On the Sand Planet 

This is the story of the sand planet itself,
Mizzer, which had lost all hope when the tyrant Wedder imposed the
reign of terror and virtue.  And its liberator, Casher O'Neill of whom
strange things were told, from the day of blood in which he fled from
his native city of Kaheer, until he came back to end the shedding of
blood for all the rest of his years.

Everywhere that Casher had gone, he had had only one thought in his
mind deliverance of his home country from the tyrants whom he himself
had let slip into power when they had conspired against his uncle, the
unspeakable Kuraf.  He never forgot, whether waking or sleeping.  He
never forgot Kaheer itself along the First Nile, where the horses raced
on the turf with the sand nearby.  He never forgot the blue skies of
his home and the great dunes of the desert between one Nile and the
others.  He remembered the freedom of a planet built and dedicated to
freedom.  He never forgot that the price of blood is blood, that the
price of freedom is fighting, that the risk of fighting is death.  But
he was not a fool.  He was willing, if he had to, to risk his own
death, but he wanted odds on the battle which would not merely snare
him home, like a rabbit to be caught in a steel trap, by the police of
the dictator Wedder.

And then, he met the solution of his crusade without knowing it at
first.  He had come to the end of all things, all problems, all
worries.  He had also come to the end of all ordinary hope.  He met
T'ruth.  Now her subtle powers belonged to Casher O'Neill, to do with
as he pleased.

It pleased him to return to Mizzer, to enter Kaheer itself, and to
confront Wedder.

Why should he not come?  It was his home and he thirsted for revenge.
More than revenge he hungered for justice.  He had lived many years for
this hour and this hour came.

He entered the north gate of Kaheer.

Casher walked into Mizzer wearing the uniform of a medical technician
in Wedder's own military service.  He had assumed the appearance and
the name of a dead man named Bindaoud.  Casher walked with nothing more
than his hands as weapons, and his hands swung freely at the end of his
arms.

Only the steadfastness of his feet, the resolute grace with which he
took each step, betrayed his purpose.  The crowds in the street saw him
pass but they did not see him.  They looked at a man and they did not
realize that they saw their own history going step by step through
their various streets.  Casher O'Neill had entered the city of Kaheer;
he knew that he was being followed.  He could feel it.

He glanced around.

He had learned in his many years of fighting and struggle, on strange
planets, countless rules of unremembered hazards.

To be alert, he knew what this was.  It was a suchesache.  The
suchesache at the moment had taken the shape of a small witless boy,
some eight years old, who had two trails of stained mucus pouring down
from his nostrils, who had forever-open lips ready to call with the
harsh bark of idiocy, who had eyes that did not focus right.  Casher
O'Neill knew that this was a boy and not a boy.  It was a hunting and
searching device often employed by police lords when they presumed to
make themselves into kings or tyrants, a device which flitted from
shape to shape, from child to butterfly or bird, which moved with the
suchesache and watched the victim; watching, saying nothing, following.
He hated the suchesache and was tempted to throw all the powers of his
strange mind at it so that the boy might die and the machine hidden
within it might perish.  But he knew that this would lead to a cascade
of fire and splashing of blood.  He had already seen blood in Kaheer
long ago; he had no wish to see it in the city again.

Instead he stopped the pacing which had been following his cadenced
walk through the street.  He turned calmly and kindly and looked at the
boy, and he said to the boy and to the hideous machine within the
boy,

"Come along with me; I'm going straightway to the palace and you would
like to see that."

The machine, confronted, had no further choice.

The idiot boy put his hand in Casher's hand and somehow or other Casher
O'Neill managed to resume the rolling deliberate march which had marked
so many of his years, while keeping a grip on the hand of the demented
child who skipped beside him.  Casher could still feel the machine
watching him from within the eyes of the boy.  He did not care; he was
not afraid of guns; he could stop them.  He was not afraid of poison;
he could resist it.  He was not afraid of hypnotism; he could take it
in and spit
it back.  He was not afraid of fear; he had been on Henriada.  He had
come home through space-three.  There was nothing left to fear.

Straightway went he to the palace.  The midday gleamed in the bright
yellow sun which rode the skies of Kaheer.  The whitewashed walls in
the arabesque design stayed as they had been for thousands of years.
Only at the door was he challenged, but the sentry hesitated as Casher
spoke: "I am Bindaoud, loyal servant to Colonel Wedder, and this is a
child of the streets whom I propose to heal in order to show our good
Colonel Wedder a fair demonstration of my powers."

The sentry said something into a little box which sat in the wall.

Casher passed freely.  The suchesache trotted beside him.  As he went
through the corridors, laid with rich rugs, military and civilians
moving back and forth, he felt happy.  This was not the palace of
Wedder, though Wedder lived in it.  It was his own palace.  He, Casher,
had been born in it.  He knew it.  He knew every corridor.

The changes of the years were very few.  Casher turned left into an
open courtyard.  He smelled the smell of salt water and the sand and
the horses nearby.  He sighed a little at the familiarity of it, the
good and kind welcome.  He turned right again and ascended long, long
stairs.  Each step was carpeted in a different design.

His uncle Kuraf had stood at the head of these very stairs while men
and women, boys and girls were brought to him to become toys of his
evil pleasures.  Kuraf had been too fat to walk down these stairs to
greet them.  He always let the captives come up to himself and to his
den of pleasures.  Casher reached the top of the stairs and turned
left.

This was no den of pleasures now.

It was the office of Colonel Wedder.  He, Casher, had reached it.

How strange it was to reach this office, this target of all his hopes,
this one fevered pinpoint in all the universe for which his revenge had
thirsted until he thought himself mad.  He had thought of bombing this
office from outer space, or of cutting it with the thin arc of a laser
beam, or of poisoning it with chemicals, or of assaulting it with
troops.  He had thought of pouring fire on this building, or water.  He
had dreamed of making Mizzer free even at the price of the lovely city
of Kaheer itself by finding a small asteroid somewhere and crashing it,
in an interplanetary tragedy, directly into the city itself.  And the
city, under the roar of that impact, would have blazed into
thermonuclear incandescence and would have become a poison lake at the
end of the Twelve Niles.  He had thought of a thousand ways of entering
the city and of destroying the city, merely in order to destroy
Wedder.

Now he was here.  So too was Wedder.

Wedder did not know that he, Casher O'Neill, had come back.

Even less did Wedder know who Casher O'Neill had become, the master of
space, the traveler who traveled without ships, the vehicle for devices
stranger than any mind on Mizzer had ever conceived.

Very calm, very relaxed, very quiet, very assured, the doom which was
Casher O'Neill walked into the antechamber of Wedder.  Very modestly,
he asked for Wedder.

The dictator happened to be free.

He had changed little since Casher last saw him, a little older, a
little fatter, a little wiser all these perhaps.  Casher was not sure.
Every cell and filament in his living body had risen to the alert.  He
was ready to do the work for which the light-years had ached, for which
the worlds had turned, and he knew that within an instant it would be
done.  He confronted Wedder, gave Wedder a modest assured smile.

"Your servant, the technician Bindaoud, sir and colonel,"

said Casher O'Neill.  Wedder looked at him strangely.  He reached out
his hand, and, even as their hands touched, Wedder said the last words
he would ever say on his own.

Within that handclasp, Wedder spoke again and his voice was strange:
"Who are you?"

Casher had dreamed that he would say,

"I am Casher O'Neill come back from unimaginable distances to punish
you," or that he would say,

"I am Casher O'Neill and I have ridden star lanes for years upon years
to find your destruction."  Or he had even thought that he might say,

"Surrender or die, Wedder, your time has come."  Sometimes he had
dreamed he would say,

"Here, Wedder," and then show him the knife with which to take his
blood.

Yet this was the climax and none of these things occurred.

The idiot boy with the machine within it stood at ease.

Casher O'Neill merely held Wedder's hand and said quite simply,

"Your friend."

As he said that, he searched back and forth.  He could feel inner eyes
within his own head, eyes which did not move within the sockets of his
face, eyes which he did not have and with which he could nevertheless
see.  These were the eyes of his perception.

Quickly, he adjusted the anatomy of Wedder, working kin esthetically
squeezing an artery there, pinching off a gland here.  Here, harden the
tissue, through which the secretions of a given endocrine material had
to come.  In less time than it would take an ordinary doctor to
describe the process, he had changed Wedder.  Wedder had been tuned
down like a radio with dials realigned, like a spaceship with its lock
sheets reset.

The work which Casher had done was less than any pilot does in the
course of an ordinary landing; but the piloting he had done was within
the
biochemical system of Wedder himself.  And the changes which he had
effected were irreversible.

The new Wedder was the old Wedder.  The same mind.  The same will, the
same personality.  Yet its permutations were different.  And its method
of expression already slightly different.

More benign.  More tolerant.  More calm, more human.  Even a little
corrupt, as he smiled and said,

"I remember you, now, Bindaoud.  Can you help that boy?"

The supposed Bindaoud ran his hands over the boy.  The boy wept with
pain and shock for a moment.  He wiped his dirty nose and upper lip on
his sleeves.  His eyes came into focus.  His lips compressed.  His mind
burned brightly as its old worn channels became human instead of idiot.
The suchesache machine knew it was out of place and fled for another
refuge.  The boy, given his brains, but no words, no education yet,
stood there and hiccupped with joy.

Wedder said very pleasantly,

"That is remarkable.  Is it all that you have to show me?"

"All," said Casher O'Neill.

"You were not he."

He turned his back on Wedder and did so in perfect safety.

He knew Wedder would never kill another man.

Casher stopped at the door and looked back.  He could tell from the
posture of Wedder that that which had to be done, had been done: the
changes within the man were larger than the man himself.  The planet
was free and Casher's own work was indeed done.  The suddenly
frightened child, which had lost the suchesache, followed him out of
blind instinct.

The colonels and the staff officers did not know whether to salute or
nod when they saw their chief stand at the doorway, and waved with
unexpected friendliness at Casher O'Neill as Casher descended the broad
carpeted steps, the child stumbling behind him.  At the furthest steps,
Casher looked one last time at the enemy who had become almost a part
of himself.  There stood Wedder, the man of blood.  And now, he
himself, Casher O'Neill, had expunged the blood, had redone the past,
and reshaped the future.  All Mizzer was heading back to the openness
and freedom which it had enjoyed in the time of the old Republic of the
Twelve Niles.  He walked on, shifting from one corridor to the other
and using short-cuts to the courtyards, until he came to the doorway of
the palace.  The sentry presented arms.

"At ease," said Casher.  The man put down his gun.

Casher stood outside the palace, that palace which had been his
uncle's, which had been his own, which had really been himself.  He
felt the clear air of Mizzer.  He looked at the clear blue skies which
he had always loved.  He looked at the world to which he had promised
he would return, with justice, with vengeance, with thunder, with
power.  Thanks to the strange
of Man and subtle capacities which he had learned from the
turtle-girl, T'ruth, hidden in her own world amid the storm-churned
atmosphere of Henriada, he had not needed to fight.

Casher turned to the boy and said,

"I am a sword which has been put into its scabbard.  I am a pistol with
the cartridges dropped out.  I am a wire point with no battery behind
it.  I am a man, but I am very empty."

The boy made strangled, confused sounds as though he were trying to
think, to become himself, to make up for all the lost time he had spent
in idiocy.

Casher acted on impulse.  Curiously, he gave to the boy his own native
speech of Kaheer.  He felt his muscles go tight, shoulders, neck,
fingertips, as he concentrated with the arts he had learned in the
palace of Beauregard where the girl T'ruth governed almost-forever in
the name of Mister and Owner Murray Madigan.  He took the arts and
memories he sought.  He seized the boy roughly but tightly by the
shoulders.  He peered into frightened crying eyes and then, in a single
blast of thought, he gave the boy speech, words, memory, ambition,
skills.  The boy stood there dazed.

At last the boy spoke and he asked,

"Who am I?"

Casher could not answer that one.  He patted the child on the shoulder.
He said,

"Go back to the city and find out.  I have other needs.  I have to find
out who I myself may be.  Good-bye and peace be with you."

Casher remembered that his mother still lived here.  He had often
forgotten her.  It would have been easier to forget her.  Her name was
Trihaep, and she had been sister to Kuraf.  Where Kuraf had been
vicious, she had been virtuous.  Where Kuraf had sometimes been
grateful, she had been thrifty and shifty.  Where Kuraf, with all his
evils, had acquired a toleration for men and things and ideas, she
remained set on the pattern of thought which her parents had long ago
taught her.

Casher O'Neill did something he thought he would never do.

He had never really even thought about doing it.  It was too simple. He
went home.

At the gate of the house, his mother's old servant knew him, despite
the change in his face, and she said, with a terrible awe in her
voice,

"It seems to me that I am looking at Casher O'Neill."

"I use the name Bindaoud," said Casher, "but I am Casher O'Neill.  Let
me in and tell my mother that I am here."

He went into the private apartment of his mother.  The old furniture
was still there.  The polished bricabrac of a hundred ages, the old
paintings and the old mirrors, and the dead people whom he had never
known,
represented by their pictures and their mementos.  He felt just as ill
at ease as he felt when he was a small boy, when he had visited the
same room, before his uncle came to take him to the palace.

His mother came in.  She had not changed.

He half-thought that she would reach out her arms to him, and cry in a
deliberately modern passion,

"My baby!  My precious!

Come back to me!"

She did no such thing.

She looked at him coldly as though he were a complete stranger.

She said to him,

"You don't look like my son, but I suppose that you are.  You have made
trouble enough in your time.  Are you making trouble now?"

"I make no malicious trouble.  Mother, and I never have," said Casher,
"no matter what you may think of me.  I did what I had to do.  I did
what was right."

"Betraying your uncle was right?  Letting down our family was right?
Disgracing us all was right?  You must be a fool to talk like this.  I
heard that you were a wanderer, that you had great adventures, and had
seen many worlds.  You don't sound any different to me.  You're an old
man.  You almost seem as old as I do.  I had a baby once, but how could
that be you?  You are an enemy of the house of Kuraf O'Neill.  You're
one of the people who brought it down in blood.  But they came from
outside with their principles and their thoughts and their dreams of
power.  And you stole from inside like a cur.  You opened the door and
you let in ruin.  Who are you that I should forgive you?"

"I do not ask your forgiveness.  Mother," said Casher.

"I do not even ask your understanding.  I have other places to go and
other things yet to do.  May peace be upon you."

She stared at him, said nothing.

He went on,

"You will find Mizzer a more pleasant place to live in, since I talked
to Wedder this morning."

"You talked to Wedder?"  cried she.

"And he did not kill you?"

"He did not know me."

"Wedder did not know you?"

"I assure you, Mother, he did not know me."

"You must be a very powerful man, my son.  Perhaps you can repair the
fortune of the house of Kuraf O'Neill after all the harm you have done,
and all the heartbreak you brought to my brother.

I suppose you know your wife's dead?"

"I had heard that," said Casher.

"I hope she died instantly in an accident and without pain."

"Of course it was an accident.  How else do people die these days?  She
and her husband tried out one of those new boats, and it overturned."

"I'm sorry, I wasn't there."

"I know that.  I know that perfectly well, my son.  You were outside
there, so that I had to look up at the stars with fear.  I could look
up in the sky and stare for the man who was my son lurking up there
with blood and ruin.  With vengeance upon vengeance heaped upon all of
us, just because he thought he knew what was right.  I've been afraid
of you for a long long time, and I thought if I ever met you again I
would fear you with my whole heart.  You don't quite seem to be what I
expected, Casher.  Perhaps I can like you.  Perhaps I can even love you
as a mother should.  Not that it matters.  You and I are too old
now."

"I'm not working on that kind of mission any longer, Mother.  I have
been in this old room long enough and I wish you well.  But I wish many
other people well, too.  I have done what I had to do.  Perhaps I had
better say good-bye, and much later perhaps, I will come back and see
you again.  When both of us know more about what we have to do."

"Don't you even want to see your daughter?"

"Daughter?"  said Casher O'Neill.

"Do I have a daughter?"

"Oh, poor fool, you.  Didn't you even find that out after you left? She
bore your child, all right.  She even went through the old-fashioned
business of a natural birth.  The child even looks something like the
way you used to look.  Matter of fact, she's rather arrogant, like you.
 You can call on her if you want to.

She lives in the house which is just outside the square in Golden Laut
in the leather workers' area.  Her husband's name is Ali Ali.  Look her
up if you want to."

She extended a hand.  Casher took the hand as though she had been a
queen.  And he kissed the cool fingers.  As he looked her in the face,
here, too, he brought his skills from Henriada in place.  He surveyed
and felt her personally as though he were a surgeon of the soul, but in
this case there was nothing for him to do.  This was not a dynamic
personality struggling and fighting and moving against the forces of
life and hope and disappointment.  This was something else, a person
set in life, immobile, determined, rigid even for a man with healing
arts who could destroy a fleet with his thoughts or who could bring an
idiot to normality by mere command.  He could see that this was a case
beyond his powers.

He patted the old hand affectionately and she smiled warmly at him, not
knowing what it meant.

"If anyone asks,"

said Casher, "the name I have been using is that of the Doctor
Bindaoud.  Bindaoud the technician.  Can you remember that, Mother?"

"Bindaoud the technician," she echoed, as she led him out the door to
walk in the street.

Within twenty minutes he was knocking at his daughter's door.

II

The daughter herself answered the door.  She flung it open.

She looked at the strange man, surveyed him from head to heels.

She noted the medical insignia on his uniform.  She noted his mark of
rank.  She appraised him shrewdly, quickly, and she knew he had no
business there in the quarters of the leather workers.

"Who are you?"  she sang out, quickly and clearly.

"In these hours and at this time, I pass under the name of the expert
Bindaoud, a technician and medical man back from the special forces of
Colonel Wedder.  I'm just on leave, you see, but sometime later, madam,
you might find out who I really am, and I thought you better hear it
from my lips.  I'm your father."

She did not move.  The significant thing is that she did not move at
all.  Casher studied her and could see the cast of his own bones in the
shape of her face, could see the length of his own fingers repeated in
her hands.  He had sensed that the storms of duty which had blown him
from sorrow to sorrow, the wind of conscience which had kept alive his
dreams of vengeance, had turned into something very different in her.
It, too, was a force, but not the kind of force he understood.

"I have children now and I would just as soon you not meet them.  As a
matter of fact, you have never done me a good deed except to beget me.
You have never done me an ill deed except to threaten my life from
beyond the stars.  I am tired of you and I am tired of everything you
were or might have been.  Let's forget it.

Can't you go your way and let me be?  I may be your daughter, but I
can't help that."

"As you wish, madam.  I have had many adventures, and I do not propose
to tell them to you.  I can see quickly enough that you have what is
seemingly a good life, and I hope that my deeds this morning in the
palace will have made it better.  You'll find out soon enough.
Good-bye."

The door closed upon him and he walked back through the sun-drenched
market of the leather workers.  There were golden hides there.  Hides
of animals which had then been artfully engraved with very fine strips
of beaten gold so that they gleamed in the sunlight.  Casher looked
upward and around.

Where do I go now?  thought he.  Where do I go when I've done
everything I had to do?  When I've loved everyone I have wanted to
love, when I have been everything I have had to be?  What does a man
with a mission do when the mission is fulfilled?  Who can be more
hollow than a victor?  If I had lost, I could still want revenge.  But
I haven't.  I've won.  And I've won nothing.  I've wanted nothing for
myself from this dear city.  I want nothing from this dear world.  It's
not in my power to give it or to take it.

Where do
of Man I go when I have nowhere to go?  What do I become when I am not
ready for death and I have no reason whatsoever for life?

There sprang into his mind the memory of the world of Henriada with the
twisting snakes of the little tornadoes.  He could see the slender,
pale, hushed face of the girl T'ruth and he remembered at last that
which it was which she had held in her hand.  It was the magic.  It was
the secret sign of the Old Strong Religion.  There was the man forever
dying nailed to two pieces of wood.  It was the mystery behind the
civilization of all these stars.  It was the thrill of the First
Forbidden One, the Second Forbidden One, the Third Forbidden One.  It
was the mystery on which the robot, rat, and Copt agreed when they came
back from space-three.  He knew what he had to do.

He could not find himself because there was no himself to be found.  He
was a used tool.  A discarded vessel.  He was a shard tossed on the
ruins of time, and yet he was a man with eyes and brains to think and
with many unaccustomed powers.

He reached into the sky with his mind, calling for a public flying
machine.

"Come and get me," he said, and the great winged birdlike machine came
soaring over the rooftops and dropped gently into the square.

"I thought I heard you call, sir."

Casher reached into his pocket and took out his imaginary pass signed
by Wedder, authorizing him to use all the vehicles of the republic in
the secret service of the regime of Colonel Wedder.  The sergeant
recognized the pass and almost popped out his eyes in respect.

"The Ninth Nile, can you reach it with this machine?"

"Easily," said the sergeant.

"But you better get some shoes first.  Iron shoes because the ground
there is mostly volcanic glass."

"Wait here for me," said Casher.

"Where can I get the shoes?"

"Two streets over and better get two water bottles, too."

IV

Within a matter of minutes he was back.  The sergeant watched him fill
the bottles in the fountain.  He looked at his medical insignia without
doubt and showed him how to sit on the cramped emergency seat inside
the great machine bird.  They snapped their seat belts and the sergeant
said,

"Ready?"  and the ornithopter spread out its wings, and flew into the
air.

The huge wings were like oars digging into a big sea.  They rose
rapidly and soon Kaheer was below them, the fragile minarets and the
white sand with the racing turf along the river, and the green fields,
and even the pyramids copied from something on Ancient Earth.

The operator did something and the machine flew harder.  The wings,
although far slower than any jet aircraft, were steady, and they moved
with respectable speed across the broad dry desert.

Casher still wore his decimal watch from Henriada, and it was two whole
decimal hours before the sergeant turned around, pinched him gently
awake from the drowse into which he had fallen, shouted something, and
pointed down.  A strip of silver matched by two strips of green
wandering through a wilderness of black, gleaming glittering black,
with the beige sands of the everlasting desert stretching everywhere in
the distance.

"The Ninth Nile?"  shouted Casher.  The sergeant smiled the smile of a
man who had heard nothing but wanted to be agreeable, and the
ornithopter dived with a lurching suddenness toward the twist in the
river.  A few buildings became visible.

They were modest and small.  Verandas, perhaps, for the use of a
visitor.  Nothing more.

It was not the sergeant's business to query anyone on secret orders
from Colonel Wedder.  He showed the cramped Casher O'Neill how to get
out of the ornithopter, and then, standing in his seat, saluted, and
said,

"Anything else, sir?"

Casher said,

"No.  I'll make my own way.  If they ask you who I was, I am the Doctor
Bindaoud and you have left me here under orders."

"Right, sir," said the sergeant, and the great machine reached out its
gleaming wings, flapped, spiraled, climbed, became a dot, and
vanished.

Casher stood there alone.  Utterly alone.  For many years he had been
supported by a sense of purpose, by a drive to do something, and now
the drives and the purpose were gone, and his life was gone, and the
use of his future was gone, and he had nothing.  All he had was the
ultimate imagination, health, and great skills.  These were not what he
wanted.  He wanted the liberation of all Mizzer.  But he had gotten
that, so what was it?

He almost stumbled towards one of the nearby buildings.

A voice spoke up.  A woman's voice.  The friendly voice of an old
woman.

Very unexpectedly, she said,

"I've been waiting for you, Casher; come on in.

V

He stared at her.

"I've seen you," he said.

"I've seen you somewhere.  I know you well.  You've affected my fate.
You did something to me and yet I don't know who you are.  How could
you be here to meet me when I didn't know I was coming?"

"Everything in its time," said the woman.

"With a time for everything
of Man and what you need now is rest.  I'm D'alma, the dog-woman from
Pontoppidan.  The one who washed the dishes."

"Her," cried he.

"Me," she said.

"But you but you how did you get here?"

"I got here," she said.

"Isn't that obvious?"

"Who sent you?"

"You're part of the way to the truth," she said.

"You might as well hear a little more of it.  I was sent here by a lord
whose name I will never mention.  A lord of the under people Acting
from Earth.  He sent out another dog-woman to take my place.  And he
had me shipped here as simple baggage.  I worked in the hospital where
you recovered and I read your mind as you got well.  I knew what you
would do to Wedder and I was pretty sure that you would come up here to
the Ninth Nile, because that is the road that all searchers must
take."

"Do you mean," he said, "that you know the road to " He hesitated and
then plunged into his question, " the Holy of Unholies, the Thirteenth
Nile?"

"I don't see that it means anything, Casher.  Except that you'd better
take off those iron shoes; you don't need them yet.  You'd better come
in here.  Come on in."

He pushed the beaded curtains aside and entered the bungalow.  It was a
simple frontier official dwelling.  There were cots hither and yon, a
room to the rear which seemed to be hers; a dining room to the right
and there were papers, a viewing machine, cards, and games on the
table.  The room itself was astonishingly cool.

She said,

"Casher, you've got to relax.  And that is the hardest of all things to
do.  To relax, when you had a mission for many many years."

"I know it," said he.

"I know it.  But knowing it and doing it aren't the same things."

"Now you can do it," said D'alma.

"Do what?"  he snapped.

"Relax, as we were talking about.  All you have to do here is to have
some good meals.  Just sleep a few times, swim in the river if you want
to.  I have sent everyone away except myself, and you and I shall have
this house.  And I am an old woman, not even a human being.  You're a
man, a true man, who's conquered a thousand worlds.  And who has
finally triumphed over Wedder.  I think we'll get along.  And when
you're ready for the trip, I'll take you."

The days did pass as she said they would.  With insistent but firm
kindness, she made him play games with her: simple, childish games
with
dice and cards.  Once or twice he tried to hypnotize her.  To throw
the dice his own way.  He changed the cards in her hand.  He found that
she had very little telepathic offensive power, but that her defenses
were superb.  She smiled at him whenever she caught him playing tricks.
And his tricks failed.

With this kind of atmosphere he really began to relax.  She was the
woman who had spelled happiness for him on Pontoppidan when he didn't
know what happiness was.  When he had abandoned the lovely Genevieve to
go on with his quest for vengeance.

Once he said to her,

"Is that old horse still alive?"

"Of course he is," she said.

"That horse will probably outlive you and me.  He thinks he's on Mizzer
by galloping around a patrol capsule.  Come on back; it's your turn to
play."

He put down the cards, and slowly the peace, the simplicity, the
reassuring, calm sweetness of it all stole over him and he began to
perceive the nature of her therapy.  It was to do nothing but slow him
down.  He was to meet himself again.

It may have been the tenth day, perhaps it was the fourteenth, that he
said to her,

"When do we go?"

She said,

"I've been waiting for that question and we're ready now.  We go."

"When?"

"Right now.  Put on your shoes.  You won't need them very much," she
said, "but you might need them where we land.  I am taking you part way
there."

Within a few minutes, they went out into the yard.  The river in which
he had swum lay below.  A shed, which he did not remember having
noticed before, lay at the far end of the yard.

She did something to the door, removing a lock, and the door flung
open.  And she pulled out a skeletonized ornithopter motor, wings,
tails.  The body was just a bracket of metal.  The source of power was
as usual an ultra-miniaturized, nuclear-powered battery.  Instead of
seats, there were two tiny saddles, like the saddles used in the
bicycles of old, old Earth which he had seen in museums.

"You can fly that?"  he asked.

"Of course I can fly it.  It's better than going 200 miles over broken
glass.  We are leaving civilization now.  We are leaving everything
that was on any map.  We are flying directly to the Thirteenth Nile, as
you well knew it should be that."

"I knew that," he said.

"I never expected to reach it so soon.

Does this have anything to do with that Sign of the Fish you were
talking about?"

"Everything, Casher.  Everything.  But everything in its place.

Climb in behind me."  He sat on top of the ornithopter, and this one
ran down the
of Man yard on its tall, graceful mechanical legs before the flaps of
its wings put it in the air.  She was a better pilot than the sergeant
had been; she soared more and beat the wings less.  She flew over
country that he, a native of Mizzer, had never dreamed about.

They came to a city gaudy in color.  He could see large fires burning
alongside the river, and brightly painted people with their hands
lifted in prayer.  He saw temples and strange gods in them.

He saw markets with goods, which he never thought to see marketed.

"Where are we?"  he asked.

D'alma said,

"This is the City of Hopeless Hope."  She put the ornithopter down and,
as they climbed out of the saddles, it lifted itself into the air and
flew back, in the direction from whence they had come.

"You are staying with me?"  asked Casher.

"Of course I am.  I was sent to be with you."

"What for?"

"You are important to all the worlds, Casher, not just Mizzer.

By the authority of the friends I have, they have sent me here to help
you."

"But what do you get out of it?"

"I get nothing, Casher.  I find my own destruction, perhaps, but I will
accept that.  Even the loss of my own hope if it only moves you further
on in your voyage.  Come, let us enter the City of Hopeless Hope."

VI

They walked through the strange streets.  Almost everyone in the
streets seemed to be engaged in the practice of religion.  The stench
of the burning dead was all round them.  Talismans, luck charms, and
funeral supplies were in universal abundance.

Casher said, speaking rather quietly to D'alma,

"I never knew there was anything like this on any civilized planet."

"Obviously," she replied, "there must be many people who believe in
worry about death; there are many who do know about this place.
Otherwise there would not be the throngs here.  These are the people
who have the wrong hope and who go to no place at all, who find under
this earth and under the stars their final fulfillment.  These are the
ones who are so sure that they are right that they never will be right.
We must pass through them quickly, Casher, lest we, too, start
believing."

No one impeded their passage in the streets, although many people
paused to see that a soldier, even a medical soldier, in uniform, had
the audacity to come there.

They were even more surprised that an old hospital attendant who
seemed to be an off-world dog walked along beside him.

"We cross the bridge now, Casher, and this bridge is the most terrible
thing I've ever seen, whereas now we are going to come to the Jwindz,
and the Jwindz oppose you and me and everything you stand for."

"Who are the Jwindz?"  asked Casher.

"The Jwindz are the perfect ones.  They are perfect in this earth.  You
will see soon enough."

VII

As they crossed the bridge, a tall, blithe police official, clad in a
neat black uniform, stepped up to them and said,

"Go back.

People from your city are not welcome here."

"We are not from that city," said D'alma.

"We are travelers."

"Where are you bound?"  asked the police official.

"We are bound for the source of the Thirteenth Nile."

"Nobody goes there," said the guard.

"We are going there," said D'alma.

"By what authority?"

Casher reached into his pocket and took out a genuine card.

He had remade one, from the memories he had retained in his mind.  It
was an all-world pass, authorized by the Instrumentality.

The police official looked at it and his eyes widened.

"Sir and master, I thought you were merely one of Wedder's men.  You
must be someone of great importance.  I will notify the scholars in the
Hall of Learning at the middle of the city.  They will want to see you.
Wait here.  A vehicle will come."

D'alma and Casher O'Neill did not have long to wait.  She said nothing
at all in this time.  Her air of good humor and competence ebbed
perceptibly.  She was distressed by the cleanliness and perfection
around her, by the silence, by the dignity of the people.

When the vehicle came, it had a driver, as correct, as smooth, and as
courteous as the guard at the bridge.  He opened the door and waved
them in.  They climbed in and they sped noiselessly through the
well-groomed streets: houses, each one in immaculate taste; trees,
planted the way in which trees should be planted.

In the center square of the city, they stopped.  The driver got out,
walked around the vehicle, opened their door.

He pointed at the archway of the large building and he said, "They are
expecting you."

of Man Casher and D'alma walked up the steps reluctantly.  She was
reluctant because she had some sense of what this place was, a special
dwelling for quiet doom and arrogant finality.  He was reluctant
because he could feel that in every bone of her body she resented this
place.  And he resented it, too.

They were led through the archway and across a patio to a large,
elegant conference room.

Within the room a circular table had already been set in preparation of
a meal.

Ten handsome men rose to greet them.

The first one said,

"You are Casher O'Neill.  You are the wanderer.  You are the man
dedicated to this planet and we appreciate what you have done for us,
even though the power of Colonel Wedder never reached here."

"Thank you," said Casher.

"I am surprised to hear that you know of me."

"That's nothing," said the man.

"We know of everyone.  And you, woman," said the same man to D'alma,
"you know full well that we never entertain women here.  And you are
the only under person in this city.  A dog at that.  But in honor of
our guest we shall let you pass.  Sit down if you wish.  We want to
talk to you."

A meal was served.  Little squares of sweet unknown meat, fresh fruits,
bits of melon, chased with harmonious drinks which cleared the mind and
stimulated it, without intoxicating or drugging.

The language of their conversations was clear and elevated.

All questions were answered swiftly, smoothly, and with positive
clarity.

Finally, Casher was moved to ask,

"I do not seem to have heard of you, Jwindz; who are you?"

"We are the perfect ones," said the oldest Jwindz.

"We have all the answers; there is nothing else left to find."

"How do you get here?"  said Casher.

"We are selected from many worlds."

"Where are your families?"

"We don't bring them with us."

"How do you keep out intruders?"

"If they are good, they wish to stay.  If they are not good, we destroy
them."

Casher still shocked by his experience of fulfilling all his life's
work in the confrontation with Wedder though his life might be at
stake, asked casually,

"Have you decided yet whether I am perfect enough to join you?  Or am I
not perfect and to be destroyed?"

The heaviest of all the Jwindz, a tall, portly man, with a great bushy
shock of black hair, replied ponderously.

"Sir, you are forcing our decision, but I think that you may be some-
thing exceptional.  We cannot accept you.  There is too much force in
you.  You may be perfect, but you are more than perfect.  We are men,
sir, and I do not think that you are any longer a mere man.

You are almost a machine.  You are yourself dead people.  You are the
magic of ancient battles coming to strike among us.  We are all of us a
little afraid of you, and yet we do not know what to do with you.  If
you were to stay here a while, if you calmed down, we might give you
hope.  We know perfectly well what that dog woman of yours calls our
city.  She calls it the City of the Perfect Ones.  We just call it
Jwindz Jo, in memory of the ancient Rule of the Jwindz, which somewhere
once obtained upon old Earth.  And therefore, we think that we will
neither kill you nor accept you.

We think do we not, gentlemen?  that we will speed you on your way, as
we have sped no other traveler.  And that we will send you, then, to a
place which few people pass.  But you have the strength and if you are
going to the source of the Thirteenth Nile, you will need it."

"I will need strength?"  Casher asked.

The first Jwindz who had met them at the door said,

"Indeed you will need strength, if you go to Mortoval.  We may be
dangerous to the uninitiated.  Mortoval is worse than dangerous.

It is a trap many times worse than death.  But go there if you must."

VIII

Casher O'Neill and D'alma reached Mortoval on a one wheeled cart, which
ran on a high wire past picturesque mountain gorges, soaring over two
serrated series of peaks and finally dropping down to another bend in
the same river, the illegal and forgotten Thirteenth Nile.

When the vehicle stopped, they got out.  No one had accompanied them.
The vehicle, held in place by gyroscopes and compasses, felt itself
relieved of their weight and hurried home.

This time there was no city: just one great arch.  D'alma clung close
to him.  She even took his arm and pulled it over her shoulder as
though she needed protection.  She whined a little as they walked up a
low hill and finally reached the arch.  They walked into the arch and a
voice not made of sound cried out to them.

"I am youth and am everything that you have been or ever will be.  Know
this now before I show you more."

Casher was brave, and this time he was cheerfully hopeless, so he
said,

"I know who I am.  Who are you?"

"I am the force of the Gunung Banga.  I am the power of this planet
which keeps everyone in this planet and which assures the order which
of Man persists among the stars, and promises that the dead shall not
walk among the men.  And I serve of the fate and the hope of the
future.  Pass if you think you can."

Casher searched with his own mind and he found what he wanted.  He
found the memory of a young child, T'ruth, who had been almost a
thousand years on the planet of Henriada.  A child, soft and gentle on
the outside, but wise and formidable and terrible beyond belief, in the
powers which she had carried, which had been imprinted upon her.

As he walked through the arch he cast the images of truth here and
there.  Therefore he was not one person but a multitude.  And the
machine and the living being which hid behind the machine, the Gunung
Banga, obviously could see him and could see D'alma walking through,
but the machine was not prepared to recognize whole multitudes of
crying throngs.

"Who are you thousands that you should come here now?  Who are you
multitudes that you should be two people?  I sense all of you.  The
fighters and the ships and the men of blood, the searchers and the for
getters there's even an Old North Australian renunciant here.  And the
great Go-Captain Tree, and there are even a couple of men of Old Earth.
 You are all walking through me.  How can I cope with you?"

"Make us, us," said Casher firmly.

"Make you, you," replied the machine.

"Make you, you.  How can I make you, you, when I do not know who you
are, when you flit like ghosts and you confuse my computers?  There are
too many, I say.  There are too many of you.  It is ordained that you
should pass."

"If it is so ordained, then let us pass."  D'alma suddenly stood proud
and erect.

They walked on through.

She said,

"You got us through."  They had indeed passed beyond the arch, and
there, beyond the arch, lay a gentle riverside with skiffs pulled up
along the beach.

"This seems to be next," said Casher O'Neill.

D'alma nodded.

"I'm your dog, master.  We go where you think."

They climbed into a skiff.  Echoes of tumult followed from the arch.

"Good-bye to troubles," the echoes said.

"Had they been people they would have been stopped.  But she was a dog
and a servant, who had lived many years in the happiness of the Sign of
the Fish.  And he was a combat-ready man who had incorporated within
himself the memories of adversaries and friends, too tumultuous for any
scanner to measure, too complex for any computer to assess."  The
echoes resounded across the river.

There was even a dock on the other side.  Casher tied the skiff to the
dock and he helped the dog-woman go toward the buildings that they saw
beyond some trees.

IX

D'Alma said,

"I have seen pictures of this place; this is the Kermesse Dorgiieil,
and here we may lose our way, because this is the place where all the
happy things of this world come together, but where the man and the two
pieces of wood never filter through.  We shall see no one unhappy, no
one sick, no one unbalanced; everyone will be enjoying the good things
of life; perhaps I will enjoy it, too.  May the Sign of the Fish help
me that I not become perfect too soon."

"You won't be," Casher promised.

At the gate of this city, there was no guard at all.  They walked on
past a few people who seemed to be promenading outside the town. Within
the city they approached what seemed to be a hotel and an inn or a
hospital.  At any rate it was a place where many people were fed.

A man came out and said,

"Well, this is a strange sight; I never knew that the Colonel Wedder
let his officers get this far from home, and as for you, woman, you're
not even a human being.  You're an odd couple and you're not in love
with each other.  Can we do anything for you?"

Casher reached into his pocket and tossed several credit pieces of five
denominations in front of the man.

"Don't these mean anything?"  asked Casher.

Catching them in his fingers, the man said,

"Oh, we can use money!  We use it occasionally for important things; we
don't need yours.  We live well here, and we have a nice life, not like
those two places across the river, which stay away from life.  All men
who are perfect are nothing but talk Jwindz they call themselves, the
perfect ones well, we're not that perfect.  We've got families and good
food and good clothes, and we get the latest news from all the
worlds."

"News," said Casher.

"I thought that was illegal."

"We get anything.  You would be surprised at what we have here.  It's a
very civilized place.  Come on in; this is the hotel of the Singing
Swans and you can live here as long as you wish.  When I say that, I
mean it.  Our treasure has unusual resources, and I can see that you
are unusual people.  You are not a medical technician, despite that
uniform, and your follower is not a mere dogunderperson or you wouldn't
have gotten this far."

They entered a promenade two stories high; little shops lined each side
of the corridor with the treasures of all the worlds on exhibit.  The
prices were marked explaining them, but there was no one in the
stalls.

The smell of good food came from a cool dining room in the inn.

"Come into my office and have a drink.  My name is Howard."

"That's an old Earth name," said Casher.

"Why shouldn't it be?"  asked Howard.

"I came here from old Earth.  I
looked for the best of all places, and it took me a long time to find
it.  This is it the Kermesse Dorgiieil.  We have nothing here but
simple and clean pleasures; we have only those vices which help and
support.  We accomplish the possible; we reject the impossible.  We
live life, not death.  Our talk is about things and not about ideas. We
have nothing but scorn for that city behind you, the City of the
Perfect Ones.  And we have nothing but pity for the holier than holies
far back where they claim to have Hopeless Hope, and practice nothing
but evil religion.  I passed through those places too, although I had
to go around the City of the Perfect Ones.  I know what they are and
I've come all the way from Earth, and if I have come all the way from
old old Earth I should know what this is.  You should take my word for
it."

"I've been on Earth myself," said Casher, rather dryly.

"It's not that unusual."

The man stopped with surprise.

"My name," said Casher, "is Casher O'Neill."

The man halted and then gave him a deep bow.

"If you are Casher O'Neill, you have changed this world; you have come
back, my lord and master.  Welcome.  We are no longer your host.  This
is your city.  What do you wish of us?"

"To look a while, to rest a while, to ask directions for the voyage."

"Directions?  Why should anyone want directions away from here?  People
come here and ask directions from a thousand places to get to Kermesse
Dorgiieil."

"Let's not argue this now," said Casher.

"Show us the rooms, let us clean ourselves up.  Two separate rooms."

Howard walked upstairs.  With an intricate twist of his hand he
unlocked two rooms.

"At your service," he said.

"Call me with your voice; I can hear you anywhere in the building."

Casher called once for sleeping gear, toothbrushes, shaving equipment.
He insisted that they send the shampooer, a woman of apparent Earth
origin, in to attend to D'alma; and D'alma actually knocked at his door
and begged that he not shower her with these attentions.

He said,

"You with your deep kindness have helped me so far.

I am helping you very little."

They ate a light repast together in the garden just below their two
rooms, and then they went to their rooms and slept.

It was only on the morning of the second day that they went with Howard
into the city to see what could be found.

Everywhere the city was strong with happiness.  The population could
not have been very large, twenty or thirty thousand persons at most.

At one point, Casher stopped; he could smell the scorch of ozone in
the air.  He knew the atmosphere itself had been burned and that meant
only one thing, spaceships coming in or going out.

He asked,

"Where is the spaceport for Earth?"

Howard looked at him quickly and keenly.

"If you were not the lord Casher O'Neill, I'd never tell you.  We have
a small spaceport there.  That is the way that we avoid our traffic
with most of Mizzer.  Do you need it, sir?"

"Not now," said Casher.

"I just wondered where it was."  They came to a woman who danced as she
sang to the accompaniment of two men with wild archaic guitars. Her
feet did not have the laughter of ordinary dance, but they had the
positiveness, the compulsion of a meaning.  Howard looked at her
appreciatively; he even ran the tip of his tongue across his upper
lip.

"She is not yet spoken for," said Howard.

"And yet she is a very unusual thing.  A resigned ex-lady of the
Instrumentality."

"I find that unusual, indeed.  What is her name?"

"Celalta," said Howard.

"Celalta, the other one.  She has been in many worlds, perhaps as many
worlds as you have, sir.  She's faced dangers like the ones you've
faced.  And oh, my lord and master, forgive me for saying it, but when
I look at her dancing, and I see you looking at her, I can see a little
bit into the future; and I can see you both dead together, the winds
slowly blowing the flesh off your bones.  And your bones anonymous and
white, lying two valleys over from this very place."

"That's an odd enough prophecy," said Casher.

"Especially from someone who seems not to be poetic.  What is that?"

"I seem to see you in the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene.  There's a
road out of here that goes there and some people, not many, go there,
and when they go there, they die.  I don't know why," said Howard.

"Don't ask me."

D'alma whispered,

"That is the road to the Shrine of Shrines.

That's the place to the Quel itself.  Find out where it starts."

"Where does that road start?"  asked Casher.

"Oh, you'll find out; there's nothing you won't find out.  Sorry, my
lord and master.  The road starts just beyond that bright orange roof."
He pointed to a roof and then turned back.

Without saying anything more, he clapped his hands at the dancer and
she gave him a scornful look.  Howard clapped his hands again; she
stopped dancing and walked over.

"And what is it you want now, Howard?"

He gave her a deep bow.

"My former lady, my mistress, here is the lord and master of this
planet, Casher O'Neill."

"I am not really the lord and master," said Casher O'Neill.

"I

merely would have been if Wedder had not taken the rule away from my
uncle."

"Should I care about that?"  asked the woman.

Casher smiled back.

"I don't see why you should."

"Do you have anything you want to say to me?"

"Yes," said Casher.  He reached over and seized her wrist.  Her wrist
was almost as strong as his.

"You have danced your last dance, madam, at least for the time.  You
and I are going to a place that this man knows about, and he says that
we are going to die there, and our bones will be blown with the
wind."

"You give me commands," she cried.

"I give you commands," he said.

"What is your authority?"  she asked scornfully.

"Me," he said.

She looked at him, he looked back at her, still holding her wrist.

She said,

"I have powers.  Don't make me use them."

He said,

"I have powers, too; nobody can make me use mine."

"I'm not afraid of you; go ahead."

Fire shot at him as he felt the lunge of her mind toward his, her
attack, her flight for freedom, but he kept her wrist and she said
nothing.

But with his mind responding to hers he unfolded the many worlds, the
old Earth itself, the gem planet, Olympia of the blind brokers, the
storm planet, Henriada, and a thousand other places that most people
only knew in stories and dreams.  And then, just for a little bit, he
showed her who he was, a native of Mizzer who had become a citizen of
the Universe.  A fighter who had been transformed into a doer.  He let
her know that in his own mind he carried the powers of Truth the
turtle-girl, and behind T'ruth herself, he carried the personalities of
the Hechizera of Gonfalon.

He let her see the ships in the sky turning and twisting as they fought
nothing at all, because his mind, or another mind which had become his,
had commanded them to.

And then with the shock of a sudden vision, he projected to her the two
pieces of wood, the image of a man in pain.  And gently, but with the
simple rhetoric of profound faith, he pronounced: "This is the call of
the First Forbidden One, and the Second Forbidden One, and the Third
Forbidden One.  This is the symbol of the Sign of the Fish.  For this
you are going to leave this town, and you are going with me, and it may
be that you and I shall become lovers."

Behind him a voice spoke.

"And I," said D'alma, "will stay here."

He turned around to her.

"D'alma, you've come this far; you've got to come further."

"I can't, my lord.  I read my duty as I see it.  If the authorities who
sent me want me enough, they will send me back to my dishwasher on
Pontoppidan, otherwise they will leave me here.  I am temporarily
beautiful and I'm rich and I'm happy and I don't know what to do with
myself, but I know I have seen you as far as I can.  May the Sign of
the Fish be with you."

Howard merely stood aside, making no attempt to hinder them or to help
them.

Celalta walked beside Casher like a wild animal which had never been
captured before.

Casher O'Neill never let go of her wrist.

"Do we need food for this trip?"  he asked of Howard.

"No one knows what you need."

"Should we take food?"

"I don't see why," said Howard.

"You have water.  You can always walk back here if you have
disappointments.  It's really not very far."

"Will you rescue me?"

"If you insist on it," said Howard.

"I suppose somewhere people will come out and bring you back, but I
don't think you will insist because that is the Deep Dry Lake of the
Damned Irene, and the people who go in there do not want to come out,
and do not want to eat, and they do not want to go forward.  We have
never seen anyone vanish to the other side, but you might make it."

"I am looking," said Casher, "for something which is more than power
between the worlds.  I am looking for a sphinx that is bigger than the
sphinx on old Earth.  For weapons which cut sharper than lasers, for
forces that move faster than bullets.  I am looking for something which
will take the power away from me and put the simple humanity back into
me.  I am looking for something which will be nothing, but a nothing I
can serve and can believe in."

"You sound like the right kind of man," said Howard, "for that kind of
trip.  Go in peace, both of you."

Celalta said,

"I do not really know who you are, my lord, master, but I have danced
my last dance.  I see what you mean.

This is the road that leads away from happiness.  This is the path
which leaves good clothes and warm shops behind.  There are no
restaurants where we are going, no hotels, no river anymore.

There are neither believers nor unbelievers; but there is something
that comes out of the soil which makes people die.  But if you think,
Casher O'Neill, that you can triumph over it, I will go with you.  And
if you do not think it, I will die with you."

"We are going, Celalta, I didn't know that it was just going to be the
two of us, but we are going and we are going now."

X

It was actually less than two kilometers to get over the ridge away
from the trees, away from the moisture-laden air along the river, and
into a dry, calm valley which had a clean blessed quietness which
Casher had never seen before.  Celalta was almost gay.

"This, this is the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene?"

"I suppose it is," said Casher, "but I propose to keep on walking.  It
isn't very big."

As they walked their bodies became burdensome; they carried not only
their own weight but the weight of every month of their lives.  The
decision seemed good to them that they should lie down in the valley
and rest amid the skeletons, rest as the others had rested.  Celalta
became disoriented.  She stumbled, and her eyes became unfocused.

Not for nothing had Casher O'Neill learned all the arts of battle of a
thousand worlds.  Not for nothing had he come through space-three. This
valley might have been tempting if already he had not ridden the cosmos
on his eyes alone.

He had.  He knew the way out.  It was merely through.  Celalta seemed
to come more to life as they reached the top of the ridge.

The whole world was suddenly transformed by not more than ten steps.
Far behind them, several kilometers, perhaps, there were still visible
the last rooftops of the Kermesse Dorgtiieil.  Behind them lay the
bleaching skeletons, in front In front of them was the final source and
the mystery, the Quel of the Thirteenth Nile.

XI

There was no sign of a house, but there were fruits and melons and
grain growing, and there were deep trees at the edges of caves, and
there were here and there signs of people that had been there long ago.
There were no signs of present occupancy.

"My lord," said the once-lady Celalta, "my lord," she repeated, "I
think this is it."

"But this is nothing," said Casher.

"Exactly.  Nothing is victory, nothing is arrival, nowhere is getting
there.  Don't you see now why she left us?"

"She?"  asked Casher.

"Yes, your faithful companion, the dog-woman D'alma."

"No, I don't see it.  Why did she leave this to us?"

Celalta laughed.

"We're Adam and Eve in a way.  It's not up to us to be
given a god or to be given a faith.  It's up to us to find the power
and this is the quietest and last of the searching places.  The others
were just phantoms, hazards on our route.  The best way to find freedom
is not to look for it, just as you obtained your utter revenge on
Wedder by doing him a little bit of good.  Can't you see it, Casher?
You have won at last the immense victory that makes all battles seem
vain.  There is food around us; we can even walk back to the Kermesse
Dorgiieil, if we want clothing or company or if we want to hear the
news.  But, most of all, this is the place in which I feel the presence
of the First Forbidden One, the Second Forbidden One, and the Third
Forbidden One.  We don't need a church for this, though I suppose there
are still churches on some planets.  What we need is a place to find
ourselves and be ourselves and I'm not sure that this chance exists in
many other places than this one spot."

"You mean," said Casher, "that everywhere is nowhere?"

"Not quite that," said Celalta.

"We have some work to do getting this place in shape, feeding
ourselves.  Do you know how to cook?  Well, I can cook better.  We can
catch a few things to eat; we can shut ourselves in that cave and then"
and then Celalta smiled, her face more beautiful than he ever expected
he would find a face to be "we have each other."

Casher stood battle-ready, facing the most beautiful dancer he had ever
met.  He realized that she had once been a part of the Instrumentality,
a governor of worlds, a genuine advisor in the destination of mankind.
He did not know what strange motives had caused her to quit authority
and to come up to this hard-to find river, unmarked on maps.  He didn't
even know why the man Howard should have paired them so quickly:
perhaps there was another force.  A force behind that dog-woman which
had sent him to his final destination.

He looked down at Celalta and then he looked up at the sky, and he
said,

"Day is ending; I will catch a few of those birds if you know how to
cook them.  We seem to be a sort of Adam and Eve, and I do not know
whether this is paradise or hell.  But I know that you are in it with
me, and that I can think about you because you ask nothing of me."

"That is true, my lord, I ask nothing of you.  I, too, am looking for
both of us, not myself alone.  I can make a sacrifice for you, but I
look for those things which only we two, acting together, can find in
this valley."

He nodded in serious agreement.

"Look," she said, "that is the Quel itself, there the Thirteenth Nile
comes out of the rocks, and here are the woods below.  I seem to have
heard of it.  Well, we'll have plenty of time.  I'll start the fire,
but you go catch two of those chickens.  I don't even think they're
wild birds.  I think they are just left over people-chickens that have
grown wild since their previous owners left.  . . ."

"Or died," said Casher.

"Or died," repeated Celalta.

"Isn't that a risk anybody has to take?  Let us live, my lord, you and
me, and let us find the magic, the deliverance which strange fates have
thrown in front of you and me.  You have liberated Mizzer, is that not
enough?

Simply by touching Wedder, you have done what otherwise could have been
accomplished at the price of battle and great suffering."

"Thank you," said Casher.

"I was once Instrumentality, my lord, and I know that the
Instrumentality likes to do things suddenly and victoriously.

When I was there we never accepted defeat, but we never paid anything
extra.  The shortest route between two points might look like the long
way around; it isn't.  It's merely the cheapest human way of getting
there.  Has it ever occurred to you, that the Instrumentality might be
rewarding you for what you have done for this planet?"

"I hadn't thought of it," said Casher.

"You hadn't thought of it?"  She smiled.

"Well.  . ."  said Casher, embarrassed and at a loss for words.

"I am a very special kind of woman," said Celalta.

"You will be finding that out in the next few weeks.  Why else do you
think that I would be given to you?"

He did not go to hunt the chickens, not just then.  He reached his arms
out to her and, with more trust and less fear than he had felt in many
years, he held her in his arms, and kissed her on the lips.  This time
there was no secret reserve in his mind, no promise that after this he
would get on with his journey to Mizzer.  He had won, his victory was
behind him, and in front of him there lay nothing, but this beautiful
and powerful place and .  . . Celalta.