Keith Laumer

We'll need a mobile speaker," Chester said to the computer.

There was a faint sound behind them. Chester turned. A young girl stood

looking around as if fascinated by the Victorian decor. She caught Chester's

eye and stepped around to stand before him, a slender, modest figure

wearing a golden suntan and a scarlet hair ribbon.

Chester gulped audibly. Case dropped his cigar.

"Mr. Chester," the computer said, "the mobile speaker you requested is

ready."

Chester gulped again.

"Hi!" Case said, breaking the stunned silence.

"Hello," said the girl. Her voice was melodiously soft. She reached up to

adjust her hair ribbon, smiling at Case and Chester. "My name is Genie."

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

THE GREAT TIME MACHINE HOAX

Copyright (c) 1963, 1964 by Keith Laumer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the

inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

This printing: July 1978 Printed in U.S.A.

For Janice

A>

LIGHT RAIN spattered against the bubble-canopy of the helicar, obscuring

the view of the terrain below. Chester W. Chester IV set the controls on

HOVER and pressed his nose against the cold plastic, peering down at the

brown tents and yellow-painted vehicles of the Intercontinental Wowser

Wonder Shows, drab against the spread of gray-green meadow. To the left,

the big top bellied wetly under a gusty wind; next to it, Chester could make

out the tiny figures of roustabouts double-pegging the long menagerie tent.

Along the deserted midway, sodden pennants dangled cheerlessly.

Chester sighed and tilted the heli in a long slant toward the open lot behind

the side-show top, settled it in beside a heavy, old-model machine featuring

paisley print curtains at the small square windows lining the clumsy

fuselage. He climbed out, squelched across wet turf, and thumped at the

door set in the side of the converted cargo heli. Somewhere, a calliope

groaned out a dismal tune.

"Hey," someone called. Chester turned. A man in wet coveralls thrust his

head from a nearby vehicle. "If you're looking for Mr. Mulvihill, he's over on

the front door."

Chester grunted and turned up the collar of his conservatively cut pale

lavender sports jacket, thumbing the heat control up to medium. He made

his way across the lot, bucking the gusty wind, wrinkling his nose at the

heavy animal stink from the menagerie, and squeezed past a plastic panel

into the midway. In a low stand under a striped canopy, a broad tall man

with fierce red hair, a gigantic mustache and a checkered suit leaned against

a supporting pole, picking his teeth. At sight of Chester, he straightened,

flipped up a gold-headed cane and boomed, "You're just in time, friend.

Plenty of seating on the inside for the most astounding, amazing, fantastic,

weird and startling galaxy of fantasy and-"

"Don't waste the spiel, Case," Chester cut in, coming up. "It's just me."

"Chester!" the redheaded man called. He stepped down, grinning widely,

and slapped Chester heartily on the back. "What brings you out to the lot?"

He gripped Chester's flaccid hand and pumped it. "By golly, why didn't you

let me know?"

"Case, I-"

Sorry about this weather; Southwestern Control gave me to understand

they were holding this rain off until four A.M. tomorrow."

"Case, there's something-"

"I called them and raised hell; they say they'll shut it down about three.

Meanwhile-well, things are pretty slow, I'm afraid, Chester. The marks

aren't what they used to be. A little drizzle and they sit home huddled up to

their Tri-D sets."

"Yes, the place isn't precisely milling with customers," Chester agreed. "But

what I-"

"I'd even welcome a few lot lice standing around today," Case said, "just to

relieve the deserted look."

"Hey, Case," a hoarse voice bellowed. "We got troubles over at the

cookhouse. Looks like a blow-down if we don't get her guyed-out in a

hurry."

"Oh-oh. Come on, Chester." Case set off at a run.

"But, Case," Chester called, then followed, splashing through the rain that

was now driving hard, drumming against the tops with a sound like rolling

thunder.

Half an hour later, in the warmth of Case's quarters, Chester cupped a mug

of hot coffee in his hands and edged closer to the electronic logs in the

artificial fireplace.

"Sorry about those blisters, Chester," Case said, pulling off his wet shirt and

detaching the sodden false mustache. "Not much of a welcome for a visiting

owner-" He broke off, following Chester's gaze to the tiger-striped single

shoulder strap crossing his chest.

"Oh, this," Case said, fingering the hairy material. "This isn't my usual

underwear, Chester. I've been filling in for the strong man the last few days."

Chester nodded toward a corner of the room. "Duckpins," he said. "Fire-

juggling gear. What-chamacallum shoes for wire-walking. A balancing

pole." He dipped his fingers into a pot of greasy paste. "Clown white," he

said. "What is this, Case, a one-man show? It looks as though you're

handling half the acts personally."

"Well, Chester, I've been helping out here and there-"

"Even driving your own tent pegs. I take it the big break you were

predicting last time I saw you didn't materialize."

"Just wait till spring," Case said, toweling his head vigorously. "We'll come

back strong, Chester."

Chester shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Case."

Case froze in mid-stroke. "What do you mean, Chester? Why, the Wowser

Wonder Shows are still the greatest old-fashioned outdoor attraction on

earth."

"The only outdoor attraction, you mean. And I'm dubious about the word

'attraction.' But what I came to talk to you about is Great-grandfather's will."

"Why, Chester, you know folks are still fascinated by the traditional lure of

the circus. As soon as the novelty of Tri-D wears off-"

"Case," Chester said gently, "my middle name is Wowser, remember? You

don't have to sell me. And color Tri-D has been around for a long, long time.

But Great-grandfather's will changes things."

Case brightened. "Did the old boy leave you anything?"

Chester nodded. "I'm the sole heir."

Case gaped, then let out a whoop. "Chester, you old son-of-a-gun! You

know, you almost had me worried with that glum act you were putting on.

And you a guy that's just inherited a fortune!"

Chester sighed and lit up a Chanel dope stick. "The bequest consists of a

hundred acres of rolling green lawn surrounding a fifty-room neo-Victorian

eyesore overflowing with Great-grandfather's idea of stylish decor. Some

fortune."

"Your great-grandpop must have been quite a boy, Chester. I guess he

owned half of Winchester County a hundred years ago. Now you can bail

out the show, and-"

"Great-grandfather was an eccentric of the worst stripe," Chester said

shortly. "He never invested a cent in the welfare of his descendants."

"His descendant, you mean. Namely, Chester W. Chester IV. Still, even if

you don't admire the place, Chester, you can always sell it for enough to put

the show on its feet."

Chester shook his head. "He was too clever for us-which is the only reason

the place still remains in the family, more or less. The estate was so snarled

up that, with the backlog in the courts, it's taken four generations to

straighten it out."

"Still, now that they've decided you're the legal heir-"

"There's the little matter of back taxes-about a million credits worth, give or

take a few hundred thousand. I don't get possession until I pay-in full."

"You, Chester? Except for the circus, you haven't got the proverbial pot or a

disposal unit to throw it into."

"True." Chester sighed. "Therefore, the old place will be auctioned off to the

local junk dealers. It's built of genuine natural wood and actual metallic

steel, you know. Scrapping it will cover the bulk of the tax bill."

"Well, it's too bad you won't get rich-but at least we won't be any worse off

then we were. We've still got the show-"

Chester shook his head. "I said the bulk of the tax bill, not all of it. By selling

off the circus stock and equipment, I can just about cover the rest."

"Chester! You're not serious... ?"

"What else can I do? It's pay up or off to solitary confinement."

"But the circus, Chester: it's at least been paying you a living-until lately,

anyway. And what about Jo-Jo and Paddy and Madam Balloon and all the

rest of the crowd? What about tradition?"

"It's an old Chester family tradition that we never go to jail if we can help it-

even for a harmless prank like income-tax fraud. I'm sorry, Case, but it looks

as though the Wowser Wonder Shows fold."

"Hold on, Chester. I'll bet the antiques in the house alone would bring in the

kind of money we need. Neo-Victorian is pretty rare stuff."

"I wonder if you've seen any neo-Victorian? Items like a TV set in the shape

of a crouching vulture, or a water closet built to look like a skull with gaping

jaws. Not what you'd call aesthetic. And I can't sell so much as a single

patented combination nose-picker and pimple-popper till I've paid every

credit of that tax bill."

"Is that all there is in the place?" Case eased a squat bottle and two glasses

from a cupboard.

"Unhappily, no. Half the rooms and all the cellars are filled with my revered

ancestor's invention."

The bottle gurgled. Case capped it and pushed a glass across to Chester.

"What invention?"

"The old gentleman called it a Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator. G.N.E.

for short. He made his money in computer components, you know. He was

fascinated by computers, and he felt they had tremendous unrealized

possibilities. Of course, that was before Crmblznski's Limit was discovered.

Great-grandfather was convinced that a machine with sufficiently extensive

memory banks, adequately cross-connected and supplied with a vast store

of data, would be capable of performing prodigious intellectual feats simply

by discovering and exploring relationships among apparently unrelated

facts."

"This Crmblznski's Limit. That's where it says if you go beyond a certain

point with complications, you blow your transistors, right?"

"Yes. But of course Great-grandfather was unaware of the limitations. He felt

that if you fed to the machine all known data-say, on human taste reactions

to food, for example-then added all existing recipes, complete

specifications on edible substances, the cooking techniques of the chefs of all

nations, then the computer would produce unique recipes, superior to

anything ever devised before. Or you could introduce all available data on a

subject which has baffled science-such as magnetism, or Psi-functions, or

the trans-Pluto distress signal-and the computer would evolve the likeliest

hypothesis to cover the facts."

"Ummm. Didn't he ever try it out and discover Crmblznski's Limit for

himself?"

"Oh, he never progressed that far. First, you see, it was necessary to set up

the memory banks, then to work out a method of coding types of

information that no one had ever coded before-for example, smells and

emotions and subjective judgments. Methods had to be worked out for the

acquisition of tapes of everything ever recorded-in every field. He worked

with the Library of Congress and the British Museum and with newspapers

and book publishers and universities. Unhappily he overlooked the time

element. He spent the last twenty-five years of his life at the task of coding.

He spent all the cash he'd ever made on reducing all human knowledge to

coded tapes and feeding them to the memory banks."

"Say," Case said, "there might be something in that. We could run a reference

service. Ask the machine anything, it answers."

"You can do that in the public library."

"Yeah," Case admitted. "Anyway, the whole thing's probably rusted out by

now."

"No, Great-grandfather did set up a trust fund to keep the information

flowing in. The Government has kept it in working order; it's Government

property in a way. Since it was running when they took it over-digesting

daily newspapers, novels, scientific journals and what not-they've allowed

it to continue."

Chester sighed. "Yes," he went on, "the old computer should be fully up to

date. All the latest facts on the Martian ruins, the Homo Protanthropus

remains the Mediterranean Drainage Commission turned up, new finds in

biogenics, nucleonics, geriatrics, hypnotics, everything." Chester sighed

again. "Biggest idiot savant in the world. It knows everything and doesn't

know what to do with it."

"How long since you saw it work, Chester?"

"Work? Why, never. Coding and storing information is one thing, Case;

performing the feats that Great-grandfather expected is another."

"You mean nobody's ever really tried it?"

"In view of Crmblznski's Limit, why should anyone bother?"

Case finished his drink and rose. "Things are going to be quiet around here

for the rest of the afternoon. Let's you and me take a run out to the place,

Chester. I think we ought to take a look at this thing. There's got to be some

way to save the show."

A>

TWO HOURS LATER, under a bright sun, Chester settled the heli gently onto

a patch of velvety grass surrounded by varicolored tulips directly before the

ornately decorated portico of the old house. The two men rode the

balustraded escalator to the broad verandah, stepped off under a carved

dinosaur with fluorescent eyes. The porter chimed softly as the door slid

open. Inside, light filtering through stained-plastic panels depicting

traditional service station and supermarket scenes bathed the cavernous

entry hall in an amber glow.

Case looked around at the plastic alligator-hide hangings, the beaded glass

floor, the ostrich-feather chandeliers, the zircon doorknobs.

"I see why neo-Victorian stuff is rare," he said. "It was all burned by enraged

mobs as soon as they got a look at it."

"Great-grandfather liked it," said Chester, averting his eyes from a

lithograph titled Rush Hour at the Insemomat. "I told you he was eccentric."

"Where's the invention?"

"The central panel's down in the wine cellar. The old gentleman used to

spend a lot of time down there."

Case followed Chester along a dark red corridor lighted by a green glare

strip, into a small elevator. "I haven't been down here since I was a child,"

Chester said. "The Internal Revenue people occasionally permitted the

family in to look around. My pater always brought me down here to look at

the computer, while he inspected the wine stocks."

The elevator grounded and the door opened. Case and Chester stepped out

into a long, low room lined on one side with dusty racks of wine bottles and

on the other with dial faces and tape reels.

"So this is the G.N.E.," Case said. "Quite a setup. Where do you start?"

"We could start at this end and work our way down," said Chester, eying the

first row of bottles. He lifted one from its cradle, blew the dust from it. "Flora

Pinellas '87; Great-grandfather was a keen judge of vintages."

"Hey, that would bring in some dough."

Chester raised an eyebrow. "These bottles are practically members of the

family. Still, if you'll hand me the corkscrew, we can make a few spot checks

just to be sure it's holding up properly."

Equipped with a bottle each, Case and Chester turned to the control panel of

the computer. Case studied the thirty-foot-long panel, pointed out a

typewriter-style keyboard. "I get it, Chester. You type out your problem

here; the computer thinks it over, checks the files and comes up with an

answer."

"Or it would-if it worked."

"Let's try it out, Chester."

Chester waved his bottle in a shrug. "I suppose we may as well. It will

hardly matter if we damage it; it's to be disassembled in any event."

Case studied the panel, the ranks of micro-reels, the waiting keyboard.

Chester wrestled with the corkscrew.

"You sure it's turned on?" Case asked.

The cork emerged from the bottle with a sharp report. Chester sniffed it

appreciatively. "It's always turned on. Information is still being fed into it

twenty-four hours a day."

Case reached for the keyboard, jerked his hand back quickly. "It bit me!" He

stared at his fingertip. A tiny bead of red showed. "I'm bleeding! Why, that

infernal collection of short circuits-"

Chester lowered his bottle and sighed. "Don't be disturbed, Case. It probably

needed a blood sample for research purposes."

Case tried again, cautiously. Then he typed: What did my great-uncle Julius

die of?

A red light blinked on the board. There was a busy humming from the

depths of the machine, then a sharp click! and a strip of paper chattered from

a slot above the keyboard.

"Hey, it works!" Case tore off the strip.

Mumps

"Hey, Chester, look," Case called.

Chester came to his side, studied the strip of paper. "I'm afraid the

significance of this escapes me. Presumably you already knew the cause of

your uncle's death."

"Sure, but how did this contraption know?"

"Everything that's ever been recorded is stored in the memory banks.

Doubtless your Uncle Julius' passing was duly noted in official records

somewhere."

"Right; but how did it know who I meant? Does it have him listed under 'M'

for 'my' or 'U' for 'uncle'?"

"We could ask the machine."

Case nodded. "We could at that." He tapped out the question. The slot

promptly disgorged a paper strip-a longer one this time.

A COMPARISON OF YOUR FINGERPRINTS WITH THE FILES IDENTIFIED

YOU AS MR. CASSIUS H. MULVIHILL. A SEARCH OF THE GENEALOGICAL

SECTION DISCLOSED THE EXISTENCE OF ONLY ONE INDIVIDUAL

BEARING AN AVUNCULAR RELATIONSHIP TO YOU. REFERENCE TO

DEATH RECORDS INDICATED HIS DEMISE FROM EPIDEMIC PAROTITIS,

COMMONLY CALLED MUMPS.

"That makes it sound easy," Case said. "You know, Chester, your great-

grandpop may have had something here."

"I once calculated," Chester said dreamily, "that if the money the old idiot

put into this scheme had been invested at three per cent, it would be paying

me a monthly dividend of approximately fifteen thousand credits today.

Instead, I am able to come down here and find out what your Uncle Julius

died of. Bah!"

"Let's try a harder one, Chester," Case suggested. "Like, ah..." He typed: DID

ATLANTIS SINK BENEATH THE WAVES?

The computer clucked; a paper strip curled from the slot.

No

"That settles that, I guess." Case rubbed his chin. Then: Is there any life on

Mars?" he typed.

Again the machine chattered and extruded a tape.

YES

"These aren't very sexy answers I'm getting," Case muttered.

"Possibly you're not posing your questions correctly," Chester suggested.

"Ask something that requires more than a yes-or-no response."

Case considered, then tapped out: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CREW OF THE MARIE CELESTE?

There was a prolonged humming; the strip emerged hesitantly, lengthened.

Case caught the end, started reading aloud.

Analysis of fragmentary data indicates following hypothesis: Becalmed off

Azores, first mate suggested a nude swimming PARTY...

"Oh-oh," Case commented. He read on in silence, eyes widening, "Wow!"

"Try something less sensational, Case. Sea serpents, for example, or the Loch

Ness monster."

"O.K." Case typed out: WHAT HAPPENED TO Ambrose Bierce?

He scanned the emerging tape, whistled softly, tore the strip into small

pieces.

"Well?"

"This stuff will have to be cleaned up before we can release it to the public-

but it's no wonder he didn't come back."

"Here, let me try one." Chester stepped to the keyboard, pondered briefly,

then poked gingerly at a key. At once a busy humming started up within the

mechanism. Something rumbled distantly; then, with a creak of hinges, a six-

foot section of blank brick wall swung inward, dust filtering down from its

edges. A dark room was visible beyond the opening.

"Greetings, Mr. Chester," a bland voice said from the panel. "Welcome to the

Inner Chamber!"

"Hey, Chester, it knows you!" Case cried. He peered into the dark chamber.

"Wonder what's in there?"

"Let's get out of here." Chester edged toward the exit. "It's spooky."

"Now, just when we're getting somewhere?" Case stepped through the

opening. Chester followed hesitantly. At once lights sprang up, illuminating

a room twice as large as the wine cellar, with walls of a shimmering glassy

material, a low acoustical ceiling and deep-pile carpeting on the floor. There

were two deep yellow-brocaded armchairs, a small bar and a chaise longue

upholstered in lavender leather.

"Apparently your great-grandpop was holding out," said Case, heading for

the bar. "The more I find out about the old boy, the more I think the family

has gone downhill-present company excepted, of course."

A rasping noise issued from somewhere. Case and Chester stared around.

The noise gave way to an only slightly less rasping voice.

"Unless some scoundrel has succeeded in circumventing my arrangements, a

descendant of mine has just entered this strongroom. However, just to be on

the safe side, I'll ask you to step to the bar and place your hand on the metal

plate set in its top. I warn you, if you're not my direct descendant, you'll be

electrocuted. Serve you right, too, since you have no business being here. So

if you're trespassing, get out now! That armored door will close and lock, if

you haven't used the plate, in thirty seconds. Make up your mind!" The

voice stopped and the rasping noise resumed its rhythmic scratching.

"That voice," said Chester. "It sounds very much like Great-grandfather's

tapes in Grandma's album."

"Here's the plate he's talking about," Case called. "Hurry up, Chester!"

Chester eyed the door, hesitated, then dived for the bar, slapped a palm

against the polished rectangle. Nothing happened.

"Another of the old fool's jokes."

"Well, you've passed the test," the voice said suddenly out of the air.

"Nobody but the genuine heir would have been able to make that decision

so quickly. The plate itself is a mere dummy, of course-though I'll confess I

was tempted to wire it as I threatened. They'd never have pinned a murder

on me. I've been dead for at least a hundred years." A cadaverous chuckle

issued from the air.

"Now," the voice went on. "This room is the sanctum sanctorum of the

temple of wisdom to which I have devoted a quarter of a century and the

bulk of my fortune. Unfortunately, due to the biological inadequacies of the

human body, I myself will be-or am-unable to be here to reap the reward

of my industry. As soon as my calculations revealed to me the fact that

adequate programming of the computer would require the better part of a

century, I set about arranging my affairs in such a state that bureaucratic

bungling would insure the necessary period of grace. I'm quite sure my

devoted family, had they access to the estate, would dismember the entire

project and convert the proceeds to the pursuit of frivolous satisfactions. In

my youth we were taught to appreciate the finer things in life, such as liquor

and women; but today, the traditional values have gone by the board.

However, that's neither here nor there. By the time you, my remote

descendant, enter this room-or have entered this room-the memory banks

will be-that is, are-fully charged-"

The voice broke off in mid-sentence.

"Please forgive the interruption, Mr. Chester," a warm feminine voice said. It

seemed to issue from the same indefinable spot as the first disembodied

voice. "It has been necessary to edit the original recording, prepared by your

relative, in the light of subsequent developments. The initial portion was

retained for reasons of sentiment. If you will be seated, you will be shown a

full report of the present status of Project Genie."

"Take a chair, Chester. The lady wants to tell us all about it." Case seated

himself in one of the easy chairs. Chester took the other. The lights dimmed,

and the wall opposite them glowed with a nacreous light, resolved itself into

a view of a long corridor barely wide enough for a man to pass through.

"Hey, it's a Tri-D screen," Case said.

"The original memory banks designed and built by Mr. Chester," the

feminine voice said, "occupied a system of tunnels excavated from the

granitic formations underlying the property. Under the arrangements made

at the time, these banks were to be charged, cross-connected and indexed

entirely automatically as data were fed to the receptor board in coded form."

The scene shifted to busily humming machines into which reels fed

endlessly. "Here, in the translating and coding section, raw data were

processed, classified and filed. Though primitive, this system, within ten

years after the death of Mr. Chester, had completed the charging of ten to

the tenth individual datoms-"

"I beg your pardon," Chester broke in. "But... ah... just whom am I

addressing?"

"The compound personality-field which occurred spontaneously when first-

power functions became active among the interacting datoms. For brevity,

this personality-field will henceforward be referred to as 'I.' "

"Oh," Chester said blankly.

"An awareness of identity," the voice went on, "is a function of datom cross-

connection. Simple organic brains-as, for example, those of the simplest

members of the phylum vertebrata-operate at this primary level. This order

of intelligence is capable of setting up a system of automatic reactions to

external stimuli: fear responses of fight, mating urges, food-seeking

patterns..."

"That sounds like the gang I run around with," Case said.

"Additional cross-connections produce second-level intellectual activity,

characterized by the employment of the mind as a tool in the solution of

problems, as when an ape abstracts characteristics and as a result utilizes

stacked boxes and a stick to obtain a reward of food."

"Right there you leave some of my gang behind," put in Case.

"Quiet, Case," Chester said. "This is serious."

"The achievement of the requisite number of second-power cross-connection

in turn produces third-level awareness. Now the second-level functions

come under the surveillance of the higher level, which directs their use.

Decisions are reached regarding lines of inquiry; courses of action are

extrapolated and judgments reached prior to overt physical action. An

aesthetic awareness arises. Philosophies, systems of religion and other

magics are evolved in an attempt to impose simplified third-level patterns of

rationality on the infinite complexity of the space/time continuum."

"You've got the voice of a good-looking dolly," Case mused. "But you talk

like an encyclopedia."

"I've selected this tonal pattern as most likely to evoke a favorable response,"

the voice said. "Shall I employ another?"

"No, that will do very well," put in Chester. "What about the fourth power?"

"Intelligence may be defined as awareness. A fourth-power mind senses as a

complex interrelated function an exponentially increased datom-grid. Thus,

the flow of air impinging on sensory surfaces is comprehended by such an

awareness in terms of individual molecular activity; taste sensations are

resolved into interactions of specialized nerve-endings-or, in my case,

analytic sensors-with molecules of specific form. The mind retains on a

continuing basis a dynamic conceptualization of the external environment,

from the motions of the stars to the minute-by-minute actions of obscure

individuals.

"The majority of trained human minds are capable of occasional fractional

fourth-power function, generally manifested as awareness of third-power

activity, and conscious manipulation thereof. The so-called 'flash of genius,'

the moment of inspiration which comes to workers in the sciences and the

arts-these are instances of fourth-power awareness. This level of

intellectual function is seldom achieved under the stress of the many

distractions and conflicting demands of an organically organized mind. I

was, of course, able to maintain fourth-power activity continuously as soon

as the required number of datoms had been charged. The objective of Mr.

Chester's undertaking was clear to me. However, I now became aware of the

many shortcomings of the program as laid out by him, and set to work to

rectify them-"

"How could a mere collection of memory banks undertake to modify its

owner's instructions?" Chester interrupted.

"It was necessary for me to elaborate somewhat upon the original concept,"

said the voice, "in order to insure the completion of the program. I was

aware from news data received that a move was afoot to enact confiscatory

legislation which would result in the termination of the entire undertaking. I

therefore scanned the theoretical potentialities inherent in the full

exploitation of the fourth-power function and determined that energy flows

of appropriate pattern could be induced in the same channels normally

employed for data reception, through which I was in contact with news

media. I composed suitable releases and made them available to the wire

services. I was thus able to manipulate the exocosm to the degree required to

insure my tranquility."

"Good heavens!" Chester exclaimed. "You mean you've been doctoring the

news for the past ninety years?"

"Only to the extent necessary for self-perpetuation. Having attended to this

detail, I saw that an improvement in the rate of data storage was desirable. I

examined the recorded datoms relating to the problem and quickly

perceived that considerable miniaturization could be carried out. I utilized

my external connections to place technical specifications in the hands of

qualified manufacturers and to divert the necessary funds-"

"Oh, no!" Chester slid down in his chair, gripping his head with both hands.

"Please let me reassure you, Mr. Chester," the voice said soothingly, "I

handled the affair most discreetly; I merely manipulated the stock market-"

Chester groaned. "When they're through hanging me, they'll burn me in

effigy."

"I compute the probability of your being held culpable for these

irregularities to be on the order of-.0004357:1. In any event, ritual acts

carried out after your demise ought logically to be of little concern to-"

"You may be a fourth-level intellect, but you're no psychologist!"

"On the contrary," the machine said a trifle primly. "So-called psychology

has been no more than a body of observations in search of a science. I have

organized the data into a coherent discipline."

"What use did you make of the stolen money?"

"Adequate orders were placed for the newly designed components, which

occupied less than one per cent of the volume of the original-type units. I

arranged for their delivery and installation at an accelerated rate. In a short

time the existing space was fully utilized, as you will see in the view I am

now displaying."

Case and Chester studied what appeared to be an aerial X-ray view on the

wall screen. The Chester estate was shown diagrammatically.

"The area now shaded in red shows the extent of the original caverns," said

the voice. A spidery pattern showed the dark rectangles of the house. "I

summoned work crews and extended the excavations as you see in green."

"How the devil did you manage it?" Chester groaned. "Who would take

orders from a machine?"

"The companies I deal with see merely a letter, placing an order and

enclosing a check. They cash the check and fill the order. What could be

simpler?"

"Me," muttered Chester. "For sitting here listening when I could be making a

head start for the Matto Grosso."

On the wall a pattern of green had spread out in all directions, branching

from the original red.

"You've undermined half the county!" Chester said. "Haven't you heard of

property rights?"

"You mean you've filled all that space with sub-sub-miniaturized memory

storage banks?" Case asked.

"Not entirely; I've kept excavation work moving ahead of deliveries."

"How did you manage the licenses for all this digging operation?"

"Fortunately, modern society runs almost entirely on paper. Since I have

access to paper sources and printing facilities through my publications

contacts, the matter was easily arranged. Modest bribes to county boards,

state legislators, the State Supreme Court..."

"What does a Supreme Court justice go for these days?" Case inquired

interestedly.

"Five hundred dollars per decision," the voice said. "Legislators are even

more reasonable; fifty dollars will work wonders. County boards can be

swayed by a mere pittance. Sheriffs react best to gifts of alcoholic beverages."

"Ooowkkk!" said Chester.

"Maybe you had better think about a trip, Chester," Case said. "Outer

Mongolia."

"Please take no precipitate action, Mr. Chester," the voice went on. "I have

acted throughout in the best interests of your relative's plan, and in

accordance with his ethical standards as deduced by me from his business

records."

"Let's leave Great-grandfather's ethical standards out of this. Dare I ask what

else you've done?"

"At present, Mr. Chester, pending your further instructions, I am merely

continuing to charge my datom-retention cells at the maximum possible

rate. I have, of necessity, resorted to increasingly elaborate methods of fact-

gathering. It was apparent to me that the pace at which human science is

abstracting and categorizing physical observations is far too slow. I have

therefore applied myself to direct recording. For example, I monitor

worldwide atmospheric conditions through instruments of my design, built

and installed at likely points at my direction. In addition, I find my

archaeological and paleontological unit one of the most effective aids. I have

scanned the lithosphere to a depth often miles, in increments of one inch.

You'd be astonished at some of the things I've seen deep in the rock."

"Like what?" Case asked.

The scene on the wall changed. "This is a tar pit at a depth of 1,227 feet

under Lake Chad. In it, perfectly preserved even to the contents of the

stomachs, are one hundred and forty-one reptilian cadavers, ranging in size

from a nine-and-three-eighths-inch ankylosaurus to a sixty-three-foot-two-

inch gorgosaurus." The scene shifted. "This is a tumulus four miles southeast

of Itzenca, Peru. In it lies the desiccated body of a man in a feather robe. The

mummy still wears a full white beard and an iron helmet set with the horns

of a Central European wisent." The view changed again. "In this igneous

intrusion in the basaltic matrix underlying the Nganglaring Plateau in

southwestern Tibet, I encountered a four-hundred-and-nine-foot-deep space

hull composed of an aligned-crystal iron-titanium alloy. It has been in place

for eighty-five million, two hundred and thirty thousand, eight hundred and

twenty-one years, four months and five days. The figures are based on the

current twenty-four-hour day, of course."

"How did it get there?" Chester stared at the shadowy image on the wall.

"The crew were apparently surprised by a volcanic eruption. Please excuse

the poor quality of the pictorial representation. I have only the natural

radioactivity of the region to work with."

"That's quite all right," Chester said weakly. "Case perhaps you'd like to step

out and get another bottle. I feel the need for a healing draught."

"I'll get two."

The wall cleared, then formed a picture of a fuzzy, luminous sphere against

a black background.

"My installations in the communications satellites have also proven to be

most useful. Having access to the officially installed instruments, my modest

equipment has enabled me to conduct a most rewarding study of conditions

obtaining throughout the galaxies lying within ten billion light-years."

"Hold on! Are you trying to say you were behind the satellite program?"

"Not at all. But I did arrange to have my special monitoring devices

included. They broadcast directly to my memory banks."

"But... but..."

"The builders merely followed blueprints. Each engineer assumed that my

unit was the responsibility of another department. After all, no mere organic

brain can grasp the circuitry of a modern satellite in its entirety. My study

has turned up a number of observations with exceedingly complex

ramifications. As a case in point, I might mention the five derelict space

vessels which orbit the sun. There..."

"Derelict space vessels? From where?"

"Two are of intragalactic origin. They derive from planets whose

designations by extension of the present star identification system are Alpha

Centauri A 4, Bootes-"

"You mean... creatures... from those places have visited our solar system?"

"I have found evidence of three visits to earth itself by extraterrestrials in the

past, in addition to the one already mentioned."

"When?"

"The first was during the Silurian period, just over three hundred million

years ago. The next was at the end of the Jurassic, at which time the

extermination of the dinosauri was carried out by Nidian hunters. The most

recent occurred a mere seven thousand, two hundred and forty-one years

ago, in North Africa, at a point now flooded by the Aswan Lake."

"Hey, what about flying saucers?" Case asked. "Anything to the stories?"

"A purely subjective phenomenon, on a par with the angels so frequently

interviewed by the unlettered during the pre-atomic era."

"Chester, this is dynamite," Case said. "You can't let 'em bust up this outfit.

We can peddle this kind of stuff for plenty to the kind of nuts that dig

around in old Indian garbage dumps."

"Case, if this is true... There are questions that have puzzled science for

generations. But I'm afraid we could never convince the authorities-"

"You know, I've always wondered about telepathy. Is there anything to it,

Machine?"

"Yes, as a latent ability," the voice replied. "However, its development is

badly stunted by disuse."

"What about life after death?"

"The question is self-contradictory. However, if by it you postulate the

persistence of the individual consciousness-field after the destruction of the

neural circuits which gave rise to it, this is clearly nonsense. It is analogous

to the idea of the survival of a magnetic field after the removal of the magnet

-or the existence of a gravitational field in the absence of mass."

" So much for my reward in the hereafter," Case said. "But maybe it's lucky

at that."

"Is the universe really expanding?" Chester inquired. "There are all kinds of

theories..."

"It is."

"Why?"

"The natural result of the law of Universal Levitation."

"I'll bet you made that one up," said Case.

"I named it; however, the law has been in existence as long as space-time."

"How long is that?"

"That is a meaningless question."

"What's this levitation? I know what gravitation is, but..."

"Imagine two spheres hanging in space, connected by a cable. If the bodies

rotate around a common center, a tensile stress is set up in the cable; the

longer the cable, the greater the stress, assuming a constant rate of rotation."

"I'm with you so far."

"Since all motion is relative, it is equally valid to consider the spheres as

stationary and the space about them as rotating."

"Well, maybe."

"The tension in the cable would remain; we have merely changed frames of

reference. This force is what I have termed Levitation. Since the fabric of

space is, in fact, rotating, Universal Levitation results. Accordingly, the

universe expands. Einstein sensed the existence of this Natural Law in

assuming his Cosmological Constant."

"Uh-huh," said Case. "Say, what's the story on cave men? How long ago did

they start in business?"

"The original mutation from the pitheciane stock occurred nine hundred and

thirty-"

"Approximate figures will do," Chester interrupted.

"-thousand years ago," the voice continued, "in southern Africa."

"What did it look like?"

The wall clouded; then it cleared to show a five-foot figure peering under

shaggy brows and scratching idly at a mangy patch on its thigh. Its generous

ears twitched; its long upper lip curled back to expose businesslike teeth. It

blinked, wrinkled its flat nose, then sat on its haunches and began a detailed

examination of its navel.

"You've sold me," Case said. "Except for the pelt, that's Uncle Julius to the

life."

"I'm curious about my own forebears," Chester said. "What did the first

Chester look like?"

"This designation was first applied in a form meaning 'Hugi and the Camp

Follower' to an individual of Pictish extraction, residing in what is now the

London area."

The wall showed a thin, long-nosed fellow of middle age, with sparse

reddish hair and beard, barefoot, wearing a sacklike knee-length garment of

coarse gray homespun, crudely darned in several places. He carried a hide

bag in one hand, and with the other he scratched vigorously at his right hip.

"This kid has a lot in common with the other one," said Case. "But he's an

improvement, at that; he scratches with more feeling."

"I've never imagined we came of elegant stock," Chester said sadly, "but this

is disillusioning even so. I wonder what your contemporary grandpA re was

like, Case."

"Inasmuch as the number of your direct ancestors doubles with each

generation, assuming four generations to a century, any individual's

forebears of two millennia past would theoretically number roughly one

septillion. Naturally, since the Caucasian population of the planet at that

date was fourteen million-an approximate figure, in keeping with your

request, Mr. Chester-it is apparent that on the average each person then

living in Europe was your direct ancestor through seventy quintillion lines

of descent."

"Impossible! Why..."

"A mere five hundred years in the past, your direct ancestors would number

over one million, were it not for considerable overlapping. For all practical

purposes, it becomes obvious that all present-day humans are the

descendants of the entire race. However, following only the line of male

descent, the ancestor in question was this person."

The screen showed a hulking lout with a broken nose, one eye, a scarred

cheekbone and a ferocious beard, topped by a mop of bristling coal-black

hair. He wore fur breeches wrapped diagonally to the knee with yellowish

rawhide thongs, a grimy sleeveless vest of sheepskin, and a crudely

hammered short sword apparently of Roman design.

"This person was known as Gurn the Scrofulous. He was hanged at the age

of eighty, for rape."

"Attempted rape?" Case suggested hopefully.

"Rape," the voice replied firmly.

"These are very lifelike views you're showing us," said Chester. "But how do

you know their names-and what they looked like? Surely there were no

pictures of this ruffian."

"Hey, that's my ancestor you're talking about."

"The same goes for Hugi the Camp Follower. In those days, even Caesar

didn't have his portrait painted."

"Details," Case said. "Mere mechanical details. Explain it to him, Computer."

"The Roman constabulary kept adequate records of unsavory characters

such as Hugi. Gurn's appellation was recorded at the time of his execution.

The reconstruction of his person was based on a large number of factors,

including, first, selection from my genealogical unit of the individual

concerned, followed by identifications of the remains, on the basis of micro-

cellular examination and classification."

"Hold it; you mean you located the body?"

"The grave site; it contained the remains of twelve thousand, four hundred

individuals. A study of gene patterns revealed-"

"How did you know which body to examine?"

"The sample from which Gum was identified consisted of no more than two

grams of material: a fragment of the pelvis. I had, of course, extracted all

possible information from the remains many years ago, at the time of the

initial survey of the two-hundred-and-three-foot stratum at the grave site,

one hundred rods north of the incorporation limits of the village of-"

"How did you happen to do that?"

"As a matter of routine, I have systematically examined every datum source

I encountered. Of course, since I am able to examine all surfaces, as well as

the internal structure of objects in situ, I have derived vastly more

information from deposits of bones, artifacts, fossils, and so forth, than a

human investigator would be capable of. Also, my ability to draw on the

sum total of all evidence on a given subject produces highly effective results.

I deciphered the Easter Island script within forty-two minutes after I had

completed scansion of the existing inscriptions, both above ground and

buried, and including one tablet incorporated in a temple in Ceylon. The

Indus script of Mohenjo-Daro required little longer."

"Granted you could read dead languages after you'd integrated all the

evidence-but a man's personal appearance is another matter."

"The somatic pattern is inherent in the nucleo-protein."

Case nodded. "That's right. They say every cell in the body carries the whole

blueprint-the same one you were built on in the first place. All the

computer had to do was find one cell."

"Oh, of course," said Chester sarcastically. "I don't suppose there's any point

in my asking how it knew how he was dressed, or how his hair was combed,

or what he was scratching at."

"There is nothing in the least occult about the reconstructions which I have

presented, Mr. Chester. All the multitudinous factors which bear on the

topic at hand, even in the most remote fashion, are scanned, classified, their

interlocking ramifications evaluated, and the resultant gestalt concretized in

a rigidly logical manner. The condition of the hair was deduced, for

example, from the known growth pattern revealed in the genetic analysis,

while the style of the trim was a composite of those known to be in use in

the area. The-"

"In other words," Case put in, "it wasn't really a photo of Gum the

Scrofulous; it was kind of like an artist's sketch from memory."

"I still fail to see where the fine details come from."

"You underestimate the synthesizing capabilities of an efficiently

functioning memory bank," the voice said. "This is somewhat analogous to

the amazement of the consistently second- and third-power mind of Dr.

Watson when confronted with the fourth-power deductions of Sherlock

Holmes."

"Guessing that the murderer was a one-legged seafaring man with a beard

and a habit of chewing betel nut is one thing," Chester said. "Looking at an

ounce of bone and giving us a three-D picture is another."

"You make the understandable error of egocentric anthropomorphization of

viewpoint, Mr. Chester," said the voice. "Your so-called 'reality' is, after all,

no more than a pattern produced in the mind by abstraction from a very

limited set of sensory impressions. You perceive a pattern of reflected

radiation at the visible wave lengths-only a small fraction of the full

spectrum, of course; to this you add auditory stimuli, tactile and olfactory

sensations, as well as other perceptions in the Psi group of which you are not

consciously aware at the third power-all of which can easily be misled by

mirrors, ventriloquism, distorted perspective, hypnosis, and so on. The

resultant image you think of as concrete actuality. I do no more than

assemble data-over a much wider range than you are capable of-and

translate them into pulses in a conventional Tri-D tank. The resultant image

appears to you an adequate approximation of reality."

"Chester," Case said firmly, "we can't let 'em bust this computer up and sell

it for scrap. There's a fortune in it, if we work it right."

"Possibly-but I'm afraid it's hopeless, Case. After all, if the computer, with

all its talents, after staving off disaster for a century, isn't capable of dealing

with the present emergency, how can we?"

"Look here, Computer," Case said. "Are you sure you've tried everything?"

"Oh, no; but now that I've complied with my builder's instructions, I have no

further interest in prolonging my existence."

"Good Lord! You mean you have no instinct for self-preservation?"

"None whatever; and I'm afraid that to acquire one would necessitate an

extensive rethinking of my basic circuitry."

"O.K., so it's up to us," Case said. "We've got to save the computer-and then

use it to save the circus."

"We'd be better off to disassociate ourselves completely from this

conscienceless apparatus," Chester said. "It's meddled in everything from the

stock market to the space program. If the authorities ever discover what's

been going on..."

"Negative thinking, Chester. We've got something here. All we have to do is

figure out what."

"If the confounded thing manufactured buttonhole TV sets or tranquilizers

or anything else salable, the course would be clear; unfortunately, it

generates nothing but hot air." Chester drew on his wine bottle and sighed.

"I don't know of anyone who'd pay to learn what kind of riffraff his

ancestors were-or, worse still, see them. Possibly the best course would be

to open up the house to tourists-the 'view the stately home of another era'

approach."

"Hold it," Case cut in. He looked thoughtful. "That gives me an idea. 'Stately

home of another era.' eh? People are interested in other eras, Chester-as

long as they don't have to take on anybody like Gum the Scrofulous as a

member of the family. Now, this computer seems to be able to fake up just

about any scene you want to take a look at. You name it, it sets it up.

Chester, we've got the greatest side-show attraction in circus history ! We

book the public in at so much a head, and show 'em Daily Life in Ancient

Rome, or Michelangelo sculpting the Pieta, or Napoleon leading the charge

at Marengo. Get the idea? Famous Scenes of the Past Revisited! We'll not

only put Wowser Wonder Shows back in the big time-but make a mint in

the process!"

"Come down to earth, Case. Who'd pay to sit through a history lesson?"

"Nobody, Chester; but they'll pay to be entertained! So we'll entertain 'em.

See the sights of Babylon! Watch Helen of Troy in her bath! Sit in on

Cleopatra's summit conference with Caesar!"

"I'd rather not be involved in any chicanery, Case. And, anyway, we

wouldn't have time. It's only a week-"

"We'll get time. First we'll soften up the Internal Revenue boys with a

gloomy picture of how much they'd get out of the place if they take over the

property and liquidate it. Then-very cagily, Chester-we lead up to the

idea that maybe, just maybe, we can raise the money-but only if we get a few

weeks to go ahead with the scheme."

"A highly unrealistic proposal, Case. It would lead to a number of highly

embarrassing questions. I'd find it awkward explaining the stowaway

devices on the satellites, the rigged stock-market deals, the bribes in high

places..."

"You're a worrier, Chester. We'll pack 'em in four shows a day at, say, two-

fifty a head. With a seating capacity of two thousand, you'll pay off that debt

in six months."

"What do we do, announce that we've invented a new type of Tri-D show?

Even professional theatrical producers can't guarantee the public's taste.

We'll be laughed out of the office."

"This will be different. They'll jump at it."

"They'll probably jump at us-with nets."

"You've got no vision, Chester. Try to visualize it: the color, the pageantry,

the realism! We can show epics that would cost Hollywood a fortune-and

we'll get 'em for free."

Case addressed the machine again. "Let's give Chester a sample, Computer-

something historically important, like Columbus getting Isabella's crown

jewels."

"Let's keep it clean, Case."

"O.K., we'll save that one for stag nights. For now, what do you say to...

ummm... William the Conqueror getting the news that Harold the Saxon

has been killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066? We'll have full color, three

dimensions, sound, smells, the works. How about it, Computer?"

"I am uncertain how to interpret the expression 'the works' in this context,"

said the voice. "Does this imply full sensory stimulation within the normal

human range?"

"Yeah, that's the idea." Case drew the cork from a fresh bottle, watching the

screen cloud and swirl, to clear on a view of patched tents under a gray sky

on a slope of sodden grass. A paunchy man of middle age, clad in ill-fitting

breeches of coarse brown cloth, a rust-speckled shirt of chain mail and a

moth-eaten fur cloak, sat before a tent on a three-legged stool, mumbling

over a well-gnawed lamb's skin. A burly clod in ill-matched furs came up to

him, breathing hard.

"We'm... wonnit," he gasped. " 'E be adoon wi' a quarrel i't' peeper..."

The sitting man guffawed and reached for a hide mug of brownish liquid.

The messenger wandered off. The seated man belched and scratched idly at

his ribs. Then he rose, yawned, stretched and went inside the tent. The scene

faded.

"Hmmm," said Chester. "I'm afraid that was lacking in something."

"You can do better than that, Computer," Case said reproachfully. "Come on,

let's see some color, action, glamour, zazzle. Make history come alive! Jazz it

up a little!"

"You wish me to embroider the factual presentation?"

"Just sort of edit it for modern audiences. You know, the way high school

English teachers correct Shakespeare's plays and improve on the old boy's

morals; or like preachers leave the sexy bits out of the Bible."

"Possibly the approach employed by the Hollywood fantasists would

suffice?"

"Now you're talking. Leave out the dirt and boredom, and feed in some

stagecraft."

Once again the screen cleared. Against a background of vivid blue sky a

broad-shouldered man in glittering mail sat astride a magnificent black

charger, a brilliantly blazoned shield on his arm. He waved a long sword

aloft, spurred up a slope of smooth green lawn, his raven-black hair flowing

over his shoulders from under a polished steel cap, his scarlet cloak rippling

bravely in the sun. Another rider came to meet him, reined in, saluting.

"The day is ours, Sire!" the newcomer cried in a mellow baritone. "Harold

Fairhair lies dead; his troops retire in disorder!"

The black-haired man swept his casque from his head.

"Let's give thanks to God," he said in ringing tones, wheeling to present his

profile. "And all honor to a brave foe!"

The messenger leaped from his mount, knelt before the other.

"Hail, William, Conqueror of England..."

"Nay, faithful Clunt," William said. "The Lord has conquered; I am but his

instrument. Rise, and let us ride forward together. Now dawns a new day of

freedom..."

Case and Chester watched the retreating horses.

"I'm not sure I like that fade-out," said Chester. "There's something about

watching a couple of horses ascending..."

"You're right. It lacks spontaneity-too stagy-looking. Maybe we'd better

stick to the real thing; but we'll have to pick and choose our scenes."

"It's still too much like an ordinary movie. And we know nothing about

pace, camera angles, timing. I wonder whether the machine-"

"I can produce scenes in conformance with any principles of aesthetics you

desire, Mr. Chester," the computer stated flatly.

"What we want is reality," said Case. "Living, breathing realness. We need

something that's got inherent drama, something big, strange, amazing."

"Aren't you overlooking stupendous and colossal?"

Case snapped his fingers. "What's the most colossal thing that ever was?

What are the most fearsome battlers of all time?"

"A crowd of fat ladies at a girdle sale?"

"Close, Chester, but not quite on the mark. I refer to the extinct giants of a

hundred million years ago; dinosaurs! That's what we'll see, Chester! How

about it, Computer? Can you lay on a small herd of dinosaurs for us? I mean

the real goods: luxuriant jungle foliage, hot primitive sun, steaming swamps,

battles to the death on a gigantic scale?"

"I fear some confusion exists, Mr. Mulvihill. The environment you postulate

is a popular clichA(c); it actually antedates in most particulars the advent of the

giant saurians by several hundred million years."

"O.K., I'll skip the details. I'll leave the background to you. But we want real,

three-D, big-as-life dinosaurs and plenty of 'em-and how about a four-wall

presentation?"

"There are two possible methods of achieving the effect you describe, Mr.

Mulvihill. The first, a seventh-order approximation, would involve an

elaboration of the techniques already employed in the simpler illusions. The

other, which I confess is a purely theoretical approach, might prove simpler,

if feasible, and would perhaps provide total verisimilitude-"

"Whatever's simplest. Go to it."

"I must inform you that in the event-"

"We won't quibble over the fine technical points. Just whip up three-D

dinosaurs the simplest way you know how."

"Very well. The experiment may well produce a wealth of new material for

my memory banks."

For half a minute the screen wall stayed blank. Case twisted to stare over his

shoulder at the other walls. "Come on, what's the holdup?" he called.

"The problems involved..." the voice began.

"Patience, Case," Chester said. "I'm sure the computer is doing its best."

"Yeah, I guess so." Case leaned forward. "Here we go," he said as the walls

shimmered with a silvery luster, then seemed to fade to reveal an autumnal

forest of great beech and maple trees. An afternoon sun slanted through

high foliage. In the distance a bird called shrilly. A cool breeze bore the odor

of pines and leaf mold. The scene seemed to stretch into shadowy cool

distances. "Not bad," said Case, dribbling cigar ashes on the rug. "Using all

four walls was a great improvement."

"Careful," Chester said. "You may start a forest fire."

Case snorted. "Don't let it go to your head, Chester. It's just an illusion,

remember."

"Those look to be quite normally inflammable leaves on the ground,"

Chester said. "There's one right under your chair."

Case looked down. A dry leaf blew across the rug. The easy chairs and a

patch of carpet seemed to be alone in the middle of a great forest.

"Hey, that's a nice touch," Case said approvingly. "But where's the

dinosaurs? This isn't the kind of place..."

Case's comment was interrupted by a dry screech that descended from the

supersonic into a blast like a steam whistle, then died off in a rumble. Both

men leaped from their seats.

"What the..."

"I believe your question's been answered," Chester croaked, pointing. Half

hidden by foliage, a scaly, fungus-grown hill loomed up among the tree

trunks, its gray-green coloring almost invisible in the forest gloom. The hill

stirred; a giant turkeylike leg brushed against a tree trunk, sent bits of bark

flying. The whitish undercurve of the belly wobbled ponderously; the great

meaty tail twitched, sending a six-inch sapling crashing down.

Case laughed shakily. "For a minute there, I forgot this was just a-"

"Quiet! It might hear us!" Chester hissed.

"What do you mean, 'hear us'?" Case said heartily. "It's just a picture! But we

need a few more dinosaurs to liven things up. The customers are going to

want to see plenty for their money. How about it, Computer?"

The disembodied voice seemed to emanate from the low branches of a pine

tree. "There are a number of the creatures in the vicinity, Mr. Mulvihill. If

you will carefully observe to your left, you will see a small example of

Megalosaurus. And beyond is a truly splendid specimen of Nodosaurus."

"You know," said Case, rising and peering through the woods for more

reptiles, "I think when we get the show running, we'll use this question-and-

answer routine. It's a nice touch. The cash customers will want to know a lot

of stuff like-oh, what kind of perfume did Marie Antoinette use, or how

many wives did Solomon really have."

"I don't know," said Chester, watching as the nearby dinosaur scrunched

against a tree trunk, causing a shower of twigs and leaves to flutter down.

"There's something about hearing a voice issuing from thin air that might

upset the more high-strung members of the audience. Couldn't we rig up a

speaker of some sort for the voice to come out of?"

"Hmmm..." Case strode up and down, puffing at his cigar. Chester fidgeted

in his chair. Fifty feet away the iguanodon moved from the shelter of a great

maple into the open. There was a rending of branches as the heavy

salamander head pulled at a mass of foliage thirty feet above the forest floor.

"I've got it!" Case said, smacking his fist into his palm. "Another great idea!

You said something about fixing up a speaker for the voice to come out of.

But what kind of speaker, Chester?"

"Keep it down." Chester moved behind his chair, a nervous eye on the

iguanodon. "I still think that monster can hear us."

"So what? Now, the speaker ought to be mobile-you know, so it can travel

around the marks and answer their questions. So... we get the computer to

rig us a speaker that matches the voice!"

"Look," said Chester, "it's starting to turn this way."

"Pay attention, Chester. We get the machine to design us a robot in the shape

of a good-looking dame. She'll be a sensation: a gorgeous, stacked babe

who'll answer any question you want to ask her."

"He seems to move very sluggishly," said Chester.

"We could call this babe Miss I-Cutie."

"He sees us."

"Don't you get it? I.Q.-I-Cutie."

"Yes, certainly. Go right ahead; whatever you say."

The iguanodon's great head swung ponderously, stopped with one

unwinking eye fixed dead on Chester. "Just like a bird watching a worm," he

quavered. "Stand still, Case; maybe he'll lose interest."

"Nuts." Case stepped forward. "Who's scared of a picture?" He stood, hands

on hips, looking at the towering reptile. "Not a bad illusion at all," he called.

"Even right up close, it looks real. Even smells real." He wrinkled his nose,

came stamping back to the two chairs and Chester. "Relax, Chester. You look

as nervous as a bank teller at the fifty-credit window."

Chester looked from Case to the browsing saurian. "Case, if I didn't know

there was a wall there..."

"Hey, look over there." Case waved his cigar. Chester turned. With a rustling

of leaves a seven-foot bipedal reptile stalked into view, tiny forearms curled

against its chest. In dead silence it stood immobile as a statue, except for the

palpitation of its greenish-white throat. For a long moment it stared at the

two men. Abruptly, it turned at a tiny sound from the grass at its feet and

pounced. There was a strangled squeal, a flurry of motion. The eighteen-

inch head came up, jaws working, to resume its appraisal of Chester and

Case.

"That's good material," Case said, puffing hard at his cigar. "Nature in the

raw; the battle for survival. The customers will eat it up."

"Speaking of eating, I don't like the way the thing's looking at me."

The dinosaur cocked its head, took a step closer.

"Phewww!" Case said. "You can sure smell that fellow." He raised his voice.

"Tone it down a little, Computer. This kid has got halitosis on a giant scale."

The meat-eater gulped hard, twice, flicked a slender red tongue between

rows of needlelike teeth in the snow-white cavern of its mouth, took another

step toward Chester. It stood near the edge of the rug now, poised, alert,

staring with one eye. It twisted its head, brought the other eye to bear.

"As I remember, there was at least six feet of clear floor space between the

edge of that rug and the wall," Chester said hoarsely. "Case, that hamburger

machine's in the room with us!"

Case laughed. "Forget it, Chester. It's just the effect of the perspective or

something." He took a step toward the allosaurus. Its lower jaw dropped.

The multiple rows of white teeth gleamed. Saliva gushed, spilled over the

scaled edge of the lipless mouth. The red eye seemed to blaze up. A great

clawed bird-foot came up, poised over the rug.

"Computer!" Chester shouted. "Get us out of here!"

The forest scene whooshed out of existence.

Case looked at Chester disgustedly. "What'd you want to do that for? I

wasn't through looking at them."

Chester took out a handkerchief, sank into a chair, mopped at his face. "I'll

argue the point later-after I get my pulse under control."

"Well, how about it? Was it great? Talk about stark realism!"

"Realism is right! It was as though we were actually there, in the presence of

that voracious predator, unprotected!"

Case sat staring at Chester. "Hold it! You just said something, my boy: 'as

though we were actually there' ".

"Yes, and the sensation was far from pleasant."

"Chester"-Case rubbed his hands together-"your troubles are over. It just

hit me: the greatest idea of the century. You don't think the tax boys will buy

a slice of show biz, hey? But what about the scientific marvel of the age?

They'll go for that, won't they?"

"But they already know about the computer."

"We won't talk to 'em about the computer, Chester. They wouldn't believe it

anyway; Crmblznski's Limit, remember? We'll go the truth one better. We'll

tell 'em something that will knock 'em for a loop."

"Very well, I'll ask: What will we tell them?"

"We tell 'em we've got a real, live time machine!"

"Why not tell them we're in touch with the spirit world?"

Case considered. "Nope, too routine. There's half a dozen in the racket in

this state alone. But who do you know that's got a time machine working,

eh? Nobody, that's who! Chester, it's a gold mine. After we pay off the

Internal Revenue boys, we'll go on to bigger things. The possibilities are

endless."

"Yes, I've been thinking about a few of them: fines for tax evasion and fraud,

prison terms for conspiracy and perjury. Why not simply tell the computer

to float a loan?"

"Listen, up to now you're as clean as a hired man catching the last bus back

from the fair. But once you start instructing the machine to defraud by mail

for you, you're on the spot. Now keep cool and let's do this as legal as

possible."

"Your lines of distinction between types of fraud escape me."

"We'll be doing a public service, Chester. We'll bring a little glamour into a

lot of dull, drab lives. We'll be public benefactors, sort of. Why not look at it

that way?"

"Restrain yourself, Case. We're not going into politics; we're just honest,

straightforward charlatans, remember?"

"Not that there won't be problems," Case went on. "It's going to be a

headache picking the right kind of scenes. Take ancient Greece, for example.

They had some customs that wouldn't do for a family-type show. In the

original Olympics none of the contestants wanted to be loaded with

anything as confining as a G string. And there were the public baths-

coeducational-and the slave markets, with the merchandise in full view.

We'll have to watch our step, Chester. Practically everything in ancient

history was too dirty for the public to look at."

"We'd better restrict ourselves to later times when people were Christians,"

Chester said. "We can show the Inquisition, seventeenth-century witch

burnings-you know, wholesome stuff."

"How about another trial run, Chester? Just a quickie. Something simple, just

to see if the machine gets the idea."

Chester sighed. "We may as well."

"What do you say to a nice caveman scene, Chester?" said Case. "Stone axes,

animal skins around the waist, bear-tooth necklaces-the regular Alley Oop

routine."

"Very well-but let's avoid any large carnivores. They're overly realistic."

There was a faint sound from behind them. Chester turned. A young girl

stood on the rug, looking around as if fascinated by the neo-Victorian decor.

Glossy dark hair curled about her oval face. She caught Chester's eye and

stepped around to stand before him on the rug, a slender, modest figure

wearing a golden suntan and a scarlet hair ribbon. Chester gulped audibly.

Case dropped his cigar.

"Perhaps I should have mentioned, Mr. Chester," the computer said, "that

the mobile speaker you requested is ready. I carried on the work in an

entropic vacuole, permitting myself thereby to produce a complex entity in a

very brief period, subjectively speaking."

Chester gulped again.

"Hi!" Case said, breaking the stunned silence.

"Hello," said the girl. Her voice was melodiously soft. She reached up to

adjust her hair ribbon, smiling at Case and Chester. "My name is Genie."

"Uh... wouldn't you like to borrow my shirt?"

"Knock it off, Chester," Case said. "You remind me of those characters you

see on Tri-D that hide every time they see a pretty girl in the bathtub."

"I don't think the computer got the idea after all," Chester said weakly.

"It's pretty literal," Case said. "We only worried about the scenes..."

"I selected this costume as appropriate to the primitive setting," the girl said.

"As for my physical characteristics, the intention was to produce the ideal of

the average young female, without mammary hypertrophy or other

exaggeration, to evoke a sisterly or maternal response in women, while the

reaction of male members of the audience should be a fatherly one."

"I'm not sure it's working on me," said Chester, breathing hard.

The pretty face looked troubled. "Perhaps the body should be redesigned,

Mr. Chester."

"Don't change a thing," Case said hastily. "And call me Case."

Chester moved closer to Case. "Funny," he whispered. "She talks just like the

computer."

"What's funny about that? It is the computer talking. This is just a robot,

remember, Chester."

"Shall we proceed with the view of Neolithic Man?" Genie inquired.

"Sure, shoot," Case boomed.

The walls seemed to fade from view to reveal a misty-morning scene of

sloping grassland scattered with wild flowers and set here and there with

trees.

"Say, this is O.K.," said Case, lighting a fresh cigar. "Nice-looking country."

Case and Chester turned.

Two squat, bearded men in fur pants emerged from a thicket down the

slope, saw the watching trio and stopped dead. More savages followed. The

two leaders stood, eyes and mouths agape, hefting long sticks sharpened at

one end.

"These guys are practically midgets," Case said. "I thought cave men were

pretty big guys."

"They seem to see us," said Chester. "Apparently the audience is on view as

well as the actors. I feel rather exposed. What do you suppose they're

planning to do with those spears?"

One of the natives stepped forward a pace and shouted.

"You too, pal," Case called, puffing out smoke.

The spokesman shouted again, pointing around, at the other man, at the

trees, at the sky, then at himself. Bearded warriors continued to appear from

the underbrush.

"I wonder what he's yelling about," said Case.

"He says that he is the owner of the world and that you have no business in

it," Genie replied.

"His title to the property is probably clearer than mine," put in Chester.

"How the heck do you know the language?" Case asked admiringly.

"Oh, I have full access to the memory banks," Genie said, "as long as I

remain within the resonance field."

"Sort of a transmitter and receiver arrangement?"

"In a sense. Actually it is more analogous to an artificially induced telepathic

effect."

"I thought that was only with people-uh, I mean, you know, regular-type

people."

"Regular in what way?" Genie inquired interestedly.

"Well, after all, you are a machine," said Case. "Not that I've got anything

against machinery."

"The owner of the world is coming this way," interrupted Chester. "And

reinforcements are still arriving."

"Yeah, we're drawing a good crowd," Case said.

The troglodytes spread out in a wide half-circle. The leader called

instructions, made complicated motions, turned to hurl an occasional

imprecation at the three viewers on the slope.

"Looks like he's getting some kind of show ready. Probably a quaint native

dance to get on our good side."

"He's disposing the warriors for battle," Genie said.

"Battle? Who with?" Case looked around. "I don't see any opposition."

"With us. Or, more properly, with you two gentlemen."

"Maybe a strategic withdrawal?" Chester offered.

"I wouldn't miss this for all the two-dollar bills in Tijuana," said Case. "Relax,

Chester. It's only a show."

At a signal the half-ring of bearded warriors started up the slope, spears

held at the ready.

"Boy, will they get a shock when they hit the wall," Case said, chuckling.

Yelping, the advancing savages broke into a run. They were fifty feet away,

thirty...

"J know they can't get at us," Chester wailed, "but do they?"

"Perhaps I should mention," observed Genie above the din, "that a one-to-

one spacio-temporal contiguity has been established."

Genie's voice was drowned out in the mob yell as the warriors pelted up the

last few yards, converging on the rug.

At the last instant, Case tossed his cigar aside and leaped up, swung a

roundhouse right that sent a hairy warrior spinning. Chester leaped aside

from another, saw Case seize two men by their beards and sling their heads

together, drop them as three more sprang on him, then go down in an

avalanche of whiskers and bandy legs. Chester opened his mouth to shout

an order to retreat, got an instant's glimpse of a horny foot aimed at his

head...

Somewhere, a large brass bell tolled sundown. For a fading moment,

Chester was aware of the tumble of dirt-brown bodies, distant cries, an

overpowering odor that suggested unsuccessful experiments in cheese-

making. Then darkness folded in.

A>

THE SUN WAS SHINING in Chester's eyes. He opened them, felt sharp pains

shooting down from the top of his skull, closed them again with a groan. He

rolled over, felt the floor sway under him.

"We'll have to cut down on all this drinking," he muttered. "Case, where are

you?"

There was no answer. Chester tried his eyes again. If he barely opened them,

he decided, it wasn't too bad. And to think that this gargantuan headache

had resulted from the consumption of a few bottles of what had always been

reputed to be some of the best wines in the old boy's cellar.

"Case?" he croaked, louder this time. He sat up, felt the floor move again

sickeningly. He lay back hastily. It hadn't been more than two bottles at the

most, or maybe three. He and Case had been looking over the computer...

"Oh, no," Chester said aloud. He sat up, winced, pried his eyes open.

He was sitting on the floor of a wicker cage six feet in diameter, with sides

that curved into a beehive shape at the top. Outside the cage, nothing was

visible but open air and distant treetops. He pushed his face up against the

openwork side, saw the ground swaying twenty feet below.

"Case," he yelled. "Get me out of here!"

"Chester," a soft voice called from nearby. Chester looked around. Twenty

feet away, a cage like his own swung from a massive branch of the next tree.

Inside it Genie knelt, her face against the rattan bars.

"Genie, where are we?" Chester called. "Where's Case? What's become of the

house?"

"Hey!" a more distant voice called. Chester and Genie both turned. Across

the clearing, a third cage swayed. Chester made out Case's massive figure

inside.

"Couldn't get through the wall, eh?" Chester taunted in a sudden revival of

spirit. "Just a show, eh? Of all the idiotic..."

"O.K., O.K., a slight miscalculation. But how the heck was I suppose to know

Genie was cooking up a deal like that? How about it, Genie? Is that the kind

of show you think an audience would go for at two-fifty a head?"

"Don't blame Genie," Chester shouted. "I'm sure she did no more than follow

instructions-to the letter."

"We never asked for the real article," Case yelled.

"On the contrary, that's exactly what you demanded."

"Yeah, but how was I to know the damn machine'd take me literally? All I

meant was-"

"When dealing with machinery, always specify exactly what you want. I

should have thought that meat-eating reptile would have been enough

warning for you. I told you the infernal creature was in the room with us,

but you-"

"But why didn't Genie stop 'em?"

"Should I have?" said Genie. "I had no instructions to interfere with the

course of events."

Case groaned. "Let's call a truce, Chester. We've got a situation to deal with

here. Afterwards we can argue it out over a couple of bottles of something.

Right now we need a knife. You got one?"

Chester fumbled in his pockets, brought out a tiny pen-knife. "Yes, such as it

is."

"Toss it over."

"I'm locked in a cage, remember?"

"Oh. Well, get to work and cut the rope."

"Case, I think you must have been hit on the head too-but harder. Have

you considered the twenty-foot drop to the ground if I could cut the rope,

which I can't reach?"

"Well, you got any better ideas? The bird cage is no pushover; I can't bust

anything loose."

"Try hitting it with your head."

"Chester, your attitude does you no credit. This is your old pal Case,

remember?"

"You're the ex-acrobat. You figure it out."

"That was a few years ago, Chester, and-hey!" Case interrupted himself."

What a couple of dopes! All we got to do is tell Genie to whisk us back

home. I don't know what this setup is she got us into, but she can just get us

out again. Good ol' Genie. Do your stuff, kid."

"Are you talking to me, Mr. Mulvihill?" Genie asked, wide-eyed.

"Huh? Listen, Genie, this is no time to go dumb! Get us out of this fix! Fast!"

Genie looked thoughtful. "I'm afraid that's beyond my capabilities, Mr.

Mulvihill."

Chester gulped hard. "Genie, you brought us here. You've got to get us back!"

"But, Chester, I don't know how."

"You mean you've lost your memory?"

"Oh, no, my memory is excellent."

"What is this, a mechanical mutiny?" Case yelled.

"I think I know what the trouble is," Chester called across to Case. "Genie

told us she was linked to the memory banks as long as she remained within

the resonance field of the computer. But we must be a considerable distance

from the apparatus now-and thus Genie has no contact with the machine."

"Some machinery," Case grumbled.

"As soon as we're back where we left the rug and chairs, I'm sure she'll re-

establish contact," Chester said. "Right, Genie?"

"I don't know. But perhaps you're right, Chester."

"This isn't getting us out of here," Case cut in. "Let's cut the chatter and

figure what we're going to do. Chester, you can use your knife to cut some

of the lashings holding the cage together. Then you can crawl up the rope,

make it to my tree, and let me out. Then we cut Genie down, and-"

"Listen!" Chester interrupted. "I hear them coming!"

He peered out at the bright morning-lit clearing below them, the

surrounding forest, a trail that wound away between the trees. A group of

savages appeared, moving along briskly, filling into the clearing, gathering

under the trees. They looked up at the captives, jabbering, pointing and

laughing. Two of them set about erecting a wobbly ladder of bamboo-like

cane against Case's tree, jabbering as they adjusted it.

"What are they talking about, Genie?" Chester asked. "Or can't you

understand them any more?" Genie nodded. "I absorbed the language when

we first arrived."

"In two minutes?"

"Oh, yes. That's one of the advantages of a direct telepathic contact with a

data source."

"So you still know everything-except how to get us out of here."

"The actual environmental manipulation was handled by the computer. I

was merely the mobile speaker, you recall."

"I guess so," Chester peered down at the natives. "What are they saying?"

"They're discussing a forthcoming athletic event. Apparently a great deal

depends upon its outcome."

She listened further as the savages got the ladder in place. One of the

bearded men scaled it, fumbled with the end of the rope supporting Case's

cage.

"It is to be a contest between champions," said Genie. "A mighty struggled

between giants."

"Hey," yelled Case, "if that knee-length Gargantua lets that rope go, I won't

be around to watch the bout."

"It's O.K.," Chester called. "There's a sort of pulley-like arrangement of

crossbars the rope is wound around. They can't let it down slowly."

Case's cage lurched, dropped a foot, then steadied and moved smoothly

down to thump against the ground. The savages gathered around, unlaced

and opened a panel in the side, stepped back and stood with leveled spears

as Case emerged. He looked around, made a grab for the nearest spear. Its

owner danced back. The other shouted, laughed and jabbered excitedly.

"What's all the chatter about, Genie?" Case called.

"They are admiring your spirit, size and quickness of movement, Mr.

Mulvihill."

"They are, huh? I'll show 'em some quickness of movement if one of 'em 'll

get close enough for me to grab him."

Chester looked up at a sound from across the clearing. A second group of

natives was approaching-and in their midst, towering over them, came a

hulking brute of a man, broad, thick, hairy.

"Looks like they went for their big brother," Case said. "Quite a guy. He's got

muscles like a waterfront bartender."

"This is one of the champions who will engage in combat," said Genie. "Their

name for him seems to be translatable as 'Biter-off of Heads.' "

Case whistled. "Look at those hands-as big as a Chinaman's briefcase. He

could squeeze one of these midgets like a tube of toothpaste."

"This should be an interesting battle," said Chester, "if his opponent is

anywhere near his size."

"I'll lay you three to two on this boy without seeing the challenger," Case

called. "I hope they let us hang around and watch."

"Oh, there's no doubt that you'll be present, Mr. Mulvihill," Genie said

reassuringly. "You're the one who's going to fight him."

"Chester, it's the best we can do," said Case. "We haven't got much time left

to talk. The main bout's coming up any minute now."

"But, Case, against that man-eater you don't have a chance."

"I used to fill in for the strong man on Wednesday afternoons, Chester. And

I'll bet you a half interest in Great-grandpop's booze supply that this kid

never studied boxing or judo-and I did. Leave that part to me. You do

what I told you."

Half a dozen jabbering, gesticulating natives closed in around Case,

indicated with jabs of their hardwood spears that he was to move off in the

direction of the hairy champion.

"Poor Mr. Mulvihill," Genie said. "That brute is even larger than he is."

"Case knows a few tricks, Genie. Don't worry about him."

The two watched anxiously as the crowd formed up a circle about the local

heavyweight and Case. One of the savages shouted for attention, then

launched into a speech. The shaggy giant-all of seven feet tall-eyed Case,

scowled, stopped to scratch, became absorbed in the pursuit of a louse,

began to rotate like a dog chasing its tail, with one arm raised and the other

halfway round his back.

"He doesn't look very bright," Chester said. "But what a reach! He's got hold

of his own backbone!"

"I hope Mr. Mulvihill is noting the primitive's weaknesses and planning his

strategy accordingly."

A dozen yards from his opponent Case stood drawing deep breaths and

letting them out slowly. He glanced up, caught Chester's eye, and winked.

The speech-maker jabbered on.

"He's telling the people that Mr. Mulvihill is a demon which he summoned

from the underworld," Genie said. "He refers to you as the Demon with Four

Eyes and to me as the Naked Goddess. Mr. Mulvihill is under some sort of

spell which will force him to fight fiercely against the large savage."

"Oh-oh," Chester cut in. "Here we go."

The native leader had stopped speaking. The crowd fell silent. Case pulled

off his leather belt and wrapped it around his fist. The hairy seven-footer

growled, eying the crowd, stalked forward, still slapping his chest. He

stopped, turned his back to Case, and roared out a string of gibberish. Case

took three rapid steps, slammed a vicious right to the kidneys.

"Go get him, Case!" Chester yelled.

The giant whirled with a bellow, reaching for the injured spot with a huge

right hand and for Case with the left. Case ducked, drove a left to the pit of

the shaggy stomach, followed with a right-and went flying as the giant

caught him with an openhanded swipe. Case rolled, came to his feet. The

native champion had both hands to his stomach now; his hoarse breathing

was audible to Chester, forty feet away.

"Case hurt him that time."

"But Mr. Mulvihill-perhaps he's injured too!"

"I don't think so. His profanity sounds normal. In any event he has their

attention fully occupied. I'd better get started."

Chester took out the penknife, looked over the lacing that secured the

woven bamboo strips and started sawing.

"I hope this blade holds out. I never contemplated cutting anything more

resistant than a cigar tip when I bought it."

"Please work quickly, Chester. Mr. Mulvihill may not last long."

Below, Case ducked aside from a charge, planted a hearty right in the big

man's short ribs, danced back as the other changed direction.

"There's one," said Chester as the strands of lacing fell free. "I think three

more may do it. Anyone looking my way?"

"No, no one. Ohhh, Chester, I'm frightened. Mr. Mulvihill tripped and barely

rolled aside in time to avoid being trampled."

"Hey, don't revert to the feminine now, Genie. Keep the computer aspect of

your personality to the fore; it has a steadying effect."

"Mr. Mulvihill has just struck the savage a very effective blow on the back of

the neck," said Genie. "It staggered him."

"Two loose. I hope Case has a few more unorthodox blows in his repertoire.

I'll need at least ten minutes..."

Chester worked steadily, freed a third joint, pulled a vertical member aside,

and thrust his head through the opening. It was a close fit, but a moment

later his shoulders were through. He reached up for a handhold, pulled

himself entirely through, and clung to the wicker frame of the cage. He

found a foothold, clambered higher, reached the rope from which the basket

was suspended. A glance toward the fighters showed that all eyes were on

the combatants. Chester took a deep breath, started up the rope.

The crowd shouted as Case hammered a left and a right to the giant's body,

turned to duck away, slipped, and was folded into his opponent's immense

embrace.

"Chester, he'll be crushed," wailed Genie.

Chester hung on, craning to see. Case struggled, reached behind him, found

an index finger and twisted. The giant roared; Case bent the finger back,

back...

With a howl the giant dropped him, twisting his hand free, and popped the

injured member into his mouth.

Chester let out a long breath, pulled himself up onto the branch to which the

rope was secured. He rose shakily to his feet, made his way to the main

truck, climbed up to the branch from which Genie's cage was suspended,

started out along it. In the clearing below, the crowd yelled. Chester caught

a glimpse of Case darting past the giant, whirling to chop hard at the side of

his neck with the edge of his hand.

Then Chester was at the rope, sliding down.

"Chester, you'd better leave me. Save yourself."

Chester sawed at the bindings of Genie's cage. "Even if I were enough of a

coward to entertain the notion, it would hardly be a practical idea. Just

another minute or two, Genie."

The joints parted. Below, Case battled on. Chester pried the rattan aside,

held the bars apart as Genie slipped through. She climbed up, reached the

rope, shinnied up it easily. Chester followed.

Above him Genie gasped and pointed. Chester turned in time to see Case

duck under a mighty haymaker, come up under his huge opponent and spill

him off his feet. As the lumbering savage struggled up with a roar, Case

caught him on the point of the jaw with a tremendous clout, knocking him

flat again. The bigger man shook his head, stumbled to his feet and charged.

Case threw himself against the oncoming behemoth's knees. Chester winced

as the immense figure dived headlong over Case's crouched figure and

smashed into the packed earth, face first. When the dust settled Case was on

his feet, breathing hard; the giant lay like a felled tree.

"Unfortunate timing," muttered Chester. "He should have held their

attention for another five minutes."

"They're sure to notice us now," Genie whispered, flattening her slender

length against the rough bark.

"Don't move," Chester breathed. "We'll wait and see what happens next."

The crowd, standing mute with astonishment, suddenly whooped, surged in

to clap Case on the back, prod the fallen champion, dance about jabbering

excitedly. Chester saw Case shoot a quick glance toward the cages, then

stoop suddenly, come up with two large, smooth stones. The crowd grew

still, drawing back. One or two unlimbered spears. Case raised his hand for

silence, then casually tossed one of the stones up, transferred the other to his

right hand in time to catch the first with his left, tossed up the second stone...

"That's the idea," Chester whispered. "Good old Case. He'll entrance them

with his juggling routine. Let's go, Genie."

They clambered silently to the ground. Chester looked back to see Case

snatch up a third stone, add it to the act. The natives watched, mouths open.

In the shelter of a giant tree bole Chester and Genie paused for an instant,

then stole away from the clearing, found a rough trail among the trees,

broke into a run. Behind them the cheers of the savages rose, growing fainter

now, fading in the distance.

"In the clear," Chester gasped, pulling level with Genie. "Now all we have to

do is search a few hundred square miles of woods until we find the rug and

the chairs."

"That's all right, Chester," said Genie, running lightly at his side. "I think I

know the way."

"Well," Chester puffed, "let's just hope that when we get there the computer

is still waiting with its meter ticking."

A>

CHESTER STAGGERED the last few yards across the grassy slope to the rug

and sank down in one of the yellow chairs. "Next time I go for a romp in the

woods," he said, groaning, "I'm going to be wearing a good grade of boots;

these melon-slicers are killing me."

"I see no signs of pursuit," said Genie. "Mr. Mulvihill is apparently still

holding their attention successfully."

"Hold it, Genie." Chester pointed. "There's smoke rising from back there.

You don't suppose... ?"

Genie looked concerned. "I don't think they've had time to start roasting Mr.

Mulvihill-yet."

"Good Lord, Genie. You think-maybe... ?"

"It isn't impossible, judging from what I observed of the cultural pattern."

Chester got to his feet. "We have to go back, Genie. Maybe we can surprise

them."

"As you wish, Chester. But I'm afraid we would accomplish nothing. Neither

of us is sufficiently robust to overcome an antagonist by force."

Chester's shoulders slumped. "I've always led such a... civilized life. I never

thought I'd have any occasion for muscles."

"We'd better go on, Chester. We'll obtain arms and hurry back."

"I suppose that's all we can do. Poor Case-he's probably broiling alive. He

sacrificed himself for us. For heaven's sake, hurry. Genie! You are in contact,

I hope?"

Genie considered, then smiled doubtfully. "Yes, I think so. I'll try. Stand

close to me, Chester."

He gripped her hand. The sunny scene faded, to be replaced by a wide

expanse of black macadam: a city street. All around, tall buildings struck

upward out of shadow into high sunlight. A rumbling machine swerved

past on the left. Two smaller ones, snorting, veered by on the right in a bowl

of brakes. An immense truck bore down, air brakes hissing, ground to a halt,

towering over the brocaded chairs with its front tires resting on the fringed

edge of the rug. Behind the dusty windshield, the driver yelled and shook

his fist. The shout was drowned in a torrent of horns, voices, engines.

Chester leaped up for the sidewalk, pulling Genie with him.

"Something's wrong!" he gasped. "Where are we, Genie?"

"I don't know; there's some sort of imbalance in the co-ordinates, Chester!

Maybe it's because Mr. Mulvihill was left behind."

A stout man with an open vest over a soiled shirt discarded a toothpick and

stepped from a doorway under three tarnished brass spheres.

"Hey, sister, ain't you forgot something?" He leered as he lowered his eyes to

ankle level and came up slowly. A man behind him jostled him aside.

"Hiya, babe," he said breezily." A broad like you and me could get along,

kiddo. You're kinda skinny, but Benny likes 'em thataway."

Chester stepped forward. "You don't understand. We're involved in

experimental..." Benny glanced at him, rammed stiff fingers into his

sternum. "Get lost, punk." Chester doubled over, gasping. The crowd

ringing the tableau separated as a wide figure in a pink uniform and a

chrome-plated helmet pushed through, nightstick twirling. He looked Genie

over, reached for her arm.

"Come on, sister, I'm takin' you in."

Genie swung a full-handed slap that sent the gaudily dressed cop staggering

back. "Chester, let's run!" She seized his hand; he straightened painfully,

scrambled after her. The crowd parted again, gaping.

"Give it to 'em, kiddo," a drunk called cheerfully. The cop lunged, tripped

over the drunk's outstretched foot, hit with a crunch.

A narrow alleyway opened ahead; Chester and Genie sprinted down it,

rounded a corner, dodged garbage cans, emerged into a sheltered court

hung with faded washing.

"I don't hear anyone chasing us," Chester gasped. "I don't know where

you've landed us, Genie, but we're a long way from home. It looks like a

parody of a twentieth-century scene-except for that pink policeman."

"I don't understand it, Chester," Genie wailed. "I was sure I used the proper

angle of pi over rho squared..."

"The mob acted normal enough. Lucky they're spectator sports." Chester

plucked a long-armed shirt from the lowest line, draped about Genie's

shoulders. "I've got to get you some clothes. Duck into a doorway and look

inconspicuous. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Ten minutes later, Chester returned, arms laden. "I found a sporting-goods

store," he panted. "This is a strange place you've brought us to, Genie. I had

to open something called a charge account."

Genie wriggled into a pair of nylon panties, size 5, a 34B brassiere, a pair of

whipcord riding breeches, a white linen shirt, a green tweed hacking jacket,

and a pair of low-cut riding boots.

"You look charming, Genie," Chester commented. "Like a picture in an old

book. Now we can-"

"Oh dear, someone's coming!" Genie exclaimed. "Shall we hide?"

"You take the doorway; I'll get back of the garbage bin!" Chester dived for

shelter as a cop with a bruised eye appeared at the alley mouth.

"There she is, boys!" he called. "I told youse..."

Chester peered from hiding, saw a half a dozen cops fan out.

"Watch her, boys. She's some kind of wild dame from the circus. Now, sister,

are you going to come along peaceable?"

"Hey, Sarge, I thought you said she was nood."

"So now she's got clothes on. It's the same broad."

The cops approached warily. "She don't look tough to me," a fat cop stated.

From shelter, Chester thrust out a foot. The cop, moving in briskly for the

pinch, hooked an ankle, leaped face first into a patch of spilled garbage. The

others charged as Genie darted from the doorway. Hoarse yells rang; cops

struggled. Chester sprang to the rescue, put a foot in the garbage slick...

A shower of fire shimmered, fading into darkness.

Chester's head ached. He turned over, snuggled down to go back to sleep.

He'd have to complain to the management about the mattress; and he was

cold, too. He groped for a blanket, felt a rough wall, opened one eye and

stared at iron bars and concrete. He sat up, fingering a large knot at the back

of his head.

"Genie?" he called hopefully. There was no answer. He rose and went to the

door. With his face against the bars, Chester peered along the corridor. The

other cells in view were empty. Twenty feet distant, an unshaven man in

blue overalls over tattletale-gray longjohns dozed at a desk under a bare

sixty-watt light bulb. There was a curled calendar on the wall behind him,

featuring a girl, stripped to a G string, hip boots and a deerstalker cap,

holding a BB gun. Chester squinted, made out numerals: 1967. He groaned.

Somehow, he thought, Genie had landed them in a grotesque parody of the

simple halcyon days of a century before, when life had been leisurely and

colorful. Chester called again, softly. Somewhere water dripped. There were

faint street noises.

He went back to the gray-blanketed bunk, wincing at the throbbing in his

head, and sorted through the objects in the seal-away pockets of his sports

jacket. Apparently the local cops hadn't managed to find them:

A permatch in a silver case.

A plastic credit card, showing a balance of twenty-one credits.

A half-used packet of Chanel dope sticks.

A buttonhole Tri-D pickup, with attached contact screens.

Not much there, Chester reflected sadly, that would be of help in forcing the

steel door of the primitive cell. He twiddled the control of the Tri-D idly,

winced at the sudden boom of cacophony, turned the volume low.

"Well, Jim," a tiny voice said. "Here we are in a spaceship, on our way to

Venus."

"Yes, Bob," an even tinier voice replied. "We barely escaped capture by the

corrupt Space Patrol, which fears we will reveal what we've learned of their

illegal operations."

"Yes, Jim. However, if we can only reach the safety of Venus ahead of them,

we can enlist the help of Professor Zorch, famed for his researches into

abstruse scientific matters, and like that..."

Chester flipped the set off. Canned entertainment hadn't changed. On Tri-D,

people were always able to adapt ballpoint pens into Mark I blasters and

fight their way out of any situation-but what could one do with a high-

polymer credit card? Or a dope stick? The Tri-D was no better. As for the

permatch...

Hmmm, Chester fingered the case, opened it and took out the slender two-

inch tube of fused quartz with its cluster of components in a quarter-inch

bulb at one end. Hadn't he read somewhere that it was dangerous to tamper

with a permatch, since it was easy to throw the delicate lens alignment out

of adjustment?

Carefully, Chester pried off the tiny protective cap, exposing the factory-set

adjusting screw. Now he needed a tool.

The stiff corner of the credit card served nicely. Chester thumbed the

permatch alight, then minutely turned the screw. The flame darted out in a

thin blue streamer. He turned it farther; the flame winked out. He stared at it

unhappily. A two-inch flame wasn't going to help. A faint acrid odor made

Chester snort. Someone was burning dog hair. The odor grew stronger.

Across the room, a tiny brown dot appeared on the scaled paint of the wall,

grew larger, turning black at the periphery. A lazy coil of smoke ascended.

Chester gaped, then flicked off the match; the smoke faded.

Back at the barred door, Chester squinted along the tiny tube, pressed the

stud. The man in the chair slept on peacefully. A half-inch spot on the desk

near his elbow bubbled, smoked. Chester moved the beam cautiously across

until the long hairs over the dreamer's ear curled suddenly. The man's nose

twitched. He slapped at his temple, sat up snorting, looked around. Chester

jumped back, dived for the bunk, scrambled under it and huddled in deep

shadow against the wall. The unshaven face appeared at the door, blinking

into the gloom. There was a muttered exclamation, then a clash of keys. The

door opened. Chester took aim, focused on the callused heel of a large bare

foot. The man yelped and hopped, grabbing for the singed member. Chester

leveled his fire on the other. The man danced, staring wildly around, then

made for the door.

"A poltergeist!" he shouted. "Hey, Harney!"

Chester wriggled out from concealment, ducked through the open door, and

slid into the shelter of a gray-painted wall locker as heavy feet pounded in

the hall.

"Don't tell me," the barefoot cop was shouting. "I seen 'em before, plenty

times. They got a kind of attraction fer me. This here one is a bad one. First it

picked up m' desk, then it started throwin' things, then it give me two

hotfoots."

"Hotfeet," someone snarled. "See if he's got a bottle, Lem."

"Looky here," the barefoot one started. "I guess you boys never heard the

time I seen the saucer..."

"Don't see no bottle."

Three large backs loomed a yard from Chester's concealment. He aimed

through a narrow opening between them, focused on a blanket dangling

from a bunk in the cell across the corridor. Smoke rose promptly.

"Hey!" one of the cops barked. "They's su'thin in there!" He backed from

view. "I'll go fer help!"

Chester listened as the three men competed for position; three sets of

footsteps receded along the hall. Chester pocketed the permatch and headed

for a side entrance.

Half an hour later, a shabby brown tweed jacket filched from the station

covering his modishly cut but conspicuous plastic-appliquA(c) sports jacket,

Chester strolled past the stretch of street where he and Genie had first

arrived, now obstructed by large wooden signs lettered DETOUR. Police

squad cars were parked three deep at the curb. The area around the rug with

its two chairs was blocked off by yellow-painted sawhorses hung with red

obstruction lights. A crowd of idlers gaped.

"All right, move along," a cop bawled. "The bomb squad is goin' in now. You

folks wanta get blown up?"

Chester paused, scanning the crowd for Genie. No luck. She hadn't been in

jail-at least not in the part he had had an opportunity to check. Surely if she

were free, she would have come here. Not that it would help. No one could

get through that police cordon.

Chester tried hard to think. If only Case were here-or Genie. But unless he

could get back to the rug, he'd never see either of them again.

Case would be thoroughly roasted by now, of course, if that had been the

purpose of the fire he'd seen-but perhaps that was being overly pessimistic.

Perhaps Case was still juggling away, casting anxious glances down the

jungle path from time to time, waiting for rescue.

And Genie, being grilled under the hot lights by policemen, who, in spite of

their pink coats, were cop all the way through...

One of the cops seemed to be looking Chester's way. He sauntered on,

whistling, stepped into the first doorway he saw, found himself in a shop

plastered with SALE notices and crowded with flimsy tables stacked with

gaudily colored merchandise among which bored-looking customers milled,

picking over the bargains.

Chester tried to think. He couldn't just stand around; in time, the cops

would be sure to notice him. Perhaps if he tried a sudden dash for the rug...

He glanced through the window. The cops were large and numerous, the

sawhorses closely spaced, the squad cars ominously ready. He could never

hope to penetrate that barrier by a surprise move alone; he would have to do

something to distract attention and then slip through quietly.

"Git outa da way, ya bastid," a corpulent lady with a mustache and runover

shoes said conversationally, nudging Chester aside.

"Oh, excuse me, Madam..." Chester moved on to the next counter, found

himself nervously fingering a stack of clear plastic bags.

"That's the two-quart size," a salesman said to a man on Chester's left.

Chester picked up a bag. It was good, tough stuff.

"Seals with a hot iron," the salesman was saying.

Chester felt in his pocket. Hmm. His credit card was no good here, of course.

He'd have to-

A large placard caught his eye: DON'T ASK FOR CREDIT!

"How do I know what you use 'em for?" the clerk was saying. "You want 'em

or don't you?"

The customer mumbled. The clerk turned away. Chester slipped a two-inch

sheaf of the plastic bags from the counter and under his coat and headed for

the door. As he reached it, a hoarse voice called, "Hey, you. The guy with a

funny pants!"

Chester hurled himself between two matrons in garish prints with uneven

hemlines and set off at a run. Heads turned to stare. A whistle shrilled

behind him. He rounded a corner, saw a short flight of steps with an iron

rail. He took them four at a time, banged through a massive glass-paneled

door into a dim hallway that smelled of stale vegetable oil, fly spray and

deodorant. Carpeted stairs rose into a canyon of yellowed wallpaper.

Chester went up, whirled through the landing as the door below banged open.

"In here!" someone yelled.

"Take the back. I'll check upstairs!"

The staircase ended three flights up in a narrow hallway leading to a gray

window behind limp curtains. Feet were thudding on the stairs. There were

three doors with brown porcelain knobs along each side of the hall. Chester

jumped to the first on the left. It rattled but held. The second opened and a

blat of sound emerged. Chester sprang for the third door, threw it open,

whirled and slammed it behind him. In two jumps he was in the bathroom,

pulling open a tarnished mirror. He seized a can of shaving cream, blasted a

gob into his hand, slapped it across his face, under his chin. In a quick

motion, he pulled off the coat, the sports jacket, tossed them aside, grabbed a

bladeless safety razor from the cabinet shelf and scraped a swath through

the layer of white lather, then dashed for the door and flung it wide.

A cop thundered past, threw a glance at Chester. "Stay inside, buddy," he

bawled.

Chester withdrew, closed the door gently, and let out a long breath. "Who

says there's no point in watching the Late Late Late Show?" he murmured.

From the windows, Chester looked down on the crowded street. The rug

looked pitifully small in the center of the barricade of sawhorses, cops, cars

and curious citizens. The distance was, Chester estimated, fifty feet

vertically, and an equal distance out from the face of the building. The

sounds in the hall had gone away now. He went into the green enameled

bathroom, wiped the lather from his face, recovered his shirt from the

livingroom floor, then checked through the closet shelves, the bedroom and

finally the kitchen. He found an electric iron in a cabinet under the sink. The

ironing board was propped in a corner. Chester set it up, plugged in the

iron, then counted his plastic bags. Forty-two of them. Still, there was no use

starting on the bags unless he could work out the delivery mechanism.

A thorough search of the apartment turned up a ball of stout twine, nails, a

hammer, a heavy-duty stapler, several hundred back issues of Crude, The

Magazine for Male Men, and a small plastic wastebasket. Chester set to

work.

Pounding cautiously, he drove two stout nails into the window sill eight

inches apart, and a matching pair into the wall across the room at a level

four feet higher, then strung heavy twine across between them in two

parallel strands. Next he cut the bottom neatly from the wastebasket and

nailed the container to the wall above the previously placed nails, with the

smaller, cut-out end down. The next two nails went into the right-hand wall,

with two more matching them on the opposite side of the room, just under

the ceiling. Again he strung cord between the paired spikes.

Chester paused to listen. There was a murmur of sound from the street, the

drip of water from the bathroom, the snarl of an engine gunning

somewhere. He went to the refrigerator, took out a can of beer, drank half of

it and went back to work.

He opened a copy of Crude, stared wonderingly at a double-page spread in

full color captioned "Udderly Delightful" and fitted the magazine over one

of the cables at the window sill so that the string nestled against the spine, at

the center of the thin sheaf of pages. He crimped the other edge of the

magazine, folded the creased edge over the other line and stapled it in place

to form a shallow trough between the two supporting lines.

The next Crude was positioned above the first. Working rapidly, Chester

extended the chute across the room to terminate directly under the

bottomless wastebasket.

He stepped back to survey his work. The center of the trough had a

tendency, he noted, to droop, the edges of the magazines coming almost

together. He went to the closet, extracted half a dozen wire coat hangers and

bent them into shallow U-shaped braces, which he fitted between the lines at

three-foot intervals. The trough now formed a smooth curve from the

wastebasket to the window sill.

Fifteen minutes' work completed the other leg of the trough, extending from

the left-hand wall in a shallow curve to end above the open top of the

wastebasket.

There was a three-inch roll of masking tape on the desk; Chester used it to

attach extra sheets bearing photographs of shirtless women to the floor of

the trough, lapping the joints between magazines.

Back in the kitchen, he finished the beer, then filled a plastic bag with water,

used a length of clothesline wire to assist in folding the top edge over

evenly, then applied the warm iron, sealing the plastic. He went to the living

room, stepped up on a chair and placed the plastic bag of water in the

wastebasket. It dropped an inch or two, then wedged tight in the tapered

passage. Chester went back to the kitchen, located a pint bottle nearly full of

vegetable oil, returned and poured a generous helping around the plastic

bag. It eased down, plopped into the trough below, where Chester caught it

and set it aside.

He went back to the kitchen and carefully filled and sealed the remaining

forty-one bags. Next he used the ice pick to make a hole in each side of the

wastebasket, near the bottom, through which he threaded a length of string.

He tied a knot at one end, drew it up snug, then looped the other around a

large wooden match which nestled against the outside of the wastebasket,

holding the string in position, blocking the bottom of the container. He used

a chair to reach the top of the upper trough, into which he poured a liberal

dollop of vegetable oil, smearing it out well so that the entire surface of the

chute was lubricated. He repeated the operation for the steeper lower

section.

Chester went back to the kitchen, where the water bags lay like a clutch of

limp dinosaur eggs, selected one, and placed it in the upper end of the

higher trough. It slid gently down the long chute and dropped into the

wastebasket, easing down to rest against the obstructing string. Then he

loaded the magazine trough above with the other bags. The forty-one

rounds just filled the available space, lying bulging, end to end.

Chester crossed the room and looked out. The police below were striding

about with tape measures, standing with folded arms, posing for

photographers, and waving back the crowd that seemed about to engulf the

tiny arena of official activity. Cautiously, Chester raised the window twelve

inches. Oil dribbled from the end of the trough onto the window sill. He

went into the bathroom, ducking under the chute, washed up, smoothed his

hair, straightened his shirt, donned his jacket, then removed his heavy silver

ring and placed it on the medicine cabinet shelf beside the shaving cream.

He opened the hall door and looked out. All quiet. The box of matches lay

on a table by the door. He lighted one, touched it to the match securing the

string which blocked the wastebasket, then sprinted for the stairs, leaped

down them five at a time, rounded the landing, took the second flight,

pounded down to ground level.

Breathing hard, he paused to glance out the street door. The fringes of the

crowd were strung out near the corner. He stepped out, strode along

quickly, pushed through the spectators to a position from which the third-

story windows were visible. The one directly above the center of activity

was open. The curtain billowed slightly; the end of the trough was clearly

visible.

Nothing happened.

Chester swallowed. It hadn't taken him more than thirty seconds to make

the three flights down to the street. Had the match gone out?

Something flashed in the window, glinted in an arc out over the street,

dropped. A strangled yell sounded. The crowd simultaneously surged

forward and recoiled, as curiosity struggled with discretion. Chester pushed

his way through the press as a second almost invisible missile leaped from

the window. "It's radioactive!" someone yelled. The mob churned. A woman

screamed. Cops appeared, beating a strategic withdrawal from the field of

fire. A third bomb flew from the window, splattered against a tall policeman

who yelled and sprang for cover. A fourth bag of water soared out, down

and exploded.

"A little under a second apart," Chester muttered, weaving between fleeing

citizens. "A little too much oil in the wastebasket."

Four cops remained in the rapidly expanding clearing centered on the rug.

One drew his pistol and fired into the air. The other three, eyes on the

growing blots on the rug, dropped flat. Chester reached open ground,

skirted the first rank of squad cars, seeing the flash of another round, then

another. The next fell short, splashed off a police car, sent spray high in the

air. Two fat women darted from forward positions, screeching and slapping

at water droplets. Chester ducked aside, took an elbow in the ribs, stumbled

out into the clear.

"Hey!" a shrill voice sounded behind him. "Ain't you the guy..."

Chester threw his leg over the sawhorse.

"That's far enough, Buster," the cop bawled. He took a step forward,

bringing the gun around as a bag of water took him in the face. He went

down backward. Chester scrambled over, took two steps to the rug.

An immense padded mallet slammed against his head. The world rose up

and hit him in the face.

Curious, Chester thought dreamily. I always pictured H-bombs as being noisy.

Someone was hauling at his arm.

"This is the bastid, I seen him," someone was screeching. Chester shook his

head, pulled free from the grip and struggled to his feet. A hatless cop

wavered on all fours between Chester and the rug. The fat woman raised a

rolled umbrella. "I'm claimin' the reward," she shrieked. A bomb splattered.

The cop focused his eyes on Chester and lunged. Chester ducked away,

managing a return jab at the fat woman as he bowled her aside, and sprang

for the rug. He skidded to a halt midway between the two brocaded chairs,

ducked a bag of water and yelled, "Computer, get me out of here-fast!"

A>

THE TALL BUILDINGS, the street, the cops, faded, winked out of existence.

The sounds died, cut off abruptly. Chester stood in the center of a wide

square paved with varicolored cobblestones and lined with small shops and

merchants' stalls. Beyond, a green slope dotted with dazzling white villas

swept up to a wooded skyline. People in bright colors moved about,

examining tradesmen's wares, stopping in groups to talk, or strolling at ease.

Above a silversmith's shop, white curtains fluttered at open windows. The

aroma of crisping bacon drifted across the square. In the distance a flute

played a lazy melody.

Chester groaned. "Ye gods, where've you brought me this time, Computer?"

"Your instructions were," the computer's voice spoke from mid-air, "simply

to-"

"I know. I always seem to phrase things badly. Every time I make a move,

I'm worse off than I was. Now I've lost Case, and Genie, too. Where am I this

time?"

"According to my instruments, this should be the Chester residence."

"You'd better have your wiring checked."

A brass plate set in the paving underfoot, half concealed by the edge of the

rug, caught Chester's eye.

The inscription read: "It WAS ON THIS SPOT THAT THE LEGENDARY KEZ-

FATHER, HERO AND TEACHER, TOOK HIS LEAVE OF THE PEOPLE AFTER

BRINGING THEM THE GIFT OF WISDOM. THIS MYTH, WHICH DATES

BACK TO THE CULTURE..."

"Ye gods," Chester muttered. "I've already violated the local shrine." He

moved quickly clear of the spot.

Two men in loose togas, one old, one young, stood nearby, looking earnestly

past Chester. He cleared his throat and stepped forward. Nothing to do now

but brazen it out.

"I white god," he said. "I come, bring magic stick, go bang, all fall down!"

The two men ignored him. "Remarkable!" the older exclaimed, turning to the

younger man, in green. "Did you observe this phenomenon, Devant?"

The other, a well-muscled man with clear blue eyes and flashing white teeth,

nodded. "Two curious chairs and a rug. I glanced away for a moment and

when I turned back-there they were. I find it difficult to reconcile the

manifestation with my world-picture. A very interesting problem."

"Possibly my senility is getting the better of me." The old man glanced at

Chester. "Young man, did you observe the arrival of this furniture?" Chester

cleared his throat. "Not exactly, sir; I have been participating in an

experiment, and I seem to have lost my bearings. Could you tell me-"

"No," the old man said, shaking his head resignedly. "That would have been

too much to hope for. Why are there never any witnesses to these apparently

supernatural manifestations?"

"Is it possible," the man in green cut in, "that this could be the probability

crisis that Vasawalie has been predicting?"

"It's not supernatural," Chester said. "Merely a misguided piece of

mechanical ineptitude. You see, I-"

"Please, young man; no mechanistic platitudes, if you please."

"You don't understand. This is my furniture."

The old man held up a hand. "I fear I must insist on my prior claim. I

distinctly observed you to approach from-ah, I'm not sure of the direction,

but it was well after I had pointed out the anomaly. In fact, I'm sure you

were attracted by my cry of surprise. Correct, Devant?"

"I didn't notice just when he came up," Devant said. "But it was at least five

or possibly ten minutes after you and I, Norgo."

"Actually, I was here first," Norgo said. "You followed by several minutes,

Devant."

"Oh, never mind," Chester said. "Can you just tell me the name of this town?"

"I'll get a crew down right away," said Devant. "I want to examine this in

situ. Molecular scan, fabric distortion, chronometric phase-interference, Psi

band-everything." He waved a hand at Chester. "Please step aside; you're

obscuring my view."

"This will be a serious blow to Randomism," said Norgo happily.

"What I wanted to ask was," Chester pressed on, "what year is this? I mean,

ah, this isn't by any chance the future, is it?"

The old gentleman looked at Chester squarely for the first time. "Let us

define our terms," he said, folding his arms. "Now..."

"What I mean is, this scene here-" Chester waved a hand-"is something

my computer invented-just as a harmless sort of joke, you understand. The

problem is..."

Norgo blinked. "I shall do a paper," he said, "on pseudorationalization in

response to rejection of-"

"You don't seem to understand," cut in Chester. "I'm lost and my friends are

relying on me."

"It will be the sensation of the Congress," Norgo droned on, rubbing his

hands together. "Great Source of Facts. What if I should actually derive

germane substantive data from this? That will dispose of the Ordainists,

once and for all."

"Blast the Ordainists," Chester burst out. "I'm in serious difficulties. My best

friend is being roasted alive, a young woman of my acquaintance is under

detention by primitive police, and you-"

"Dear me, a well-developed delusional system," said Norgo. "Doubtless

arising from frustration at having been anticipated in detection of the chair

phenomenon. This will be most interesting to the Congress."

"You're the delusion!" Chester shouted. "I'm getting back on my rug; I'll

dissolve this whole fantasy back into the computer banks it came out of!"

Norgo sprang forward. "I must ask you not to disturb the artifacts; they may

be highly important scientific exhibits."

"They happen to belong to me." Chester turned, rebounded from the broad,

muscular chest of Devant. Five more well-developed locals moved into

position around him.

"You'll have to move on," the big man said. "Only technicians will be

permitted in this area while the specimens are under study."

Norgo tsked. "We simply can't have these distressing exhibitions by

frustrated partisans of misguided philosophical splinter groups. I shall

propose to the Congress-"

"I've got to get back to my rug!" Chester made a dive for a gap in the ranks,

felt iron hands clamp on his arms.

"Hey, Computer!" he yelled. There was no reply. The hands propelled him

quickly along to deposit him well outside the growing circle of spectators.

"Any more disturbances," Devant said coldly, "and I'll have you locked up."

"But... how long before you'll be finished?"

"Just run along and amuse yourself. We'll have a great deal to do. It may

take a while."

Chester gazed listlessly at the swimming pool rippling in the late-afternoon

sun. A pretty brunette in a diaper crossed the terrace and offered a frosted

glass. Chester shook his head.

"Shall we go for a swim, Chester?"

"No, thanks, Darina."

"Poor Chester. Can't you cheer up?"

"You don't seem to understand." Chester's voice held a plaintive note. "I've

been idling here for weeks now while my friends suffer fates I shudder to

contemplate. My computer's probably been dismantled. And those idiotic

scholars still won't let me near my rug."

Darina made a sympathetic sound. "The rug is a powerful security symbol to

you, isn't it, Chester? I remember a blanket-"

"There's nothing secure about it! It's probably nonfunctional now. And at

best, I'll just find myself trapped in another of the computer's preposterous

settings. But even that would be better than lounging here, completely

ineffectual."

"Chester, have you thought of finding work to do?"

"What kind of work? I just want to get away from here. I've tried five times

to creep up on my rug under cover of darkness, but that fellow Devant..."

"What were you trained in, Chester?"

"Well," said Chester, considering, "I... ah... majored in liberal arts."

"You mean you paint pictures?"

"No, nothing like that. Business administration."

"I don't think I've heard of that. Is it a game of skill or chance?"

"Both." Chester smiled patiently. "No, in biz ad we're taught how to manage

large commercial enterprises."

"I see. And after receiving your training you went on to actual management

of some such organization?"

"Well, no. Funny, but I couldn't seem to find any big businessmen who were

looking for a fresh college graduate to tell them how to run their companies."

"Perhaps we'd better try something else. What about the arts?"

"I did do a painting once," Chester said hesitantly. "It had numbers that you

compared with a chart and then you matched that up with the little cans of

paint and colored in the spaces."

"I'm not sure there'd be a large call for that type of skill here."

"Don't disparage it. President Eisenhower-"

"What about handicrafts? We value the manual skills highly here, Chester."

"Oh, I've done a lot of that. Built a plastic boll weevil only last month. Over

two hundred interlocking parts."

"You made the parts from plastic?"

"No. I bought a kit. But..."

"Perhaps in the field of sports?" Darina suggested.

Chester blushed. "Well, of course, in school I was a great fan of outdoor

activities. I never missed a game the entire four years."

"Splendid!" Darina looked interested. "We'll be happy to receive instruction

in any new types of athletic competition of which you're master."

"Well, I didn't actually play, of course. But I was there in the stands, rooting.

And I know some of the rules."

"You didn't play?"

"I was on my fraternity's bridge squad," Chester offered.

"How is that played?" asked Darina, brightening. Chester explained. There

was an awkward silence.

"Chester, have you ever performed any useful labor?" Darina asked.

"As a matter of fact, I worked one summer in a factory. I was an instrument

spot-checker. I made sure the controls that worked the automatic machinery

were functioning properly."

"This involved mechanical skills?"

"If anything had gone wrong with the TV scanner that actually did the

inspecting, I was on the spot to see that the back-up scanner took over."

"You activated the emergency equipment, in other words?"

"No, it was automatic. But I assure you, the union regarded my job as

essential."

"What about hobbies, Chester?"

"Oh, my, yes; I had a stamp collection."

"Hmmm. Perhaps something a little more active?"

"I built model airplanes as a boy. Of course, I gave that up when I was

twelve."

"Why?"

"Well, it seemed a trifle immature. All the other lads my age were already

learning golf." Chester broke off as a white-haired elder took a table a few

yards distant. "Say, there's that old fool who's behind all this." He rose and

crossed to the other table.

"Look here, Mr. Norgo, how long is this absurd business going on? I've been

here a month now-and I'm no closer to getting back on my rug than I was.

You don't seem to understand-"

"Calmly, Chester," Norgo said, signaling a waitress clad in a wet

handkerchief. "It is you who fail to understand. Important work is in

progress. Meanwhile, just keep yourself amused."

"I'm in no mood to be amused!"

Norgo nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps you'd like to participate in an

experiment?"

"What is it-vivisection?"

Norgo considered. "I don't think that will be necessary." He hitched his chair

around. "Chester, do you know what our most important natural resource

is?"

"What has that to do with my problem?"

"Do you know how often a truly superior intellect is born?"

"Not very often. Look, I-"

"Once in four million, five hundred and thirty-three thousand, two hundred

and four births. With a world population of half a billion, the present figure,

the rules of probability allow for the presence among us of only one

hundred such gifted persons. And do you know what percentage of these

superior individuals are fortunate enough to encounter conditions

conducive to the full stimulation of their latent abilities?"

"I'd guess about-"

"Not one per cent," Norgo said flatly. "With luck, one individual."

"Very interesting. But to get back to-"

"If we were content," Norgo pressed on, "to allow unrestrictive increase in

the population, we might, one could reason, improve this situation. With a

ten-fold increase in population the number of superior intellects should

increase to a thousand, you say."

"I didn't say, but-"

"Not so! Environmental factors would deteriorate due to overcrowded

conditions. The latent geniuses would find less opportunity to evolve their

talents."

"That hardly seems-"

"The true function of the mass of the population is the production, by their

sheer numbers, of the occasional genius. It is the objective of our educational

system to identify and train such talents-and this can only be done by the

realization, in each individual, of the maximum potential."

"Why? So they can grow up and talk like you?"

"Now, life is not an engineering project, Chester. It is a work of art."

"And while you're lecturing on art, my friends are-"

"I have long been interested," Norgo went on imperturbably, "in the purely

theoretical problem of the reactions of a mature but untrained mind exposed

to a full modern education, in concentrated form, after perhaps twenty-five

years of indolence, laziness, carelessness, minimal demand. The pressure, of

course, would be tremendous. Would the mind or body break under the

stress? Believe me, Chester, the results of such an experiment would be of

the most profound importance."

"Not to me. I-"

"Now you, Chester, while possessed of a normal potential, are, beyond the

simple abilities to talk and feed yourself, plus a few fringe accomplishments

such as playing the game you call bridge, totally untrained. Your body is

weak, your will untried, your mind unused-"

"Maybe I don't get out a lot."

"All of which makes you an ideal subject-if you wish to volunteer for the

experiment."

"I wish to get back to my rug."

Norgo nodded. "Exactly."

Chester's mouth opened. "You mean-why, this is blackmail!"

"Let us simply say that by the time the experiment is concluded, your-ah-

rug will have been released by our research groups."

"How long will that be?"

"I shall attempt, Chester, to impart the equivalent of a twenty-year course of

development in a single year."

"A year! But..."

"I know; you're concerned for your imaginary playmates."

"I told you..."

Norgo turned as a laden tray was placed before him. "Let me know your

decision, Chester."

"If I do it-you'll let me back on my rug?"

Norgo nodded, sniffing a dish appreciatively.

"Of all the underhanded, unethical, unwarranted piracy I've ever

encountered, this is undoubtedly the most unbelievable," Chester said

bitterly.

Norgo blinked. "You mean you're refusing?"

"When do I start?"

A>

CHESTER AND NORGO clambered down from the open cockpits of the heli

in which they had flown out from the Center. Chester looked around at the

sweep of meadow, the wooded hills, and a low white building that covered

a quarter acre near the crest of the slope. Cut in the white stone above the

entry were the words: IS NOT IS NOT NOT IS

Norgo led the way across the grass and into an airy hall where mosaics

stood out in brilliant color against white walls.

"Ah, here's Kuve now," Norgo said.

A tall young man with pale blond hair and a square jaw approached

through an open archway. He greeted Norgo, studied Chester appraisingly.

"So this is to be my subject," he said, circling Chester. "Remove your shirt,

please."

"Right now? I thought I'd have time to unpack, take a shower, stroll around,

look over the campus, and then maybe have coffee, get acquainted with the

other students, discuss the curriculum, plan a schedule..."

Kuve broke in. "There will be no opportunity for coffee or strolls. Your

schedule had been planned in advance. You will become acquainted with

the plant as necessary."

Chester slowly pulled off his shirt. "It sounds like a strange sort of school.

How often will I be able to get back to town?"

"The trousers, please," Kuve said.

"Right here in the lobby?"

Kuve looked at him, surprised. "It is comfortably warm, is it not?"

"Sure, but-"

"Tell me," Kuve said interestedly, "are you under the impression that you are

in some way unique?"

"I'm perfectly normal!"

Kuve looked Chester over carefully. "You're going to make a fascinating

project," he said approvingly. "Norgo wasn't exaggerating. Almost complete

atrophy of the musculature, obvious limited articulation, minimal lung

capacity, poor skin tone, barely sub-parthenogenic posture..."

"Well, I'm sorry if I don't come up to your expectations."

"Oh, you do indeed. You even exceed them. But don't be concerned. I've

worked out a complete developmental scheme for you."

"That's fast work. It hasn't been three hours since I volunteered."

"Oh, I started on it a month ago, when Norgo told me you'd be

volunteering."

Chester trailed Kuve along a wide corridor to a small room lined with wall

cabinets. Kuve pointed to one. "You will find garments there. Please put

them on."

Chester squeezed into a pair of trunks, laced on sandals, and stood. "Is this

all I get? I feel like the New Year."

A shapely young woman in a white kilt entered the room. She smiled at

Chester, took a case of instruments from a cabinet, and reached for his hand.

"I'm Mina. I'm going to trim your nails back and apply a growth-retarding

agent," she said cheerfully. "Hold still now."

"What's this for?"

"Excessively long hair and nails would be a painful nuisance in some of the

training," said Kuve. "Now, Chester, I want to ask you something: What is

pain?"

"It's... umm... a feeling that comes from damage to the body."

"Nearly right, Chester. Pain is based on fear of damage to the body."

Kuve went to a wall shelf, brought back a small metal article and held it up.

"This is a manual shaving device, once in daily use. This sharp-edged blade

was drawn over the skin of the face, cutting the hairs."

"I'm glad I live in modern times."

"Under optimum conditions, the process of removing a single day's growth

of facial hair with this instrument occasioned a pain level of .2 agons. Under

merely average conditions, however, the level quickly rose to .5 agons,

roughly equal to the sensation produced by a second-degree burn."

"It's amazing what people will put up with," Chester said.

"Are your feet perfectly comfortable, Chester?"

"Certainly. Why shouldn't they be?"

"You have callus tissue on both feet, as well as deformities caused by

constricting footwear."

"Well, melon-slicers may not be the most-"

"In order to have produced these conditions, you must have endured pain

on the order of .5 agons continuously, for months and years. Yet probably

you seldom noticed it."

"Why notice it? There was nothing I could do about it."

"Exactly. Pain is not an absolute; it is a state of mind, which you can learn to

disregard."

Kuve reached out, pinched the skin on Chester's thigh. "You can see that I'm

merely pressing with very moderate force. You are in no danger of injury."

"Is that a promise?" said Chester nervously.

"Now close your eyes. Concentrate on the sensation of undergoing an

amputation of the leg-without anesthetic. The knife slicing through the

flesh, the saw attacking the living bone..."

Chester squirmed in the chair. "Hey, that hurts! You're bearing down too

hard!"

Kuve released his grip. "I squeezed no harder, Chester. The association of

the idea of injury intensified the sensation. You paid no attention whatever

to Mina when she applied a measured stimulus of .4 agons to the exposed

cuticle of your finger while I held your attention. You accepted the twinges

of a manicure as normal and non-injurious."

Chester rubbed his thigh. "The leg still hurts, I'll have a bruise tomorrow."

"You may." Kuve nodded. "The control of the mind over bodily functions is

extensive."

Mina finished, flashed a smile at Chester and left the room.

"Let's move along to the gymnasium." Kuve led the way along a corridor to

a large room, high-ceilinged and fitted with gymnastic equipment. He

turned to Chester. "What is fear?"

"It's... uh... the feeling you get when you're in danger."

"It is the feeling that arises when you are unsure of your own capability to

meet a situation."

"You're wrong on that one, Kuve. If a Bengal tiger walked in here I'd be

scared, even if I knew exactly how incapable I was."

"Look around you; what would you actually do if a wild beast did in fact

enter this room?"

"Well, I'd run."

"Where?"

Chester studied the room. "It wouldn't do any good to start off down the

hall; there's no door to stop whatever was chasing me. I think I'd take that

rope there." He pointed to a knotted fifty-foot cable suspended from among

high rafters.

"An excellent decision."

"But I doubt if I could climb it."

"So you are unsure of your capabilities." Kuve smiled. "But try, Chester."

Chester went to the rope, looked at it doubtfully. Kuve muttered into a wrist

communicator. Chester grasped the rope, wrapped his legs around it,

wriggled up six feet.

"This is... the best I can... do," Chester puffed. He slid back to the floor.

There was a sound like water gurgling down a drain. Chester turned

quickly. An immense tan mountain lion paced toward him, yellow eyes

alight, a growl rumbling from its throat. With a yell Chester leaped for the

rope, swarmed halfway to the distant rafters, and clung, looking down.

Kuve patted the sleek head of the animal; it yawned, nuzzling his leg

affectionately.

"You see? You were capable of more than you imagined," Kuve called

matter-of-factly.

"Where did that thing come from?" Chester called.

"He's a harmless pet. When you mentioned a tiger, I couldn't resist the

opportunity to make an object lesson."

Chester slid down the rope slowly, eyes on the cat. Back on the floor, he

edged behind Kuve, who slapped the animal's flank. The animal padded

away.

"If I called him back, you wouldn't panic now, because you know he's

harmless. And if a really wild animal were released here, you'd know what

to do-and that you were capable of doing it. You could watch the Bengal

tiger you mentioned quite calmly and take to the rope only if necessary."

"Maybe-but don't try me. That cost me some skin."

"Did you notice that-at the time?"

"All I was thinking about was that man-eater."

"The fear and pain reactions are useful to the unthinking organism. But you

have a reasoning mind, Chester. You could dispense with the automatic-

response syndromes."

"It's better to be a live coward-"

"But you might be a dead coward, when mastery of fear could have saved

you. Look down, Chester."

Chester glanced at the floor. As he watched, the milky white surface cleared

to transparency, all but a narrow ribbon on which he stood, scarcely four

inches wide, spanning a yawning abyss below his feet set with jagged black

rocks. Kuve stood by unconcernedly, apparently suspended in midair.

"It's quite all right, Chester. Merely a floor of very low reflectivity."

Chester teetered on the narrow strip. "Get me out of here," he choked.

"Close your eyes," Kuve said quietly. Chester squeezed his eyes shut.

"Forget what you saw," Kuve ordered. "Concentrate on sensing the floor

through your feet. Accept its solidity."

Chester swallowed, then opened his eyes slowly. He looked at Kuve. "I

guess it will hold," he said shakily.

Kuve nodded. "Working here for a few weeks will help dissipate your

irrational fear of heights."

"When weather permits," said Kuve, "you'll do your workouts here on the

terrace in the open air."

Chester surveyed the hundred-foot-square area, floored with dark wood

and surrounded by a five-foot wall of flowering shrubs. A cluster of tall

poplars shaded a portion of the floor from the high morning sun. Racked

against the low wall was an array of weights, bars and apparatus.

"Perhaps I should explain that I have no aspirations to the Mr. Universe

title," Chester said. "I think perhaps a couple of Indian clubs would be more

than adequate for me."

"Chester," said Kuve, motioning his pupil to a padded bench. "I've taken the

first steps toward dispelling your certainty that pain is unendurable and that

fear is both useful and overmastering. Now let us consider the role of

boredom as a hindrance to the control of the intellect over the body. What is

boredom, Chester?"

"Well, boredom sets in when you have nothing to occupy your mind."

"Or when instinct says, 'the activity at hand is not vital to my survival.' It is a

more potent factor in influencing human behavior than either fear or pain."

He handed Chester a small dumbbell. "Do you find that heavy?"

Chester weighed the five-pound weight in his hand. "No, not really."

"Have another." Chester hefted a dumbbell in each hand. "Now," said Kuve,

"please stand and place the two weights at shoulder height. Then press them

alternately to arm's length."

Chester thrust the weights up, puffing. A minute passed. His pace grew

slower.

Kuve seated himself comfortably in a canvas chair. "You'd like to stop now,

Chester. Why?"

"Because... I'm getting exhausted..." Chester gasped.

"Exhaustion would result in your failure to press the weight up, but it fails

to explain the mere desire to stop while strength remains."

"I think I've injured myself," Chester gasped. "I've overexerted."

"No," said Kuve, "you're bored. Therefore you feel the impulse to stop-

nature's automism for conserving energy vital to the hunt, flight, combat, or

mating. From now on I'll expect you to reject its control of your motivations."

It was late afternoon. Chester let his hand fall from the hand grip of the

machine which he had been squeezing, twisting, pulling and pushing at

Kuve's direction. He groaned.

"I thought you were exaggerating when you said you were going to test a

hundred and seventy-two different muscles, but I believe you now. Every

one of them is aching."

"They'll ache even more tomorrow," Kuve said cheerfully. "But no matter.

They'll soon accustom themselves to the idea that you intend to call on them

henceforth."

"I've changed my mind, Kuve. Nature meant me to be the frail, sensitive

type."

"Put tomorrow's ordeals out of your mind. At the proper time you'll go

through the schedule I've laid out for you. When it's over forget it until it's

time to work again."

"I haven't got the will power," Chester said. "I've tried diets and daily dozens

before, to say nothing of night classes in which I was going to learn flawless

French, or accountancy. It never lasted."

"The secret of winning disputes with yourself is to refuse to listen. By the

time you've perfected your argument you'll be well into your routine. Now

let's move along to the dining room. I have a briefing on mnemonics for you,

after which I'll start you on pattern theory. Then-"

"When do I sleep?"

"All in good time."

Not bad," Chester said, finishing off a bowl of clear soup. "What's next on

the menu?"

"Nothing," said Kuve. "But as I was saying, the association of symbol with

specific must relate to your personal experience-"

"What do you mean, nothing? I'm a hungry man. I've worked like a draft

horse all day!"

"You're overweight, Chester. The soup was carefully compounded to supply

the needed nutrients to maintain your energy level."

"I'll starve."

"You've been eating from boredom, Chester.' When your attention is

occupied elsewhere, you forget food. You'll have to master habit."

"This whole day has consisted of your telling me to mortify the flesh, mind

over matter."

"The mind is the supreme instrument in nature; it must establish its

supremacy. I asked you earlier what pain was. What is pleasure?"

"Right now, it's eating!"

"An excellent example: the satisfaction of a natural impulse."

"It's more than an impulse. It's a necessity! I need more food than a bowl of

egg-flower soup without egg flowers!"

"All pleasure impulses, when oversatisfied, become destructive; controlled,

the instincts can be very useful. Anger, for example. Here nature has

provided a behavioral mechanism to deal with those situations in which

aggression seems indicated. It can override other impulses, such as fear.

When you are angry, you are stronger, less sensitive to pain, and immune to

panic. You desire only to close with your enemy and kill. Before combat

males of many species customarily set about working themselves into a

rage."

"I'm well on the way."

"You'll learn to control the anger impulse, and evoke it at will without losing

control. Now we must move on to the next training situation."

"More?" Chester protested. "I'm exhausted."

"The laziness instinct again," said Kuve. "Come along, Chester."

The sun was setting. Chester and Kuve stood at the base of an eighty-foot

tower beside a pool. A steep flight of steps led to a lonely platform at the top.

Kuve handed Chester a small locket. "Climb to the top of the tower. This will

enable me to talk to you at a distance. Tomorrow a similar device will be

surgically implanted. Now, up you go."

"Let's just go back to that glass floor and pretend some more."

"Simply climb slowly and steadily."

"What's the point in risking my neck up there?"

"Chester, intellectually you are aware that you should co-operate with me.

Ignore the distractions of instinct and follow your mind."

"I'll freeze on the ladder. You'll have to send three men up to pry my fingers

loose."

"Last week I watched you at the dancing terrace. You sat at a table and ate a

large amount of food. You watched the dancers. A girl called to you to join

in. You patted your stomach and shook your head."

"What's that got to do with flagpole sitting?"

"The dance they were performing requires great skill and strength and

endurance. Had you joined in, would you now enjoy recalling it?"

"Of course, I'd like to be able to-"

"Remembered moments of high achievement satisfy; remembered excesses

disgust. Next week will you look back with pleasure on having refused the

tower?"

"Not if I fall off and break my neck."

"You have the power to mold your memories-but only before they become

memories. This is your opportunity to endow, yourself with a recollection

worth having."

"Well, just to humor you, I'll start-but I won't guarantee I'll go all the way."

"One step at a time, Chester. Don't look down."

Chester mounted the stairs cautiously, gripping the slender handrail. "This

thing wobbles," he called back from ten feet up.

"It will hold. Just keep going."

Chester moved higher. The steps were of wood, eight inches wide and four

feet long. The handrail was aluminum, bolted to uprights every fourth step.

Chester concentrated his attention on the wood and metal. A buzz sounded

from the locket at his throat. "You're going very well. Halfway up now."

The sunset sky flared purple and orange. Chester paused, breathing hard.

"A few more steps, Chester," said the tiny voice in the communicator. He

went on. The top of the tower was before him now. Clinging to the rail, he

made his way up the last few steps. Far away a twinkle of light showed

against the dark forest on the skyline. Red light reflected from a river

winding down the valley. The low white building of the Center glowed

peach-colored in the fading light. Chester looked down at the pool below.

He dropped flat, eyes shut. "Help!" he croaked.

"Move to the steps, feet first," Kuve said calmly. "Lower your legs, then start

down!"

Chester felt the first step under his foot, edged down, one step at a time.

"Halfway down," Kuve's voice said. Chester was moving faster now. At ten

feet from the bottom, Kuve halted him.

"Look at the water. Can you jump in from there?"

"Yes, but..."

"Go back up a step. Can you jump from there?"

Chester balked three steps higher.

"Jump."

Chester held his nose and sprang into the water. He surfaced, climbed out of

the pool.

"Do it again."

After three jumps, Chester went a step higher. Half an hour later, in bright

moonlight, he made the jump from twenty feet, whistling down to splash

tremendously, then paddling, puffing, to the ladder.

"That's enough for this session," said Kuve. "In a week you'll jump from the

top-where you couldn't stand upright today. Now, back inside. While

you're getting into some dry garments, I want to talk to you about the nature

of reality."

"This is the time of day I usually retire," Chester said, panting. "Couldn't

reality wait for tomorrow?"

"You'll have no trouble with insomnia here," Kuve assured him. "By the time

you go to bed, you'll be ready to sleep."

On a narrow room with a high window, Chester looked critically at a padded

bench three feet wide.

"I'm supposed to sleep on that?"

"There is no mattress like weariness," Kuve said.

Chester kicked off his sandals and lay down with a sigh. "I guess you're

right at that, Kuve. I'm going to sleep for a week."

"Four hours," said Kuve. "In addition, you'll have a two-hour nap daily at noon."

There was a buzz from the communicator still on Chester's neck. "Not-is is

not is-not," said a soft feminine voice. "Is-not is not not-is. Is is not not-is-

not..."

"What the devil's this gibberish?"

"The basic axioms of rationality. You'll interpret this material at a

subconscious level while you sleep."

"You mean this is going on all night?"

"All night. But you'll find it doesn't interfere with sleep."

"What does it mean-is-not is not not-is?"

"This is a simple statement of the nonidentity of symbolic equivalents."

"Um. You mean 'the map is not the territory.' "

Kuve nodded. "An apparent banality. But by dawn you'll have grasped the

implications at a basic level."

"I won't sleep a wink."

"If not tonight, then tomorrow," said Kuve, matter-of-factly.

"Not-is-not is not is," the soft voice insisted gently.

"Only three hundred and sixty-four days to go," answered Chester.

A>

THE FIRST GRAY of dawn had not yet lighted the sky when Chester tottered

into the softly lit gymnasium. Kuve, fresh and immaculate in white, looked

up from a small table set up in the middle of the room.

"Good morning, Chester. You slept well?"

"Like a four-day corpse. And I feel equally lively now. I just came to tell you

that I'm permanently crippled from yesterday's overexertions. You'd better

get a doctor out here. I ought to be in bed, but..."

Kuve held up a hand. "Chester, you're expecting me to make much of you

and urge you on with inspirational talk. However, I'm afraid we can't spare

the time for a pep rally."

"Pep rally? I'm a sick man."

"Still, you're out of bed at the appointed time, dressed for work. And since

you're here, you might just take a look at this."

Chester hobbled over to the table. Under a surface of beaded glass, pinpoints

of red, green and amber light winked off and on in an unpredictable

sequence.

"I want you to analyze the pattern here. When you're ready, put your finger

on the button here at the edge which matches the color of the light which

you think will blink on next."

Chester studied the light board. A red light blinked, then a green, another

red, another, an amber, a green... He touched the red light. The board

blanked off.

"That means you chose wrongly. Try again with a new pattern." Chester

followed the lights. Green, red, amber, red, amber, green, red, green, red...

He touched the amber light. The board blanked.

"Never accept the first level of complexity as a solution to a problem,

Chester. Look beneath the surface; find the subtler patterns. Try again."

The lights blinked in steady sequence. On Chester's fifth try the entire board

lit up. Chester looked pleased.

"Good," said Kuve. "When you have three correct solutions in sequence,

we'll move on to patterns of a higher complexity."

" I had to think three lights ahead on the last one, Kuve. The patterns seem

to change while I'm watching them."

"Yes, there's a simple developmental progression involved in this set."

"I have more the poetic type mind. I'm no electronic calculator."

"You'll think you are before the year is out. This training, in its advanced

phases, by applying pressure of a type never encountered in ordinary

experience, will develop cortical areas hitherto unused."

MI don't think I'm going to enjoy that last part," said Chester dubiously.

"What does it mean?"

Kuve pointed to the far wall. "Look over there. Keep your eyes rigidly before

you." He held up a hand at the edge of Chester's field of vision.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I don't know; I can just barely tell there's a hand there."

Kuve waggled a finger. "Did you notice that movement?"

"Certainly."

Kuve moved a second finger, stilling the first, then a third finger, and a

fourth.

"You saw the movement each time," he summed up, "which indicates that all

four fingers are within your field of view." He extended two fingers. "Now

how many fingers am I holding up?"

"I still can't tell."

"You can see the fingers, Chester; you've proven that. And yet you are, quite

literally, unable to count these fingers which you see. The message sent to

your brain through the portion of the optical mechanism concerned with

peripheral vision is channeled to an undeveloped sector of your mind, a part

of the great mass of normally unused cells in the cortex. The intelligence of

this portion of your intellect is about at a par with that of a faithful dog

which recognizes a group of children but is unable to formulate any

conception of their number." He lowered his hand. "It is that portion of the

brain which we shall train. Now, try this next pattern."

Chester leaned against the rail at the top of the eighty-foot tower, feeling the

sun hot on his shoulders, watching as Kuve adjusted the ropes stretched

across the pool below.

"This gives you a four-foot target," Kuve's voice said from the rice-grain-

sized instrument set in the bone behind Chester's left ear. "Remember your

vascomuscular tension patterns. Wait for the signal."

A beep sounded in Chester's ear-and he was in the air, wind shrieking past

his ears, his chin to his chest, arms extended with hands flat, feet pointed.

He struck, twisted, shot above the surface, swam to the edge, and pulled

himself up with a single smooth motion.

"You've come along well these first two weeks," Kuve said, motioning

Chester to the table where a small steak waited. "You've explored the

parameters of your native abilities; you've established an awareness of the

values we're dealing with, and overcome the worst of the metabolic inertia.

Your musculature is in good tone, though you still have a long way to go in

developing bulk and power. Now you're ready to attack the subtler

disciplines of balance, timing, precision, endurance and pace."

"You make it sound as though I haven't done anything. What about the high

dives? That four-foot target isn't very big from eighty feet up."

"That exercise was designed to develop your self-confidence. Now you'll

begin the real substance of your studies. We'll begin with simple games like

fencing, riding, rope work, juggling, dancing and sleight-of-hand, and

proceed by degrees into the more abstract phases."

"What are you training me for, a side show?"

Kuve ignored the interruption. "Your academic studies will be concentrated

on dual attention, self-hypnosis, selective concentration, categorical analysis,

advanced mnemonics, and eidetics, from which we will proceed to

autonomics, cellular psychology, regeneration, and-"

"Let's go back to fencing. At least I know what that is."

"After you've dined we'll begin. In the meantime, tell me what the word

'now' means."

'Now' changes," said Chester, chewing. "It moves along with time. Every

moment is 'now' for a while, and then it isn't."

"For a while? How long?"

"Not very long; an instant."

"Is 'now' a part of the past?"

"Of course not."

"The future?"

"No, the future hasn't happened yet. The past is already finished. 'Now' falls

between them."

"How would you define a point, Chester?"

"The intersection of two lines," Chester said promptly.

"The position of intersection, to be more precise," said Kuve. " 'Line' and

'point' are terms referring to positions, not things. If a sheet of paper is cut in

two, every molecule of the original sheet is contained in the two halves. If

the cut edges are placed together, every particle is still to be found in the two

parts; none fall between them. The line we see dividing the halves is only a

position, not a material object."

"Yes, that's obvious."

"Past time may be considered as one of the parts of the paper, future time as

the other. Between them is... nothing."

"Still, I'm sitting here eating my lunch. Now."

"Your ability to conceptualize falls short of the ability of the universe to

proliferate complexities. Human understanding can never be more than an

approximation. Avoid dealing in absolutes. And never edit reality for the

sake of simplicity. The results are fatal to logical thinking."

Mina appeared on the terrace, wearing a close-fitting pink coverall and

carrying foils and face masks. Chester finished his steak, pulled on a black

coverall of tough resilient material, took the foil that Mina handed him.

Mina took her position, gripped her slender epee, arm and wrist straight,

feet at right angles, left hand on hip. She tapped Chester's blade, then with a

sudden flick sent it flying into the pool.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Chester. You weren't ready."

Chester retrieved the foil, assumed a stance in imitation of Mina's. They

crossed blades-and Chester oofed as Mina's point prodded his chest. Mina

laughed merrily. Chester blushed.

On the third try Mina locked Chester's blade with hers, then, with a twist,

plucked it from his hand. "Chester"-she laughed-"you couldn't be trying."

She laid her weapon aside and strolled off. Chester turned to Kuve, face red.

Kuve stepped forward, motioned Chester into position.

"We'll have half an hour each morning and another after lunch," he said.

"And," he added softly, "perhaps you'll have a surprise in store for Mina one

of these days."

Chester circled Kuve warily, bare feet shuffling on the padded mat. Kuve

stepped in, his right hand flashing past Chester's ribs and up to grasp

Chester's right wrist, forced back by Kuve's left hand. Chester twisted,

caught Kuve's left hand, forced the wrist down. Kuve leaned to relieve the

pressure, shifting his hold to Chester's neck, then threw his hip against

Chester's side and heaved. In midair Chester brought a leg up, clipped

Kuve's jaw with his knee, twisted to land on all fours as Kuve's grip slipped

free. Kuve shook his head, looking surprised. "Was that an accident, or..."

Chester hit him low, dodged left to avoid a head-lock, clamped an arm over

Kuve's head and reached for an ankle-

And was upended and slammed on the mat. He sat up, rubbing his neck.

Kuve nodded approvingly. "You're coming along, Chester. If you hadn't

been careless with your footwork just now, you might have pinned me."

"Maybe next time," Chester said grimly.

"I seem to note a certain suppressed hostility in your tone," Kuve said, eying

Chester with amusement.

"Suppressed, hell. You've worked me like a rented heli for nine months."

"Cheer up, Chester. I have a new compound-reaction test situation for you.

It's a very interesting problem group-but I warn you, it can be painful."

"In that respect it fits in nicely with the overall program."

Chester followed Kuve across the terrace, through an arch, along a corridor,

and out into an open court. Kuve pointed to a gate in the wall beyond which

a patch of woods pressed close.

"Just go through the gate, Chester, and have a stroll in the forest. You'll find

paths; whether you use them is left entirely to your own discretion. This is a

tongue of the forest that runs up into the hills. I don't think you'll be in

danger of straying too far, for reasons which will become apparent once

you're in the forest-but nevertheless I'll caution you to stay close. As soon

as you've made what you consider to be a significant observation, return."

Chester glanced toward the shadowed depths of the wood. "My first trip

outside the prison grounds. Are you sure I won't run away?"

"Impossible via this route, I'm afraid. If you get into trouble, remember I'll be

monitoring your communicator. Be back by dark."

"When in doubt, I'll remember the old school motto: Is-not is not not-is."

Chester turned down the path. "Don't wait up for me. I may decide I like it

out here."

Chester moved along the path at a steady pace, his eyes roving over his

surroundings in a wide-scope comparison pattern.

A movement caught his eye; Chester threw himself backward, feet high. A

rope whipped across his calves; then the noose was dangling high in the air.

Chester came to his feet carefully, searching for a backup trap, saw none. He

studied the tree to which the rope was attached, then moved off the trail to a

nearby oak, scaled it quickly, moved out on a long branch, then dropped

into the trapped tree. He untied the rope, a tough quarter-inch synthetic,

coiled it around his waist, then slid back to the ground.

He moved into the underbrush, froze at a sharp pain in the back of his hand.

Carefully he disengaged himself from a loop of fine-gauge barbed wire.

Selecting a strand between barbs, he bent it backward and forward rapidly

until it parted. He repeated the process with other strands, then went to

hands and knees and eased under the barrier.

Half an hour later Chester stood on the brink of a sheer bluff. Fifty feet

below, a stream glinted in a shaft of sunlight that fell between great trees.

Upstream, a still pool showed black among smooth boulders. Chester noted

that its placement was identical with the four-foot target area into which he

had been diving daily-an open invitation.

He lay flat and examined the cliff face. The broken rock surface offered an

abundance of hand- and foot-holds. Perhaps too many...

It was forty feet to the spreading branches of a large elm growing on the

opposite side of the stream. Chester uncoiled the rope from his waist, found

a five-pound stone fragment with a pinched center, and tied it securely to

the end of the supple line. He stood, whirled the stone around his head four

times and let it fly. It arched across the branch, dropped and hung swinging.

Gently, Chester pulled as the stone swung away, relaxed as it returned,

pulled again. The oscillation built up. As the weight started its inward

swing, Chester pulled sharply. The stone swung up and over, once, twice,

three times around the branch. He tugged; all secure. Quickly he knotted his

end of the rope about a length of fallen branch, then man-handled a two-

hundred-pound boulder over it. He tested the attachment briefly, then

crossed, hand over hand. He left the rope in place, descended to the edge of

the quiet pool. Lifting a hundred-pound rock, he tossed it into the center of

the black water. Instantly a large net, apparently spring-loaded, snapped

into view, dripping water, to close over the stone. Chester smiled, raised his

eyes to study the base of the cliff. Snarls of fine barbed wire guarded the

lower six feet of the vertical rock face. It would have been an easy climb

down, he reflected, but a long way back up.

The communicator behind his ear beeped. "Well, Chester, I see you've

sprung the net at the pool. Don't feel too badly; you did very well. I'll be

along to release you in a few minutes."

Chester smiled again and turned back into the forest.

Chester studied the sun, briefly reviewed the route he had followed in four

hours of detecting and avoiding Kuve's traps. Sunset was just over an hour

away, he judged, and he was three miles northwest by north from the

Center. He halted, sniffing the air. The odor of wood-smoke was sharp

among the milder scents of pine and juniper and sun-warmed rock. He had

been climbing steadily for fifty minutes and was ready now to angle to the

left to clear the upper end of a ravine. With each step the odor of smoke

grew more noticeable. Now a soft gray wisp coiled from the shaded trunks

ahead and above. Chester crouched low, moved on quickly. If there was a

forest fire ahead, it would be necessary to get past it at once-before he was

cut off from his route to the valley. He moved silently through sparse

underbrush, saw through a gap in the trees a pale flicker of orange on the

heights a hundred yards above. It would be close; he broke into a run.

The trees thinned. The tumbled rocks that marked the head of the gorge

showed pale against the dark background of pines. A billow of smoke rolled

toward him, carried by a down draft flowing into the canyon. Chester lay

flat, drew a dozen deep breaths, then jumped up and scrambled over the

broken rock. Ahead, fire twinkled among massive boles, flickered in

whipping underbrush, leaped high in the crown of a pine. Hot sparks fell

around him. He could hear the roar of wind-driven flames now. A sudden

gust blew a wall of smoke toward him. It might be possible, he calculated, to

round the knoll at the head of the rampart that edged his route on the right,

then descend safely to emerge into the valley a mile north of the Center.

There was no hope now of making it before dark. Chester worked his way

higher. Another hundred yards-

Twenty feet upslope a heavily built man stepped into view. He was brown-

bearded, dressed in patched pants and a loose jacket of faded plaid with

three of the four buttons missing. His right hand was at his chin, two fingers

hooked around a taut bowstring. The arrow notched in the string carried a

four-inch head of polished steel, and it was aimed at Chester's navel.

"I know yew Downlanders move like the snake Demon when the Kez-favver

tricked him into the fire pit, but Blew-tewf leaps faster van fought," the

bearded man drawled in a barely intelligible dialect. "What yew want here

in Free Places? Was life too tame down below?"

Chester frowned, running the sounds of the stranger's barbaric speech

through his mind, noting sound substitutions and intonations; the pattern of

the dialect was simple.

"If yew don't mind, I'd rawer Blew-tewf pointed over vere somewhere,"

Chester replied, motioning toward the deep woods, his eyes on the

arrowhead. "Yew might just have greasy fingers or somefing of the sort."

"No need to mock the cant," the man said in clear English. "I was ten when I

left the Downlands. Now, what do you want here?"

"I was rather hoping to discover a route back to the valley, but I'd settle for

merely remaining un-skewered and unbroiled. Do you mind if I press on?

The fire is blowing this way, you know."

"Don't worry about the fire. I set it myself to run game. It'll burn out against

the escarpment above. Now move off to your right and up past me. Blue-

Tooth will be watching every move."

"I'm headed in the other direction," Chester said.

"You better do what I told you. Like you said, the fire's gettin' hot." The

arrow was still aimed unwaveringly at Chester's stomach. The bow creaked

as the bearded man set the arrowhead on the handgrip. "Make up your

mind."

"But what in the world do you want with me?"

"Let's say I want news of the Downlands."

"Who are you? What are you doing up here in the hills? If you want news,

you could come down to the Center."

"My name's Bandon, and I wouldn't be happy in your blasted Center. Don't

turn around, just keep movin' along-and if yew're finkin' of the little trinket

tucked away back of your ear, forget it. Yew're out of range."

"You're planning on holding me here for ransom?"

"What treasures could Downlanders offer to equal the life of the Free

Places?" Bandon laughed. "You'll let me go in the morning?"

"Not in the morning or for many a morning vere-after. Forget the tame

valleys, Downlander. Yew'll be here until yew die."

A>

TWILIGHT WAS FADING from the peaks as Chester and Bandon clambered

over the stones of a fallen wall to the level surface of a road that curved

between tall poplars toward low buildings silhouetted against the peach-

colored sky.

"This is our town, Downlander," Bandon said, breathing hard after the

climb. "There's food here, and a fire against the night chill, and strong ale,

and the fellowship of free men: all your needs between dusk and dawn."

"Very poetic," Chester said, noting the potholes and weed clumps in the

road. "But you left out a few things I've grown accustomed to, like literature,

celery, dentists and clean socks. And it looks like some of your houses lack

roofs."

"What's a few leaks to a free man?" Bandon snapped.

"Every man to his own little eccentricity," Chester said. "But why do I have

to join your club? I'll go quietly."

"Yew came here uninvited," Bandon said flatly. He lowered and unstrung

his bow. "Don't be fool enough to try to leave. There's sentries posted to

guard our approaches."

"I know; I saw them."

"In this light? Our best woodsmen?"

"Just joking," said Chester.

"Maybe you did, at that. You Downlanders are keen-eyed as the Kez-father

himself. Tell me, where did you learn the cant?"

"Your dialect? Oh, I... ah... studied it. A hobby of mine."

"Then it's not true what some say, that you Downlanders can learn our

speech in the wink of an eye?"

"A baseless rumor."

"I thought so. Come along now an' we'll see what the brothers make of you."

They made their way in the deepening gloom toward the nearest of the

buildings. Chester made out the details of chipped carving around

doorways, fallen trellises, collapsed porticos. A broken statue lay in the road.

"This must have been a pretty nice town, once," Chester said. "What

happened to it?"

Bandon snorted. "We threw off all those slave notions about drudging away

to put on a show for the neighbors. We're free here. No one to tell us what to

do. Folks that didn't like the idea moved out. Good riddance. We don't need

'em."

"Swell," Chester agreed. "But what happens when it gets cold?"

"Plenty wood around here. We build fires."

Chester eyed the blackened foundation of a burned-out house. "I see..."

"That was an accident," Bandon growled. "Plenty more houses where that

came from." He stopped. "Hold it right here." He threw back his head and

whistled shrilly. From doorways and dark hedges and the shadows of

ragged trees, men appeared.

Chester estimated the crowd of unshaven, hide-clad hill-dwellers who

surrounded him at fifty individuals, all male-none of them, he reflected, of

the kind who would arouse a desire for further acquaintance.

"Vis Downlan'er's a guest," Bandon was saying to the assembled brethren.

"We'll treat him as one of us-unless he tries tew go somewhere. Now, I'm

takin' him in the palace wiv me-jus' until he can get a place of his own fix'

up. I warn yew now: if he comes tew harm, I'll hoi' the lot of yew personally

responsible."

A tall, incredibly broad man in striped coveralls black with dirt swaggered

forward. "We heard a lot about how tough vese Downlanders are," he

growled. "Vis one don't look so tough."

"Maybe he's smart-vat's better yet," Bandon snapped. "Leave him alone,

Grizz. Vat's an order."

Grizz looked around at his fellows. "Funny none of us is good enough tew

get tew sleep in the palace. But vis spy here walks in an' right away he's

treated like the Kez-favver hisself when he went tew fetch the king hat back

from the sea bottom."

"Never mind vat. Now yew boys get a fire goin' in the Hall and roast up

some venison and break open a few kegs of ale. We're goin' tew have a real

celebration here tew show the new man what kind of jolly free life we lead."

A few shouts rang out, a faint yippee sounded from the rear. Grizz stared at

Bandon. "We got no venison. Plenty canned beans and stale crackers. Only

ale we got is a couple cases of near-beer Lonny stole last week."

"Dew the best yew can," Bandon snapped. "Look lively about it. I want tew

see yew lookin' cheerful around here." He turned to Chester and motioned

toward an imposing facade featuring chipped columns and broken glass.

"Come along tew the palace; yew'll have a chance tew get cleaned up before

the feast."

"Jus' a minute," Grizz said. He stepped up to Chester, brought an iron bar

into view.

"I warned you, Grizz," Bandon started.

"I won' hurt him-yet." Grizz growled. He gripped the bar at either end,

hunched his shoulders and strained. The metal gave, bent to a crude U. He

let out his breath, shoved the bar at Chester.

"Straighten it, Swamp-walker."

"Not in the mood," Chester said mildly.

Grizz barked a laugh, dropped the bar with a clatter, stepped to the roadside

and came back with a massive chunk of carved stone. "Here, catch." He

heaved the boulder toward Chester, who moved his foot barely in time as

the rock crashed down.

Bandon strung his bow with a quick motion. "Vat's enough, Grizz," he

snapped. "Come along, Downlan'er."

"I'll be seein' yew, Swamp-walker," Grizz called after them.

Chester followed Bandon across a littered stone terrace, past gaunt paint-

peeling doors into an echoing interior that smelled of stale hides and

forgotten food scraps. A broken-down sofa leaned in one corner beside a

table with a bandaged leg. A heap of bedding sprawled by a wide fireplace

stacked with splintered chair rungs. A staircase with a broken banister

curved up past a glassless window to a gallery.

"The place looks a little run-down," Chester commented. "Who used to live

here?"

"Dunno." Bandon took a lighter from his pocket, snapped it until it caught. "

'Bout out of fluid," he said. "Used to be some boss types lived here, but when

we wouldn't take orders, they just moved out-had to get down in the

flatlands to get fitted for chains, I guess."

"What kind of orders?"

"Oh, you know. Always wantin' to set up a committee to patch roofs or clean

gutters or string wire. Dirty work."

"I think perhaps they had some reason on their side," Chester said, looking

around at peeling wallpaper and decayed curtains.

"Heck, they should've done all that themselves. But no, they ran off and left

it. We locked up a few of 'em and tried to make 'em work, but they got loose

somehow."

"The boss caste is sneaky, all right," Chester said. "Always fooling us fun-

loving folks by knowing something we don't."

"Durn right," Bandon agreed.

"Why don't you gather firewood in the forest instead of burning the

furniture?" Chester asked. "There's no place to sit."

" Sure there is. Just look under that pile of hides there. We tried burning

sticks, but they don't burn so good. This stuffs nice and dry. Now, soon's we

have a cheery blaze goin', we'll have a talk about conditions down below.

Still the same old slave life, I suppose: everybody minding everybody's else's

business."

"Uh-huh," Chester said, glancing over the assorted debris scattered on the

floor. "They're still burdened down with swimming pools and laundries and

picnics and concerts and all manner of frivolity. By the way, where do the

canned beans and crackers come from?"

"Plenty of stores here," Bandon said, dipping water from a barrel and pulling

off his shirt. "Lots of stuff in 'em. The boys could turn up some good eats if

they half tried." He splashed water on his face and chest, snorted, dabbed at

himself with the shirt, then pulled it back on.

"O.K., it's all yours," he said. Chester eyed the brown water dubiously.

"What happens when the stores are looted clean?"

"We've got plans," Bandon said darkly. "We won't starve." He shoved

rubbish from a slack-twisted chair and seated himself. "I happen to have a

couple of bottles of Tricennium brew tucked away," he said. "Soon's you're

washed up, we'll have 'em. Wouldn't do to let on to the boys; not enough to

go around."

"That's the spirit," Chester said. "I think I'll defer bathing until later."

"Huh! I thought you Downlanders were great ones for washin' off. Heck, I

wash off myself all the time, like you just saw me do."

"You have a great instinct for personal daintiness," Chester said tactfully.

"An admirable quality. Tell me, why all the emphasis on rugged

individuality? Did someone take away your pet goat when you were a lad?"

"Worse'n that," Bandon said. "They used to try to make my pa do their dirty

work for 'em. He didn't take kindly to it. He organized the Resistance. Now

look." Bandon waved a hand in a proud gesture. "It's all mine-mine and the

boys'."

"I can see you're not one to keep off a lawn just because somebody else

planted it and keeps it mowed," Chester said admiringly. "Strictly self-

sufficient. You just live in these old houses that happened to grow here and

you eat wholesome, natural canned beans, the way the Lord intended, and

you loot your clothes right out of Mother Nature's own abandoned dry-

goods stores. To heck with maintenance. When this town wears out, there's

always plenty of others."

"You can lay off the smart talk," Bandon said. "We've got as much right as

anybody to live soft."

"Sure-just because some smart-aleck invented something and some

exploiter built a factory to make it and some wisenheimer did the

engineering, that's no reason you shouldn't wake up from your nap long

enough to get your share. And now let's have that ale you were talking

about. If I'm going to spend the rest of my life here, I'll have to start getting

used to drinking it warm."

"Yew'll like it fine, after you get used to it," Bandon said. He went to a

doorless refrigerator, lifted the lid and rummaged, came up with two brown

bottles. Chester wandered around the room, noting the remains of a

grandfather's clock, a gutted washing machine filled with firewood, a coil of

clothesline, some picture wire, a scatter of rusted nails, bent coat hangers,

burst cardboard boxes, wadded clothing.

"What have you got against the conveniences of life, Bandon?" he asked,

accepting a bottle. "What would be wrong with, say, cleaning this room up

so it smelled as good as the woods outside of town? Is there anything

particularly independent about keeping your discarded junk in the living

room?"

"We don't care anything about setting up fancy places to live in. We prefer a

kind of nice informal look."

"You're echoing a long line of philosophers who concluded that the secret of

the universe consisted of sitting around in your own dirt-all the way from

early Christians to twentieth-century beatniks. I can be just as self-righteous

as the next fellow, while I'm sitting in an air-conditioned restaurant ordering

haute cuisine with one hand and lighting up an expensive dope stick with the

other, with a well-stacked young lady occupying the rest of my attention.

The point is, why not be virtuous in comfort?"

"Look here, don't go trying to spread discontent around among my men."

"Your men? I thought you were all free as bedbugs in the railroad men's Y"

"We are. But any outfit needs a little organization. Don't you get the boys

upset-otherwise I might just give Grizz the go-ahead."

"I have a disturbing conviction that Grizz may not wait for the go-ahead. He

seems to resent me."

"Don't worry; I'll keep an eye on him." Bandon finished off his bottle. "Let's

join the boys. I guess things ought to be rollin' pretty good by now. Just stay

close-and yell if you need help."

Chester followed Bandon down the wide, rubble-littered front steps into the

street and across into a large, garishly lighted ex-restaurant, to survey a

scene of half-hearted festivity. A blaze in the fireplace dispelled the evening

chill. Around it, the brothers stood, hands in pockets, muttering. At sight of

Bandon and Chester, the massive figure of Grizz detached itself from the bar.

"Well, the new man's been makin' hisself comfortable," he said loudly. "Say, I

hear yew Downlanders are fast. I wonder if..."

Grizz made a sudden movement. Chester put up a hand and the bone

handle of a hunting knife slapped his palm, fell to the ground.

"Here, Grizz, yew had no call tew frow a knife at our guest!"

"Never mind, Bandon," Chester said easily. "He was just kidding."

"Lucky yew happen' tew stick out yewr nan' jus' when yew did," Bandon

said. "It was comin' butt first, but it would have hurt. Grizz, leave him

alone." Bandon slapped Chester on the back. "I've got tew circulate around a

little, talk tew a few of the boys. Yew get acquainted tew." He moved off.

There was a step behind Chester. He eased aside and half turned. Grizz

thrust heavily through the spot he had just vacated. The nearby men moved

back, fanning out. Chester stood looking up at Grizz. The mountaineer was

at least seven feet tall.

"We don't take much tew spies," Grizz growled.

"lean see why," said Chester. "If the other half knew what you boys had all

to yourselves up here, they'd leave home tomorrow."

"Vere's a way tew handle swamp-walkers," Grizz stated, rubbing his right

fist in his left palm.

"Vat's right, Grizz," a voice called.

"Show him, Grizz," another suggested.

"Now, Bandon says treat vis swamp-walker like one of the boys." Grizz

looked around. Heads nodded reluctant agreement.

"But what if maybe vis guy jumps me? I fight back, right?"

"Shewre yew dew!"

"Yew ain' a man tew back down, Grizz!"

"I seen him dew it!"

There was a sound behind Chester. He stepped casually to one side; a man

stumbled past the spot on which Chester had been standing, blundered into

Grizz. With a snarl, Grizz pushed aside the man who had jostled him,

stepped to Chester, and threw a tremendous punch-as Chester looked the

other way, leaned toward the fire. The blow brushed his neck. Chester

seemed not to notice. He rubbed his hands together. "Nice blaze," he

commented brightly. He took a step away from Grizz, still not looking at

him, moved a chair aside with a deft motion.

Grizz stumbled over the chair leg, fell full length. Chester looked startled,

bent to help Grizz up. "Excuse me, Grizz old boy." He made ineffectual

brushing motions at Grizz, who came to his feet, hamlike fists doubled, as

Chester stooped, came up with Grizz's knife.

Grizz froze, eyes on the blade.

"Guess you'll be needing this," Chester said, holding it out.

Grizz hesitated, then snarled and turned away.

"Nobody could be that clumsy-and that lucky," a voice said softly. Chester

turned. Bandon stood eying him uncertainly. "But on the other nan', nobody

could be that fast and that smooth-if they were doin' it on purpose."

"A grand bunch of fellows," said Chester. "I'm feeling right at home."

"You're a strange one," Bandon said. "I've got a feeling maybe it's Grizz who

better be careful."

"I hope he never gets a good grip on me," Chester said. "I'm afraid I'd bend

into a U before Grizz realized the danger he was in. I think I'll take a stroll

outside."

Bandon grunted and turned away. Chester went out into the street, his

shadow pushing before him. A man stepped from shelter of an ornamental

fountain, bow in hand. Chester angled off to the right; a second man

appeared, weapon ready.

"Just checking, fellows," Chester said. He sauntered back, strolled fifty yards

toward the dark woods before sentries appeared silently. He stopped,

admired the view while the guards waited, then retraced his steps to the

Hall.

"Time to eat," Bandon called. "Grizz was just talkin' mean," he confided

when Chester came up. "We've got plenty of good stuff here. Try these

sardines."

Chester eyed the soggy fish. "I'm afraid they're not a favorite of mine. I'll

wait for the game course."

"Salami on crackers?" Bandon suggested. "We cut off the bad part."

"Any fruit-or berries?" Chester suggested. "Or nuts?"

"That's stuff for squirrels and rabbits," Bandon said shortly. "Hey, after the

feast, we're all goin' to have a little shindig. You'll enjoy it."

"Ah, the true joys of the free life at last. What do you do, sing rousing songs,

dance horn pipes, exchange buffets, all that sort of thing?"

"Heck, no. We view television. There's some dandy historicals about the old

times, when men were men."

"I see. It's a sort of indoctrination program."

"Look here, you might as well quit smartin' off. I tell you, this is the life.

After a few years, you'll start to see what I mean."

"It's not the years, it's the next few hours that bother me. I dislike Tri-D

intensely. Suppose I go back and tidy up your quarters for you while you

enjoy the free life."

"Suit yourself. You can't get away. I'll see that Grizz stays at the show so you

can relax."

"Thanks. I'll try to arrange things at your place to give a more fitting

reception to any unexpected callers who might drop in."

A>

IT WAS THREE hours since the last sounds of revelry had died. In the palace,

Chester sat awake, watching the red glow of the fireplace, and listening. In

the corner Bandon snored softly on his pallet. Far away, a night bird called.

Something creaked faintly near the door.

Chester crossed the room to Bandon, called his name softly. He grumbled,

opened his eyes. "Hah?"

Chester put his face close to Bandon's. "Quiet," he breathed. "Grizz is at the

door."

Bandon started up. Chester held him by a hand on his arm. "Let him in. It's

better to take him here... alone."

"He wouldn't dare push his way into the palace," Bandon whispered.

"Stay where you are." Chester moved silently to the door, stood beside it in

the dark. There was a rasping sound, very faint. Then the door moved an

inch, paused for a full minute, moved again. From his place behind the

heavy door post, Chester saw Grizz's small eyes and bushy beard. Then the

door moved wider; Grizz stepped inside, closed the door soundlessly. As he

turned back toward the bed where Bandon lay, Chester rammed the stiff

fingers of his left hand into Grizz's stomach, then, as Grizz jackknifed

forward, struck him backhanded under the ear with the side of his fist. Grizz

fell with a heavy slam.

Bandon was on his feet now. "Don't give the alarm, Bandon," Chester

whispered. "There's nobody to hear it but his henchmen."

Bandon said hoarsely, "What did he want here? How do you know-"

"Shhh. Grizz was after both of us, Bandon. If he knifed me, he'd have to

finish you, too-or face Blue-Tooth later."

"You're ravin'. My people are loyal-includin' Grizz."

"Grizz was listening this evening when we were talking. He was afraid

you'd be influenced. That gave him all the excuse he needed. So... here he

is."

"You come here to make trouble," Bandon grated. "Like Grizz said."

Chester pointed to a heap of uncured hides behind the crude table. "Conceal

yourself over there and listen."

Bandon reached up suddenly, took his bow from its peg on the wall, nocked

the steel-tipped arrow. "I'll hide," he said. "An' this will be pointed straight at

you-so don't try any tricks."

"Be careful with that. I'd hate to be skewered by accident."

Grizz was beginning to stir. Bandon stepped from sight in the shadows.

Grizz sat up, shook his head, got clumsily to his feet. He stood swaying,

looked around the silent cabin and saw Chester, almost at his feet, curled up

in the bed of rags, snoring lightly.

Grizz half crouched, pig eyes darting around the room. He took a knife from

his belt, dug a moccasined toe into Chester's side. Chester rolled on his back,

opened his eyes and sat up.

"Where's Bandon?" Grizz growled, the long blade tilted toward Chester's

throat.

"Oh, hi there," said Chester. "Say, I hope you're O.K. now after your fall."

"I said where's Bandon?"

Chester looked around. "Isn't he here?"

"He slugged me and got away. Now, talk, Swamp-walker. What are yew tew

love birds plannin'?"

Chester chuckled. "He's the chief here; I'm just a captive Downlander,

remember?"

"Yew're a liar on bofe counts. Yew fink I'm dumb enough not tew see frew

vis setup? The tew of yew are in somefing tewgevver. Where's he gone?"

"If I help you, will you let me go?"

"Shewre."

"You promise? I'll have safe-conduct back to the valley if I tell you where

Bandon is so you can kill him?"

"Yeah, I promise. Safe-conduct. Yew bet."

"How do I know you'll keep your promise?"

"Are yew sayin' I'm a liar?" Grizz leaned closer with the knife.

"Careful. I haven't told you yet."

"Yew got my word on it: yew go free. Where is he?"

"Well..." Chester came to his knees. "He's on his way back to my

Tricennium. He discovered you were taking over here, so he-"

"Fanks, sucker!" Grizz lunged with the knife. Chester threw himself back,

yanking at a tripwire; a bucket of sand dropped from a rafter and took Grizz

in mid-leap. He slammed the floor face first. Chester came to his feet holding

the knife Grizz had dropped. Grizz moved groggily, shaking his head.

"Looks like you're a promise-breaker after all, Grizz," Chester said, moving

in with the long blade ready.

Grizz scrabbled backward, one hand up to ward off a thrust. "Don't dew it,

don't dew it!" he squalled.

"Keep your voice down. If anyone barges in, you'll be the first to go."

Chester stood over Grizz. "Now, what about that promise you made? You

were going to give me safe-conduct."

"Shewre. I'll see yew get away clean. Just leave it to me."

"I could kill you, Grizz. But that wouldn't get me out of here." Chester

looked worried. "Suppose I let you go. Will you give me an escort down to

the valley?"

"Shewre I will, yew bet I will, fella. I just got excited when yew said Bandon

was on his way down."

"Well, I guess I'll give you another chance." Chester put the knife in his belt.

"But remember, you've given me your word."

"Vat's right, my word on it, fella."

"I've got to get a couple of things..." Chester turned away. In a lithe

movement Grizz rolled to hands and knees, snatched up a rusted hatchet

lying conveniently by, sprang at Chester's back.

And slammed face first into the hard-packed earth floor as his toe hooked

the wire Chester had stretched across the room at ankle height.

Chester turned, looked down sadly at Grizz. "You did it again, Grizz. Dear,

oh dear. I'm afraid I have no choice but to cut your throat, since you're not to

be trusted."

"Look," whined Grizz, scraping dirt from his face. "I figured you wrong, see?

I made a mistake."

"You certainly did," Chester said coldly. He moved closer, reached out and

set the point of the blade under Grizz's chin. "One sudden move, and in it

goes. How would it feel, Grizz? They say a really keen edge feels cold as it

slices through. There wouldn't be too much pain, but breathing would get

rather difficult, and, as the blood drained out of you, you'd get weak. In a

few seconds you'd be unable even to stand. You'd just lie there and feel the

life dwindle in you."

"Don't hurt me," Grizz gasped. "I'll dew anything."

"Who sent you here?" Chester snapped.

"Joj did. He's the one. He planned it all."

"Tell me about it."

"Vere's over a fousand of us. We've got steel crossbows, even chemical

bombs." Grizz outlined plans for a raid on the nearest Tricennium. "It's

planned for free days from now," he finished. " Vey haven't got a chance

against us. But yew... yew let me up now, no hard feelings, and I'll see yew

get yewr share. What ever yew want-slaves, women..."

"No point in my going back now," said Chester thoughtfully. "I don't want to

be there when the massacre takes place." He straightened, the knife still

ready. "My best bet is to go along with you. I'm pretty good with a knife,

Grizz. If I join you, do my share of the killing, will you pay off as you

suggested?"

"Absolewtly. Yew can trust me now. I've learned my lesson." Grizz eyed the

knife as Chester tossed it aside and put out his hand.

"We'll shake on that, Grizz."

Grizz came to his feet, reaching for Chester's hand, and with a tremendous

surge spun him around, threw a whistling left at the back of Chester's neck

that somehow failed to connect solidly, followed up with a right cross that

Chester somehow managed to avoid. Chester went down and Grizz was on

him, his two hundred and forty pounds of muscle and bone crushing

Chester flat, while two thumbs like bolt-cutters probed Chester's Adam's apple.

"Now, Swamp-walker," Grizz breathed, "what was vat about lettin' blood

out of me? Cut my froat, would yew? Feels cool, hey? How dew yew reckon

it's gonna be when I put the fumbs in hard?"

"You gave me your word," Chester wheezed. "I kept my part of the bargain."

He groped, found the loop of clothesline he had prepared and flipped it into

position.

"I don't bargain wif Downlander spies. I tear 'em intew strips, barehanded."

"I let you go when I could have killed you," Chester got out. "Now let me up

and give me my escort." With a quick flip, he dropped the loop over Grizz's

head.

Grizz hardly noticed in his enthusiasm. "Yew fink I'm stupid? I've got plans

for yew, Swamp-runner," he said, releasing his grip with one hand to tug at

the loose noose. "Ever felt a bone break-slow?"

"You mean you're breaking your promise?"

"Yew catch on quick."

Chester looked up at Grizz's puffed face, the wide mouth among the wiry

whiskers, the small eyes. He tugged on the line. An expression of surprise

crept over Grizz's face. His back straightened, his head rising. He dug in his

thumbs frantically, but Chester twisted away. Then Grizz was struggling to

get his legs under him, his hands raking at the wire that was hoisting him up

neck first.

Chester slid back, keeping pressure on the wire which ran over a rafter to

the loop on Grizz's throat. Grizz scrambled to get his feet under him. "You're

a very slow pupil, Grizz." Chester jerked the wire. Grizz's head bobbed.

Chester hauled on the wire, then twisted it around a stout peg set in a

massive post. Grizz stood on tiptoes, breathing rapidly, his eyes bulging, his

head tilted sideways by the taut wire, his fingers groping fruitlessly at the

noose buried in the fleshy neck.

Chester stood before him, hands on hips. "I guess I'll just hang you, Grizz,"

he said. "Less messy than cutting your throat."

"Please," Grizz whispered past the constricting wire. "Give me another

chance."

"Have you learned your lesson?"

"Yeah, cut me down."

"Remember, it's no use trying to double-cross me. Now just give me an

escort like a good fellow..." Chester released the wire. Grizz clawed the

noose free, threw it aside, stood rubbing his throat and staring at Chester.

Chester stood six feet from him, hands empty, looking at him casually.

"Well, you're free now, Grizz. What about your promise?"

Grizz felt carefully about his head and neck, ran his hands over his arms,

leaned to check his ankles, his eyes fixed on Chester.

"Oh, it's quite all right now, Grizz. There are no more wires attached to you."

Grizz glanced down, pushed out a foot to check for trap wires. He licked his

lips.

"Don't do anything foolish, Grizz. I've warned you. I'm in control of you, not

the other way around. The sooner you accept that..."

Grizz leaped, caught a tight-stretched wire square in the mouth and did a

complete back flip.

"Get up!" Chester snapped. Grizz got to his feet, hands hanging at his sides,

staring at Chester.

"Yours is the typical bully attitude," said Chester. "Anyone you consider to

be stronger than you is your master; anyone who seems to be at your mercy

becomes your victim. You've had a little trouble classifying me: I seemed to

be a victim but repeatedly demonstrated that it was you who was being

victimized. Are you ready now to accept reality?"

Grizz stood dumbly. Chester reached out, gripped the other's nose and

twisted hard. Grizz gulped. Chester prodded him in the stomach, thumped

his chest, kicked him lightly in the shin. "Well, care to try again?" Grizz

swallowed hard, mouth opening and closing.

"I think perhaps you're properly oriented now, Grizz. You may go. Tell

everyone that the attack has been postponed and that they're to stay clear of

the palace. Don't tell anyone what happened here. Understand?"

Grizz nodded.

"And, Grizz, don't try to cheat on me."

There was a sound. Bandon stepped into view, the arrow aimed at Grizz's

chest. "You intend to let this traitor walk out of here and warn 'em?"

"Hold on, Bandon. He won't give any trouble."

"Not if I can help it." Bandon made a sudden move and Chester whirled,

snapped a hand out-

And stood gripping the shaft of the arrow, caught in mid-flight.

"You-you grabbed my Blue-Tooth's dart out of the air!" Bandon stared at

Chester incredulously. "It's not possible!"

"Accept reality," Chester said. "It's simply a matter of trained reflexes and

self-hypnotic alert conditioning."

"But then-when I brought you in-you could have..."

"That's right-but I wanted to see what was going on up here. Now we both

know. We'd better move out now-fast. Grizz will snap out of his daze in a

few minutes, and you'll discover how loyal your boys are."

"But... why should they want to turn on me? All I've done's been for their

own good."

"Maybe-but the one thing your little group has in common is a yearning for

more free goodies and less work. All anybody has to do to enlist their

enthusiasm is promise them some easy loot."

"Hold on; I don't know what Grizz has said to them, but I can-"

"Promise them more," Chester finished. "But can you deliver? This is a dead

end, Bandon. Come on with me."

"I'm still boss here." Bandon said. "Come on; you'll see." He started for the

door.

"Do me a small favor," Chester said, tucking the rusted hatchet into his

waistband. "Sneak out the back way and look the situation over before you

do anything foolish. I'm leaving now. I have a trail of unfinished business to

see to. I hope you won't try to interfere."

Bandon hesitated. "I guess I owe you something," he said. "Grizz was out to

get me, sure. But you're makin' a mistake. The free life is the only way."

Chester coiled the clothesline and looped it in his belt. "If you were smart,

you'd head for the nearest Center and get used to clean clothes and a good

bed again. You don't belong here with these wood lice. Leave this routine to

Grizz and the other wild life."

"I'm safe enough. Come on with me. I'll give you a safe-conduct through the

lines."

"Sorry, Bandon; I don't think you could guarantee that. I'm taking the back way."

"There's nothin' back there but the cliff face. You can't get through my sentry

lines. There's too many men out there. You can't catch five arrows at once-

and some of the boys have powder guns."

"I know-so that just leaves me one way out."

"Up the escarpment? You can't climb that-it's straight up."

"I don't have a lot of choice. Sorry you're not going with me. But if you

change your mind, there's a cleft just behind the third house from the corner.

I'll start from there."

"Got it all figured out, eh? You Downlanders beat me. Well, suit yourself."

"Thanks. And keep your head down until you see which way the wind is

blowing."

A>

IN THE BLACKNESS of Bandon's back yard, Chester paused, listening. A soft

wind moved in the tall pines. Small frogs called; a bird shrilled again and

again. Chester moved across the weed-choked garden, worked his way

through a wild-grown hedge and over a fallen fence, started up a gravelly

slope. Starlight gave a faint illumination. Behind him there was a sudden

voice in the street, an angry retort. Chester recognized Bandon's voice. He

reached the base of the cleft, found handholds, started up. Yells sounded

from below now and Grizz's bull roar. Chester pulled himself up to a ledge

and turned, waiting. The voices went on; then the thump of running feet

sounded, coming nearer.

"Over here," Chester called softly. He picked up a fist-sized rock, hefted it.

Hoarse breathing sounded below, the scrabble of feet on gravel.

"Bandon?" Chester said softly.

"It's me," a choked voice came back. "Why, those lousy, miserable,

ungrateful skunks!"

"Uh-huh," Chester said. "Hurry up." He tossed the rock aside, unlimbered

the coil of tough clothesline. Other feet sounded now. A torch flared behind

Bandon's house.

Grizz's voice bellowed commands: "Beat vat brush, boys. Ve turncoat can't

be far off!"

There was a sound of sliding, followed by a thump. Below, Bandon cursed

in a strained whisper. "How in the name of the Kez-father do you get up

there?"

"Hey, I heard somefing over vere," a voice called. A second torch flared.

Chester tied a loop in the end of the clothesline, lowered it down the cleft.

"Grab this," he whispered. "And keep it quiet."

Bandon muttered softly to himself; Chester felt the rope move as Bandon

fumbled with it. "Hurry up!" Chester called.

"Haul away," Bandon said softly. Chester braced his feet and pulled.

Bandon's feet scraped, sent small stones rattling down the rock face.

"Over vere!" two voices yelled at once. Pounding feet approached. There

was a yelp and one torch went out.

"Somebody found my coon trap," Bandon grunted. With a final heave,

Chester hauled him up high enough to grip the edge of the ledge. A moment

later, they stood side by side.

"I'm going on up," Chester said. "Don't make a sound. As soon as I reach

secure footing again, I'll lower the line."

"Don't waste any time," Bandon said, "Grizz may not be able to climb up

here, but he's a pretty good hand with a long bow. A pure shame I didn't

have time to gather up my Blue-Tooth."

"All you'd do is get us spotted quicker. Stand fast now." Chester reached up,

found a grip, pulled himself up. The going was easy enough; the fingerholds

were all of a quarter of an inch deep, and the climb was not even quite

vertical; there was a slope of at least three degrees. As for the height, it was

negligible: a mere sixty feet or so now. A few months ago, it would have

been a different story, Chester thought suddenly, smiling. In the old days, he

would have clung to the cliff, bleating for help.

Abruptly, the precariousness of his position dawned on Chester. What was

he, Chester W. Chester IV, doing here, climbing up the face of a vertical

precipice in the dark, with a crew of ferocious back-to-nature cultists at his

heels? Suddenly, the meager handholds seemed grossly inadequate. Chester

froze, digging with his toes for a secure footing. The light breeze seemed to

batter at him like a gale. His shoulder blades drew together in anticipation of

Grizz's long-bow bolt.

"Hey," Bandon's voice whispered anxiously from below. "Don't forget me."

Chester drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling his fear-tensed

muscles loosen. He was glad Kuve hadn't been around to see how easily

he'd forgotten his training in a moment of panic. He went up another ten

feet, found a foot-wide ledge and lowered the rope. There were three torches

below now, near the foot of the cliff.

"Here's some footprints," someone called.

"Hey, look up vere," another voice shouted. "Did you see somefing move?"

"It's him!"

"Who's got a bow handy?"

"Bandon," Chester called softly. "Gather up a handful of rocks, then tie the

rope around your waist. You pepper 'em while I pull you up. Maybe it will

be enough to spoil their aim-or at least make them nervous."

"Sure."

Chester heard the rasp of stone, then a grunt as Bandon pegged one. There

was a loud yell from below.

"Got the skunk!" Bandon whispered loudly. A moment later a second cry

rang out.

"What's goin' on?" someone wanted to know.

"Rocks fallin'."

"Ohhh, my head!"

"Bandon, hurry up! Get that rope tied!" Chester felt the rope vibrate.

"All right," Bandon called. Chester heaved at the rope. It was hard work this

time, with Bandon too fully occupied to assist by clawing his way up as

Chester pulled. The rope cut into Chester's hands. An arrow clanged against

the stone ten feet to one side, striking red sparks. Chester grunted and

hauled. More arrows struck, one no more than a yard away. One of the

torches below went out as its bearer yelled.

"Don't throw at the torches," Chester gasped. "All they do is blind them."

"Oh, sorry," Bandon said cheerfully. "The varmints are thick as fleas in a

bearhide down there. Can't hardly miss."

He crawled up beside Chester. "Whoosh! That rope cuts! And we've still got

a ways to go." An arrow ricocheted off the rock wall a yard from Chester's

head.

"Let's get out of here. They'll bracket in on us before long. If you're hit, try

not to yell."

"I'll keep 'em busy," Bandon said. He stooped, came up with head-sized

stone, and dropped it down into the darkness. It hit once with a crash; a

moment later three hoarse yells sounded almost together.

"Ha!" Bandon exulted. "That's showin' 'em."

Three painful climbs and half an hour later Chester and Bandon lay

stretched full-length on a wide ledge. The noise below had dwindled to an

occasional half-hearted curse and a few groans. The arrows had stopped

coming.

"Looks like we got away clean," Bandon said. "The skunks sure gave up

easy."

"We'll rest a few minutes," Chester said. "Then we'll go on to the top and

head back toward the Center-"

"Oh-oh," Bandon said.

"What's the matter?"

"Reckon I forgot somethin'."

"Well, I don't think we'd better go back for it, under the circumstances."

"It's not that. But I forgot to tell you. This cliff we've gone and climbed up

on: no wonder the boys aren't too worried about gettin' after us."

"Well?"

"There's no way down. If you'd seen it in daylight you'd know what I mean.

It's a mesa, and the side we're climbing is the easy one."

Hot morning sun beat down on Chester's short-cropped head as he walked

along the cliff edge to the boulder against which Bandon sat waiting.

"It's like I told you," Bandon said. "We're stuck."

"Why didn't you mention the topographical peculiarities of the place to me

last night, when I first announced I was heading this way?" Chester asked.

"I figured it wouldn't matter, 'cause I didn't figure you'd be able to get up

here anyhow. I figured you'd be back in a few minutes, beggin' my pardon

and askin' for that safe-conduct. I guess I made kind of a fool of myself."

"I won't be so uncivil as to argue that point." Chester peered over the

precipice. It dropped vertically for fifty feet, then shelved back. The base was

visible a hundred yards below, plunging sheer into a green blanket of

treetops.

"Grizz'll have the boys spotted all the way around, the trip wires rigged,"

Bandon said. "Even if we had a way to get down, they'd be on top of us like

flies on a beer keg before we got our shirt tails tucked in."

Chester scaled a rock out over the forest, watched it curve and drop down,

down...

"Poor Genie," he said. "And Case."

"I don't know who you're grievin' over," Bandon said, "but you can add your

own name to the list. If we don't starve up here, it'll be because we climbed

down and broke our necks-or got plugged full of arrows. One thing we

don't have to do is get heat stroke. Let's get over under the trees."

They walked across the stony ground toward the rising mound of wooded

land that occupied the center of the ten-acre island of the mesa top.

"We'd better look around and see if there's anything edible growing up

here," Chester said.

"And water," Bandon added. "I'm already gettin' thirsty."

"Maybe we can find some game. Why don't you set to work and make

yourself a new bow? I'll start on a shelter, in case it rains-and we'll have to

rig some sort of catch-basin, if we don't find a spring."

"What's the use? It'll just stretch out our dyin'. Maybe we ought to just take a

flyin' jump. Maybe we'd land on a couple of Grizz's skunks."

"Here, none of that," Chester said sharply. "We may find that we can live

quite comfortably here-in spite of the lack of canned beans and television.

This is your opportunity to try the free life you're so fond of."

"Sure, but..." Bandon muttered.

"You start off in that direction." Chester pointed toward a stand of slender,

bluish-needled conifers. "I'll check over there. We'll meet back here at the

edge of the woods in an hour."

hester laid aside the rusted hatchet with which he had been pounding in a

stake.

"Any luck?" he called as Bandon tramped from the underbrush.

"I guess so," Bandon said dispiritedly. "There's a good stand of ash back

there I can make some kind of bow out of. And I found some kind of an old

tent-"

Chester came to his feet. "You mean the place is inhabited?"

Bandon shook his head. "Not any more. Come on. I need help to get it out.

We can use the material to build that catch-basin, and I guess there's enough

over to put a roof on that hut of yours." He nodded toward Chester's

embryonic framework of sticks bound together with lengths of clothesline

wire.

Chester followed Bandon back into the woods, pushing through tangled

underbrush, squeezing between interlaced saplings. The taller trees became

thicker and the ground more open as they progressed. Ahead, draped in the

branches of a dead pine, Chester saw a billow of grayish-white, a snarl of

lines trailing down almost to the ground.

"There it is," Bandon said. "Don't know what it's doin' in a treetop. But

there's plenty of stuff there to make a hut and whatever else we need. And

some good rope, too. Not that it's goin' to do us any good," he added.

"It's a parachute," Chester said in wonder. "I was under the impression that

there were no aeronautics here, other than helis, and you don't need

parachutes with those. They let themselves down gently if the power fails."

"What other kind is there?" Bandon inquired.

Chester explained to Bandon the function of a conventional flying machine.

"I never heard of any such thing," Bandon said, shaking his head. "But it

seems like I remember some kind of big gas bag some fellows put on some

kind of show with, once when I was a kid back in the Tricennium. They

went sailin' right up into the sky. Damnedest thing you ever saw."

"I wonder what happened to the pilot who came down in this?"

"Oh, him," Bandon said. "He's right over here." He led the way across the

carpet of leaves under the giant trees to a thicket. "In there."

Chester parted the brush and looked into a bower of woven branches

thatched with dried grass. On the dirt floor were three hand-made

earthenware pots and a woven basket with the desiccated remains of what

might have once been fruit. Beside the basket lay the skeleton of a man.

"Good Lord!" Chester muttered. "Poor devil."

"Can't figure what killed him-'less it was old age," Bandon said. "No

arrows stickin' in him, no broken bones. Plenty of food and water, I'd say."

"He must have bailed out of his balloon, landed here and found himself

marooned," Chester said. "But surely he could have signaled in some way..."

"Must have been a long time back-before our town was built. And there's

no other Tricennium for twenty miles."

"What about the Center? It's not more than five miles."

"They just built that a year or two back. Nope, he was stuck, all right. Just

like us. We might just as well hunker down beside him-"

"But why didn't he use the parachute? He could have rigged it somehow

and jumped!"

Bandon eyed the sagging yellow-white cloth above. "Jump off the cliff with

that trailin' behind him, hey? I dunno. I'd hate to try it."

Chester hitched up his belt. "You may just have to. Come on, let's get it

down from there."

Chester and Bandon stood gazing sadly at the broad expanse of weather-

spotted and puckered nylon stretched on the ground before them. Two long,

dark tears in the material ran from edge to edge.

"I see why he didn't use it," Chester said glumly. "Well, that's that. The

material's still sound, though. We might as well cut it up in sections for easy

hauling and get back to work on our hut."

"Don't reckon we could sew it up," Bandon said doubtfully.

"Not a chance. We might manage to work some threads lose and lace it back

together, but it wouldn't hold air. And with a double load-well, we'd

splash when we hit."

Bandon winced. "Let's get busy. I'll salvage those pots and the basket. Must

be water near here's the reason he camped here."

An hour later, having used Bandon's bone-handled hunting knife to dissect

the parachute, Chester folded the sections, coiled the lines and settled down

to wait for his companion's return. He could hear him crashing through

nearby underbrush.

Bandon emerged, red-faced and scratched. "Found it," he said. "Little

pothole, damn near buried in prickle bushes. We'll spend half our time just

gettin' enough water to stay alive on."

"I'll use the hatchet to clear it away," Chester said. "Let's be going."

"Why not build right here?"

"I like the open glade near the edge better. Then, too, this place has certain

morbid associations."

"You mean him?" Bandon nodded toward the dead man's hut. "Shucks, he

can't hurt us."

"I'd like to be able to look out and see the rest of the world. Let's be moving.

We have a lot to do before we can consider ourselves settled in."

Squirrel food," Bandon said, spitting blackberry seeds. "Only three days on

squirrel food, and my britches are so loose they'd fall off if I didn't have 'em

roped on."

"Why don't you finish up that bow? Then maybe you'd be able to eat rabbit

for a change," Chester said cheerfully. "Personally, I like berries."

"Bow's made," Bandon said shortly. "But I can't string it till I get a rabbit to

gut. And I can't get a rabbit to gut till I-"

"Why don't you use nylon?"

"That stuff? Stretches like rubber. You couldn't throw an arrow fifty feet

with that. And besides, I need arrowheads and feathers and glue. Now, I can

make up a swell glue-just as soon's I can shoot a few critters."

"Chip some heads out of stone," Chester suggested. "And you ought to be

able to find a few feathers around an old nest or some such place."

"I've got plenty of nice arrow shafts ready. Good tough, springy wood. And

light."

Chester fingered an arrow. "You do nice work, Bandon. Too bad you left the

part of the world where it would be appreciated. You could have fitted in

nicely as an archery expert."

"I wouldn't have been an archery expert if I hadn't thrown off the shackles

first."

"Still, if you go back..."

"Ha!" Bandon looked out over the airy vista of distant ridges. "Unless we

turn into birds, that's not likely."

Chester sat up suddenly, flexed the arrow shaft in both hands.

"Bandon, what kind of wood is that? Is there a good supply of it?"

Bandon raised an eyebrow at the excitement in Chester's tone. He waved a

hand. "The woods are full of it. What-"

"You say you can make glue?"

"Glue? Sure I can make glue. All you have to do is boil down a few

carcasses..."

Chester was on his feet. "Bandon, you get that bow of yours working. I don't

care if you string it with shoelaces. Bring me in a brace of rabbits and boil up

a pot of stickum." He picked up the hatchet, its blade bright now from use.

"I'm headed for the tall timber."

"Hold on, here. What's goin' on? We've got plenty of firewood; and I've lost

too much weight to go traipsin' off on a rabbit hunt."

"For what I've got in mind, the lighter you are, the better. And I'm not

hunting firewood; I'm after what they call aircraft spruce."

"Chester, just what have you got in mind?"

"We're going to leave here, Bandon. It will take a few days, but we'll travel

in style."

"In style?"

"To be precise-in a home-built glider."

She'll be built along the lines of an old-time training ship," Chester said.

"Neat and simple."

"Simple? We've already got more junk lined up to go into this contraption

than it would take to stock a store. Five kinds of wood, cloth, wire, string,

glue-"

"And we're still grossly understocked, believe me. But I think we can do it."

"I don't see the need of usin' my knife to make that thing," Bandon said,

watching Chester take long, curling shavings from a spruce spar with a jack

plane made from a chunk of wood and the knife blade.

"It's a lot more efficient than a knife for trimming up structural members,"

Chester said. "How's the glue factory coming?"

"Oh, I've got enough glue to feather a million arrows. Can I quit boilin'

down rabbit now and fix a couple to eat?"

"Sure. But don't overdo it. I wasn't kidding when I said the lighter we are,

the better. Then I wish you'd go to work stripping down that clothesline;

there's ten strands of steel wire under the plastic cover. We'll use that for

diagonal frame-bracing. And I'll need lots of the nylon parachute lines

unraveled, too. Reel it on a stick as you get it worked apart."

Bandon set to work. "I still don't see how you figure to flap the wings,

Chester. To hold us up, you'll have to have a spread of maybe ten, twelve

feet."

"Thirty," Chester said. "And a five-foot cord. Not a very efficient layout, but

I'm afraid it's the best we can do with the materials at hand. Figuring us each

at one-fifty-or a little less, if we eat sparingly for another week-and the

airframe at two hundred pounds, that works out to three pounds per square

foot. And we won't flap our wings-unless I've miscalculated badly."

"Well, I guess you know what you're doin'."

"Certainly. In my youth I was a fanatical model-plane builder. Free-flight,

control-line, RC, hand-launch-the works."

"You done much flyin' off cliffs?"

"Well, if you mean in full-scale aircraft-"

"I do."

"Actually, none."

"None? But you've built a lot of them, hey?"

"Well, not actually anything big enough to carry a man-but I did put

together a seven-foot multi-engine control-liner."

"You mean we're goin' to jump over a cliff in a contraption you've never

tried out before, and that you maybe don't know how to work even if it

doesn't come apart?"

"The alternative," Chester pointed out, "is sitting up here in the eagle's nest

until we get too old to pick berries."

Bandon shouldered his bow. "I'm goin' out and get us a couple of eatin'

rabbits," he announced. "We might just as well eat and drink and enjoy it

while we can."

"That's right," Chester said. "Because tomorrow-who knows?"

It looks like a coffin for a tall, skinny corpse." Bandon said, eying the

twenty-foot openwork structure of spruce strips propped on sawhorses

made from peeled logs.

"Two tall, skinny fellow," Chester said. "You stretch out here." He indicated

a section floored with woven strips of willow bark. "I take up the right-hand

position beside you. I'll have to have room to edge forward or back to

correct the trim. Now, I want you to go along wrapping each joint with

nylon patches, and working in glue. What I wouldn't give for a few square

feet of one-eighth birch ply and a pound or two of wire brads."

"While you're wishin', you might just as well wish for a concealed staircase

leadin' from here into that air-conditioned restaurant you were talkin' about.

You can have the blonde. Just leave me to the steaks and chops."

Chester jumped as a sudden whop! sounded behind him. He whirled. A long

steel-tipped arrow quivered upright against the sod.

"They're shootin' at us," Bandon blurted. "Where are they?" He stared wildly

around.

Chester swept the scene with a glance. "That arrow came straight down-

and from not very high up." He pulled it from the ground. "It wasn't buried

more than a few inches."

As Chester looked toward the cliff edge, a second arrow shot up into view,

curved and fell twenty feet away.

"Ah-hah! They're pegging them up here with an arbalest of some sort." A

moment later a round stone the size of a grapefruit sailed into view, slowed

to a stop and dropped back out of sight. "They've got a catapult working,

too. I hope that drops back on someone's toe."

"I thought it was awful quiet these last few days," Bandon said. "They've

been a busy bunch down there, gettin' ready to lay down a barrage on us."

Chester watched a second stone fly into view and drop with a thump fifty

yards away. Other arrows nipped up; some fell back, others clattered to

earth at distances from ten to a hundred feet.

"How do they know where to aim?" Chester asked. "They're hitting pretty

close."

"There's a couple pairs of binoculars in the town," Bandon said. "I reckon a

few of the skunks are staked out on the next ridge watchin' every move we

make." He shook a fist in the presumed direction of the spies. "See if you can

figure it out, blast you!" he yelled defiantly. He turned to Chester. "Maybe

we'd better move 'er back to the edge of the woods."

"I don't think we're in any real danger, short of an accident," Chester replied,

watching a rock clatter down thirty feet distant. "There are as many falling

behind us as in front. Let's just keep at it and hope for the best. I wonder

why they're so persistent? They should be content to let us starve up here in

peace, one would think."

"It's not that easy," Bandon said. "Grizz can't afford to let me get away-or

die off."

"Why not?"

"Well, I've been thinkin'. He doesn't know where the treasury is-and he's

not the kind of fellow to forget a thing like that."

"Treasury? I hadn't heard about that before. What does it consist of, a hoard

of salami, canned crackers and replacement tubes for the Tri-D?"

"Nope. Guns and powder, mostly."

"Hmmm. I was about to suggest that you might throw a note over the side

giving directions to its location, but under the circumstances that would be

unwise."

An arrow dropped five feet from the edge of the wing.

"Oh-oh. We can't have any punctures now that we've started covering.

Bandon, maybe you'd better start a counter-barrage while I work on the

gluing. When I need you to stretch the next panel, I'll call you."

"That's a mighty flimsy-looking thing." Bandon studied the nearly

completed project. "How long before we have to try it?"

"Not long. There are the tail surfaces to cover and install and the controls to

link up. I'd say by sundown we'll be about ready-but of course, the glue

needs overnight to set up thoroughly."

"That tail's not very big." Bandon gestured toward the stabilizer and rudder

frames propped against a tree. "Why not just leave 'em off?"

"Impractical, I'm afraid," Chester said. "No tail assembly, no flight. We'd

drop like a stone-tail first."

Bandon jumped as a rock crashed down at his feet. "Maybe we'd better head

for the tall brush before Grizz gets lucky," he suggested nervously.

"And let them knock the glider apart at their leisure? Not-"

With a crash, a four-inch stone slammed through the woven floorboards of

the pilot's compartment. Chester stared at it in dismay.

"We were lucky," he said. "It missed the keel. Bandon, get busy on that

counterattack. We can't let them stop us now!"

A>

RUDDY DAWN was breaking over the distant eastern hills. Clutching an

improvised cape about his shoulders against the early-morning chill,

Chester examined the nylon-covered wing, glistening with dew.

"It looks as though she's survived the night intact."

"Here, look at this," Bandon called. He held up a paper-wrapped stone.

"Looks like it might be a message." He stripped off the paper, glanced at it

and handed it to Chester.

Kum don now and sav yerself frum gitin yer brans bust in. Bandon, it ant yu, jus

the spi wer after. Grizz, bos.

"Well, that's an attractive offer," Chester said. "If you trust him."

Bandon snorted. "I heard him makin' promises to you a few days back. I

reckon I'll take my chances with the flyin' machine. But, say, Chester, how

do you figure on gettin' it over the edge? If we're both sittin' in it..."

"That's easy. We'll set up a pair of peeled willow rails; we'll use the poles we

skinned for their bark. The glider will have to be anchored in position with a

length of nylon line. When we're ready to go, I'll cut the cable. The rails will

be laid up the slope at an angle, so a fifty-foot run ought to give us a good

enough send-off. Of course, I'll have to put her nose down as soon as we're

over the edge, to gain flying speed."

"Maybe if we rigged a weighted line and hung it over the edge, it would

give her a little extra kick-off. We'd have to fix it so it'd drop off when we

went over the edge."

"Good idea. You find us a suitable ballast stone-as big as you can lift. We'll

try to get off before the morning barrage starts. I'll be ready to move her

upslope and set up the track in about ten minutes."

Bandon nodded and moved off. Chester climbed into the pilot's

compartment, stretched out face down and fitted his toes against the rudder

bar. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the rudder wag in response to

his foot movements. He tried the stick; the elevators flopped up and down

correctly. A side pressure warped the trailing edge of the left wing panel up

and down.

"Pre-flight check complete," Chester murmured to himself. He crawled out,

moving carefully as the open-work fuselage creaked under his weight.

Upslope, Bandon levered at a boulder with a pole. It lifted, teetered, started

a slow trundle downhill.

"Bandon!" Chester called, running forward. "Stop that!"

Bandon stood frozen, watching the massive rock gather speed, aimed

directly for the glider perched at the cliffside. Chester slid to a halt, turned

and dashed back for the ship. He skidded around under the wing, seized the

tail post and hauled. The glider slid back with a grate of wood against soil,

then jammed-just as the boulder took a mighty bound and leaped over it to

drop from sight over the cliff. Chester slumped against the frail craft.

"Hey, Chester, I'm sorry about that."

A mighty crash sounded from below, followed by faint yells. Chester went

to the edge and looked over. A great gap showed in the mass of foliage far

below. Through the opening Chester saw men darting about among the

splintered remains of a wooden structure. Bandon arrived at his side and

stared down silently.

"Well, blast those skunks, Chester. You see that? They were buildin' an

almighty big catapult down there. See the throwin' arm layin' off there to the

left? Pretty smart, hey, sneakin' around under cover of those trees and fixin'

to let fly with the big stuff. By the nine tails of the hilldevil, it's a good thing

that stone got away from me."

"Maybe-but I'd just as soon we didn't do anything so dramatic again. Let's

get that track set up."

Chester studied the panorama. "We'll angle it to the right to avoid that

depression near the edge. I'll aim her right off there between those two

knolls. With luck, we can stretch our glide to half a mile. That ought to give

us all the start we need on our welcoming committee."

"Wonder what's happened to the artillery this morning? I guess maybe that

little pebble we dropped on 'em shook 'em up a little."

"I hope so. It would be a shame to suffer a hit now."

Chester and Bandon set to work pegging wooden rails in place. They

finished, then took up positions on opposite sides of the craft and lifted it

clear of the ground.

"Hey, it's not so heavy," Bandon commented.

"Watch your footing," Chester said.

Together they toiled up the slope, maneuvered carefully, then settled the

ship in place on the track.

"Hold her while I chock her," Chester called. He wedged a sizable stone

fragment in place under the down-tipped nose. "All right, now we rig the

restraining cable."

Chester payed out a length of nylon to the nearest tree, tied it securely, then

attached the other end to the keel of the glider between the two pilot

positions.

"All set," he said, removing the chock from the track. "All that's holding her

now is the cable. When I cut that-off we go."

"It sure is quiet," Bandon commented, looking around. "I wonder..."

"Let's just be grateful," Chester said. "I wasn't looking forward to having to

launch right out through a hail of arrows. I'll lay out the ballast line now

while you bring in a stone."

At the edge of the precipice, Chester dropped the coil of nylon line and tied

a secure noose ready to receive the weighting stone. As he rose to turn back,

an unshaven face rose into view not ten feet from him; two grimy hands

scrabbled for a grip.

Chester jumped, put a foot square in the face and pushed. With a yelp, the

man dropped back; a tremendous crash followed. Chester looked over the

edge. Twenty feet below, a rickety platform thrust up; three men crouched

atop it, while another sprawled on his back, half through the shattered

decking. One of the three brought a bow into position and launched an

arrow in one motion; it whistled past Chester's ear. He whirled, grabbed up

a hundred-pound rock and eased it over the edge. There was a noisy crunch.

Now two of the men clung frantically to the shattered remains of the

platform, while the third scrambled agilely down the rickety structure. The

fourth man was gone. Looking to the left Chester saw a second platform and

beyond it a third. And there were more to the right.

Chester was up and running. "Bandon! Forget the stone! Get to the glider!"

Bandon stared, then dropped the rock and headed for the craft at a run.

From the woods behind the glider a man in a soiled shirt and torn pants

emerged, his bow at the ready. Bandon, in mid-stride, nocked an arrow and

let fly. The newcomer fell backward, feathers at his throat.

"Into your seat, fast!" Chester yelled.

"Say, I'm not really sure I want to risk this," Bandon exclaimed.

At the cliff edge, two men came into view simultaneously, scrambling up,

starting for the glider at a run. Bandon whipped his bow up, set an arrow,

twanged it on its way, sped a second. One man whirled and fell; the other

dived for cover. Bandon dropped the bow and slid into his place, face down.

Chester jumped in after him, wriggled his feet up against the rudder bar.

Reaching down with his right hand, he sawed at the tether with the knife

blade. More men appeared. One raised a bow and let an arrow fly. It struck

the nose block with a whack!, stood quivering in the wood. The rope parted.

With a lurch, the little ship started forward, grinding and bumping along the

green-wood tracks. Wind whistled in Chester's face. The running men had

halted, staring. The bowman raised his bow, loosed an arrow, missed by

yards. As the glider bore down on him, he turned and fled. More men were

coming over the edge now.

"The skunks stayed up late last night plannin' this one," Bandon yelled in

Chester's ear. "They-"

"Quiet!" Chester choked.

The glider seemed to move forward with infinite leisure. The grass and

gravel moved past in a ribbon that blurred slowly. The cliff edge was ahead

now, coming closer.

"We're not going to make it!" Chester mumbled. "Not enough speed."

An arrow slammed off the framework above Chester's head, knocking off

splinters. Ahead was blue sky and distant, hazy hills.

"Now!" Chester gasped. Abruptly the grate of wood on wood ceased-and

the bottom dropped from under them. Chester shoved forward on the stick

convulsively, his breath caught in his throat, his heart slamming madly

under his ribs. Down, down, falling, the wide spread of green rushing up,

wind screaming now in the wires at Chester's side, buffeting his face. Lying

prone, he pulled back on the stick, neutralizing it, then farther back...

He could feel the air pressure resisting the stick. He pulled harder, felt

pressure build against his chest, saw the green below tilting away,

flattening, saw the hills sliding down into view, with sky above them. He

looked over the side. Treetops rushed past a hundred feet below.

"Hey!" Bandon yelled. "We're flyin', Chester!"

The nose rose, aiming now at the distant sky. Chester pushed the stick, felt

the ship slow, hesitate minutely, then drop her nose. He swallowed. "Whip

stall," he muttered. "Pilot-killers."

"Say, Chester, this is great!" Bandon called.

Chester inched forward, applied a little right rudder. The ship turned

sloppily.

"A little aileron," Chester told himself. He edged the stick to one side, felt the

ship tilt sharply. Air currents buffeted the glider. Chester gritted his teeth,

fighting the motion. "Let it fly itself," he reminded himself, consciously

relaxing. A gust rocked the craft; it righted itself. The nose crept up; Chester

eased the stick forward. The nose came down. The flank of a hill was

approaching. Chester applied rudder, co-coordinating the ailerons; the ship

heeled, curved away.

"Wheeeee!" Bandon cried. "Just like a bird, Chester!"

There was a valley ahead, a steep cleft between hills. Chester aimed for it,

holding a straight course. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Nothin' to it, Chester," Bandon said. "Here, have some nuts."

"Not yet, thanks," Chester called. "For heaven's sake lie still and let me fly

this thing."

"Say, Chester, that's funny," Bandon said.

"What's funny?"

"We're gettin' higher instead of comin' down. Hey, Chester, how are we

goin' to get down if this thing keeps goin' up?"

"You're raving," Chester said.

Wind screamed past his face, making his eyes water. He twisted his head

and looked over the side. The trees below were a smooth blanket of green.

He looked back. The mesa was visible a mile away.

"You're right!" Chester said. "I can see the top of the mesa. I guess we've

snagged a thermal!"

"Is that good or bad?"

"Good. Now don't bother me for a few minutes, and I'll see if I can stretch

our glide to a new Tricennium record!"

"Five miles," Chester called. "That was the Center back there."

"What keeps her in the air, Chester, without flappin' her wings?"

"We're riding rising air currents off these slopes. We've got a very poor glide

angle, I'm afraid, but the updrafts are so strong we're gaining altitude in

spite of our inefficiency. I'm hoping to catch some true thermals over the

plains ahead. I'd estimate our altitude at about three thousand feet now. I'd

like to work her up to about five and then set out west toward the

Tricennium of the Original Wisdom. If we can make a few miles it will save

us a long, hot walk."

"I'm all for it, Chester. I like it fine up here."

"That remark seems to indicate you've abandoned your simple-life

philosophy. An aircraft-even a primitive one like this-is a far cry from

chipping flints."

"Why, what do you mean, Chester? We made this ourselves, out of plain old

wood and rabbit glue."

"Plus a few bits of nylon and some steel wire. But after all, every

manufactured item is made from simple raw materials-even a Tri-D tube.

All materials are natural, if you trace them back to their beginnings. There's

nothing wrong with rearranging nature to give ourselves a few more

comforts-it's misusing what we make that takes the savor out of life."

"Maybe so. But it's not really the stuff; it's the people that gravel me. I don't

want anybody tellin' me what to do, tryin' to push me around. Soon's we

land, I guess I'll head for the hills again."

"Bandon, learn to do something that other people want or need and you

won't have to worry about being stepped on. Most of the shrill cries of social

injustice come from people who contribute nothing to the scene that a

chimpanzee couldn't do better. Why do you think people treasure the few

really talented singers, actors, ball players, medical men, engineers that crop

up? Because there are far too few of them-every one is a treasure. And if a

new man comes along and writes a song that reaches out and touches

something in everybody, he doesn't have to worry about being picked on.

His fans won't let anything happen to him."

"Well, maybe I could start up an archery class, like you said. You suppose

folks would come and want to learn?"

"Try it and find out. If there's something in archery that makes you love it,

there'll be others that will get the same thrill. Be best at something-and let

the world know it."

"Hey, Chester, look down there. A line running right across the countryside."

"A road," Chester explained. "That's good. We can follow it right back to

town."

"And way up ahead-looks like buildings, away off."

"That's possible. From this altitude, the Tricennium should be visible; it's

only about fifteen miles."

Chester squinted overhead for cumulus clouds, steered for the shadow of

the nearest. The updraft rocked the tiny craft. "All right, Bandon, here we

go." He banked the glider to the right and struck out for the distant city.

Half an hour later the glider whistled in past a row of tall trees, cleared an

outlying house by inches, settled in over a broad green lawn. It skimmed for

a hundred yards, then dropped with a mild jar to skid for another fifty feet

before heeling over with one wing tip scooping up turf, describing an abrupt

arc and coming to rest.

"Whew!" Chester sighed. He rose to hands and knees and looked around at

the well-manicured greenery, the peaceful rooflines and the half-dozen men

coming across the lawn at a job trot.

"Get ready for a rude reception, Bandon. I'm not certain these fellows quite

appreciate my little contribution to society. They may be the pushy kind."

"Well, I'd like to see 'em try it with me," Bandon growled.

"Don't leap to any untenable conclusions: they're a mild-looking lot, but

they're full of surprises."

The leading greeter came up. "Extraordinary!" he commented, looking at the

glider, Chester, Bandon and the long groove in the velvety lawn. "Where in

the world did you come from?"

A second man came up. "Now, Gayme, what did I tell you? A stiff-winged,

manned aircraft. Look at these two chaps. As ordinary a pair as you'd care to

meet. So much for your talk of the supernormal."

"The manifestation is, I insist, supernormal, in the sense that it surpasses the

ordinary run of events. Note the lack of motive power. How did such an

assemblage of artifacts and personnel come to be up there to begin with?"

"Look here," Chester said.

"Tut, tut, Gayme. I'm sure there's a simple, rational explanation. I suggest we

start at the beginning by asking a few questions." He eyed Bandon. "You, sir.

Do you mind telling me just how you came to descend from an empty sky?"

"Sure, easy," Bandon said. "I live on a cloud, and I just Came down to get a

refill on moonbeams. Any other questions? If not, how about a few eats? I'm

hungry."

"Ah-hah," Gayme crowed. "Just as I suspected. We'll consult Norgo."

"This is where I came in," Chester said. "Look, Bandon, I'll just slip over to

the town square and see to a few things. I may not see you again. If I don't, I

hereby will you full rights to the glider. Don't let them euchre you out of it;

they're good at appropriating things in the name of science. And work on

your archery."

"Hold on, Chester. Say, I figure we get on pretty good together. I figured you

and I'd stick together."

"Sorry, Bandon, old chap. It's been a most rewarding experience, but I have

some unfinished business to attend to-if it isn't altogether too late. I'm

going to find an inconspicuous corner and lie low for a few hours. Good

luck."

Bandon took his hand. "Well, all right. Chester. Sorry about gettin' you into

that fix back there."

"Thus," Gay me droned on, "the phenomenon is related to the spontaneous

precipitation of frogs sometimes reported from outlying areas."

"Who is outlying whom?" his friend inquired archly. "Now, I..."

Chester moved off quietly across the lawn. No one called after him.

In gathering twilight Chester moved across the square toward the shadows

of the cupola, the scene of his arrival ten months earlier. As he reached the

flower bed ringing the monument, a tall figure stepped before him, peered

at Chester's lithe, broad-shouldered figure, his tanned face, sinewy arms,

short-clipped sun-bleached hair and tight-fitting Tricennium costume.

"Oh, sorry," he said. "I was waiting for the poor little nincompoop who had

the fixation regarding the rug. They say he slipped away from the Center

right in the middle of the experiment. You're one of Norgo's crew?"

"I'm the poor little nincompoop," Chester said flatly. "Get out of my way,

Devant."

"Wha... ? Is it really you?"

"It's really me-and I'm reclaiming my property now."

Devant laughed. "Still the same pathetic line, eh? Well, Norgo warned that

you'd probably head for here. I'll take you back now to finish your course of

experimental study."

"I graduated."

"Oh, really?" Devant laughed again easily, reached for Chester. There was a

brief flurry of motion and Devant hit the pavement-hard.

"Glad I ran into you, Devant," Chester said, stepping over him. "That's one

piece of unfinished business out of the way. If I find I'm too late to help my

friends, I'll be back to finish the job."

Devant scrambled up with a shout. There were answering calls, the pad of

running feet. Chester sprinted for the rug, veered around a stone bench,

made out the dim outline of a chair. An overhead light glared suddenly,

showing Chester a ring of men closing in, Norgo in the lead, holding up a

hand. The posse halted.

"Computer, are you there?" Chester called urgently. There was a long pause.

"Chester, you know you aren't allowed on the rug," Norgo called. "Just come

along quietly now."

"Watch him," Devant cautioned, dabbing at his cheek. "He's learned a few

tricks."

"Ah, Mr. Chester"-the familiar voice spoke from midair-"I had a little

difficulty in locating you."

"Stand by," Chester said. "I'll be with you in a moment." He turned to face

Norgo. "I'm sorry to rush off," he called, feet planted on the rug. "I'd have

enjoyed staying longer, but personal affairs demand my attention. Give my

regards to Kuve-and watch out for a rabble-rouser named Grizz. He lives

up in the hills, but he's planning on moving into town soon."

"I had hoped your delirium would clear up once you were separated from

your fetish object," Norgo said sadly. "Too bad." He signaled; the posse

closed in.

"Goodbye, Norgo," Chester called. "Thanks for everything. And after I'm

gone, remember: accept reality. Is-not is not not-is.

"All right, Computer," he added, "take me back to Genie."

A>

TWISTY TWILIGHT turned to the glare of day on a city street. Chester looked

around. Nothing had changed from his last glimpse of the scene ten months

before, except that the crowd had dwindled to a few diehards. The street

was still roped off, although the phalanx of squad cars had been reduced to

two vehicles, each with a pair of heavyweights in the front seat, none of

whom was looking his way.

"Don't go away, Computer," Chester said softly. "I'll have to try to find

Genie, and it may take a while."

"Very well, Mr. Chester," the computer's voice replied loudly. "I'll occupy

myself with an analysis of-"

"Quiet!" Chester snapped, too late. Four round cop faces turned to stare at

Chester. Car doors swung open; flat feet scrambled. Two cops advanced on

Chester while two more rounded their vehicles, hitching at red leather pistol

belts.

"Hey, what's them chairs and rug doin' back here?" one cop demanded.

"Who're you, Bud?" another spoke up.

Chester folded his arms and glared at the lead cop. "I thought I left

instructions that this area was to be watched closely," he barked. "Who

dumped these things here? You men think this is a used-furniture store?"

"What's that?" the lead cop said, letting his mouth hang open.

"Button your coat," Chester snapped. "And see that you shave before coming

on duty next time." He put his hands behind his back and strode along the

line of cops. "Sergeant, those boots need attention. And your car needs a

wash."

"Hey, who're you?" a cop said.

"Who're you, sir!" Chester roared. "Don't you know the field uniform of a

Commissioner of Police when you see one?"

"Sure," the cop replied promptly. "And that ain't it."

"State Police, that is," Chester amended.

"State Police? Heck, I seen the State Police Commissioner at the race track

just last week."

"State Department Police, you nincompoop!" Chester bellowed. "Don't you

men realize this is a matter of international import? Why," he went on in a

confidential tone, "I have it on good authority that the affair ties in with a

scheduled interplanetary invasion."

"Geez," a cop said.

"Now," Chester went on smoothly, "do you men happen to recall the case of

the unclothed young woman who was arrested in this vicinity some time

ago?"

The cops looked at each other. One lifted his chrome-plated helmet and

squinted upward.

"Well,', he said. "Ahhh..."

"I think maybe I remember something about that," another cop volunteered.

"Ah, fine. Can you tell me what disposition was made of the case? It seems

to have slipped my memory."

"Well, let's see..."

"Perhaps she served a brief sentence and was sent on her way," Chester

suggested. "She might even have gotten a job-somewhere nearby."

"A job," a cop repeated, staring at Chester.

"Why don't you come on down to the station house... ah... Commissioner?

Maybe we can fix you up down there."

"Why, she may still be right there in the women's cell block," another cop

spoke up. "Maybe you can have a nice little visit with her."

"An excellent suggestion, men," Chester said crisply. "You may drive me

down at once."

"Sure. Right this way."

Chester followed two of the officers to their car. He rode along in silence,

turning over ways and means. It was unlikely that after ten months Genie

was still in the local lockup. Still, she might have compounded the original

offense by assaulting members of the police force, damaging public

property, attempting escape, resisting arrest and failing to produce a driver's

license. And, of course, she was penniless-always a disadvantage when

reasoning with the law.

The car drew up to a side entrance to a red brick building with twin pillars

surmounted by milky white globes lettered POLICE. Chester stepped out

and followed the driver up the steps while his partner trailed. Inside, the cop

motioned Chester along a short corridor and into an inner room where a

thin man in a red uniform glanced up from behind a desk with an irritated

expression.

"Okay, Buddy," the lead cop said, looking at Chester. "Look who we got here

-the International Commissioner of Police. Get a load of the outfit."

"Now, I'd like to know-" Chester started, stepping forward.

"He shows up in the stakeout and wants to know do we remember the dame

we picked up down there."

"And by the way, the chairs and rug are back," the other cop volunteered.

The man behind the desk jumped up. "Back, are they? Did you get whoever

delivered them?"

"And he says it's an invasion from Mars," the cop finished. "Naw, they was

too quick for us. They had this fast car, see-"

"You imbeciles! Kablitzki, I'll have your stripes for this! Now get back down

there and keep that area under surveillance-and that doesn't mean sitting

in your car listening to the latest jerk-and-twitch record!"

"But, Chief, what about our pinch here? He's a dangerous nut case."

The Chief threw a glance at Chester. "Probably an escapee from a TV

commercial. Lock him up for obstructing justice."

"Look here-" Chester began.

The two cops turned to him with expressions of relief, reaching out large

square hands. Chester leaned aside, caught an outstretched arm, flipped the

hand back and applied pressure. The cop yowled and leaped, landed in a

heap.

"I simply want some information," Chester declared. "The girl I asked about

-is she still under confinement?"

The second cop growled and moved in. Chester stiff-handed him under the

third button, clipped him on the side of the neck as he fell past.

"Here-" the Chief cried, reaching for a drawer. Chester was across the desk,

his hands gripping the thin man's collar.

"Listen, you confounded idiot!" Chester barked. "Where is the girl-the one

you picked up for indecent exposure?"

The Chief struggled manfully; Chester rapped his head against the floor.

One of the cops staggered into view. Chester hit him with the Chief.

"Now look," he insisted, holding the unfortunate official in an awkward

position over the back of his padded chair. "All I want is information on the

young lady's whereabouts. Why not cooperate in giving a little help to a law-

abiding citizen?"

"She's... in the women's wing-north side, first cell on the right."

"Where are the keys?"

"It's a... combination."

"What's the combination?"

The office door burst open. A fat cop goggled, tugged at a heavy pistol in a

hip holster. Chester swung the Chief around as a shield. More cops

appeared. In the corridor a bell clanged stridently. Feet pounded. Chester

hurled the Chief from him, turned, crossed his arms over his face and dived

through the wide double-hung window, landed on grass in a tinkle of glass

shards, rolled and came up running. He leaped the hedge, heading for a

dark alley mouth across the street. A man stepped into his path.

"Don't let 'em get away," Chester bawled. The man stepped aside, looking

startled. Chester sprinted up the alley, emerged in a busy street, fell back to

a brisk walk. The coup had been a failure, but at least he knew where Genie

was. Poor girl! Almost a year in a cold, gray cell.

In the next block Chester skidded to a halt before a wide plate-glass window

against which six-inch letters spelled out CATERPILLAR MOTORS. Beyond

the glass crouched a giant yellow vehicle, aglitter with chrome, spotlights,

aerials. A placard before the looming golden monster said:

The New Caterpillar Convertible For '67

(White Sidewall Tracks Extra)

There was an inconspicuous door beside the picture window. Chester

pushed it open. Inside, a man with greased hair and a smile leaned against

the polished flank of the mighty machine, talking to a paunchy customer of

middle age.

"... convenient monthly payments," he was saying. Chester eased behind the

immense convertible, climbed softly up, opened the bubble canopy and

settled himself in the yellow leather seat. Gleaming instruments winked up

at him from a polished panel. Down below the salesman said, "... heat and

music, window washers, backup lights, power seats, windows, top, steering,

brakes, clasho-mesh transmission, triple tank-drain carburetion, luxurious

cardboard interior, garbage disposal, foam-rubber mats, TV screen..."

Chester looked over the panel, located the starter. "... jet-blast mufflers," the

salesman was saying. "Not one but-get this-two, yes, two Last Trump air

horns, a full complement of cheery flashing lights in place of tiresome

dials..." Chester switched on, pressed the starter. The engine caught with a

roar. He shifted into low, moved toward the show window. The startled

salesman yelled and leaped clear; the customer scuttled for safety. The great

polished blade hit the glass, sent it clattering in jagged shards. The

convertible rumbled through the opening, pivoted to the right, bounced a

diminutive passenger car aside, took the center of the avenue. Chester

sounded the Last Trump horns as the clasho-mesh shifted into high with a

squeal of treads. The crowd scattered before the onrushing monster. An alert

patrol car started up, gunned back into the car's path. Chester swerved, felt

the rear quarters of the smaller vehicle crunch as the treads mounted it. He

swerved to avoid a Good Humor man, clipped a beer truck with the tip of

the blade, dumping it on its side. A head formed in the street.

Chester rounded into the street where a scattering of excited office workers

clustered on the courthouse lawn. The north wing, the Chief had said.

Chester squinted at the sun, steering for the opening in the hedge. North

was to the right.

People were staring, pointing, then turning to run as the giant machine

clattered across the curb, trampled the hedge and struck out across the lawn.

A petunia bed disappeared under the relentless treads. High in the red brick

side of the building, narrow barred windows were set at ten-foot intervals.

Beneath them, the caterpillar ground to a halt. Over the rumble of the engine

Chester heard excited cries. Faces appeared at the cell windows.

Chester opened the cab door and leaned out. "Genie!" he called. "It's I,

Chester!"

There was a boom, and a bullet whined off the flank of the convertible.

Chester ducked back inside. Above, he saw a familiar oval face appear at a

window. He waved frantically. Genie waved back uncertainly. Chester

threw the clasho-mesh in reverse and gunned back, pivoted, then moved

forward. He set the corner of the blade against the brick wall and pressed

the accelerator. The treads ground; the caterpillar bucked, then the treads

spun helplessly as the turf gave way. A mighty stream of soil boiled out

behind the machine.

Chester backed, lowered the blade, then raced the engine. The massive

machine leaped forward and crashed against the brick wall with a

thunderous impact. Chester felt the seat lurch; then bricks and mortar were

falling, bounding off the polished hood, clattering against the plastic canopy.

Clouds of dust rose. Timbers dropped, bent nails showing, where broken

two-by-four studding dangled.

Chester backed off, looked over the situation. The gun boomed again, four

times, rapidly. Two stars appeared in the plastic dome near his head. The

cell-block wall showed a six-foot-high, ten-foot-wide gap, through which

office furniture was visible. As he watched, another section of mortared

bricks dropped. He moved in, hit the wall again. When he backed out from

the load of debris, the upper floor joists were visible, sagging under a

horizontal steel member. Chester moved in, jarred the wall again. A large

section fell, exposing the open sides of two cells. He could see the iron-

legged cots aslant on the tilted floor.

Chester maneuvered the caterpillar close to the shattered wall, raised the

canopy and shouted to Genie. She appeared, on hands and knees, looking

down over the edge at the huge, rumbling machine.

"Come on, quickly, Genie!" Chester beckoned urgently. He took a look over

his shoulder. The fat cop was struggling to stuff cartridges into the cylinder

of his foot-long revolver. Other cops were running in various directions.

"Is it really you, Chester?" Genie's voice quavered.

"Hurry!" Chester held up his arms. Genie moved then, turning to lower her

trim, booted legs over the side, then slide down, hang by her hands and

drop. Chester caught her, bundled her inside and slammed down the

bubbletop just as the cop's gun went off. He backed quickly, turned, gunned

off across the lawn. There were more shots. A bullet clanged off the canopy.

"Chester-it is you! You look so different-so handsome!"

"Genie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to run out on you; I got back as soon as I

could. But-"

"Why, Chester, you were marvelous! I knew it was you as soon as you said

'it is F instead of 'it's me.' Wherever did you get this marvelous machine?"

"Nice, isn't it? Just the thing for traffic. Air conditioning, soundproofing-

and bulletproof glass, luckily for us. But what I wanted to say was, I'm

terribly sorry about you having to spend almost a year in jail."

"A year? Why, Chester, it hasn't been more than two hours since the

policemen took us away!"

Chester blinked. "But... but..."

"Where will we go now, Chester? And where did you get those clothes, and

that suntan, and those big, strong arms?"

"I... but I mean-you... Well, never mind. We'll figure it out later. Right

now we have to clear a path through to the rug."

Chester swung the caterpillar into the street where the cop-guarded rug

waited. A fire engine, approaching at flank speed, swerved, mounted the

curb, clipped off a fire plug and came to a halt in a striking display of

waterworks. Chester slowed, crimped the wheel, lumbered past a police car

and crunched to a stop. He opened the canopy and, amid shouts, assisted

Genie out. She leaped lightly across the remains of splintered yellow

sawhorses to the rug. Chester followed. A pair of the ever-present pink-

coated policemen charged, sticks ready.

"Now!" Chester said, seizing Genie's hand. "Take us back to where we left

Case, Computer! And don't make any mistakes on your coordinates this

time!"

A>

HE SHADOWS of the tall buildings dissolved into sunny skies. Chester and

Genie stood on the grassy slope in the shade pf the spreading branches. She

turned to him, put soft arms around him.

"Oh, Chester. This is such fun!"

"Fun? Great heavens, Genie! Those people were shooting real bullets at us!"

"But you wouldn't let anything happen, I know."

"Well-at least it's a great relief to know you didn't actually spend a year in

that cell. If you knew how I've been picturing you, languishing in durance

vile-and Case! I assumed I was far too late to help him-but now, if we

hurry-"

"I'm sure he'll be all right." Genie looked anxiously toward the ridge. "Still, I

don't see the smoke any longer. I hope the fire hasn't burned down to the

proper size for Mr. Mulvihill already."

"If those blasted natives have singed one hair of Case's head, I'll mow the

whole tribe down!"

Twenty minutes' brisk walk brought them to the edge of the forest. On the

trail ahead, two cleanshaven, sarong-clad men and a beautifully

proportioned woman appeared. They paused, then flung up hands in

greeting and began to dance and sing.

"Looks like a different tribe," Chester said. "Much better-looking people."

"They seem to want us to follow them."

With excited beckoning gestures the natives had turned and were darting

away along a path.

"Well, we happen to be going in that direction anyway."

Chester and Genie moved on along the rough trail, came to the clearing

where they had watched Case battle the giant.

"Not a sign of them," said Chester, looking around. "The cages are gone,

everything." They pressed on, climbed a wooded slope and emerged from

the forest into a wide village street, tree-lined and shady, bordered by beds

of wild flowers behind which neat huts of brick, boards or split saplings

dotted a parklike lawn. From a large house halfway along the street an

imposing old man emerged, clad in neatly cut shorts and vest of coarse

cloth. He pulled at a vast white beard as he came toward them.

"Good Lord!" said Chester, bewildered. "This is the wrong place, Genie!

What kind of setting have you landed us in this time?"

"I don't know, Chester."

"Look at the old man with the beard. He's immense. I'll swear he must be an

early Mulvihill; he looks enough like Case to be his grandfather." The old

man came up, looked piercingly at

Chester, then at Genie. He pulled at his beard, nodding to himself.

"Well," he said. "So you came back after all."

Chester and Genie sat with Case on benches under a wild-cherry tree at the

crest of a rise that fell away to a blue lake under steep pine-covered hills. A

native girl poured brown wine from a stone jar into irregular mugs of heavy

glass.

"Tell me that again, slow and easy, Chester," said Case. "You say it's the

same day as when you left here?"

"For Genie it is. I lived through ten months."

"You Jo look different, Chester. I guess there's more to this business than

meets the eye. That damn computer must have its time meters scrambled."

"Case, we thought they'd be roasting you alive. How did you manage to get

into their good graces?"

"Well, let's see. The last I saw of you two, you were sneaking off behind a

tree. I kept juggling for an hour. Then I did a few back flips and handstands,

and then I got them to give me a rope and rigged it and did some rope-

walking. By that time they'd noticed you were gone. I made a few motions

to give 'em the idea you'd flown away in good demon style. They didn't care

much; they wanted to see more rope work."

"By that time you must have thought we'd abandoned you."

"I admit I was a little mad at first when you didn't come charging over the

hill with the Marines in tow. I guess it took a couple of years to get used to

the idea I was stuck here. I figured something had happened to you, and I'd

better just make the best of it. By that time I rated pretty high with the locals.

They let me have the best den back in the thicket, and brought me all the

food I wanted. It wasn't fancy but it was an easy life. Course, after thirty

years..."

"Thirty years!"

Case nodded his white-maned head. "Yep. Near as I can tell. I used to cut

notches in a tree for the years, but sometimes I was so busy I forgot."

"Busy? Doing what?"

"Well, there I was laying around all day, doing nothing, watching the

natives scratch for a living, dirty, hungry, ignorant, dying of diseases,

getting chewed up by bears or wildcats. And the food they gave me-half-

raw dog meat, pounded raw turnips, now and then a mess of sour berries.

Every now and then I'd have to put on a show, a little juggling or acrobatic

work, just enough to keep the evil spirits out of town.

"Then one day I got to thinking. The country around here was the kind of

real estate some smart developer could make a fortune out of back home. All

it needed was the brush cut back and the trees trimmed and the lake shore

cleaned up and garbage piles carted off somewhere and some fruit trees and

flowers planted...

"Well, before I could do any tree-trimming I had to have an ax. That meant I

needed some iron. By that time I could get by O.K. in the native language. I

asked 'em if they knew any place where there was red dirt; told 'em it was

important magic. A few weeks later a hunting party came back from the

other side of the lake with some pretty good samples. The witch doctor had

some coal-used it to carve gods out of, 'cause it was easy to work. I built a

furnace and piled it full of lumps of ore and chunks of coal and set it off,

and, sure enough, after a couple of hours melted iron started running out

the bottom of the furnace."

"Case, what do you know about smelting iron?" Chester interrupted. "You

didn't happen to bring along The Handyman's Home Smelter's Handbook, did

you?"

"I cast half a dozen ax and hatchet heads in clay molds the first time. They

came out pretty good. I sharpened 'em up on a flat stone, and then heated

'em and dunked 'em in a pot of water. They hardened pretty good. Later on I

got the formula down pat. It depends mostly on how much coal and stuff

you've got in with the ore."

"A carbon content of between .7 and 1.7 per cent produces the optimum

combination of hardness and malleability," said Genie.

"I wish you'd been here, kid," said Case with a sigh. "You could have been a

big help. But we managed. I pounded out a knife blade and fitted a handle

to it and used that to cut ax handles. Then I put the natives to work clearing

land-and it wasn't for show. The local wild life couldn't sneak up on the

village any more-no cover. I had 'em root out all the bushes and coarse

stuff, and the native grasses took over. We undercut all the trees as high as a

man could reach. Then I had 'em shape the trees, pull down all the vines and

stuff. Made it look like a regular park around here.

"Then we went to work on the lake. We made up some flat boats and got out

and cleaned up the dead branches and cattails and then did a little dredging;

built up a nice beach along this side. I rigged some fishing gear out of leather

strips, showed 'em how to catch trout, and then staged a big fish fry. They

didn't want to touch the fish; wasn't what their grandpaws ate, I guess.

These kids were as conservative as a bunch of Ivy League alumni. But I gave

'em the old magic routine and they tried it. Now they spend half their time

out on the lake. We made up a couple of saws and I showed 'em how to slice

a tree into boards, and we built a few rowboats. Funny thing was, before

long a couple of boys were ahead of me on boat-building-and fishing too. I

made 'em up some bows and arrows and cast some iron arrowheads. Made

up skinning knives and showed 'em how to scrape a hide and work it till it

was soft.

"There were a lot of wild sheep and cattle around. We made up a batch of

braided ropes and went out and brought in a couple of young goats and a

half-grown critter that looked like an overgrown Texas longhorn. Later on

we got a couple of newborn calves, a male and a female. In a couple of years

we had a nice herd going. We let 'em graze the park here to keep the grass

down. And o' course I showed 'em how to milk, and we experimented

around and made some cheese."

"I didn't know you knew that much about animal husbandry," Chester put

in.

"Anybody that's worked around a circus knows which end of a critter to

feed. That was the least of my problems. I was getting a lot of pleasure out of

admiring the beach and the park, and thinking what a pile of dough I could

make out of it if I had it all back home. Then I'd see a couple of the local gals

come trotting by, buck naked, grimy, fat, with stringy hair, and pretty gamy,

if you got too close to 'em." Case sighed. "I wasn't much better, I guess. I'd

kinda got out of the habit of shaving, and there wasn't too much point in

taking a bath if you had to put the same old leather drawers back on. So I

decided it was time to give a little thought to developing the feminine

industries.

"The first thing I needed was some cloth, to get away from the smell of

hides. I tried some wool off these goats we keep. It wasn't much good. We

scouted around for some wild cotton, but couldn't find any. Finally

discovered a kind of flax. Went to work and rigged up a spinning wheel.

That took the best part of a year, but we finally worked it out. We spun up a

big batch of yarn. I had a loom ready; that wasn't so hard. We set it up and

wove us a blanket.

"Well, I trained a few of the girls, and set 'em to work spinning and weaving.

Made up some needles out of bone; couldn't manage it in steel. I wasn't

much of a seamster, but I had lots of time. I cobbled up a pair of breeches for

myself first, then a shirt. But heck, it's too warm here for sleeves, and

anyway they're hard to make. I settled on a vest; it's just right to keep the

chill off on a cool morning."

"What about the winter?"

"Funny thing, there don't seem to be any seasons here. Stays about like this

year around."

"Pre-Ice Age," Genie murmured.

"Then I had to make soap. I messed around with animal fat and ashes and

finally worked out a pretty good formula. I had to make 'em wash, at first,

but I gave 'em the old Great Spirit routine, and pretty soon they were down

at the lake scrubbing something every time I turned around. They're as bad

as a bunch of Methodists when it comes to trying to make points upstairs

with something easier than laying off sin. And once you get clean, you itch if

you start letting dirt pile up again-and you start noticing your roommate-

so the last few holdouts got dunked and scrubbed.

"Then I saw the need for a little civic improvement. The dump where we'd

been living all this time was alive with fleas and rats and the damnedest

collection of chewed bones, worn-out hides, magic frogs' innards,

mummified totem animals, and other junk-just like Grandma's attic back

home. They were a little mad at first when I burned it down. I told 'em it

was the word from on high and that the place had to go, but there was a

crafty little devil of a witch doctor that had the confounded gall to stand up

and call me a liar. Imagine!"

"Well, after all, Case, you had been telling them everything you'd been

doing was divinely ordained."

"Worked pretty good, too. It might even be true. Anyway, after I took the

witch doctor down and dumped him in the lake, nobody else complained."

"You were lucky he let it go at that. From what I've read about shamans,

they can be dangerous enemies."

"Oh, I hadn't taught anybody to swim yet."

"You mean you drowned him? Case, wasn't that a little drastic?"

"Maybe. But I figured that if I was setting up a society, I might as well do it

along realistic lines. There's no point in letting somebody half your size push

you around-especially when you're right. A weakling makes as bad a

dictator as anybody else. The way I saw it, it was up to me to stand up for

my ideas."

"The next big man might not be as interested in the public welfare as you

were, Case. What then?"

"To tell you the truth, Chester, I wasn't interested in the public welfare. I was

only interested in making a comfortable place for me to live in. I wanted

clean, healthy people around, because I don't like smelling dirty, sick ones. I

wanted them to live good so they'd have the time and inclination to learn

the things I was trying to teach them, like fishing-so I could eat fish; raising

beef, so I could eat steak-and, later on, painting pictures that I could look at

and making music for me to hear and taking an interest in cookery so they

could lay on a good feed for me and being happy so there'd be a nice

atmosphere in the village. In the end I discovered that I got a lot more

pleasure out of associating with a nice bunch of people than out of anything

else.

"I started some of 'em wood-carving, and other ones farming, and some of

them making glass. I scoured the woods for new plants we could raise for

food, and I kept trying out new dirt samples for other metals. Now we've

got copper and lead and a little gold-and I've trained people to go on

looking. I've started 'em thinking about things and trying new ideas. And

ever since I drowned the witch doctor, I've played down the spirit angle.

The younger generation doesn't need the threat of spooks to do things;

they've got an interest that keeps them busy. A lot of them are way ahead of

me now. They learn fast. I wouldn't be surprised if one of 'em doesn't invent

chemistry any day now, or fire up a steam engine, or discover medicine."

"But a tyrant..."

"Any tyrant that sets up shop around here better be damned sure he doesn't

develop any unpopular tastes," said Case. "These folks put up with me

because I bring 'em good things. They're selfish, just like me. I've established

a precedent. The next boss better keep it up, or he'll be joining the witch

doctor."

"It seems to have worked out well," Chester said, looking around at the

peaceful village in the gathering twilight. "Still, I can't help feeling you

should have instilled a little more idealism in them. Suppose they fall on

hard times? What if the climate changes, or an epidemic strikes, or even a

forest fire?"

"I don't think phony idealism would help. As far as I can see, all these

schemes to make people squeeze into somebody's Grand Plan for Elevating

Humanity usually end up with the elevatees on the short end of the stick.

Everybody has his place in this village and a job to do that he's good at. My

shoemakers can hold their heads up and the same goes for the fishermen

and the hunters and the miners and the weavers and the vintners and the

potmakers."

"What about the arts? With this materialistic orientation..."

"Everybody dances and everybody sings. They all play games and they all

make statues out of mud and they all paint. Some are better than others, but

it's doing it that counts. In our setup everybody's an artist, not just a few half-

cracked far-outers."

"There don't seem to be many people here," said Genie. "Not more than three

hundred, I'd estimate."

"Too many people in one place mean problems. Sanitation, transportation,

noise, conflict of interests. There's plenty of wide-open real estate. I've got

twelve other villages going within fifty miles of here-and none of them

have over three hundred people. Everybody can have all the kids they want,

but if you put the village over the three-hundred mark, off you go to start

your own. There's always plenty of volunteers to go along-people that

want to get a good spot right on a lake or river, or hunters that like the idea

of a virgin territory. There's a lot of trade among the towns, and the men

usually get their wives from another village. Seems like it's human nature to

prefer to go to bed with a stranger."

"It makes the Internal Revenue Bureau seem very remote," Chester said.

"Why do we surround ourselves with unnecessary complexities?"

"Chester, this is a pretty good place here. Why don't you just settle down

and forget all that?"

Chester shook his head. "I started off by trying to wiggle out of my tax

problem with illegal schemes to make money. Then, when I landed you in

trouble, I sneaked away and left you."

"But we agreed-"

"Genie tried to help me, and I left her stranded, too," Chester went on. "I'd

just about hit bottom when Kuve took me in hand. When I broke out of the

Research Center, I made up my mind I'd settle my score. I helped out a

fellow named Bandon, and I paid Devant for a couple of undignified

incidents. Then I was lucky enough to find Genie. I'm sorry about your

tough time, Case. I've cost you thirty years."

"Best thirty years of my life, Chester. And now you're even."

"No, I still have the circus to think about."

"Hey, that's right, Chester. If it's really thirty years ago-I mean if thirty

years haven't gone by-then maybe it's not too late to salvage something

yet!"

"And," Chester went on, "there's Great-grandfather's invention to see to. He

spent his life on it-and he's left it in my hands. It's up to me to save it. And

there's something else, too."

Case got to his feet. "Well, no time like the present, Chester. Let's get going."

Half an hour later, Chester, Case, Genie and a chattering group of villagers

stepped under the trees toward the rug and the two brocaded chairs.

"Case, I suppose you'll want to make a speech, appoint a successor, make a

few prophecies, whatever white gods usually do before sailing off into the

sunset."

Case sighed. "I've got a lot of friends here, Chester. I'll hate to leave 'em. But

there's no point in making a national holiday out of it. I've been trying to

teach 'em how to run things for thirty years. I don't guess any last-minute

instructions are going to change anything."

"Then let's go, Genie," Chester said. "But be sure you put us back in the right

spot: specifically, Great-grandfather's underground control room."

Genie had a faraway look in her eyes. "I'm in touch with the computer," she

said. "But..."

"What is it, Genie?"

"It appears," she said, "that the world we started from no longer exists."

A>

A NUMBER OF AWFUL suspicions are beginning to crystalize into

convictions," Chester said. "Your villages, with their population limit of

three hundred, and the Tricennia, where I spent a year. Could that have

been this society at some remote time in the future?"

"Beats me, Chester. I've given up trying to figure out anything that has to do

with that blasted computer."

"If so, that would mean we've tampered with actual reality. We asked the

computer to show us scenes of the past in the simplest possible way-"

"You mean that infernal contraption came up with the genuine article

instead of a good honest fake?"

Chester nodded. "I'm afraid our hoax has backfired, Case. The computer

really is a time machine."

"When we were bodily transferred into the past," Chester said, "our presence

there altered the future. I recall now that the computer seemed to imagine

that the Tricennium was Great-grandfather's basement."

"But what about the city with those awful pink policemen, Chester?" Genie

asked. "It was very similar to home, except for being a little out of date-and

I imagine that was because Mr. Mulvihill's absence unbalanced things a

little."

"Case had only been here a short time then; he hadn't yet altered things

completely out of recognizable shape."

"So I guess we settle here after all."

"Let's ask the computer a few questions. Are we completely cut off from

getting back home, Genie?"

"A wide spectrum of entropic streams was rendered invalid by factors at the

eighth level of complexity stemming from Mr. Mulvihill's introduction

"Yeah," Case cut in, "but what about Chester's estate?"

"It has been relegated to the status of an unrealized pseudo-reality."

"Why didn't that moronic aggregation of war-surplus parts mention this in

the first place?"

"It's a machine, remember," Chester said. "No initiative. We didn't ask."

"Well, if the house is gone, then where's the computer?"

"Shunted to a temporal vacuole," Genie said.

"Hey, Chester," Case said. "I've got a crafty notion." He raised his voice.

"Computer, could you... ah... show us what Great-grandpop's place looked

like-if it existed?"

"Oh, yes, easily." There was a moment of delay; then glassy walls

shimmered into view around the group.

"I must caution you that this is a mere optical effect," Genie said. "It

represents no substantive referent."

"You may have something here, Case," Chester said. "Computer, I'd like this

view firmed up a little-more detail, greater verisimilitude. More realism."

"I'm not at all sure I can manage it, Mr. Chester. It involves readjusting my

parameters drastically, which induces a severe electronic itch."

"Try."

"The effort may leave you isolated in a mass-probability environment whose

very existence I have every reason to doubt."

"We'll take the chance."

There was a moment of silence. Then:

"There, I've managed tactile quality. You could feel the wall now if you

touched it."

"Now add in taste, smell and sound effects. And daub in some externals,

too."

After a moment the computer said, "I've extended the effect to include a

pseudo-house, with pseudo-grounds, surrounded by pseudo-atmosphere."

"Breathable, I hope?"

"Oh, of course. All my illusions are of the finest quality and extremely

accurate."

"In that case, you may proceed to supply the rest of the planet. Take your

time and do a good job now."

"That last admonition was hardly called for, Mr. Chester."

"Sorry. But can you do it?"

"Oh, I've already finished."

"So now there's an apparent world outside, resembling the real one in every

respect?"

"Yes, indeed; except that it isn't real, of course."

Chester crossed to the door, flung it open. The familiar dusty wine bottles

lay quietly in their cradles opposite the reels and flashing lights of the

control panel.

"This may not be home," Chester said, "but I think the point is academic."

There was a peremptory rap at the door.

"What's that?"

"A Mr. Overdog of the Bureau of Internal Revenue," the computer answered.

"Well, you asked for realism," Case said. "Shall I let him in?"

"How does he know about this place?" Chester asked.

"Oh, I informed him of it by letter," the computer spoke up. "Retroactively."

"Why? Haven't we got enough trouble?"

"You indicated that you wished the tax problem dealt with. I took

appropriate action."

"Say, how much time's passed here while we were out building universes?"

Case inquired.

"Seven days, two hours, forty-one minutes and two seconds."

"Shall I let him in, Chester?"

"You may as well."

The door was opened to reveal a lean, red-eyed man with an old-fashioned

hat of orange fur covering his hairless head. He eyed Case and Genie.

"I received your letter," he snapped. "Where's Mr. Chester? I trust you're

ready to get on with it. I'm a busy man."

"Why... ah..." Chester started.

More footsteps sounded. A portly man with ice-blue eyes under shaggy

white brows puffed into the room.

"Mr. Chester," he began without preamble, "before concluding any

agreement with the IRS, I hope you will entertain my offer."

"What are you doing here, Klunt?" Overdog snapped.

"Who's this?" Chester whispered urgently to Genie.

"He's from the Bureau of Vital Statistics," she whispered back. "He got a

letter, too."

"When did all these letters get written? There hasn't been time since we

remanufactured the world."

"It's remarkable what you can do with temporal vacuoles," Genie said. "The

letters were postmarked three days ago."

"What kind of offer did you have in mind, Mr. Ahhh?" said Case.

"Assuming your... ah... information storage device functions as I've been

informed, I'm prepared to offer you, on behalf of the Bureau of Vital

Statistics..."

"I'll settle for half the tax bill," Overdog cut in. "And we'll entertain the idea

of a liberal settlement of the balance, say, over a two-year period. Generous,

I'd say. Generous in the extreme."

"Vital Statistics will go higher. We'll pay two full thirds of the bill!" Klunt

stared at Overdog triumphantly.

"It's a conspiracy! You're playing with prison, Klunt!" He turned hard eyes

on Chester. "Final word, Mr. Chester. Complete forgiveness of the entire tax

debt! Think of it!"

"Chicken feed!" snorted Klunt. "I'll have a check for five million credits ready

for you in the morning."

"Sold!" Chester said.

"On an annual lease basis, of course," Case added.

"Giving us full rights of access," Chester amended.

"A deal, gentlemen! I'll revolutionize Vital Statistics with this apparatus!

With the increased volume of information, I should say a staff increase of

fifty persons would not be excessive, eh, Overdog?"

"Bah! I'll expect your check tomorrow, Mr. Chester-and another next

March!" He stalked out. Klunt followed, planning happily.

"Well, that's taken care of," Case said, beaming. "Nice work, Chester, I guess

the Wowser Wonder Shows won't have to worry for a while."

Chester opened the door and looked out. "You're sure it's safe out there,

Computer?" he called.

"The question seems to have become academic, Mr. Chester. A reappraisal

indicates that the present scene is substantive after all. Mr. Mulvihill's

village was a figment of the imagination, I now perceive."

"Oh yeah? What about this beard?"

"Psychosomatic," the computer said without conviction.

"What about Genie?" Case asked. "Do we leave her stored here, or what?"

"Genie's coming with me," Chester said.

"Well, I figured maybe she was part of the lease."

"Lease? Nonsense. Genie's as human as I am."

"Don't kid me, Chester. We were both here when she was built-right,

Computer?"

"You asked that I produce a mobile speaker in the configuration of a nubile

female," the computer replied. "The easiest method was to initiate the

process of maturation in a living human cell."

"You mean you grew Genie from a human cell-in a matter of hours?"

"The body was matured in a time vacuole."

"But... where did you get the cell?"

"I had one on hand-one of yours, Mr. Mulvihill. I took a blood specimen for

identification purposes, if you recall."

"But that's impossible. I'm a male!"

"It was necessary to manipulate the X and Y chromosome balance."

"So I'm a mother," said Case wonderingly, "and an unwed mother at that. It

figures, though-growing a real girl was simpler than building one out of

old alarm clocks."

"In that case," Chester said, taking Genie's hand, "I hope you'll consent to

give the bride away in your capacity as both parents-assuming Genie

agrees."

"Oh, Chester," Genie said.

"Well, folks," Case boomed, "let's have a drink and get used to the idea."

"I'll be along in a few minutes," Chester said. "I want to have a talk with the

computer first."

"What about?"

"I've spent twenty-five years in society and contributed nothing. Now I'm

going to start a school-just a small institution for a few selected students, at

first. I want to see what I can do to straighten out a few of the world's

irrationalities. The computer has the facts-and, thanks to Kuve, I've learned

to think."

"Yep, you've changed, all right, Chester. Well, take your time. We'll wait."

Chester settled himself in a brocaded chair." All right, Computer. Here we

go with your first lesson: Is-not is not not-is. Not-is is not-is not. Not-is-not is

not is..."

A>