that if we gained an insight into their bloodthirsty culture, we would crush them."

"You're insane, Roki!" she snapped.

"No! Why else would they refuse to stop? Technical secrets? Baloney! Their technology is still inferior to ours. They carried a cargo of hate, our hate, riding with them unrecognized. They couldn't afford to reveal it."

Hulgruv laughed uproariously. The girl shook her head slowly at Roki, as if pitying him.

"It's true, I tell you! I guessed, sure. But it was pretty obvious they were taking their surgibank supplies by murder. And they contend they're not men. They guard their ships so closely, live around them while in port. And he admitted it to me."

The second signal came. Roki answered it, then began ignoring the girl. She didn't believe him. Hulgruv ap­peared amused. He hummed the signals over to himself —without mistake.

"You're using polytonal code for challenge, monotonal for reply. That makes it harder to learn."

The Cophian caught his breath. He glanced at the Solarian's huge, bald braincase. "You hope to learn some three or four hundred sounds—and sound-combinations within the time I allow you?"

"We'll see."

Some note of contempt in Hulgruv's voice gave Roki warning.

"I shorten my ultimatum to one hour! Decide by then. Surrender, or I stop answering. Learn it, if you can."

"He can, Roki," muttered Daleth. "They can memorize a whole page at a glance."

Roki keyed another answer. "I'll cut it off if he tries it."

The commander was enduring the tension of the stalemate superbly. "Ask yourself, Cophian," he grunted with a smile, "what would you gain by destroying the ship—and yourself? We are not important. If we're destroyed, our planet loses another gnat in space, nothing more. Do you imagine we are incapable of self-sacrifice?"

 

Roki found no answer. He set his jaw in silence and answered the signals as they came. He hoped the bluff would win, but now he saw that Hulgruv would let him destroy the ship. And—if the situation were reversed, Roki knew that he would do the same. He had mistak­enly refused to concede honor to an enemy. The com­mander seemed to sense his quiet dismay, and he leaned forward to speak softly.

"We are a new race, Roki—grown out of man. We have abilities of which you know nothing. It's useless to fight us. Ultimately, your people will pass away. Or become stagnant. Already it has happened to man on Earth."

"Then—there are two races on Earth."

"Yes, of course. Did apes pass away when man ap­peared? The new does not replace the old. It adds to it, builds above it. The old species is the root of the new tree."

"Feeding it," the Cophian grunted bitterly.

He noticed that Talewa was becoming disturbed. Her eyes fluttered from one to the other of them.

"That was inevitable, manthing. There are no other animal foodstuffs on Earth. Man exhausted his planet, overpopulated it, drove lesser species into extinction. He spent the world's resources getting your ancestors to the denser star-clusters. He saw his own approaching stagnation on Earth. And, since Sol is near the rim of the galaxy, with no close star-neighbors, he realized he could never achieve a mass-exodus into space. He didn't have the C-drive in its present form. The best he could do was a field-cancellation drive."

"But that's the heart of the C-drive."

"True. But he was too stupid to realize what he had. He penetrated the fifth component and failed to realize what he had done. His ships went up to five-hundred C's or so, spent a few hours there by the ship's clock, and came down to find several years had passed on Earth. They never got around that time-lag."

"But that's hardly more than a problem in five-space navigation!"

"True again. But they still thought of it in terms of field-cancellation. They didn't realize they'd actually left the four-space continuum. They failed to see the blue-shift as anything more than a field-phenomenon. Even in high-C, you measure light's velocity as the same constant —because your measuring instruments have changed pro­portionally. It's different, relative to the home continuum, but you can't know it except by pure reasoning. They never found out.

"Using what they had, they saw that they could send a few of their numbers to the denser star-clusters, if they wanted to wait twenty thousand years for them to arrive. Of course, only a few_ years would pass aboard ship. They knew they could do it, but they procrastinated. Society was egalitarian at the time. Who would go? And why should the planet's industry exhaust itself to launch a handful of ships that no one would ever see again? Who wanted to make a twenty thousand year investment that would impoverish the world? Sol's atomic resources were never plentiful."

"How did it come about then?"

"Through a small group of men who didn't care about the cost. They seized power during a `population rebel­lion'—when the sterilizers were fighting the euthana­siasts and the do-nothings. The small clique came into power by the fantastic promise of draining off the population-surplus into space. Enough of the stupid be­lieved it to furnish them with a strong backing. They clamped censorship on the news agencies and impris­oned everyone who said it couldn't be done. They put the planet to work building ships. Their fanatic personal philosophy was: `We are giving the galaxy to Man. What does it matter if he perishes on Earth?' They put about twelve hundred ships into space before their slave-structure collapsed. Man never developed another technology on Sol III. He was sick of it."

"And your people?"

Hulgruv smiled. "A natural outgrowth of the situation. If a planet were glutted with rabbits who ate all the grass, a species of rabbits who learned to exploit other rabbits would have the best chance for survival. We are predators, Cophian. Nature raised us up to be a check on your race."

"You pompous fool!" Roki snapped. "Predators are specialists. What abilities do you have—besides the abil­ity to prey on man?"

"I'll show you in a few minutes," the commander mut­tered darkly.

Daleth had lost color slowly as she listened to the Solarian's roundabout admission of Roki's charge. She suddenly moaned and slumped in a sick heap. Hulgruv spoke to the guard in the soundless facial language. The guard carried her away quickly.

""If you were an advanced species, Hulgruv—you would not have let yourself be tricked so easily, by me. And a highly intelligent race would discover the warp locks for themselves."

Hulgruv flushed. "We underestimated you, manthing. It was a natural mistake. Your race has sunk to the level of cattle on earth. As for the warp locks, we know their principles. We have experimental models. But we could short-circuit needless research by using your design. We are a new race, new to space. Naturally we cannot do in a few years what you needed centuries to accomplish."

"You'll have to look for help elsewhere. In ten minutes, I'm quitting the key—unless you change your mind."

Hulgruv shrugged. While Roki answered the signals, he listened for sounds of activity throughout the ship. He heard nothing except the occasional clump of boots, the brief mutter of a voice in the corridor, the intermittent rattling of small tools. There seemed to be no excitement or anxiety. The Solarians conducted themselves with quiet self-assurance.

"Is your crew aware of what is happening?"

"Certainly."

As the deadline approached, his fingers grew nervous on the key. He steeled himself, and waited, clutching at each second as it marched past. What good would it do to sacrifice Daleth and himself? He would succeed only in destroying one ship and one crew. But it was a good trade—two pawns for several knights and a rook. And, when the Solarians began their march across space, there would be many such sacrifices.

For the last time, he answered a signal, then leaned back to stare at Hulgruv. `"Two minutes, Solarian. There's still time to change your mind."

Hulgruv only smiled. Roki shrugged and stood up. A pistol flashed into the commander's hand, warning him back. Roki laughed contemptuously.

"Afraid I’ll try to take your last two minutes away?" He strolled away from the table toward the door. "Stop!" Hulgruv barked.

"Why? I want to see the girl."

"Very touching. But she's busy at the moment."

"What?" He turned slowly, and glanced at his watch. "You don't seem to realize that in fifty seconds—"' 

"We'll see. Stay where you are."

The Cophian felt a sudden coldness in his face. Could they have found a flaw in his net of death?—a way to circumvent the sudden application of the Idiot's C-drive, with its consequent ruinous stresses to both ships? Or had they truly memorized the Cophian symbols to a one second reaction time?

He shrugged agreeably and moved in the general di­rection of the transmitter tuning units. There was one way to test the possibility. He stopped several feet away and turned to face Hulgruv's suspicious eyes. "You are braver than I thought," he growled.

The admission had the desired effect. Hulgruv tossed his head and laughed arrogantly. There was an instant of relaxation. The heavy automatic wavered slightly. Roki backed against the transmitters and cut the power switch. The hum died.

"Ten seconds, Hulgruv! Toss me your weapon. Shoot and you shatter the set. Wait and the tubes get cold. Toss it!"

Hulgruv bellowed, and raised the weapon to fire. Roki grinned. The gun quivered. Then with a choking sound, the Solarian threw it to him. "Get it on!" he howled. "Get it on!"

As Roki tripped the switch again, the signals were already chirping in the loud-speaker. He darted aside, out of view from the corridor. Footsteps were already racing toward the control room.

The signals stopped. Then the bleat of an answer! Another key had been set up in the adjoining room! With Daleth answering the challenges?

The pistol exploded in his hand as the first crewman came racing through the doorway. The others backed out of sight into the corridor as the projectile-weapon knocked their comrade back in a bleeding sprawl. Hulgruv made a dash for the door. Roki cut him down with a shot at the knee.

"The next one takes the transmitter," he bellowed. "Stay back."

Hulgruv roared a command. "Take him! If you can't, let the trap spring!"

Roki stooped over him and brought the pistol butt crashing against his skull, meaning only to silence him. It was a mistake; he had forgotten about the structure of the Solarian skull. He put his foot on Hulgruv's neck and jerked. The butt came free with a wet cluck. He raced to the doorway and pressed himself against the wall to listen. The crewmen were apparently having a parley at the far end of the corridor. He waited for the next signal.

When it came, he dropped to the floor—to furnish an unexpected sort of target—and snaked into view. He shot twice at three figures a dozen yards away. The answering fire did something to the side of his face, blurring his vi­sion. Another shot sprayed him with flakes from the deck. One crewman was down. The others backed through a door at the end of the corridor. They slammed it and a pressure seal tightened with a rubbery sound.

Roki climbed to his feet and slipped toward a doorway from which he heard the click of the auxiliary key. He felt certain someone was there besides Daleth. But when he risked a quick glance around the corner, he saw only the girl. She sat at a small desk, her hand frozen to the key, her eyes staring dazedly at nothing. He started to speak, then realized what was wrong. Hypnosis! Or a hyp­notic drug. She sensed nothing but the key beneath her fingers, waiting for the next challenge.

The door was only half-open. He could see no one, but there had been another man; of that he was certain. Thoughtfully he took aim at the plastic door panel and fired. A gun skidded toward Daleth's desk. A heavy body sprawled across the floor.

The girl started. The dull daze left her face, to be re-placed with wide-eyed shock. She clasped her hands to her cheeks and whimpered. A challenge bleated from the radio.

"Answer!" he bellowed.

Her hand shot to the key and just in time. But she seemed about to faint.

"Stay on it!" he barked, and dashed back to the con­trol room. The crewmen had locked themselves aft of the bulkhead, and had started the ventilator fans. Roki heard their whine, then caught the faint odor of gas. His eyes were burning and he sneezed spasmodically.

"Surrender immediately, manthing!" blared the inter­com.

Roki looked around, then darted toward the controls. He threw a damping voltage on the drive tubes, defocused the ion streams, and threw the reactors to full emission. The random shower of high-speed particles would spray toward the focusing coils, scatter like deflected buckshot, and loose a blast of hard X-radiation as they peppered the walls of the reaction chambers. Within a few seconds, if the walls failed to melt, the crewmen back of the bulkhead should recognize the possibility of being quickly fried by the radiant inferno.

The tear gas was choking him. From the next compart­ment, he could hear Daleth coughing and moaning. How could she hear the signals for her own weeping? He tried to watch the corridor and the reaction-chamber temperature at the same time. The needle crept toward the danger-point. An explosion could result, if the walls failed to melt.

Suddenly the voice of the intercom again: "Shut it off, you fool! You'll destroy the ship."

He said nothing, but waited in tense silence, watching the other end of the corridor. Suddenly the ventilator fans died. Then the bulkhead door opened a crack, and paused.

"Throw out your weapon first!" he barked.

A gun fell through the crack and to the floor. A Solarian slipped through, sneezed, and rubbed his eyes. "Turn around and back down the corridor."

The crewman obeyed slowly. Roki stood a few feet behind him, using him for a shield while the others emerged. The fight was gone out of them. It was strange, he thought; they were willing to risk the danger of the Idiot's C-drive, but they couldn't stand being locked up with a runaway reactor. They could see death coming then. He throttled back the reactors, and prodded the men toward the storage rooms. There was only one door that suggested a lockup. He halted the prisoners in the hallway and tried the bolt.

"Not in there, manthing!" growled one of the Solarians. "Why not?"

"There are—"

A muffled wail from within the compartment in­terrupted the explanation. It was the cry of a child. His hand trembled on the bolt.

"They are wild, and we are weaponless," pleaded the Solarian.

"How many are in there?"

"Four adults, three children."

Roki paused. "There's nowhere else to put you. One of you—you there—go inside, and we'll see what happens."

The man shook his head stubbornly in refusal. Roki repeated the order. Again the man refused. The predator, unarmed, was afraid of its prey. The Cophian aimed low and calmly shot him through the leg.

"Throw him inside," he ordered tonelessly.

With ill-concealed fright for their own safety, the other two lifted their screaming comrade. Roki swung open the door and caught a brief glimpse of several human shad­ows in the gloom. Then the Solarian was thrown through the doorway and the bolt snapped closed.

At first there was silence, then a bull-roar from some angry throat. Stamping feet—then the Solarian's shriek—and a body was being dashed against the inside walls while several savage voices roared approval. The two re­maining crewmen stood in stunned silence.

"Doesn't work so well, does it?" Roki murmured with ruthless unconcern.

After a brief search, he found a closet to lock them in, and went to relieve Dalcth at the key. When the last signal came, at the end of the four hours, she was asleep from exhaustion. And curled up on the floor, she looked less like a tough little frontier urchin than a frightened bedraggled kitten. He grinned at her for a moment, then went back to inspect the damage to the briefly overloaded reactors. It was not as bad as it might have been. He worked for two hours, replacing fused focusing sections. The jets would carry them home.

The Idiot was left drifting in space to await the coming of a repair ship. And Daleth was not anxious to fly it back alone. Roki set the Solarian vessel on a course with a variable. C-level, so that no Sol ship could track them without warp lockers. As far as Roki was concerned the job was done. He had a shipful of evidence and two live Solarians who could be forced to confirm it.

"What will they do about it?" Daleth asked as the cap­tured ship jetted them back toward the Sixty-Star Cluster. "Crush the Solarian race immediately."

"I thought we were supposed to keep hands-off non-human races?"

"We are, unless they try to exploit human beings. That is automatically an act of war. But I imagine an Ultimatum will bring a surrender. They can't fight without warp lockers."

"What will happen on Earth when they do surrender?" Roki turned to grin. "Go ask the human Earthers. Climb in their cage."

She shuddered, and murmured, "Some day—they'll be a civilized race again, won't they?"

He sobered, and stared thoughtfully at the star-lanced cosmos. "Theirs is the past, Daleth. Theirs is the glory of having founded the race of man. They sent us into space. They gave the galaxy to man—in the beginning. We would do well to let them alone."

He watched her for a moment. She had lost cockiness, temporarily.

"Stop grinning at me like that!" she snapped.

Roki went to feed the Solarian captives: canned cabbage.

 

Big Joe and the Nth Generation

 

A THIEF, HE was about to die like a thief.

He hung from the post by his wrists. The wan sunlight glistened faintly on his naked back as he waited, eyes tightly closed, lips moving slowly as he pressed his face against the rough wood and stood on tiptoe to relieve the growing ache in his shoulders. When his ankles ached, he hung by the nails that pierced his forearms just above the wrists.

He was young, perhaps in his tenth Marsyear, and his, crisp black hair was close-cropped in the fashion of the bachelor who had not yet sired a pup, or not yet ad­mitted that he had. Lithe and sleek, with the quick knotty muscles and slender rawhide limbs of a wild thing, half-fed and hungry with a quick furious hunger that crouched in ambush. His face, though twisted with pain and fright, remained that of a cocky pup.

When he opened his eyes he could see the low hills of Mars, sun-washed and gray-green with trees, trees brought down from the heavens by the Ancient Fathers. But he could also see the executioner in the foreground, sitting spraddle legged and calm while he chewed a blade of grass and waited. A squat man with a thick face, he occasionally peered at the thief with empty blue eyes—while he casually played mumblety-peg with the bleeding-blade. His stare was blank.

"Ready for me yet, Asir?" he grumbled, not unpleas­antly.

The knifeman sat beyond spitting range, but Asir spat, and tried to wipe his chin on the post. "Your dirty mother!" he mumbled.

The executioner chuckled and played mumblety-peg.

After three hours of dangling from the spikes that pierced his arms, Asir was weakening, and the blood throbbed hard in his temples, with each jolt of his heart a separate pulse of pain. The red stickiness had stopped oozing down his arms; they knew bow to drive the spike just right. But the heartbeats labored in his head like a hammer beating at red-hot iron.

How many heartbeats in a lifetime—and how many left to him now?

He whimpered and writhed, beginning to lose all hope. Mara had gone to see the Chief Commoner, to plead with him for the pilferer's life—but Mara was about as trustworthy as a wild hiiffen, and he had visions of them chuckling together in Tokra's villa over a glass of amber wine, while life drained slowly from a young thief.

Asir regretted nothing. His father had been a renegade before him, had squandered his last ritual formula to buy a wife, then impoverished, had taken her away to the hills. Asir was born in the hills, but he came back to the village of his ancestors to work as a servant and steal the rituals of his masters. No thief could last for long. A ritual-thief caused havoc in the community. The owner of a holy phrase, not knowing that it had been stolen, tried to spend it—and eventually counterclaims would come to light, and a general accounting had to be called. The thief was always found out.

Asir had stolen more than wealth, he had stolen the strength of their souls. For this they hung him by his wrists and waited for him to beg for the bleeding-blade.

 

Woman thirsts for husband, 

Man thirsts for wife,

Baby thirsts for breast-milk 

Thief thirsts for knife .. .

 

A rhyme from his childhood, a childish chant, an eenie-­meenie-miney for determining who should drink first from a nectar-cactus. He groaned and tried to shift his weight more comfortably. Where was Mara?

"Ready for me yet, Asir?" the squat man asked.

Asir hated him with narrowed eyes. The executioner was bound by law to wait until his victim requested his fate. But Asir remained ignorant of what the fate would be. The Council of Senior Kinsmen judged him in secret, and passed sentence as to what the executioner would do with the knife. But Asir was not informed of their judg­ment. He knew only that when he asked for it, the ex­ecutioner would advance with the bleeding blade and exact the punishment—his life, or an amputation, depend­ing on the judgment. He might lose only an eye or an ear or a finger. But on the other hand, he might lose his life, both arms, or his masculinity.

There was no way to find out until he asked for the punishment. If he refused to ask, they would leave him hanging there. In theory, a thief could escape by hanging four days, after which the executioner would pull out the nails. Sometimes a culprit managed it, but when the nails were pulled, the thing that toppled was already a corpse.

The sun was sinking in the west, and it blinded him. Asir knew about the sun—knew things the stupid council failed to know. A thief, if successful, frequently became endowed with wisdom, for he memorized more wealth than a score of honest men. Quotations from the ancient gods—Fermi, Einstein, Elgermann, Hauser and the rest—most men owned scattered phrases, and scattered phrases remained meaningless. But a thief memorized all transactions that he overheard, and the countless phrases could be fitted together into meaningful ideas.

He knew now that Mars, once dead, was dying again, its air leaking away once more into space. And Man would die with it, unless something were done, and done quickly. The Blaze of the Great Wind needed to be rekindled under the earth, but it would not be done. The tribes had fallen into ignorance, even as the holy books had warned:

It is realized that the colonists will be unable to main­tain a technology without basic tools, and that a rebuilding will require several generations of intelligently directed effort. Given the knowledge, the colonists may he able to restore a machine culture if the knowledge continues to be bolstered by desire. But if the third, fourth, and Nth gen­erations fail to further the gradual retooling process, the knowledge will become worthless.

The quotation was from the god Roggins, Progress of the Mars-Culture, and he had stolen bits of it from various sources. The books themselves were no longer in exist­ence, remembered only in memorized ritual chants, the possession of which meant wealth.

Asir was sick. Pain and slow loss of blood made hire weak, and his vision blurred. He failed to see her coming until he heard her feet rustling in the dry grass.

"Mara—"

She smirked and spat contemptuously at the foot of the post. The daughter of a Senior Kinsman, she was a tall, slender girl with an arrogant strut and mocking eyes. She stood for a moment with folded arms, eyeing him with amusement. Then, slowly, one eye closed in a solemn wink. She turned her hack on him and spoke to the ex­ecutioner.

"May I taunt the prisoner, Slubil?" she asked.

"It is forbidden to speak to the thief," growled the knifeman.

"Is he ready to beg for justice, Slubil?"

The knifeman grinned and looked at Asir. "Are you ready for me yet, thief?"

Asir hissed an insult. The girl had betrayed him. "Evidently a coward," she said. "Perhaps he means to hang four days."

"Let him then."

"No—I think that I should like to see him beg."

She gave Asir a long searching glance, then turned to walk away. The thief cursed her quietly and followed her with his eyes. A dozen steps away she stopped again, looked back over her shoulder, and repeated the slow wink. Then she marched on toward her father's house. The wink made his scalp crawl for a moment, but then ...

Suppose she hasn't betrayed me? Suppose she had wheedled the sentence out of Tokra, and knew what his punishment would be. I think that I should like to see him beg.

But on the other hand, the fickle she-devil might be tricking him into asking for a sentence that she knew would be death or dismemberment—just to amuse herself.

He cursed inwardly and trembled as he peered at the bored executioner. He licked his lips and fought against dizzyness as he groped for words. Slubil heard him mut­tering and looked up.

"Are you ready for me yet?"

Asir closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. "Give it to me!" he yelped suddenly, and braced himself against the post.

Why not? The short time gained couldn't he classed as living. Have it done with. Eternity would be sweet in comparison to this ignominy. A knife could be a blessing.

He heard the executioner chuckle and stand up. He heard the man's footsteps approaching slowly, and the singing hiss of the knife as Slubil swung it in quick arcs. The executioner moved about him slowly, teasing him with the whistle of steel fanning the air about him. He was expected to beg. Slubil occasionally laid the knife against his skin and took it away again. Then Asir heard the rustle of the executioner's cloak as his arm went back. Asir opened his eyes.

The executioner grinned as he held the blade high—aimed at Asir's head! The girl had tricked him. He groaned and closed his eyes again, muttering a half-forgotten prayer.

The stroke fell—and the blade chopped into the post above his head. Asir fainted.

When he awoke he lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. The executioner rolled him over with his foot.

"In view of your extreme youth, thief," the knifeman growled, "the council has ordered you perpetually ban­ished. The sun is setting. Let dawn find you in the hills. If you return to the plains, you will be chained to a wild hilffen and dragged to death."

Panting weakly, Asir groped at his forehead, and found a fresh wound, raw and rubbed with rust to make a scar. Slubil had marked him as an outcast. But except for the nail-holes through his forearms, he was still in one piece. His hands were numb, and he could scarcely move his fingers. Slubil had bound the spike-wounds, but the bandages were bloody and leaking.

When the knifeman had gone, Asir climbed weakly to his feet. Several of the townspeople stood nearby, snicker­ing at him. He ignored their catcalls and staggered toward the outskirts of the village, ten minutes away. He had to speak to Mara, and to her father if the crusty oldster would listen. His thief's knowledge weighed upon him and brought desperate fear.

Darkness had fallen by the time he came to Welkir's house. The people spat at him in the streets, and some of them flung handfuls of loose dirt after him as he passed.

A light flickered feebly through Welkir's door. Asir rat­tled it and waited.

Welkir came with a lamp. He set the lamp on the floor and stood with feet spread apart, arms folded, glaring haughtily at the thief. His face was stiff as weathered stone. He said nothing, but only stared contemptuously.

Asir bowed his head. "I have come to plead with you, Senior Kinsman."

Welkin snorted disgust. "Against the mercy we have shown you?"

He looked up quickly, shaking his head. "No! For that I am grateful."

"What then?"

"As a thief, I acquired much wisdom. I know that the world is dying, and the air is boiling out of it into the sky. I wish to be heard by the council. We must study the words of the ancients and perform their magic, lest our children's children be born to strangle in a dead world."

Welkir snorted again. He picked up the lamp. "He who listens to a thief's wisdom is cursed. He who acts upon it is doubly cursed and a party to the crime."

"The vaults," Asir insisted. "The key to the Blaze of the Winds is in the vaults. The god Roggins tells us in the words—"

"Stop! I will not hear!"

"Very well, but the blaze can be rekindled, and the air renewed. The vaults—" He stammered and shook his head. "The council must hear me."

"The council will hear nothing, and you shall be gone before dawn. And the vaults are guarded by the sleeper called Big Joe. To enter is to die. Now go away."

Welkir stepped back and slammed the door. Asir sagged in defeat. He sank down on the doorstep to rest a mo­ment. The night was black, except for lamp-flickers from an occasional window.

"Ssssst!"

A sound from the shadows. He looked around quickly, searching for the source.

"Ssssst! Asir!"

It was the girl Mara, Welkir's daughter. She had slipped out the back of the house and was peering at him around the corner. He arose quietly and went to her.

"What did Slubil do to you?" she whispered.

Asir gasped and caught her shoulders angrily. "Don't you know?"

"No! Stop! You're hurting me. Tokra wouldn't tell me. I made love to him, but he wouldn't tell."

He released her with an angry curse.

"You had to take it sometime," she hissed. "I knew if you waited you would be too weak from hanging to even run away."

He called her a foul name.

"Ingrate!" she snapped. "And I bought you a huffen!" 

"You what?"

"Tokra gave me a ritual phrase and I bought you a huffen with it. You can't walk to the hills, you know."

Asir burned with full rage. "You slept with Tokra!" he snapped.

"You're jealous!" she tittered.

"How can I be jealous! I hate the sight of you!"

"Very well then, I'll keep the huffen."

"Do!" he growled. "I won't need it, since I'm not going to the hills!"

She gasped. "You've got to go, you fool. They'll kill you!"

He turned away, feeling sick. She caught at his arm and tried to pull him back. "Asir! Take the huffen and go!"

"I'll go," he growled. "But not to the hills. I'm going out to the vault."

He stalked away, but she trotted along beside him, trying to tug him back. "Fool! The vaults are sacred! The priests guard the entrance, and the Sleeper guards the inner door. They'll kill you if you try it, and if you linger, the council will kill you tomorrow."

"Let them!" he snarled. "I am no sniveling townsman! I am of the hills, and my father was a renegade. Your council had no right to judge me. Now I shall judge them!"

The words were spoken hotly, and he realized their folly. He expected a scornful rebuke from Mara, but she hung onto his arm and pleaded with him. He had dragged her a dozen doorways from the house of her father. Her voice had lost its arrogance and became pleading.

"Please, Asir! Go away. Listen! I will even go with you—if you want me."

He laughed harshly. "Tokra's leavings."

She slapped him hard across the mouth. "Tokra is an impotent old dodderer. He can scarcely move for arthri­tis. You're an idiot! I sat on his lap and kissed his bald pate for you."

"Then why did he give you a ritual phrase?" he asked stiffly.

"Because he likes me."

"You lie." He stalked angrily on.

"Very well! Go to the vaults. I'll tell my father, and they'll hunt you down before you get there."

She released his arm and stopped. Asir hesitated. She meant it. He came back to her slowly, then slipped his swollen hands to her throat. She did not back away.

"Why don't I just choke you and leave you lying here?" he hissed.

Her face was only a shadow in darkness, but he could see her cool smirk.

"Because you love me, Asir of Franic."

He dropped his hands and grunted a low curse. She laughed low and took his arm.

"Come on. We'll go get the huffen," she said.

Why not? he thought. Take her huffen, and take her too. He could dump her a few miles from the village, then circle back to the vaults. She leaned against him as they moved back toward her father's house, then skirted it and stole back to the field behind the row of dwellings. Phobos hung low in the west, its tiny disk lending only a faint glow to the darkness.

He heard the huffen's breathing as they approached a hulking shadow in the gloom. Its great wings snaked out slowly as it sensed their approach, and it made a low piping sound. A native Martian species, it bore no resemblance to the beasts that the ancients had brought with them from the sky. Its back was covered with a thin shell like a bettle's, but its belly was porous and soft. It digested food by sitting on it, and absorbing it. The wings were bony—parchment stretched across a fragile frame. It was headless, and lacked a centralized brain, the nerv­ous functions being distributed.

 

The great creature made no protest as they climbed up the broad flat back and strapped themselves down with the belts that had been threaded through holes cut in the huffen's thin, tough shell. Its lungs slowly gathered a tremendous breath of air, causing the riders to rise up as the huge air-sacs became distended. The girth of an inflated huffen was nearly four times as great as when deflated. When the air was gathered, the creature began to shrink again as its muscles tightened, compressing the breath until a faint leakage-hiss came from behind. It waited, wings taut.

The girl tugged at a ring set through the flesh of its flank. There was a blast of sound and a jerk. Nature's experiment in jet propulsion soared ahead and turned into the wind. Its first breath exhausted, it gathered another and blew itself ahead again. The ride was jerky. Each tailward belch was a rough lurch. They let the huffen choose its own heading as it gained altitude. Then Mara tugged at the wing-straps, and the creature wheeled to soar toward the dark hills in the distance.

Asir sat behind her, a sardonic smirk on his face, as the wind whipped about them. He waited until they had flown beyond screaming distance of the village. Then he took her shoulders lightly in his hands. Mistaking it for affection, she leaned back against him easily and rested her dark head on his shoulder. He kissed her—while his hand felt gingerly for the knife at her belt. His fingers were numb, but he managed to clutch it, and press the blade lightly against her throat. She gasped. With his other hand, he caught her hair.

"Now guide the huffen down!" he ordered.

"Asir!"

"Quickly!" he barked.

"What are you going to do?"

"Leave you here and circle back to the vaults."

"No! Not out here at night!"

He hesitated. There were slinking prowlers on the Cimerian plain, beasts who would regard the marooned daughter of Welkir a delicious bit of good fortune, a gustatory delight of a sort they seldom were able to enjoy. Even above the moan of the wind, he would hear an occasional howl-cry from the fanged welcoming committee that waited for its dinner beneath them.

"Very well," he growled reluctantly. "Turn toward the vaults. But one scream and I'll slice you." He took the blade from her throat but kept the point touching her back.

"Please, Asir, no!" she pleaded. "Let me go on to the hills. Why do you want to go to the vaults? Because of Tokra?"

He gouged her with the point until she yelped. "Tokra be damned, and you with him!" he snarled. "Turn back." 

"Why?"

"I'm going down to kindle the Blaze of the Winds." 

"You're mad! The spirits of the ancients live in the vaults."

"I am going to kindle the Blaze of the Winds," he insisted stubbornly. "Now either turn back, or go down and I'll turn back alone."

After a hesitant moment, she tugged at a wing rein and the huffen banked majestically. They flew a mile to the south of the village, then beyond it toward the clois­ter where the priests of Big Joe guarded the entrance to the vaults. The cloister was marked by a patch of faint light on the ground ahead.

"Circle around it once," he ordered.

"You can't get in. They'll kill you."

He doubted it. No one ever tried to enter, except the priests who carried small animals down as sacrifices to the great Sleeper. Since no outsider ever dared go near the shaft, the guards expected no one. He doubted that they would be alert.

The cloister was a hollow square with a small stone tower rising in the center of the courtyard. The tower contained the entrance to the shaft. In the dim light of Phobos, assisted by yellow flickers from the cloister win­dows, he peered at the courtyard as they circled closer. It seemed to be empty.

"Land beside the tower!" he ordered.

"Asir—please—"

"Do it!"

The huffen plunged rapidly, soared across the outer walls, and burst into the courtyard. It landed with a rough jolt and began squeaking plaintively.

"Hurry!" he hissed. "Get your straps off and let's go." "I'm not going."

A prick of the knife point changed her mind. They slid quickly to the ground, and Asir kicked the huffen in the flanks. The beast sucked in air and burst aloft.

Startled faces were trying to peer through the lighted cloister windows into the courtyard. Someone cried a challenge. Asir darted to the door of the tower and dragged it open. Now forced to share the danger, the girl came with him without urging. They stepped into a stair-landing. A candle flickered from a wall bracket. A guard, sitting on the floor beneath the candle glanced u¢ in complete surprise. Then he reached for a short barbed pike. Asir kicked him hard in the temple, then rolled his limp from outside. Men with torches were running across the courtyard. He slammed the heavy metal door and bolted it.

Fists began beating on the door. They paused for a moment to rest, and Mara stared at him in fright. He ex­pected her to burst into angry speech, but she only leaned against the wall and panted. The dark mouth of the stairway yawned at them—a stone throat that led into the bowels of Mars and the realm of the monster, Big Joe. He glanced at Mara thoughtfully, and felt sorry for her.

"I can leave you here," he offered, "but I'll have to tie you."

She moistened her lips, glanced first at the stairs, then at the door where the guards were raising a frantic howl. She shook her head.

"I'll go with you."

"The priests won't bother you, if they see that you were a prisoner."

"I'll go with you."

He was pleased, but angry with himself for the pleasure. An arrogant, spiteful, conniving wench, he told himself. She'd lied about Tokra. He grunted gruffly, seized the candle, and started down the stairs. When she started after him, he stiffened and glanced back, remembering the barbed pike.

As he had suspected, she had picked it up. The point was a foot from the small of his back. They stared at each other, and she wore her self-assured smirk.

"Here," she said, and handed it casually. "You might need this."

They stared at each other again, but it was different this time. Bewildered, he shook his head and resumed the descent toward the vaults. The guards were batter­ing at the doors behind them.

The stairwell was damp and cold. Blackness folded about them like a shroud. They moved in silence, and after five thousand steps, Ash stopped counting.

Somewhere in the depths, Big Joe slept his restless sleep. Asir wondered grimly how long it would take the guards to tear down the metal door. Somehow they had to get past Big Joe before the guards came thundering after them. There was a way to get around the monster: of that he was certain. A series of twenty-four numbers was involved, and he had memorized them with a stolen bit of ritual. How to use them was a different matter. He imagined vaguely that one must call them out in a loud voice before the inner entrance.

The girl walked beside him now, and he could feel her shivering. His eyes were quick and nervous as he scanned each pool of darkness, each nook and cranny along the stairway wall. The well was silent except for the mutter of their footsteps, and the gloom was full of musty odors. The candle afforded little light.

"I told you the truth about Tokra," she blurted sud­denly.

Asir glowered straight ahead and said nothing, em­barrassed by his previous jealousy. They moved on in silence.

Suddenly she stopped. "Look," she hissed, pointing down ahead.

He shielded the candle with his hand and peered downward toward a small square of dim light. "The bot­tom of the stairs," he muttered.

The light seemed faint and diffuse—with a slight green­ish cast. Asir blew out the candle, and the girl quickly protested.

"How will we see to climb again?"

He laughed humorlessly. "What makes you think we will?"

She moaned and clutched at his arm, but came with him as he descended slowly toward the light. The stairway opened into a long corridor whose ceiling was faintly luminous. White-faced and frightened, they paused on the bottom step and looked down the corridor. Mara gasped and covered her eyes.

"Big Joe!" she whispered in awe.

He stared through the stairwell door and down the cor­ridor through another door into a large room. Big Joe sat in the center of the room, sleeping his sleep of ages amid a heap of broken and whitening bones. A creature of metal, twice the height of Asir, he had obviously been designed to kill. Tri-fingered hands with gleaming talons, and a monstrous head shaped like a Marswolf, with long silver fangs. Why should a metal-creature have fangs, unless he had been built to kill?

The behemoth slept in a crouch, waiting for the in­truders.

He tugged the girl through the stairwell door. A voice droned out of nowhere: "If you have come to plunder, go back!"

He stiffened, looking around. The girl whimpered.

"Stay here by the stairs," he told her, and pushed her firmly back through the door.

Asir started slowly toward the room where Big Joe waited. Beyond the room he could see another door, and the monster's job was apparently to keep intruders back from the inner vaults where, according to the ritual chants, the Blaze of the Winds could be kindled.

Halfway along the corridor, the voice called out again, beginning a kind of sing-song chant: "Big Joe will kill you, Big Joe will kill you, Big Joe will kill you—"

He turned slowly, searching for the speaker. But the voice seemed to come from a black disk on the wall. The talking-machines perhaps, as mentioned somewhere in the ritual.

A few paces from the entrance to the room, the voice fell silent. He stopped at the door, staring in at the mon­ster. Then he took a deep breath and began chanting the twenty-four numbers in a loud but quavering voice. Big Joe remained in his motionless crouch. Nothing hap­pened. He stepped through the doorway.

Big Joe emitted a deafening roar, straightened with a metallic groan, and lumbered toward him, taloned hands extended and eyes blazing furiously. Asir shrieked and ran for his life.

Then he saw Mara lying sprawled in the stairway entrance. She had fainted. Blocking an impulse to leap over her and flee alone, he stopped to lift her.

But suddenly he realized that there was no pursuit. He looked back. Big Joe had returned to his former position, and he appeared to be asleep again. Puzzled, Asir stepped back into the corridor.

"If you have come to plunder, go back!"

He moved gingerly ahead again.

"Big Joe will kill you, Big Joe will kill you, Big Joe will kill—"

He recovered the barbed pike from the floor and stole into the zone of silence. This time he stopped to look around. Slowly he reached the pike-staff through the doorway. Nothing happened. He stepped closer and waved it around inside. Big Joe remained motionless.

Then be dropped the point of the pike to the floor. The monster bellowed and started to rise. Asir leaped back, scalp crawling. But Big Joe settled back in his crouch.

Fighting a desire to flee, Asir reached the pike through the door and rapped it on the floor again. This time noth­ing happened. He glanced down. The pike's point rested in the center of a gray floor-tile, just to the left of the entrance. The floor was a checkerboard pattern of gray and white. He tapped another gray square, and this time the monster started out of his drowse again.

After a moment's thought, he began touching each tile within reach of the door. Most of them brought a response from Big Joe. He found four that did not. He knelt down before the door to peer at them closely. The first was unmarked. The second bore a dot in the center. The third bore two, and the fourth three—in order of their distance from the door.

He stood up and stepped inside again, standing on the first tile. Big Joe remained motionless. He stepped diag­onally left to the second—straight ahead to the third—then diagonally right to the fourth. He stood there for a moment, trembling and staring at the Sleeper. He was four feet past the door!

Having assured himself that the monster was still asleep, he crouched to peer at the next tiles. He stared for a long time, but found no similar markings. Were the dots coincidence?

He reached out with the pike, then drew it back. He was too close to the Sleeper to risk a mistake. He stood up and looked around carefully, noting each detail of the room—and of the floor in particular. He counted the rows and columns of tiles—twenty-four each way.

Twenty-four—and there were twenty-four numbers in the series that was somehow connected with safe passage through the room. He frowned and muttered through the series to himself          0,1,2,3,3,3,2,2,1 . .

The first four numbers—0,1,2,3. And the tiles—the first with no dots, the second with one, the third with two, the fourth with three. But the four tiles were not in a straight line, and there were no marked ones beyond the fourth. He backed out of the room and studied them from the end of the corridor again.

Mara had come dizzily awake and was calling for him weakly. He replied reassuringly and turned to his task again. "First tile, then diagonally left, then straight, then diagonally right—"

0,1,2,3,3.

A hunch came. He advanced as far as the second tile, then reached as far ahead as he could and touched the square diagonally right from the fourth one. Big Joe re­mained motionless but began to speak. His scalp bristled at the growling voice.

"If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill."

Standing tense, ready to leap back to the corridor, he touched the square again. The motionless behemoth re­peated the grim warning.

Asir tried to reach the square diagonally right from the fifth, but could not without stepping up to the third. Taking a deep breath, he stepped up and extended the pike cau­tiously, keeping his eyes on Big Joe. The pike rapped the floor.

"If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill." But the huge figure remained in his place.

Starting from the first square, the path went left, straight, right, right, right. And after zero, the numbers went 1, 2, 3, 3, 3. Apparently he had found the key. One meant a square to the southeast; two meant south; and three southwest. Shivering, he moved up to the fifth square upon which the monster growled his first warning. He looked back at the door, then at Big Joe. The taloned hands could grab him before he could dive back into the corridor.

He hesitated. He could either turn back now, or gamble his life on the accuracy of the tentative belief. The girl was calling to him again.

"Come to the end of the corridor!" he replied.

She came hurriedly, to his surprise.

"No!" he bellowed. "Stay back of the entrance! Not on the tile! No!"

Slowly she withdrew the foot that hung poised over a trigger-tile.

"You can't come in unless you know how," he gasped. She blinked at him and glanced nervously back over her shoulder. "But I hear them. They're coming down the stairs."

Asir cursed softly. Now he had to go ahead.

"Wait just a minute," he said. "Then I'll show you how to come through."

He advanced to the last tile that he had tested and stopped. The next two numbers were two—for straight ahead. And they would take him within easy reach of the long taloned arms of the murderous sentinel. He glanced around in fright at the crushed bones scattered across the floor. Some were human. Others were animal-sacrifices tossed in by the priests.

He had tested only one two—back near the door. If he made a mistake, he would never escape; no need bothering with the pike.

He stepped to the next tile and closed his eyes.

"If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill."

He opened his eyes again and heaved a breath of relief.

"Asir! They're getting closer! I can hear them!"

He listened for a moment. A faint murmur of angry voices in the distance. "All right," he said calmly. "Step only on the tiles I tell you. See the gray one at the left of the door?"

She pointed. "This one?"

"Yes, step on it."

The girl moved up and stared fearfully at the monstrous sentinel. He guided her up toward him. "Diagonally left —one ahead—diagonally right. Now don't be frightened when he speaks—"

The girl came on until she stood one square behind him. Her quick frightened breathing blended with the growing sounds of shouting from the stairway. He glanced up at Big Joe, noticing for the first time that the steel jaws were stained with a red-brown crust. He shuddered.

The grim chess-game continued a cautious step at a time, with the girl following one square behind him. What if she fainted again? And fell across a triggered tile? They passed within a foot of Big Joe's arm.

Looking up, he saw the monster's eyes move—following them, scrutinizing them as they passed. He froze. "We want no plunder," he said to the machine. The gaze was steady and unwinking.

"The air is leaking away from the world."

The monster remained silent.

"Hurry!" whimpered the girl. Their pursuers were gain­ing rapidly and they had crossed only half the distance to the opposing doorway. Progress was slower now, for Asir needed occasionally to repeat through the whole series of numbers, looking back to count squares and make certain that the next step was not a fatal one.

"They won't dare to come in after us," he said hopefully.

"And if they do?"

"If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill," an­nounced the machine as Asir took another step.

"Eight squares to go!" he muttered, and stopped to count again.

"Asir! They're in the corridor!"

Hearing the tumble of voices, he looked back to see blue-robed men spilling out of the stairway and milling down the corridor toward the room. But halfway down the hall, the priests paused—seeing the unbelievable: two intruders walking safely past their devil-god. They growled excitedly among themselves. Asir took another step. Again the machine voiced the monotonous warning.

"If the intruder makes an error ..."

 

Hearing their deity speak, the priests of Big Joe bab­bled wildly and withdrew a little. But one, more impulsive than the rest, began shrieking.

"Kill the intruders! Cut them down with your spears!"

Asir glanced back to see two of them racing toward the room, lances cocked for the throw. If a spear struck a triger-tile--

"Stop!" he bellowed, facing around.

The two priests paused. Wondering if it would result in his sudden death, he rested a hand lightly against the huge steel arm of the robot, then leaned against it. The huge eyes were staring down at him, but Big Joe did not move.

The spearmen stood frozen, gaping at the thief's famil­iarity with the horrendous hulk. Then, slowly they backed away.

Continuing his bluff, he looked up at Big Joe and spoke in a loud voice. "If they throw their spears or try to enter, kill them."

He turned his back on the throng in the hall and continued the cautious advance. Five to go, four, three, two—

He paused to stare into the room beyond. Gleaming machinery—all silent—and great panels, covered with a multitude of white circles and dials. His heart sank. If here lay the magic that controlled the Blaze of the Great Wind, he could never hope to rekindle it.

He stepped through the doorway, and the girl followed. Immediately the robot spoke like low thunder.

"The identity of the two technologists is recognized. Hereafter they may pass with impunity. Big Joe is charged to ask the following: why do the technologists come, when it is not yet time?"

Staring back, Asir saw that the robot's head had turned so that he was looking directly back at the thief and the girl. Asir also saw that someone had approached the door again. Not priests, but townspeople.

He stared, recognizing the Chief Commoner, and the girl's father Welkir, three other Senior Kinsmen, and—Slubil, the executioner who had nailed him to the post.

"Father! Stay back."

Welkir remained silentt, glaring at them. He turned and whispered to the Chief Commoner. The Chief Commoner whispered to Slubil. The executioner nodded grimly and took a short-axe from his belt thong. He stepped through the entrance, his left foot striking the zero-tile. He peered at Big Joe and saw that the monster remained motionless. He grinned at the ones behind him, then snarled in Asir's direction.

"Your sentence has been changed, thief."

"Don't try to cross, Slubil!" Asir barked.

Slubil spat, brandished the axe, and stalked forward. Big Joe came up like a resurrection of fury, and his elbow was explosive in the vaults. Slubil froze, then stupidly drew back his axe.

Asir gasped as the talons closed. He turned away quickly. Slubil's scream was cut off abruptly by a ripping sound, then a series of dull cracks and snaps. The girl shrieked and closed her eyes. There were two distinct thuds as Big Joe tossed Slubil aside.

The priests and the townspeople—all except Welkir­had fled from the corridor and up the stairway. Welkir was on his knees, his hands covering his face.

"Mara!" he moaned. "My daughter."

"Go back, Father," she called.

Dazed, the old man picked himself up weakly and stag­gered down the corridor toward the stairway. When he passed the place of the first warning voice, the robot moved again—arose slowly and turned toward Asir and Mara who backed quickly away, deeper into the room of strange machines. Big Joe came lumbering slowly after them.

Asir looked around for a place to flee, but the monster stopped in the doorway. He spoke again, a mechanical drone like memorized ritual.

Big Joe is charged with announcing his function for the intelligence of the technologists. His primary function is to prevent the entrance of possibly destructive organisms into the vaults containing the control equipment for the fu­sion reaction which must periodically renew atmospheric oxygen. His secondary function is to direct the tech­nologists to records containing such information as they may need. His tertiary function is to carry out simple directions given by the technologists if such directions are possible to his limited design.

Asir stared at the lumbering creature and realized for the first time that it was not alive, but only a machine built by the ancients to perform specific tasks. Despite the fresh redness about his hands and jaws, Big Joe was no more guilty of Slubil's death than a grinding mill would be if the squat sadist had climbed into it while the Mars oxen were yoked to the crushing roller.

Perhaps the ancients had been unnecessarily brutal in building such a guard—but at least they had built him to look like a destroyer, and to give ample warning to the intruder. Glancing around at the machinery, he vaguely understood the reason for Big Joe. Such metals as these would mean riches for swordmakers and smiths and plun­derers of all kinds.

 

Asir straightened his shoulders and addressed the machine.

"Teach us how to kindle the Blaze of the Great Wind."

"Teaching is not within the designed functions of Big Joe. I am charged to say: the renewal reaction should not be begun before the Marsyear 6,000, as the builders reckoned time."

Asir frowned. The years were not longer numbered, but only named in honor of the Chief Commoners who ruled the villages. "How long until the year 6,000?" he asked.

Big Joe clucked like an adding machine. "Twelve Marsyears, technologist."

Asir stared at the complicated machinery. Could they learn to operate it in twelve years? It seemed impossible.

"How can we begin to learn?" be asked the robot.

"This is an instruction room, where you may examine records. The control mechanisms are installed in the deepest vault."

Asir frowned and walked to the far end of the hail where another door opened into—another anteroom with another Big Joe! As he approached the second robot spoke:

"If the intruder has not acquired the proper knowl­edge, Big Oswald will kill."

Thunderstruck, he leaped back from the entrance and swayed heavily against an instrument panel. The panel lit up and a polite recorded voice began reading something about "President Snell's role in the Eighth World War." He lurched away from the panel and stumbled back toward Mara who sat glumly on the foundation slap of a weighty machine.

"What are you laughing about?" she muttered.

"We're still in the first grade!" he groaned, envisioning a sequence of rooms. "We'll have to learn the magic of the ancients before we pass to the next."

"The ancients weren't so great," she grumbled. "Look at the mural on the wall."

Asir looked, and saw only a strange design of circles about a bright splash of yellow that might have been the sun. "What about it?" he asked.

"My father taught me about the planets," she said. "That is supposed to be the way they go around the sun." "What's wrong with it?"

"One planet too many," she said. "Everyone knows that there is only an asteroid belt between Mars and Venus. The picture shows a planet there."

Asir shrugged indifferently, being interested only in the machinery. "Can't you allow them one small mistake?"

"I suppose." She paused, gazing miserably in the direc­tion in which her father had gone. "What do we do now?"

Asir considered it for a long time. Then he spoke to Big Joe. "You will come with us to the village."

The machine was silent for a moment, then: "There is an apparent contradiction between primary and tertiary functions. Request priority decision by technologist."

Asir failed to understand. He repeated his request. The robot turned slowly and stepped through the doorway. He waited.

Asir grinned. "Let's go back up," he said to the girl.

She arose eagerly. They crossed the anteroom to the corridor and began the long climb toward the surface, with Big Joe lumbering along behind.

"What about your banishment, Asir?" she asked gravely.

"Wait and see." He envisioned the pandemonium that would reign when girl, man, and robot marched through the village to the council house, and he chuckled. "I think that I shall be the next Chief Commoner," he said. "And my councilmen will all be thieves."

"Thieves!" she gasped. "Why?"

"Thieves who are not afraid to steal the knowledge of the gods—and become technologists, to kindle the Blaze of the Winds."

"What is a `technologist', Asir?" she asked worshipfully.

Asir glowered at himself for blundering with words he did not understand, but could not admit ignorance to Mara who clung tightly to his arm. "I think," he said, "that a technologist is a thief who tells the gods what to do."

"Kiss me, Technologist," she told him in a small voice. Big Joe clanked to a stop to wait for them to move on. He waited a long time.

 

The Big Hunger

 

I AM BLIND, yet I know the road to the stars. Space is my harp, and I touch it lightly with fingers of steel. Space sings. Its music quivers in the flux patterns, comes creep­ing along the twitch of a positron stream, comes to whis­per in glass ears. I hear. Alec! Though I am without eyes, I see the stars tangled in their field-webs, tangled into One. I am the spider who runs over the web. I am the spider who spins, spinning a space where no stars are.

And I am Harpist to a pale, proud Master.

He builds me, and feeds me the fuel I eat, and leads nee riding through the space I make, to the glare of another sun. And when he is done with me, I lie rusting in the rain. My metal rots with ages, and the sea comes washing over land to take me while I sleep. The Master forgets. The Master chips flint from a stone, leaving a stone-ax. He busies himself with drums and bloody altars; he dances with a writhing snake in his mouth, conjuring the rain.

Then—after a long time—he remembers. He builds an-other of me, and 1 am the same, for like the Soul of him who builds me, my principle lies beyond particular flesh. When my principle is clothed in steel, we go wandering again. I the minstrel, with Man the king.

Hear the song of his hunger, the song of his endless thirst.

There was a man named Abe Jolie, and he leaned against me idly with one hand in the gloom while he spoke quietly and laughed with a female of his species.

"It's finished, Junebug. We got it made," he said.

And the girl looked her green eyes over me while the crickets sang beyond the wall, and while the shuttling of their feet echoed faintly in the great hangar.

"Finished," she murmured. "It's your success, Abe." "Mine, and a lot of others. And the government's money."

She toyed with the lapel of his coveralls, grinned, and said, "Let's steal it and run away."

"Ssshh!" He looked around nervously, but there were no guards in sight. "They can shoot you for less than that,' he warned. "The S.P. doesn't have a sense of humor."

"Abe—"

"What?"

"Kiss me."

He kissed her.

"When is that going to be illegal, too?" she whispered. He looked at her grimly, and she answered her own question.

"As soon as the eugenics laws are passed, Abe. Abe Jolie, who built the spacedrive, a genetic undesirable." "Don't!"

They stood there breathing quietly, and there was hate in their throats.

"Well?"

He looked around again, and whispered, "Meet me here at eleven o'clock, Junebug."

They parted to the sound of casual footsteps.

 

At eleven o'clock, a lion roared in the hangar. At eleven o'clock a steel juggernaut tore through the hangar wall and paused on a concrete ramp while bullets rico­cheted off the hull. Then the first star-chariot burnt a verticle column of flame in the night. Thunder walked upward on fiery stilts, while men shouted angrily. When we were alone in the airless, star-stung, sun-torn blackness, I stroked the web of space, and listened to the muted notes. When the tune is memorized, I speak. I contradict. I refute the universe. We lived in a spaceless space beyond stars.

The man and the woman had gone. But the plan re­mained on Earth. My principle lingered on the drawing boards, and in the dreams of men—men who said they were sick of wars and politics and the braying of collectivist jackasses. Others were sick of petty peace and cheap­ness and Independence Day speeches and incorporated jackasses who blubbered disgustingly about various free­doms.

They wanted the one Big Freedom. They built me again, these pale, proud bipeds, these children of an Ape-Prince who walked like a god. They packed themselves in cylinders of steel and wandering, riding starward on a heart-tempest that had once sung them down from the trees to stalk the plains with club and torch. The pod of earth opened, scattered its seed spaceward. It was the time of the great bursting, the great birth-giving. Empires shivered in the storm.

Sky-chariots flung themselves upward to vanish beyond the fringes of the atmosphere. Prairie schooners of space bore the restless, the contemptuous, the hungry and the proud. And I led them along the self-road that runs around space. The world seethed, and empires toppled, and new empires arose whose purpose it was to build the sky-chariots.

Young men, young women, clamored at the gates of launching fields. Those who were chosen grinned expect­antly at the stars. They climbed aboard in throngs and deserted Earth. They were hard laughers with red freckles and big fists. They wore slide rules at their belts like swords, and they spoke familiarly of Schwarschild Line-Elements and Riemann-Christofel tensors. Their women were restless talkers, big women, with flashing white teeth. They teased the men, and their hands were strong and brown.

Poets came—and misfits, and saints, sinners, dirt-farmers. Engineers came and child-bearers, fighters, uto­pianists, and dreamers with the lights of God glowing in their starward eyes.

"Why were we taught to pray with downcast eyes?" they asked. "When you pray, look starward, look to the God at the north end of the Universe."

Man was a starward wind, a mustard seed, a wisp of Brahma's breath breathed across space.

They found two corpses in an orbit about Arcturus. The corpses were frozen and the ice was slowly sublimat­ing into space-vapor. One of them had an Engineering Union card in his pocket. It gave his name as Abe Jolie. The other was a girl. And, because the corpse had given them the blueprints that led to space, they hauled him aboard with the girl. Somebody sang the "Kyrie" and somebody said, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." Then they cancelled out the orbital velocity and let the corpses go toppling toward Arcturus, toward a burning sun-grave where their light would shine forever.

There were those who remained behind. There were those who made Earth their business and stayed at home. Their tribes were numbered at two billion souls. And they were somehow different from the spacers. They liked to sit in their rocking chairs. They liked prettiness and a one-hundred-cent dollar. They voted for the Conservative Party. They abolished centralization. Eventually they abolished government. And for the first time in anyone's memory, there was peace on Earth, good will among men.

My Master was hungry for land. My Master sought new worlds. And we found them.

There was a yellow sun in Serpens called 27 Lambda, lying eight parsecs inward toward the galactic heartland and seven parsecs north toward the galactic pole. A lush green planet drifted at one hundred twenty megamiles from the friendly sun-star, and it awoke in the wandering biped nostalgic thoughts. We paused in space-black, we looked, we came down on tongues of lightning from the clear sky to set jet-fires in the grassy plain near a river and a forest.

Man was a seed replanted.

He wandered away from the sky-chariot and drank from a pool in the jungle. A behemoth with several legs and a parasite-rider came roaring his appetite at the pale biped. And his bones lay whitening in the sun, and his descendants learned that it was easier to stay alive by ignoring the biped from the sky.

I lay rusting in the rain. Houses of log and stone grew up on the hillsides. They crumbled slowly into ruin. A man wearing a fur robe came and built an altar at my feet. He burnt his eldest daughter on it while he sang a battle song and danced, danced a victory under strange sky.

The sons of men molded clay and chipped arrowheads and built fires. The old men told them stories of a space-going god, and the stories became their legends. They kidnapped the daughters of neighbors, knew wives, and multiplied.

A glacier came and ground me into dust. Millenniums passed, and each Prophet had his Bazar.

One of the prophets wrote an energy equation. Men crucified an Agitator on a telegraph pole. They purged a minority-group. They split a uranium atom into atoms of strontium and xenon. They wrote immortal lines deploring war while they invented better ways to wage it. They refashioned a body for my life-principle, for the tensor-transformers that constitute my soul. They mounted me again in a sky-borne prairie schooner because they were weary of sanctified braying.

There were growling columns of blue-white fire in the night, and growling voices of restless masses of men. Men darted along the road around space.

Men departed for other stars. But after a thousand years, many remained on the planet of their birth—home­bodies and movie-idols and morticians, nembutal-addicts and advocates of world-government.

When the restless ones, the wild-eyed spacers were gone, the addicts got religion and the federalists became placid anarchists and the Parliaments voted themselves out of existence. There was peace of the third planet of 27 Lambda Serpentis, and good will among the inhabit-ants thereof. They made love and studied sociology under a friendly sun, under a pleasant blue sky forever.

 

On the road around space, my Master hungered for land.

And there was a yellow sun in the region of the Scor­pion, and once it had been called 18 Scorpii, but now they named it Ba'Lagan. It was a little south of Serpens, a little nearer to the galactic nucleus. They named its planets Albrasa and Nynfi, and they were twins. Albrasa was already populated by a clan of hairy intellectuals with teeth and twittering voices. They liked the flavor of man-flesh, digested it easily.

Man came down on sky-lightning. Man came down to walk on the land and own it. I lay quietly rusting in the rain.

Man taught his grandson to hammer virgin copper into a vicious battle-ax, and taught him the mystic recipe for roasting a hairy intellectual. It was forbidden to boil a young intellectual in the milk of its mother, but it was permissible to roast it alive and remind it that its fathers had dared to attack a two-legged god.

Man's grandson waxed strong and malicious. He com­mitted genocide on the furry natives and used their skips for blankets. He shattered their braincases and erected his own altars in their temples. He butchered an octo­genarian on one of the altars, because the old man had made the silly suggestion that they sacrifice a perfectly healthy young virgin to their god. The young virgin watched the ceremony with quietly triumphant eyes; then she married the chief priest and bore him many children.

The biped bludgeoned the planet into submission. He assured himself that he was the Chosen Child of the Most High. He built himself a throne and sat upon it—while he listened to a newscaster describe jet-battles over the North Pole. Centuries wandered by, decked in gaudy robes. And there was a war with Nynfi between the worlds.

And then another Abraham Jolie bent over his drawing board. Another crew of big-fisted men wrapped steel flesh around my principle. Another race of men spat contempt on the soil—the soil that had drunk the blood of their fathers, felt the fire of the suns as the rockets heaved skyward bearing my body and the bodies of my Master.

Men were steel-jacketed motes of flesh, scurrying among the stars. Men were as dust, rolling across the galactic prairie—bits of dandelion fluff whirling in a rising tempest that bore them along the arm of the galactic spiral and inward, ever inward. Their eyes were on Her­cules and the far distant globular clusters. He paused at Nu Lupi and 15 Sagittea and a nameless yellow sun in Ophiuchus where he met a native race who dared to be bipeds. He crushed them quickly.

There were always those who remained behind, lin­gered on the planets where their ancestors had fought. I watched them with my last eyes as the last ship hurtled into space. I watched, and saw the lust go out of them, saw them become as a cauldron removed from the fire. Their boiling waned to a simmer, and they cooled. They always found peace when the spacers were gone.

This I have never understood. I, the machine, the space-spider, cannot understand. But I have seen it—the exodus of the hungry, the settling of peace over those who chose to linger. The hungry drink of the emptiness of space, and their hunger grows. The placid eat of the earth, and find peace, yet somehow—they seem to die a little.

 

Ever deeper pressed the starships, deeper into Sagitta­rius and Scorpius, and Lupus, Ophiuchus and Sagitta. Now and then they paused to colonize and conquer. A planet devoured a handful of men and tormented them with its biological devices. But the men grew and beat the savage planet into a slave after long ages, forced it to pay tribute to its king. Once more they coveted the stars. Once more they darted heavenward, leaving reluctant brothers in peace.

They wrote a song. They called it "Ten Parsecs to Para­dise." They sang the song as if they believed it. This I have never understood.

It was always ten or twelve parsecs to another sun with a class G spectrum, with a planet chastely clad in green forests and white clouds. There he landed to rebuild, to furrow the fertile earth, to rock in a porch swing at twi­light sucking his pipe, and to thoughtfully stare at the stars while his grandchildren romped like young chimpan­zees on the cool lawn.

He had forgotten Earth—this old man—his race had forgotten its history. But he knew a little. He knew the star-going cycle—the landing of the starships, the re­gression to savagery, the painful rebuilding, the cruelty, the re-learning, the proud exodus. He knew these things because Man had learned to keep a little of the past in tact throughout a cycle. He no longer fell back to chipping arrowheads. Now he managed to begin again in an age of bronze or soft iron. And he knew in advance that he would carve mighty industries out of savage wilderness.

But the old man was sad as he sat on his porch. He knew so little of the Great Purpose. Why must his seed fling itself starward? He knew that it must—but he lacked a reason. His grandchildren played in the twilight, played space-games, although there was not yet a starship on the planet.

There was a small boy on the lawn who tried to tease the girls, but the girls put on masks of superior sophisti­cation and ignored the little man. Disgruntled, he looked up and saw the old man dreaming on the porch.

"Gramp's got star-craze!", he shrieked. "Look at Gramp menting! Nnyahh! Gramp's got star-craze."

Musical laughter tittered over the lawn. Another voice took up the cry. The old man chuckled affectionately 'but wistfully. They were young, but they knew about the star-thirst. The planet was young, too young for starships, even though the priests preserved the records and scien­tific writings in the temples. The planet knew about space and coveted it. Yet, the children would all be dead before the first vessel was launched.

The laughter on the lawn subsided. The eldest child, a gawky and freckled girl of eight years came trudging up the steps to sit against the post and stare at him quietly in the gloom. He felt a question lurking in her silence. He nudged her ribs affectionately with his toe.

"What weighty matter worries you, Nari?" he asked pleasantly.

"Why is star-craze, Gramp?"

He rocked thoughtfully for a moment. "Why are there men to feel it?" he countered.

The child was silent.

 

"I know only what the priests say, Nari;" he told her gently. "They say that man once owned a paradise planet, and that he ran away in search of a better one. They say he made the Lord Bion angry. And the lord hid the paradise, and condemned Man to forever wander, touched his heart with eternal hunger for the place he lost."

"Will people find it again, Gramp?"

"Never—so the priests say. The hunger is on him, Nari."

"It's not fair!" said the little girl.

"What isn't, my child?"

"Star-craze. Last night I saw a lady crying. She was just standing there crying at the sky."

"Where?"

"On the street. Waiting for a motor bus."

"How old was she?"

Nari scraped her heels and muttered doubtfully. "It was kind of dark."

Gramp chuckled reassuringly. "I bet she wasn't over fourteen. I bet she was still a kid. Star-craze comes to little girls about the time they start being interested in little boys. Works the other way, too. But you grow out of it, Nari. By the time you're twenty, it won't make you miserable any more. It gives you a goal. Gives everyone a goal. Something to work for. Something to long for and fight for. The stars—you'll want to give them to your grandchildren."

"Won't I get to go?"

"Not ever, Nari."

They fell silent again, and the old man peered up into the deepening blackness with its countless array of suns sitting like hens on their nests of planets. He scarcely be­lieved the legend of the lost paradise-planet, but it was a good story to tell little girls. It made him sad though, and revived a little of the forgotten restlessness of his youth. If only he could have lived two centuries later—

But then a gust of wind brought the sweet perfume of freshly cut hay from the field to the east of the farmhouse, and the odor made him smile. The field would have to be raked tomorrow, and the hay brought in to the barn. A lot of things like that needed to be done before the starships could rise again. And every straining muscle helped toward the ultimate goal. The hay fed the animals whose flesh fed the men who made the tools which built the factories which fashioned more complicated tools—and so the journey, down the long road to space again.

The old man didn't know why the road had to be trav­eled, nor did he really care. The road was there, and it beckoned, and it gave meaning to life, for surely the Lord Bion was less cruel a tempter than the priests sometimes proclaimed Him. Surely there was something more than despair at the end of the long, long road.

The old man grew older, and died peacefully, and his ashes were scattered across the fields he had tilled since boyhood. His children, and his grandchildren, followed in his patient steps, and their ashes were mingled with his own before the first gleaming sky craft burst star fire in the night.

When the skycraft at last rumbled upward, the crowd thundered a triumphant roar, the crowd gathered to wit­ness the culmination of their labors, and the labors of their ancestors. Men walked with shoulders erect and with pride glowing in their faces. Again they triumphed over forces that held them bound to a grain of sand in the sky. Again they slashed through the knot that held them in the web of the continuum, and shed the weights that dragged at their feet.

I noticed a subtle difference in those who lingered be-hind. They no longer lingered of their own choosing. They were no longer the peace-seekers and placid ones. They were those who could not go because they were old, or sick, or because the industries were half-deserted and there was no one left to build the ships. They still stared longingly upward on dark nights.

"We'll do it again," they promised. "We'll repopulate and do it again."

But the bitterness of their plight was upon them, a sense of defeat and doom. They fought savagely among themselves. They fell in feudal wars, while the starward wave receded.

I am the acolyte of the space-priest, the server of the pale proud biped. I have taken him onward across the void, to the Hercules Cluster, and beyond it to the un­charted regions past the dust clouds of the Great Rift, into the star-pact heartland of the galactic nucleus where other races were testing their space wings and tasting of the great freedom. I have watched him, and have felt the life-aura of his longing. And I have wondered. What is his goal? Where is an answer to his hunger?

My neural circuits are not of flesh. My circuits are of glass and steel. My thought is a fanning electron stream. But I have prayed. I, the spider who builds around space, have prayed to the gods of the biped I serve. I have prayed to the God of the North End of Space. I have asked, "Where is his peace?"

No answer came.

I have seen my Master change.

The biped was thunder across the galaxy. The biped was a swift and steel-clad spear hurtling ruthlessly on-ward. He made no friends; for he came as a being who owned the stars, and he took what he wanted along the way. He left his seed to grow anew. A creature of fierce pride! And fiercer longing. He trampled hatelessly such races as he encountered. He crushed them, or harnessed them to his plow, or borrowed their neural circuits for his bio-computers. Sometimes he fought against his own race, men who had traveled other routes to the galactic heart-land. When man battled against man, they fought with hatred and cruelty and bitterness—but never with contempt. Man saw a rival king in man. Against other races, he waged only cool contempt and hot death.

Sometimes a thoughtful old man would say, "Seems to me they've got as much right to live as we have. Seems to me all intelligent creatures have got a common denom­inator. God, maybe." But he muttered it quietly, speculatively. Even if he believed it, he never objected to the swift ambush of the alien ship, nor to the razing of the alien city. For the biped stalked a new frontier. The ape-tribe stole across a field where danger lurked. He was fresh from the branches of the trees, not wise to the ways of the plains. How could he risk offering peace to the shaggy beast who crouched in the tall grass? He could only weigh the odds—then strike or run away.

He took the planets of the yellow suns—deep in the galactic heartland. He skipped from one to the next in jumps as long as his patience would last. He captured the globular clusters. He inhabited each planet for a few generations. He built ships, and battled with his brothers for the right to take them. Many were left behind. They repopulated after an exodus, rebuilt, launched a second flight, and a third—until those who finally remained at home were those who lacked the incentive of the big hunger.

Those who lacked incentive sought their peace. They molded a pleasant place to live in and infested it. Or else they scorned pleasantry and made themselves a battleground.

My Master is the Nomad, gaunt and tall. My Master grits his teeth in staring at the stars, and his eyes go nar­row and moist. I have mirrored his hunger, have allowed his life-aura to seep into the cold steel and hot glass of me, have reflected his thoughts in my circuits. Sometimes he wonders if I am alive. But then he remembers that he built me. He built me to think, not to be alive. Perhaps I am not alive, but only a mirror that catches a little of my Master's life. I have seen him change.

The spearhead groups pushed relentlessly across the gleaming blackness, and each generation grew more restless than the one before it. The restless moved ahead. The contented remained at home. Each exodus was a separation, and a selection of the malcontent.

The biped came to believe his priests. He believed the legend of the lost home. He believed that Bion had touched him with the hunger curse. How else could they explain the pressing cry of the heart? How could they interpret the clamor of the young, the tears—except as a Divine Thirst.

The star-craze. The endless search.

There was a green planet beyond the heartland, and it was ripe for bursting its human star-seed. There was a launching field, and a ship, and teeming crowd, and a fence with guards to keep the others out. A man and a girl stood at the fence, and it was nearly dawn.

He touched her arm and gazed at the shadows on the launching site.

"We won't find it, Marka," he said quietly. "We'll never find it."

"You believe the legend, Teris?" she whispered.

"The Planet of Heaven? It's up there. But we can never find it."

"Then why must you look?"

"We are damned. Marka."

There was a silence, then she breathed, "It can be found. The Lord Bion promised—"

"Where is that written, Marka?" he scoffed coldly. "In a woman's heart."

Teris laughed loudly. "What does the heart-writing say?"

She turned to stare at the dark shadow of the ship against the graying sky. "It says: `When Man is content —without his lost paradise—when he reconciles. himself —Bich will forgive, and show us the road home.' "

He waved his hand fiercely at the fading stars in the west. "Ours, Marka. They're ours! We took them."

"Do you want them?"

He stiffened angrily and glared at the shadow of her face. "You ... you make me sick. You're a hanghacker."

"No!" She shook her head wildly. "No!" She caught at his arm as he retreated a step. "I wish I could go! I want to go, do you hear?"

"I hear," he snapped. "But you can't, so there's no use talking about it. You're not well, Marka. The others wouldn't let you aboard." He backed away another step.

"I love you," she said frantically.

He turned and stumbled away toward the sky-chariot. "I love you!"

He began to trot, then burst into a wild sprint. Afraid, she thought in triumph. Afraid of turning back. Of loving her too much.

"You'll never find it!" she screamed after him. "You can't find it up there! It's here—right here!"

But he was lost in the crowd that milled about the ship. The ship had opened its hatches. The ship was devouring the people, two at a time. The ship devoured Teris and the space crew. Then it closed its mouth and belched flame from its rockets.

She gasped and slumped against a fencepost. She hung there sobbing until a guard drove her away.

A rocket bellowed the space song. The girl tore off her wedding bracelet and flung it in the gutter. Then she went home to fix breakfast for the children.

 

I am the Weaver of space. T am a Merchant of new fabrics in flux patterns for five-space continua. I serve the biped who built me, though his heart he steeped in hell.

Once in space, a man looked at me and murmured softly, "You are the cross on which we crucify ourselves."

But the big hunger pushed him on—on toward the ends of space. And he encountered worlds where his ancestors had lived, and where his peaceful cousins still dwelt in symbiosis with their neighbors. Some of the worlds were civilized, some barbaric, and some were archaeological graveyards. My nomads, they wore haunted faces as they re-explored the fringes of the galaxy where Man had walked before, leaving his footprints and his peace-seeking children. The galaxy was filled.

Where could he go now?

I have seen the frantic despair in their faces when, upon landing, natives appeared and greeted them politely, or tried to kill them, or worshiped them, or just ran away to hide. The nomads lurked near their ships. A planet with teeming cities was no place for a wanderer. They watched the multifaceted civilizations with bitter, lonely eyes.

Where were new planets?

Across the great emptiness to the Andromeda galaxy? Too far for the ships to go. Out to the Magellanic clouds? Already visited.

Where then?

He groped blindly, this biped. He had forgottgn the trail by which his ancestors had come, and he kept re-crossing it, finding it winding everywhere. He could only plunge aimlessly on, and when he reached the last limit of his fuel—land. If the natives could not provide the `fuel, he would have to stay, and try to pass another cycle of starward growth on the already inhabited world. But a cycle was seldom completed. The nomads intermarried with the local people; the children, the hybrid children, were less steeped in hunger than their fathers. Sometimes they built ships for economic purposes, for trade and com­merce—but never for the hysterical starward sweep. They heard no music from the North End of Space, no Lorelei call from the void. The craving was slowly dying.

They came to a planet. The natives called it "Earth." They departed again in cold fright, and a space com­mander blew out his brains to banish the memory. Then they found another planet that called itself "Earth"—and another and another. They smiled again, knowing that they would never know which was the true home of Man.

They sensed the nearness of the end.

They no longer sang the old songs of a forgotten para­dise. And there were no priests among them. They looked back at the Milky Way, and it had been their royal road. They looked ahead, where only scattered stars separated them from the intergalactic wasteland—an ocean of emp­tiness and death. They could not consign themselves to its ultimate embrace. They had fought too long, labored too hard to surrender willingly to extinction.

But the cup of their life was broken.

And to the land's last limit they came.

 

They found a planet with a single moon, with green forests, with thin clouds draping her gold and blue body in the sunlight. The breath of the snowking was white on her ice caps, and her seas were placid green. They landed. They smiled when the natives called the planet "Earth." Lots of planets claimed the distinction of being Man's birthplace.

Among the natives there was a dumpy little professor—still human, though slightly evolved. On the night follow­ing the nomad's landing, he sat huddled in an easy-chair, staring at the gaunt nomadic giant whose bald head nearly touched the ceiling of the professor's library. The profes­sor slowly shook his head and sighed.

"I can't understand you people."

"Nor I you," rumbled the nomad.

"Here is Earth—yet you won't believe it!"

The giant snorted contemptuously. "Who cares? Is this crumb in space the fulfillment of a dream?"

"You dreamed of a lost Earth paradise."

"So we thought. But who knows the real longing of a dream? Where is its end? Its goal?"

"We found ours here on Earth."

The giant made a wry mouth. "You've found nothing but your own smug existence. You're a snake swallowing its tail."

"Are you sure you're not the same?" purred the scholar. The giant put his fists on his hips and glowered at him. The professor whitened.

"That's untrue," boomed the giant. "We've found noth­ing. And we're through. At least we went searching. Now we're finished."

"Not you. Its the job that's finished. You can live here. And he proud of a job well done."

The giant frowned. "Job? What job?"

"Why, fencing in the stars. Populating the galaxy." The big man stared at him in horrified amazement. "Well," the scholar insisted, "you did it, you know. Who populates the galaxy now?"

"People like  you."

The impact of the scaring words brought a sick gasp from the small professor. He was a long moment in realiz­ing their full significance. He wilted. He sank lower in the chair.

The nomad's laughter suddenly rocked the room. He turned away from his victim and helped himself to a tum­bler of liqueur. He downed it at a gulp and grinned at the professor. He tucked the professor's liqueur under his arm, waved a jaunty farewell, and lumbered out into the night.

"My decanter," protested the professor in a whisper.

He went to bed and lay whimpering slightly in drowsi­ness. He was afraid of the tomorrows that lay ahead.

The nomads settled on the planet for lack of fuel. They complained of the climate and steadfastly refused to be­lieve that it was Earth. They were a troublesome, boister­ous lot, and frequently needed psychoanalysis for their various crimes. A provisional government was set up to deal with the problem. The natives had forgotten about governments, and they called it a "welfare commission."

The nomads who were single kidnapped native wives. Sometimes they kidnapped several, being a prolific lot. They begot many children, and a third-generation hybrid became the first dictator of a northern continent.

I am rusting in the rain. I shall never serve my priest here on Earth again. Nuclear fuels are scarce. They are needed for the atomic warheads now zipping back and forth across the North Pole. A poet—one of the hybrids—has written immortal lines deploring war; and the lines were inscribed on the post-humour medal they gave his widow.

Three dumpy idealists built a spaceship, but they were caught and hung for treason. The eight-foot lawyer who defended them was also hung.

The world wears a long face; and the stars twinkle in­vitingly. But few men look upward now. Things are prob­ably just as bad on the next inhabited planet.

I am the spider who walked around space. I, Harpist for a pale proud Master, have seen the big hunger, have tasted its red glow reflected in my circuits. Still I cannot understand.

But I feel there are some who understand. I have seen the pride in their faces. They walk like kings.

 

Conditionally Human

 

HE KNEW there was no use hanging around after breakfast, but he could not bear leaving her like this. He put on his coat in the kitchen, stood uncertainly in the doorway, and twisted his hat in his hands. His wife still sat at the table, fin­gered the handle of an empty cup, stared fixedly out the window at the kennels behind the house, and pointedly ignored his small coughings and scrapings. He watched the set of her jaw for a moment, then cleared his throat.

"Anne?"

"What?"

"I can't stand seeing you like this."

"Then go away."

"Can't I do anything—?"

"I told you what to do."

Her voice was a monotone, full of hurt. He could neither en­dure the hurt nor remove it. He gingerly crossed the room to stand behind her, hoping she'd look up at him and let her face go soft, maybe even cry a little. But she kept gazing at the win­dow in accusing silence. He chuckled suddenly and touched her silk-clad shoulder. The shoulder shivered away. Her dark hair quivered as she shuddered, and her arms were suddenly locked tightly about her breasts as if she were cold. He pulled his hand back, and his big pliant face went slack. He gulped forlornly.

"Honeymoon's over, huh?"

"Ha!"

He backed a step away, paused again. "Hey, Baby, you knew before you married me," he reminded her gently.

"I did not."

"You knew I was a District Inspector for the F.B.A. You knew I had charge of a pound."

"I didn't know you killed them!" she snapped, whirling. 

"I don't have to kill many," he offered.

"That's like saying you don't kill them very dead."

"Look, honey, they're only animals."

"Intelligent animals!"

"Intelligent as a human imbecile, maybe."

"A baby is an imbecile. Would you kill a baby?— Of course you would! You do! That's what they are: babies. I hate you." He withered, groped desperately for a new approach, tried a semantic tack. "Look, `intelligence' is a word applicable only to humans. It's the name of a human function, and . . . " 

"And that makes them human!" she finished. "Murderer!" 

"Baby—!"

"Don't call me baby! Call them baby!"

He made a miserable noise in his throat, backed a few steps toward the door, and beat down his better judgment to speak again: "Anne, honey, look! Think of the good things about the job. Sure—everything has its ugly angles. But just think: we get this house rent-free; I've got my own district with no local bosses to hound me; I make my own hours; you'll meet lots of people that stop in at the pound. It's a fine job, honey!"

Her face was a mask again. She sipped her coffee and seemed to be listening. He blundered hopefully on.

"And what can I do about it? I can't help my aptitudes. Place­ment Division checked them, sent me to Bio-Authority. Period. Okay, so I don't have to work where they send me. I could ig­nore the aptitudes and pick common labor, but that's all the law allows, and common laborers don't have families. So I go where they need my aptitudes."

"You've got aptitudes for killing kids?" she asked sweetly. He groaned, clenched his eyes closed, shook his head fiercely as if to clear it of a sudden ache. His voice went desperately pa­tient. "They assigned me to the job because I like babies. And because I have a degree in biology and an aptitude for dealing with people. Understand? Destroying unclaimed units is the smallest part of it. Honey, before the evolvotron, before anybody ever heard of Anthropos Incorporated, people used to elect animal catchers. Dogcatchers, they called them. Didn't have mutant dogs, of course. But just think of it that way—I'm a dog-catcher."

Ice-green eyes turned slowly to meet his gaze. Her face was delicately cut from cold marble. One corner of her mouth twitched contempt at him. Her head turned casually away again to stare out the window toward the kennels again.

He backed to the door, plucked nervously at a splinter on the woodwork, watched her hopefully for a moment.

"Well, gotta go. Work to do."

She looked at him again as if he were a specimen. "Do you need to be kissed?"

He ripped the splinter loose, gulped, "See you tonight," and stumbled toward the front of the house. The honeymoon indeed was done for District Inspector Norris of the Federal Biological Authority.

Anne heard his footsteps on the porch, heard the sudden grumble of the kennel-truck's turbines, choked on a sob and darted for the door, but the truck had backed into the street, lurched suddenly away with angry acceleration toward the highway that lay to the east. She stood blinking into the red morning sunlight, shoulders slumped. Things were wrong with the world, she decided.

A bell rang somewhere, rang again. She started slightly, shook herself, went to answer the telephone. A carefully enunciated voice that sounded chubby and professional called for Inspector Norris. She told it disconsolately that he was gone.

"Gone? Oh, you mean to work. Heh heh. Can this be the new Mrs. Norris?" The voice was too hearty and greasy, she thought, muttered affirmatively.

"Ah, yes. Norris spoke of you, my dear. This is Doctor Georges. I have a very urgent problem to discuss with your husband. But perhaps I can talk to you."

"You can probably get him on the highway. There's a phone in the truck." What sort of urgent problems could doctors discuss with dogcatchers, she wondered.

"Afraid not, my dear. The inspector doesn't switch on his phone until office hours. I know him well, you see."

"Can't you wait?"

"It's really an emergency, Mrs. Norris. I need an animal from the pound—a Chimp-K-48-3, preferably a five year old."

"I know nothing about my husband's business," she said stiffly. "You'll have to talk to him."

"Now see here, Mrs. Norris, this is an emergency, and I have to have ...”

"What would you do if I hadn't answered the phone?" she interrupted.

"Why I—I would have—"

"Then do it," she snapped, dropped the phone in its cradle, marched angrily away. The phone began ringing again. She paused to glance back at it with a twinge of guilt. Emergency, the fat voice had said. But what sort of emergency would in­volve a chimp K-48, and what would Georges do with the ani­mal? Butchery, she suspected, was somehow implied. She let the phone ring. If Norris ever, ever, ever asked her to share his work in any way, she'd leave him, she told herself.

 

The truck whirred slowly along the suburban street that wound among nestled groups of pastel plasticoid cottages set approximately two to an acre on the lightly wooded land. With its population legally fixed at three hundred million, most of the country had become one gigantic suburb, dotted with com­munity centers and lined with narrow belts of industrial develop­ment. There was no open country now, nor had there been since the days of his grandparents. There was nowhere that one could feel alone.

He approached an intersection. A small animal sat on the curb, wrapped in its own bushy tail. The crown of its oversized head was bald, but its body was covered with blue-gray fur. A pink tongue licked daintily at small forepaws equipped with prehensile thumbs. It eyed the truck morosely as Norris drew to a halt and smiled down out of the window at it.

"Hi, kitten," he called. "What's your name?"

The Cat-Q-5 stared at him indifferently for a moment, uttered a stuttering high-pitched wail, then cried: "Kitty Rorry."

"Kitty Rorry. That's a nice name. Where do you live, Rorry?"

The Cat-Q-5 ignored him.

"Whose child are you, Rorry? Can you tell me that?"

Rorry regarded him disgustedly. Norris glanced quickly around. There were no houses near the intersection, and he feared that the animal might be lost. It blinked at him, sleepily bored, then resumed its paw-bath. He repeated the questions.

"Mama kiyi, kiyi Mama," it finally reported.

"That's right, Mama's kitty. But where's Mama? Do you suppose she ran away?"

The Cat-Q-5 looked startled. It stuttered for a moment. Its fur crept slowly erect. It glanced both ways along the street, shot suddenly away at a fast scamper along the sidewalk. Norris followed it in the truck for two blocks, where it darted onto a porch and began wailing through the screen: "Mama no run ray! Mama no run ray!"

He chuckled and drove on. A couple who failed the genetic requirements, who could have no children of their own, could get quite attached to a Cat-Q-5, but the cats were emotionally safer than any of the quasi-human chimp-K models called "neu­troids." The death of a neutroid could strike a family as hard as the death of a child, while most couples could endure the loss of a cat-Q or a dog-F. A couple with a genetic "C" rating were permitted to own one neutroid, or two non-humanized models of daily food intake less than four hundred calories each. Most psychologists regarded the neutroids as emotional dynamite, and advised attaching affections to some tail-wagger with a lower love-demand potential.

Norris suddenly lost his vestigial smile. What about Anne? What outlet would she choose for her maternal needs?—for his own Social Security card was stamped "Genetic-C"—and Anne loved kids. He had been thinking in terms of the kennel animals, how she might direct her energies toward helping him take care of them, but now that her hostility was evident . . . well .. . suppose she wanted a pseudoparty and a neutroid of her own? Of this, he disapproved.

He shuddered slightly, fumbled in his pocket, and brought out a slightly battered invitation card that had come in yesterday's mail:

 

You are cordially invited
to attend the pseudoparturition
and ensuing cocktail hour
to celebrate the arrival of

HONEY BLOSSOM

Blessed event to occur on

Twelveweek's Sixday of 2063
at 19:30 hours

Reception Room, Rockabye Hours Clinic

R.s.v.p.   Mr. & Mrs. John Hanley Slade

 

The invitation had come late, the party would be tonight. He had meant to call Slade today and say that he and Anne would probably drop in for cocktails, but would be unable to get there in time for the delivery. But now that she had reacted so hostilely to the nastier aspects of his job, perhaps he had better keep her away from sentimental occasions involving neutroids.

The battered card reminded him to stop in Sherman III Com­munity Center for his mail. He turned onto the shopping street that paralleled the great highway and drove past several blocks of commercial buildings that served the surrounding suburbs. At the down-ramp he gave the attendant a four-bit bill and sent the truck down to be parked under the street, then went to the message office. When he dropped his code-disk in the slot, the feedway under his box number chattered out a yard of paper tape at him. He scanned it slowly from end to end—note from Aunt Maye, bill from SynZhamilk Products, letter from Anne's mother. The only thing of importance was the memo from the chief, a troublesome tidbit that he had been expecting for days:

Attention All District Inspectors: Subject: Deviant Neutroid.

You will immediately begin a systematic and thorough survey of all animals whose serial numbers fall in the Bermuda-K-99 series for birth dates during weeks 26 to 32 of year 2062. This is in connection with the Delmont Negligency case. Seize all animals in this category, impound, and run applicable sections of nor­malcy tests. Watch for signs of endocrinal deviation and non-standard response patterns. Delmont has confessed to passing only one non-standard model, but there may have been others. He disclaims memory of deviant's serial number. This could be a ruse to bring a stop to investigation when one animal is found. Be thorough.

If allowed to reach age-set or adulthood, such a deviant could be dangerous to its owner or to others. Hold all seized K-99s who exhibit the slightest departure from standard in the nor­malcy tests. Forward these to Central Lab. Return standard mod­els to their owners. Accomplish entire survey project within seven days.

C. Franklin

 

"Seven days!" he hissed irritably, wadded the tape in his pocket, stalked out to get the truck.

His district covered two hundred square miles. With a replacement quota of seventy-five neutroids a week, the district would have probably picked up about forty K-99s from the Bermuda factory influx during the six-week period last year. Could he round them up in a week? Doubtful. And there were only eleven empty cages in the kennel. The other forty-nine were oc­cupied by the previous inspector's "unclaimed" inventory—awaiting destruction. The crematorium behind the kennels would have a busy week. Anne would love that.

He was halfway to Wylo City when the radiophone buzzed on the dashboard. He pulled into the slow lane and answered quickly, hoping for Anne's voice. A polite professional purr came instead.

"Inspector Norris? Doctor Georges."

Norris made a sour mouth, managed a jovial greeting.

"Are you extremely busy at the moment?" Georges asked. He paused. Georges usually wanted a favor for some wealthy patient, or for some wealthy patient's tail-wagger.

"Extremely," he grunted.

"Eh? Oh well, this won't take long. One of my patients—a Mrs. Sarah Glubbes—called a while ago and said her baby was sick."

"So?"

"No baby. I must be getting absent minded, because I forgot she's class C until I got there."

"I'll guess," Norris muttered. "Turned out to be a neutroid." 

"Of course, of course."

"Why tell me?"

"It's dying. Eighteenth order virus. Naturally, I can't get it admitted to a hospital."

"Ever hear of vets?"

"You don't understand. She insists it's her baby, believes it's her own. How can I send it to a vet?"

"That's your worry. Is this an old patient of yours?"

"Why, yes, I've known Sarah since—"

"Since you presided at her pseudopart?"

"How did you know?"

"Just a guess. If you put her through pseudopart, then you deserve all the trouble you get."

"I take it you're a prohibitionist."

"Skip it. What did you want from me?"

"A replacement neutroid. From the kennel."

"Baloney. You couldn't fool her. If she's blind, she'd still know the difference."

"I'll have to take the chance. Listen, Norris, it's pathetic. She knows the disease can be cured—in humans—with hospitaliza­tion and expensive treatment that I can't get for a neutroid. No vet could get the drug either. Scarce. It's pathetic."

"I'm crying all over the steering wheel."

The doctor hesitated. "Sorry, Norris, I thought you were hu­man."

"Not to the extent of doing quasi-legal favors that won't be ap­preciated for some rich neurotic dame and a doc who practices pseudopart."

"One correction," Georges said stiffly. "Sarah's not rich. She's a middle-aged widow and couldn't pay for treatment if she could get it."

"Oh—"

"Thanks anyway, Norris."

"Hold it," he grunted. "What's the chimp's series?" "It's a K-48, a five-year-old with a three-year age set." Norris thought for a moment. It was a dirty deal, and it wouldn't work.

"I think I've got one in the kennel that's fairly close," he offered doubtfully.

"Good, good, I'll have Fred go over and—"

"Wait, now. This one'll be spooky, won't know her, and the serial number will be different."

"I know, I know," Georges sighed. "But it seems worth a try. An attack of V-i8 can cause mild amnesia in humans; that might explain why it won't know her. About the serial number—"

"Don't try changing it," Norris growled.

"How about obliterating—"

"Don't, and I'll check on it a couple of weeks from now to make damn sure you didn't. That's a felony, Georges."

"All right, all right, I'll just have to take the chance that she won't notice it. When can I pick it up?"

"Call my wife in fifteen minutes. I'll speak to her first."

"Uh, yes . . . Mrs. Norris. Uh, very well, thanks, Inspector." Georges hung up quickly.

Norris lit a cigaret, steeled himself, called Anne. Her voice was dull, depressed, but no longer angry.

"All right, Terry," she said tonelessly. "I'll go out to the kennel and get the one in cage thirty-one, and give it to Georges when he comes."

"Thanks, babe."

He heard her mutter, "And then I'll go take a bath," just before the circuit clicked off.

He flipped off the auto-driver, took control of the truck, slipped into the fast lane and drove furiously toward Wylo City and the district wholesale offices of Anthropos Incorporated to begin tracing down the suspected Bermuda K-99s in accordance with Franklin's memo. He would have to check through all incom­ing model files for the six week period, go over the present in­ventory, then run down the Bermuda serial numbers in a moun­tain of invoices covering a thirty-week period, find the pet shops and retail dealers that had taken the doubtful models, and finally survey the retail dealers to trace the models to their present owners. With cooperation from wholesaler and dealers, he might get it down to the retail level by mid-afternoon, but getting the models away from their owners would be the nasty part of the job. He was feeling pretty nasty himself, he decided. The spat with Anne, the distasteful thoughts associated with Slade's pseudoparty, the gnawing remorse about collaborating with Dr. Georges in a doubtful maneuver to pacify one Sarah Glubbes, a grim week's work ahead, plus his usual charge of suppressed re­sentment toward Chief Franklin—it all added up to a mood that could turn either black or vicious, depending on circumstance.

If some doting Mama gave him trouble about impounding her darling tail-wagger, he was, he decided, in the right kind of mood to get a warrant and turn the job over to the sheriff.

The gasping neutroid lay on the examining table under the glaring light. The torso quivered and twitched as muscles con­tracted spasmodically, but the short legs were already limp and paralyzed, allowing the chubby man in the white coat to lift them easily by the ankles and retrieve the rectal thermometer. The neutroid wheezed and chattered plaintively as the nurse drew the blanket across its small body again.

"A hundred and nine," grunted the chubby man, his voice muffled by the gauze mask. His eyes probed the nurse's eyes for a moment. He jerked his head toward the door. "She still out there?"

The nurse nodded.

The doctor stared absently at the thermometer stem for a moment, looked up again, spoke quietly. "Get a hypo—necrofine." She turned toward the sterilizer, paused briefly. "Three c.c.s?" she asked.

"Twelve," he corrected.

Their eyes locked with his for several seconds; then she nod­ded and went to the sterilizer.

"May I leave first?" she asked tonelessly while filling the syr­inge.

"Certainly."

"What'll I say to Mrs. Glubbes?" She crossed to the table again and handed him the hypo.

"Nothing. Use the back way. Go tell Fred to run over to the kennels and pick up the substitute. I've called Mrs. Norris. Oh yeah, and tell Fred to stop in here first. I'll have something for him to take out."

The nurse glanced down at the squirming, whimpering newt, shivered slightly, and left the room. When the door closed, Georges bent over the table with the hypo. When the door opened again, Georges looked up to see his son looking in.

"Take this along," he grunted, and handed Fred the bundle wrapped in newspapers.

"What'll I do with it?" the youth asked.

"Chuck it in Norris's incinerator."

Fred glanced at the empty examining table and nodded indifferently. "Can Miss Laskell come back now?" he asked in go­ing.

"Tell her yeah. And hurry with that other neut."

"Sure, Pop. See you later."

The nurse looked in uncertainly before entering.

"Get cleaned up," he told her. "And go sit with Mrs. Glubbes." 

"What'll I say?"

"The `baby' will recover. She can take it home late this afternoon if she gets some rest first."

"What're you going to do?—about the substitute."

"Give it a shot to put it to sleep, give her some codeine to feed it."

"Why?"

"So it'll be too groggy for a few days to even notice her, so it'll get addicted and attached to her because she gives it the coedine."

"The serial number?"

"I'll put the tattooed foot in a cast. V-18 paralysis—you know."

"Smart," she muttered, but there was no approval in her voice.

When she had changed clothes in the anteroom, she unlocked the door to the office, but paused before passing on into the reception room. The door was ajar, and she gazed through the crack at the woman who sat on the sofa.

Sarah Glubbes was gray and gaunt and rigid as stone. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her wide empty eyes—dull blue spots on yellowed marble orbs—staring ceilingward while the colorless lips of a knife-slash mouth moved tautly in earnest prayer. The nurse's throat felt tight. She rubbed it for a moment. After all, the thing was only an animal.

She straightened her shoulders, put on a cheerful smile, and marched on into the reception room. The yellowed orbs snapped demandingly toward her.

"Everything's all right, Mrs. Glubbes," she began.

 

"Finished," Norris grunted at three o'clock that afternoon.

"Thirty-six K-99s," murmured the Anthropos file-clerk, gazing over Norris's shoulder at the clip-board with the list of doubtful neuts and the dealers to whom they had been sent. "Lots of owners may be hard to locate."

"Yeah. Thanks, Andy, and you too, Mabel."

The girl smiled and handed him a slip of paper. "Here's a list of owners for thirteen of them. I called the two local shops for you. Most of them live here close."

He glanced at the names, felt tension gathering in his stom­ach. It wasn't going to be easy. What could he say to them?

Howdy, Ma'am, excuse me, but I've come to take your little boy away to jail ... Oh, yes ma'am, he'll have a place to stay—in a little steel cage with a forkful of straw, and he'll get vitamin­ized mush every day. What's that? His sleepy-time stories and his pink honey-crumbles? Sorry, ma'am, your little boy is only a mutated chimpanzee, you know, and not really human at all.

"That'll go over great," he grumbled, staring absently at the window.

"Beg pardon, sir?" answered the clerk.

"Nothing, Andy, nothing." He thanked them again and strode out into the late afternoon sunlight. Still a couple of hours work­ing time left, and plenty of things to do. Checking with the other retail dealers would be the least unpleasant task, but there was no use saving the worst until last. He glanced at the list Mabel had given him, checked it for the nearest address, then squared his shoulders and headed for the kennel truck.

Anne met him at the door when he came home at six. He stood on the porch for a moment, smiling at her weakly. The smile was not returned.

"Doctor Georges' boy came," she told him. "He signed for the—"

She stopped to stare at him, then opened the screen, reached up quickly to brush light fingertips over his cheek.

"Terry! Those welts! What happened—get scratched by a cat-Q?"

"No, by a human-F," he grumbled, and stepped past her into the hall; Anne followed, eyeing him curiously while he reached for the phone and dialed.

"Who're you calling?" she asked.

"Society's Watchdog," he answered as the receiver buzzed in his ear.

"Your eye, Terry—it's all puffy. Will it turn black?"

"Maybe."

"Did the human-F do that too?"

"Uh-uh. Human-M—name of Pete Klusky ...

The phone croaked at him suddenly. "This is the record-voice of Sheriff Yates. I'll be out from five to seven. If it's urgent, call your constable."

He hung up briefly, then irritably dialed the locator service. "Mnemonic register, trail calls, and official locations," grated a mechanical voice. "Your business, please."

"This is T. Norris, Sherman-9-4566-78B, Official rating B, Pri­ority B, code XT-88-U-Bio. Get Sheriff Yates for me." "Nature of the call?"

"Offish biz."

"I  shall record the call."

He waited. The robot found Yates on the first probability-trial attempt—in the local pool-hall.

"I'm getting to hate that infernal gadget," Yates snapped. "Acts like it's got me psyched. Whattaya want, Norris?"

"Cooperation. I'm mailing you three letters charging three Wylo citizens with resisting a federal official—namely me—and charging one of them with assault. I tried to pick up their neu­troids for a pound inspection, and—"

Yates bellowed lusty laughter in his ear.

"Not funny," he growled. "I've got to get those neutroids. It's connected with the Delmont case."

Yates stopped laughing. "Oh? Well . . . I'll take care of it."

"Rush order, Sheriff. Can you get the warrants tonight and pick up the animals in the morning?"

"Easy on those warrants, boy. Judge Charleman can't be bothered just any time. I can get the newts to you by noon, I guess, provided we don't have to get a helicopter posse to chase down the mothers."

"Well, okay—but listen—I want the charges dropped if they cooperate with you. And don't shake the warrants at them unless you have to. Just get those newts, that's all I want."

"Okay, boy. Give me the dope."

Norris read him the names and addresses of the three unwill­ing owners, and a precise account of what happened in each case. As soon as he hung up, Anne muttered "Sit still," perched on his knees, and began stroking chilly ointment across his burn­ing cheek. He watched her cool eyes flicker from his cheek to his own eyes and down again. She was no longer angry, but only gloomy and withdrawn from him. He touched her arm. She seemed not to notice it.

"Hard day, Terry?"

"Slightly. I picked up nine newts out of thirteen, anyhow. They're in the truck now."

"Good thing you didn't get them all. There are only twelve empty cages."

"Twelve?—oh, Georges picked one up, didn't he?" 

"And sent a package," she said, eyeing him soberly. 

"Package? Where is it?"

"In the crematorium. The boy took it back there." He swallowed a tight spot in his throat, said nothing.

"Oh, and darling—Mrs. Slade called. Why didn't you tell me we're going out tonight?"

"Going—out?" It sounded a little weak.

"Well, she said she hadn't heard from you. I couldn't very well say no, so I told her I'd be there, at least."

"You—?"

"Oh, I didn't say about you, Terry. I said you'd like to go, but you might have to work. I'll go alone if you don't want to."

He stared at her with a puzzled frown. "You want to go to the psuedoparty?"

"Not particularly. But I've never been to one. I'm just curi­ous."

He nodded slowly, felt grim inside. She finished with the oint­ment, patted his cheek, managed a cheerful smile.

"Come on, Terry. Let's go unload your nine neutroids." He stared at her dumbly.

"Let's forget about this morning, Terry."

He nodded. She averted her face suddenly, and her lip quiv­ered. "I—I know you've got a job that's got to be—" She swal­lowed hard and turned away. "See you out in the kennels," she choked gaily, then hurried down the hall toward the door. Nor­ris scratched his chin unhappily as he watched her go.

After a moment, he dialed the mnemonic register again. "Keep a line on this number," he ordered after identifying himself. "If Yates or Franklin calls, ring continuously until I can get in to answer. Otherwise, just memorize the call."

"Instructions acknowledged," answered the circuitry.

He went out to the kennels to help Anne unload the neutroids.

A sprawling concrete barn housed the cages, and the barn was sectioned into three large rooms, one housing the fragile, humanoid chimpanzee-mutants, and another for the lesser breeds such as cat-Qs, dog-Fs, dwarf bears, and foot-high lambs that never matured into sheep. The third room contained a small gas chamber, with a conveyor belt leading from it to the crema­torium. He usually kept the third room locked, but he noticed in passing that it was open. Evidently Anne had found the keys in order to let Fred Georges dump his package.

A Noah's Ark Chorus greeted him as he passed through the animal room, to be replaced by the mindless chatter of the doll-like neutroids as soon as he entered the air conditioned neutroid­section. Dozens of blazing blond heads began dancing about their cages. Their bodies thwacked against the wire mesh as they leaped about their compartments with monkey-grace, in recognition of their feeder and keeper.

Their human appearance was broken only by two distinct features: short beaverlike tails decorated with fluffy curls of fur and an erect thatch of scalp hair that grew up into a bright candle-flame. Otherwise, they appeared completely human, with baby-pink skin, quick little smiles, and cherubic faces. They were sexually neuter and never grew beyond a predetermined age-set which varied for each series. Age-sets were available from one to ten years, human equivalent. Once a neutroid reached its age-set, it remained at this stage of retarded development until death.

"They must be getting to know you pretty well," Anne said as she came from behind a section of cages. "A big loud welcome for Pappa, huh?"

He frowned slightly as he glanced around the gloomy room and sniffed the animal odors. "That's funny. They don't usually get this excited."

She grinned. "Big confession: it started when I came in."

He shot her a quick suspicious glance, then walked slowly along a row of cages, peering inside. He stopped suddenly be-side a three year old K-76 to stare.

"Apple cores!"

He turned slowly to face his wife, trying to swallow a sudden spurt of anger.

"Well?" he demanded.

Anne reddened. "I felt sorry for them, eating that goo from the mechanical feeders. So I drove down to Sherman III and bought six dozen cooking apples."

"That was a mistake."

She frowned irritably. "We can afford it."

"That's not the point. There's a reason for mechanical feed­ings."

"Oh? What is it?"

He hesitated, knowing she wouldn't like the answer. But she was already stiffening.

"Let me guess," she said coldly. "If you feed them yourself they get to love you. Right?"

"Uh, yeah. They even attach some affection to me because they know that right after I come in, the feeders get turned on."

"I see. And if they love you, you might get queasy about run­ning them through Room 3's production line, eh?"

"That's about the size of it," he admitted.

"Okay, Terry, I feed them apples, you run your production line," she announced firmly. "I can't see anything contradictory about that, can you?"

Her eyes told him that he had damn well better see something contradictory about it, whether he admitted it or not.

"Planning to get real chummy with them, are you?" he in­quired stiffly.

"Planning to dispose of any soon?" she countered. 

"Honeymoon's off again, eh?"

She shook her head slowly, came toward him a little. "I hope not, Terry—I hope not." She stopped again. They watched each other doubtfully amid the chatter of the neutroids.

After a time, he turned and walked to the truck, pulled out the snare-pole and began fishing for the squealing, squeaking doll-things that bounded about like frightened monkeys in the truck's wire mesh cage. They were one-family pets, always frightened of strangers, and these in the truck remembered him only as the villain who had dragged them away from Mamma into a terrifying world of whirling scenery and roaring traffic.

They worked for a time without talking; then Anne asked casually: "What's the Delmont case, Terry?"

"Huh? What makes you ask?"

"I heard you mention it on the phone. Anything to do with a black eye and a scratched face?"

He nodded sourly. "Indirectly. It's a long story. Well—you know about the evolvotron."

"Only that Anthropos Incorporated uses it to induce muta­tions."

"It's sort of a sub-atomic surgical instrument—for doing `plastic surgery' to reproductive cells—Here! Grab this chimp! Got him by the leg."

"Oop! Got him. . . . Go ahead, Terry."

"Using an evolvotron on the gene-structure of an ovum is likeplaying microscopic billiards—with protons and deuterons and alpha particles for cue-balls. The operator takes the living ovum, mounts it in the device, gets a tremendously magnified image of it with the slow-neutrino shadowscope, compares the image with a gene-map, starts gouging out submolecular tidbits with single-particle shots. He juggles them around, hammers chunks in where nothing was before, plugs up gaps, makes new gaps. Catch?"

She looked thoughtful, nodded. "Catch. And the Lord Man made neutroid from the slime of an ape," she murmured.

"Heh? Here, catch this critter! Snare's choking him!"

"Okay—come to Mamma . . . Well, go on--tell me about Delmont."

"Delmont was a green evolvotron operator. Takes years of training, months of practice."

"Practice?"

"It's an art more than a science. Speed's the thing. You've got to perform the whole operation from start to finish in a few sec­onds. Ovum dies if you take too long."

"About Delmont—"

"Got through training and practice tryouts okay. Good rating, in fact. But he was just one of those people that blow up when rehearsals stop and the act begins. He spoiled over a hundred ova the first week. That's to be expected. One success out of ten tries is a good average. But he didn't get any successes."

"Why didn't they fire him?"

"Threatened to. Guess he got hysterical. Anyhow, he reported one success the next day. It was faked. The ovum had a couple of flaws—something wrong in the nervous system's determinants, and in the endocrinal setup. Not a standard neutroid ovum. He passed it on to the incubators to get a credit, knowing it wouldn't be caught until after birth."

"It wasn't caught at all?"

"Heh. He was afraid it might not be caught. So he suppressed the testosterone flow to its incubator so that it would be—later on."

"Why that?"

"All the neutroids are potential females, you know. But male hormone is pumped to the foetus as it develops. Keeps female sexuality from developing, results in a neuter. He decided that the inspectors would surely catch a female, and that would be blamed on a malfunction of the incubator, not on him."

"So?"

Norris shrugged. "So inspectors are human. So maybe a guy came on the job with a hangover and missed a trick or two. Besides, they all look female. Anyhow, she didn't get caught."

"How did they ever find out Delmont did it?"

"He got caught last month—trying it again. Confessed to doing it once before. No telling how many times he really did it."

Norris held up the final kicking, squealing, tassel-haired doll from the back of the kennel-truck. He grinned down at Anne.

"Now take this little yeep, for instance. Might be a potential she. Might also be a potential murderer. All these kiddos from the truck came from the machines in the section where Delmont worked last year when he passed that fake. Can't have non-standard models on the loose. Can't have sexed models either—then they'd breed, get out of hand. The evolvotron could be shut down any time it became necessary, and when that generation of mutants died off . . . " He shrugged.

Anne caught the struggling baby-creature in her arms. It strug­gled and tried to bite, but subsided a little when she disentangled it from the snare.

"Kkr-r-reeee!" it cooed nervously. "Kree Kkr-r-reeee!"

"You tell him you're no murderer," she purred to it.

He watched disapprovingly while she fondled it. One code he had accepted: steer clear of emotional attachments. It was eight months old and looked like a child of two years—a year short of its age-set. And it was designed to be as affectionate as a human child.

"Put it in the cage, Anne," he said quietly.

She looked up and shook her head.

"It belongs to somebody else. Suppose it transfers its fixation to you? You'd be robbing its owners. They can't love many peo­ple at once."

She snorted, but installed the thing in its cage.

"Anne—" Norris hesitated, knowing that it was a bad time to approach the subject, but thinking about Slade's pseudoparty tonight, and wondering why she had accepted.

"What, Terry?"

He leaned on the snare pole and watched her. "Do you want one of them for yourself? I can sign an unclaimed one over to you. Wouldn't cost anything."

She stared at him evenly for a moment, glanced down at her feet, paced slowly to the window to stand hugging her arms and looking out into the twilight.

"With a pseudoparty, Terry?"

He swallowed a lump of anxiety, found his voice. "Whatever you want."

"I hear the phone ringing in the house."

He waited.

"It stopped," she said after a moment.

"Well, babe?"

"Whatever I want, Terry?" She turned slowly to lean back against a patch of gray light and look at him.

He nodded. "Whatever you want."

"I want your child."

He stiffened with hurt, stared at her open-mouthed. "I want your child."

He thrust his hand slowly in his hip pocket.

"Oh, don't reach for your social security card. I don't care if it's got `Genetic triple-Z' on it. I want your child."

"Uncle Federal says `no,' babe."

"To hell with Uncle Federal! They can't send a human through your Room 3! Not yet, anyhow! If it's born, the world's stuck with it!"

"And the parents are forcibly separated, reduced to common-labor status. Remember?"

She stamped her foot and whirled to the window again. "Damn the whole hellish world!" she snarled.

Norris sighed heavily. He was sorry she felt that way. She was probably right in feeling that way, but he was still sorry. Right­eous anger, frustrated, was no less searing a psychic acid than the unrighteous sort, nor did a stomach pause to weigh the moral worth of the wrath that drenched it before giving birth to an ulcer.

"Hey, babe, if we're going to the Slade affair—"

She nodded grimly and turned to walk with him toward the house. At least it was better having her direct her anger at the world rather than at him, he thought.

 

The expectant mother played three games of badminton before sundown, then went inside to shower and dress before the guests arrived. Her face was wreathed in a merry smile as she trotted downstairs in a fresh smock, her neck still pink from the hot water, her wake fragrant with faint perfume. There was no apparent need for the smock, nor was there any pregnant cau­tion in the way she threw her arms around John's neck and kicked her heels up behind.

"Darling!" she chirped. "There'll be plenty of milk. I never believed in bottle-feeding. Isn't it wonderful?"

"Great. The injections are working, I guess."

She looked around. "It's a lovely resort-hospital. I'm glad you didn't pick Angel's Haven."

"So am I," he grunted. "We'll have the reception room all to ourselves tonight."

"What time is it?"

"Seven ten. Oh, the doe called to say he'd be a few minutes late. He was busy all day with a sick baby."

She licked her lips and glanced aside uneasily. "Class A cou­ple?"

"No, doll. Class C—and a widow."

"Oh." She brightened again, watched his face teasingly. "Will you pace and chain-smoke while I'm in delivery?"

He snorted amusement. "Hey, it's not as if you were really . . " He stopped amid a fit of coughing.

"Not as if I really what?"

His mouth opened and closed. He stammered helplessly. "Not as if I were really what?" she demanded, eyes begin­ning to brim.

"Listen, darling, I didn't mean . . .”

A nurse came clicking across the floor. "Mrs. Slade, it's time for your first injection. Doctor Georges just called. Will you come with me please?"

"Not as if I what, John?" she insisted, ignoring the nurse. "Nothing, doll, nothing—"

"Mrs. Slade—"

"All right, nurse, I'm coming." She tossed her husband a hurt glance, walked away dabbing at her eyes.

"Expectant dames is always cranky," sympathized an attendant who sat on a bench nearby. "Take it easy. She won't be so touchy after it comes."

John Hanley Slade shot an irritable glare at the eavesdropper, saw a friendly comedian-face grinning at him, returned the grin uneasily, and went over to sit down.

"Your first?"

John Hanley nodded, stroked nervously at his thin hair. "I see 'em come, I see 'em go. It's always the same." "Whattaya mean?" John grunted.

"Same expressions, same worries, same attitudes, same con­versation, same questions. The guy always makes some remark about how it' not really having a baby, and the dame always gets sore. Happens every time."

"It's all pretty routine for you, eh?" he muttered stiffly.

The attendant nodded. He watched the expectant father for several seconds, then grunted: "Go ahead, ask me." "Ask you what?"

"If I think all this is silly. They always do."

John stared at the attendant irritably. "Well—?"

"Do I think it's silly? No, I don't."

"Fine. That's settled, then."

"No, I don't think it's silly, because for a dame ain't satisfied if she plunks down the dough, buys a newt, and lets it go at that. There's something missing between bedroom and baby."

"That so?"

John's sarcastic tone was apparently lost on the man. "It's so," he announced. "Physiological change—that's what's missing. For a newt to really take the place of a baby, the mother's got to go through the whole build-up. Doc gives her injections, she craves pickles and mangoes. More injections for morning sickness. More injections, she gets chubby. And finally the shots to bring milk, labor, and false delivery. So then she gets the newt, and everything's right with the world."

"Mmmph."

"Ask me something else," the attendant offered.

John looked around helplessly, spied an elderly woman near the entrance. She had just entered, and stood looking around as if lost or confused. He did not recognize her, but he got up quickly.

"Excuse me, chum. Probably one of my guests."

"Sure, sure. I gotta get on the job anyhow."

The woman turned to stare at him as he crossed the floor to meet her. Perhaps one of Mary's friends, he thought. There were at least a dozen people coming that he hadn't met. But his wel­coming smile faded slightly as he approached her. She wore a shabby dress, her hair was disheveled in a gray tangle, her matchstick legs were without make-up, and there were fierce red lines around her eyelids. She stared at him with wide wild eyes—dull orbs of dirty marble with tiny blue patches for pupils. And her mouth was a thin slash between gaunt leathery cheeks.

"Are—are you here for the party?" he asked doubtfully.

She seemed not to hear him, but continued to stare at or through him. Her mouth made words out of a quivering hiss of a voice. "I'm looking for him."

"Who?"

"The doctor."

He decided from her voice that she had laryngitis. "Doctor Georges? He'll be here soon, but he'll be busy tonight. Couldn't you consult another physician?"

The woman fumbled in her bag and brought out a small parcel to display. "I want to give him this," she hissed.

"I could—"

"I want to give it to him myself," she interrupted.

Two guests that he recognized came through the entrance. He glanced toward them nervously, returned their grins, glanced indecisively back at the haggard woman.

"I'll wait," she croaked, turned her back, and marched to the nearest chair where she perched like a sick crow, eyes glued to the door.

John Hanley Slade felt suddenly chilly. He shrugged it off and went to greet the Willinghams, who were the first arrivals.

 

Anne Norris, with her husband in tow, zig-zagged her way through a throng of chattering guests toward the hostess, who now occupied a wheel-chair near the entrance to the delivery room. They were a few minutes late, but the party had not yet actually begun.

"Why don't you go join the father's sweating circle?" Anne called over her shoulder. "The men are all over with John."

Norris glanced at the group that had gathered under a cloud of cigar smoke over by the portable bar. John Slade stood at the focus of it and looked persecuted.

"Job's counselors," Terry grunted.

A hand reached out from a nearby conversation-group and caught his arm. "Norris," coughed a gruff voice.

He glanced around. "Oh—Chief Franklin. Hello!"

Anne released his hand and said "See you later," then wound her way out of sight in the milling herd.

Franklin separated himself from the small congregation and glanced down coolly at his district inspector. He was a tall man, with shoulders hunched up close to his head, long spindly legs, a face that was exceedingly wide across the cheekbones but nar­row at the jaw. Black eyes gazed from under heavy brows, and his unruly black hair was badly cut. His family tree had a few Cherokee Indians among its branches, Norris had heard, and they were frequently on the warpath.

Franklin gulped his drink casually and handed the glass to a passing attendant. "Thought you'd be working tonight, Norris," he said.

"I got trapped into coming, Chief," he replied amiably. "How're you doing with the Delmont pickup?"

"Nearly finished with record-tracing. I took a break today and picked up nine of them."

"Mmmph. I wondered why you plastipainted that right eye." Franklin rolled back his head and laughed loudly toward the ceiling. "Newt's mamma tossed the crockery at you, did she?"

"Her husband," he corrected a little stiffly.

"Well—get them in a hurry, Norris. If the newt's owner knows it's a deviant, he might hear we're after something and hide it somewhere. I want them rounded up quickly."

"Expect to find the one?"

Franklin nodded grimly. "It's somewhere in this part of the country—or was. It narrows down to about six or eight districts. Yours has a good chance of being it. If I had my way, we'd de­stroy every Bermuda K-99 that came out during that period. That way, we'd be sure—in case Delmont faked more than one."

"Be pretty tough on dames like Mary," Norris reminded him, glancing toward Mrs. Slade.

"Yeah, yeah, five hundred Rachels blubbering for their chil­dren, and all on my neck. I'd almost rather let the deviant get away than have to put up with the screaming mommies."

"The burdens of office, Chief. Bear up under the brickbats. Herod did."

Franklin glowered at him suspiciously, noticed Norris's bland expression, muttered "eh heh heh," and glanced around the room.

"Who's presiding over the whelping tonight?" Norris asked. 

"Local doctor. Georges. You ought to know him."

Terry's eyebrows went up. He nodded.

"He's already here. Saw him come in the doctor's entrance a few minutes ago. He's probably getting ready. Well, Norris . . . if you'll excuse me ..."

Norris wandered toward the bar. He had been to several pseu­doparties before. There was nothing to it, really. After the guests had gathered, the medics rolled the mother into delivery, and everyone paced restlessly and talked in hushed voices while she reenacted the age-old drama of Birth—in a way that was only mildly uncomfortable and did nothing to aggravate the popula­tion problem. Then, when they rolled her out again—fatigued and emotionally spent—the nurse brought out a newly purchased neutroid, only a few days out of the incubator, and presented it to the mother. When the oohs and awws were finished, the mother went home with her child to rest, and the father whooped it up with the guests. Norris hoped to get away early. He had things to do before dawn.

"Who's that hag by the door?" a guest grunted in his ear.

Norris glanced incuriously at the thin-lipped woman who sat stiffly with her hands in her lap, not gazing at the guests but looking through and beyond them. He shook his head and moved on to shake hands with his host.

"Glad you came, Norris!" Slade said with a grin, then leaned closer. "Your presence could be embarrassing at a time like this, though."

"How's that?"

"You should have brought your net and snare-pole, Norris," said a man at Slade's elbow. "Then when they bring the baby out, go charging across the room yelling "That's it! That's the one I'm after!' "

The men laughed heartily. Norris grinned weakly and started away.

"Hey, Slade," a voice called. "They're coming after Mary." Norris stood aside to let John hurry toward his wife. Most of the crowd stopped milling about to watch Dr. Georges, a nurse, and an attendant coming from a rear door to take charge of Mary.

"Stop! Stop right there!"

The voice came from near the front entrance. It was a choked and hoarse gasp of sound, not loud, but somehow penetrating enough to command the room. Norris glanced aside during the sudden lull to see the thin-lipped woman threading her way through the crowd, and the crowd folded back to clear a way. The farther she walked, the quieter the room, and Norris sud­denly realized that somehow the center of the room was almost clear of people so that he could see Mary and John and the medics standing near the delivery room door. They had turned to stare at the intruder. Georges' mouth fell open slightly. He spoke in a low voice, but the room was suddenly silent enough so that Norris could hear.

"Why, Sarah—what're you doing here?"

The woman stopped six feet away from him. She pulled out a small parcel and reached it toward him. "This is for you," she croaked.

When Georges did not advance to take it, she threw it at his feet. "Open it!" she commanded.

Norris expected him to snort and tell the attendants to toss the nutty old dame out. Instead, he stooped, very slowly, keeping his eyes on the woman, and picked up the bundle.

"Unwrap i