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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

•'Centaur Fiekter for the Yankees." by Edward D. Hoch. Copyright © 1986 by
Edward 0. Hoch; an original story published with the permission of the author.

"The Ice Dragon," by George R.R-Martin. Copyright® 1980 by George R. R.
Martin. From DRAGONS OF LIGHT. Reprinted by pennission of the author.

••The Gorgon," by Tanith Lee. Copyright © 1983 by Tanith Lee. Reprinted by
permission of the author.

"The Kragen," by Jack Vance. Copyright © 1964 by Ziff-Davis Publishing

Company- Reprinted by pennission of Kifby McCauley, Ltd.

"Letters from Laura," by Mildred Clingennan. Copyright © 1954; renewed ©

1982 by Mildred Clingennaa. Reprinted by permission of me author.

"The Triumph of Pegasus," by F. A. Javor. Copyright © 1964 by Mercury Press,

Inc. From THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION.

Reprinted by permission of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845

Third Avenue. New York, NY 10022.

"Caution! Inflammable!" by Thomas N. Scoitia. Copyright © 1954; © 1975 by

E-S.T. International, Ltd. First published as "The End of the Line."

"The Pyramid Project," by Robert F. Young. Copyright © 1961 by Ziff-Davis
Publishing Company. Reprinted by pennission of the Scott Meredith Literary
Agency. Inc., 845 Third Avenue. New York. NY 10022.
"The Silken Swift." by Theodore Sturgeon. Copyright © 1953; renewed ©
1979 by Theodore Sturgeon. Reprinted by pennission of Kirby McCauiey, Ltd.
"Mood Weiriigo." by Thomas A. Easion. Copyright © 1980 by Davis
Publications, Inc. Reprinted by pennission of die author.

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CONTENTS

1 Centaur 1

Centaur Fielder for the Yankees—
by Edward D. Hoch 3

2 Dragon 13

The Ice Dragon—by George R. R. Martin 15

3 Firedrake 36

Prince Prigio—by Andrew Lang 38

4 Gorgon 88

The Gorgon—Ay Tanith Lee 90

5 Griffin 112

The Griffin and the Minor Canon—
by Frank R. Stockton. \ 14

6 Kragen 129

The Kragen—by Jack Vance 131

7 Mermaid 203

The Little Mermaid—by Haw Christian Andersen 205

8 Minotaur 228

Letters from Laura—by Mildred Clingerman 230

9 Pegasus 237

The Triumph of Pegasus—by F. A. Javor 239

10 Phoenix 269

Caution! Inflammable!—fry Thomas N. Scortia 271

11 Sphinx 274

The Pyramid Project—by Robert F. Young 276

12 Unicorn 307

The Silken-Swift—fry Theodore Sturgeon 309

13 Wendigo 330

Mood Wendigo—fry Thomas A. Easton 332

CENTAUR

The horse was tamed about 2000 B.C. by the nomads of
the Central Asian steppes, and when it drew a light chariot
bearing a driver and an armed warrior, it proved a fear-
some weapon. The horsemen conquered the entire civilized
world from India to Egypt, and held their rule until the
dominated people learned the use of the horse themselves.

By 800 B.C.. the Medes of western Asia had bred
horses large enough to carry men on their backs, and that
combination was even more fearsome. To farmers who
encountered horsemen for the first time this combination of
men and animals must have seemed monstrous.

The early Greeks were not horsepeople, for their moun-
tainous terrain and narrow valleys were not conducive to
either the breeding or the use of horses. In northern
Greece, however, there was the plain of Thessaly, and
there horses and horsemen made their appearance.

The fearful Greeks must have first seen them as horse-
human combinations, and so was born the myth of the
' 'centaur,'' finally portrayed in Greek art as a creature
with the head and torso of a human being replacing the
head and neck of a horse. For the most part, the Greeks
pictured the centaurs as barbarians—crude, wild. lawless,
easily made drunk, and, in that state, prone to be lascivi-
ous. Perhaps' that is how they saw the real Thessalian
horsemen.

At least one centaur, however, named Chiron, was wise,

Edward D. Hoch

noble, and learned. He was the tutor of Hercules and

Achilles, among others.

The centaur of the story that follows falls between these
two extremes.

CENTAUR FIELDER FOR THE
YANKEES

Edward D. Hoch

Let me tell you. there was a time not so long ago when a
centaur would have been kept in a zoo or a circus. He
certainly wouldn't have been allowed to play major league
baseball. But times have changed, and we're more tolerant of
people who are different. I suppose that's why Mark Eques
ended up playing baseball for the New York Yankees.
But I'd better tell it from the beginning.

The idea of centaurs—creatures having the head, trunk and
arms of a man and the body and legs of a horse—had been
around since Ovid's Metamorphoses and Homer's lliad. It
was Lucretius who declared that the creature must be mythi-
cal because horses reach maturity before humans, and are
full-grown at three years of age. The horse would die fifty
years before the man. All mis is true enough, but when
Professor Hagger of Columbia University returned from me
Greek island of Antikythira with a young living centaur early
in the 22nd century, a great many preconceptions changed.

Like most everyone else in America, I'd equated centaurs
with unicorns and other mythical beasts. Seeing one live on
the evening news took some getting used to. Hagger chris-
tened the young creature Mark Eques, and set about educat-
ing him. It was quite a story for a month or two, during the
slow news days of summer, but by fall Professor Hagger and
his discovery had faded from view. Mark Eques was living
on a farm in upstate New York, staying pretty much out of
the public eye.

4                  Edward D Hoch

A few years passed before we heard about him again, and
this time it was an announcement by Professor Hagger that
Mark was about to enter Columbia University, having passed
the traditional college entrance examinations. He was even
entitled to special consideration by the university, since the
government had ruled that Mark was a handicapped human
being and not any sort of monster.

Mark found college to be difficult, and by me end of his first
year it appeared he was ready to drop out. That was when
Roscoe Greene, a scout for the New York Yankees baseball
team, contacted Mark, and when I had my first meeting with
the boy centaur.

I was a sportswriter on a Boston paper at the time, and I
became interested in Mark when he attempted to run in the
Boston marathon, They couldn't officially bar him from it,
but they did me next best thing. They set up a special
category for centaurs. Since he was the only known centaur
on earth, he had no one to compete against but himself. There
was no point in running at all, and on Patriots' Day he didn't
even bother to appear.

But baseball was a different story.

Mark Eques had been ruled a handicapped person, and
under federal regulations in those early years of the 22nd
century, handicapped persons were allowed to play profes-
sional sports, so long as their handicap did not prevent them
from performing their duties. I had to hand it to Roscoe
Greene for coming up with that one.

An old girl friend in the Yankee front office tipped me off
to what was happening, and I drove all night to reach the
Dutchess County farm where Mark was living with Professor
Hagger after completing his first year at Columbia. It was
horse country, with the roads bordered on either side by neat
white fences that extended back over the rolling hills as far as
the eye could see.

As I pulled into the Hagger farm shortly after nine in the
morning I saw that Roscoe Greene had arrived first. He stood
at the fence speaking with Mark Eques. When he saw me he
cursed, not too softly. "What in hell are you doing here,
Danny? Go back to Boston where you belong!"

CENTAUR FIELDER FOR THE YANKEES       5

"Hello, Roscoe. Glad to see you too. Is it true the Yankees
are about to sign Mark here to a position in center field?' *

Mark Eques, his hairy chest bare to the morning sun,
grinned boyishly and pawed the grass with his front hoof.
"I'm gonna play in the big leagues," he announced proudly.

"What does Hagger say about all this?" I wanted to know.

"Why don't you ask him?" Greene answered smugly.

Professor Hagger must have observed my arrival, because
he came out of the farmhouse to join us. When Greene
introduced me. he said, "So the press is onto this already!
You don't waste any time."

"Danny's a go-getter." Green confirmed. "One of these
days he'll cover a story before it happens."

"Has he ever played ball?" 1 asked the professor. "Is he
any good at it?"

"His family apparently played a version of baseball,'*
Hagger responded. "He remembers it as a child."

"I'm good," Mark Eques answered for himself. "They
wouldn't let me run in the marathon but they can't stop me
now."

"He has tremendous speed in the outfield," Professor
Hagger confirmed. "Virtually nothing gets by him. His base-
running is superb too. We're still working on his hitting."

"What do you think, Roscoe?" I asked Greene.

"I think he has unlimited potential. Young, clean-cut—
people will flock to the games just to see him play."

"The other managers will never allow it," I predicted.

"We've already got the courts behind us. Let the other
clubs go out and hire their own centaur."

Mine was the first exclusive interview with Mark Eques on
his signing with the Yankees, and for a week or two it wa§
quite a story. The other major league clubs grumbled, of
course, until New York agreed to share with them the addi-
tional revenues Mark's appearance was expected to generate.
So, after a month of hoopla and further training, the centaur
took the field for a July 4th doubleheader against the Boston
Red Sox. I was there, of course, covering Boston on the road
as I usually did, but so was just about every sportswriter in

6                  Edward D. Hoch

the country, along with all the TV and satellite people. It's a
wonder there was any space left in the Yankees' new domed
stadium for just plain fans.

Mark Eques galloped onto the field wearing his Yankee
shirt and the crowd went wild. He removed his hat while the
National Anthem was played, and then continued on into
center field. The first inning was a disappointment for the
fans and television cameras, with not a single ball making it
out of the infield. But in the top of the second Mark showed
his stuff, charging across center field to nab a well-hit grounder
and peg it to first base for the out. The crowd went wild for
the second time.

He could hit too. He ended the day's doubleheader with
two doubles and a single, which wasn't bad. The Yankees
won the first game 5-3, and only dropped the nightcap 2-1 as
a result of a ninth-inning Boston homer. Even a centaur in the
outfield couldn't protect against home runs.

The following week's games showed that his biggest strengths
were in fielding and baserunning. Once he got the hang of it,
Mark proved a whiz at stolen bases. The sight of him gallop-
ing into second at a full charge was enough to intimidate most
any second baseman in the league. By the end of July, the
Yankees had climbed into a tie with Boston for first place in
the American League East.

That was when I was approached by Lippy Lewis.

Lippy was a gambler who specialized in sports betting of
any kind. He'd bet big money on Boston as an early-season
favorite to take both the pennant and the World Series, and he
wasn't about to lose it. "Tell me something, Danny," he said
one afternoon in August after the Yankees had extended a
midseason winning streak to seven games. "Do you think
that Eques guy could be bought off?"

"Lippy, you always did have a big mouth," I told him. "I
guess that's how you got your name. Do you want me to run
what you just said in tomorrow's edition? I could probably
even get your picture in. What were you thinking of offering
him—oats?"

Lippy shrugged. "Money. Women. He must have some
weakness."

CENTAUR FIELDER FOR THE YANKEES       7

"Stay away from him, Lippy, or I will print that."

"Hell, you're a Boston guy! The Sox are your meal ticket
too."

"Mark Eques is my meal ticket this year. He's the greatest
thing that's happened to baseball in two decades. Stay away
from him, Lippy, or you'll be in big trouble."

But 1 knew Lippy Lewis would do as he pleased, and I
wasn't surprised the following week to see him chatting with
Mark after a game, standing by the horse trailer that Professor
Hagger used to make the run to and from his farm. The trailer
was even used for games on the road. though it had to be
transported by air between distant cities. I stood off to one
side, waiting until Lippy departed, and then strolled up to
Mark.

"Lippy's got a bad reputation," I said casually. "You
shouldn't be seen talking to him too much."

"That guy? He doesn't bother me. He offered me money
and girls to miss a few fly balls." Mark seemed to find the
idea amusing.

"What did you say?"

"I told him I had enough money. As for girls, it's wrong
to mate outside your species. Professor Hagger taught me
that."

"But there are no female centaurs, are there?"

"Oh sure," he replied offhandedly. "They're just shy,
that's all. They live in the caves and the mazes and no one
ever sees them."

"I thought mazes were for Minotaurs."

Mark looked disgusted. "No one believes in them anymore."

Professor Hagger always attended the games, of course,
transporting Mark back and forth in the trailer. 1 caught up
with him at the next home appearance, with the Yankees now
firmly in first place. "Has there been any more trouble with
Lippy Lewis?" I asked.

Hagger looked surprised. "We haven't had any trouble
with Lippy that I know about."

"I think he tried to bribe Mark to relax a bit. There's big
money riding on the pennant and the World Series,"

"Mark wouldn't take a bribe."

8                  Edward D. Hoch

"I'm sure he wouldn't. But if you have any trouble with
Lippy, let me know. A few mentions in my column would
cool him off.''

Hagger nodded. "We appreciate everything you've done
for Mark already. Some of the press still treat him like a
freak. Your stories make him seem like a human being."

"I've always considered Mark to be a human being."

Hagger smiled slightly. "Well, he's still a centaur. Noth-
ing can change that.''

Mark Eques hit two home runs in that evening's game, and
ran the bases like a stallion. His fielding was better than
ever—so good, in fact, that the opposing manager raised the
point in a post-game press conference that Mark should be
banned from organized baseball. "He's not human, after
all," Bunty Simmons grumbled.

I fought my way through the throng to the front row of
questioners. "Back in July you alt went along with it," I
reminded him. "The gates would increase and everyone would
share in the wealth."

"Well. sure," he admitted. "We knew people would pay
to see a centaur playing ball. What we didn't know was—"

"—that he'd be so good," I finished for him.

Through all of this, Roscoe Greene, the scout who'd first
signed Mark with the Yankees, was riding high. I heard
through the grapevine that he'd gotten a big raise, with a
bonus promised if Mark Eques came through strong in the
World Series. Greene and I had never really been friends, and
I was surprised when he phoned me in Boston the day the
Yankees clinched the pennant in the American League East.

"Have you heard the news?" he asked without preamble.

"About what?"

"Mark Eques."

The panic in his voice was catching. "He's not hurt?"

"Worse than that."

"What—?"

"It just came over the radio. An expedition on that Greek
island has discovered a female centaur!"

CENTAUR FIELDER FOR THE YANKEES       9

"Then he wasn't kidding me. He said there were females.
That's great news, Roscoe."

"It's terrible news."

"How come?"

"The expedition is financed by Lewis Enterprises, the
video people. In case you didn't know, that's Lippy Lewis's
brother.''

"My God!"

"I know Lippy's been trying to bribe Mark. Now he's got
his weapon. Mark may not be tempted by regular women, but
a female centaur is something else again!"

Well, this latest development really stirred up the press.
About the only thing they like better than a bribery scandal is
a sex scandal. Although the whereabouts of the newly discov-
ered female centaur was a carefully guarded secret, the papers
were full of rumors of a secret tryst with Mark Eques. I
phoned Professor Hagger nearly every day in late September,
but he assured me there'd been no word from Lippy and no
sign of a female centaur.

I spoke with Mark too, of course. The playoffs began in
early October, and 1 covered all the games. The Yankees
made short work of the Las Vegas Wheels, capturing four
straight behind some good pitching and Mark's fleet-footed
fielding. There was a general feeling that the only team to
present a real challenge to the Yankees might be the St. Louis
Cardinals, and when the Cards clinched the National League
pennant to move on to the World Series, there was talk of the
greatest Series since *75.

I interviewed Mark Eques on the eve of the first game at
St. Louis. "What about it. Mark?" I asked. "You seem a
little bit troubled and off your feed. Has Lippy Lewis been
after you again?"

"Yeah," the young centaur admitted. "He talked to me."

"About the newly discovered female?"

Mark nodded. "He showed me pictures."

"And asked you to throw the game?"

"Either mat or not play at all."

"You were tempted?"

10 Edward D. Hoch

"By the pictures? No."

"Why not?"

"She's my sister, Carza."

"Your—"

"I told you there were females down in the caves. Carza
was never as shy as the rest. I should have known she'd be
the one to come outside and get caught."

"If she's your sister, I'd think you'd be happy at the
prospect of seeing her again. Why are you so glum?"

"I guess because I don't know what Lippy wili try next.
There's something about Carza they might discover—"

"What's that?"

Mark Eques hung his shoulders. "She's a better ball player
than 1 am."

We learned the following day that Lewis and his people
had indeed discovered it. Carza took the field wearing a
Cardinals shirt and started warming up with the rest of the team.
She was a lovely young woman, frisky and smiling, and she
captured the hearts of almost everyone at once. The Yankee
owners were not quite so enchanted, and they could be seen
huddling with the baseball commissioner in his box. Certainly
no one could object to a centaur playing baseball, nor to a
woman, since Iris Schultz had pitched a full season for the
Dodgers. But this was a new player, joining the team just in
time for the Series!

The game was delayed an hour while they argued the
point, disrupting television schedules around the world, but
the commissioner finally ruled that she could play. The teams
took the field- It would be centaur against centaur.

For the first few innings the crowd went wild each time
Mark or his sister took the field. But it soon became obvious
that each of them was so skilled in playing the outfield that
nothing less than a home run would make it onto the score-
board that day. Mark was the better hitter, probably because
he'd been playing since July, but he only succeeded in hitting
two high flies that Carza caught without any trouble. The
crowd wanted hits, but all they were getting was a demonstra-
tion of some remarkable fielding.

CENTAUR FIELDER FOR THE YANKEES      11

As the ninth inning ended in a scoreless tie I spotted Lippy
Lewis at a refreshment stand by the back of the stadium.
"How's it going, Lippy? I see you switched your allegiance
from the Sox to the Cards."

"You gotta go with the smart money, Danny," he said,
squeezing some mustard onto a hot dog.

"The smart money used to say you should never bet
against the Yankees."

"Yeah? Well, we got our own centaur now."

The tenth inning had begun while we chatted, and suddenly
there came a groan of anguish from the St. Louis fans. Lippy
and I hurried to see what had happened, and 1 think we were
equally horrified to see Carza tying on the field in obvious
pain. She'd tripped while chasing a hard-hit grounder to
center, and the ball had rolled ail the way to the outfield
fence for a triple.

Mark hurried to her side as she was carried off the field.
"Marque," she murmured. "Take me home. I want to go
home."

"Will they have to shoot her?" Lippy asked me.

"No. She's not a horse."

The Yankees won it, 1-0, and went on to win the Series,
but that was the last game Mark Eques and his sister played.
Professor Hagger accompanied them back to the Greek island
where he'd first found Mark. During their winter meeting the
baseball managers voted to bar any players having more than
two legs, whatever their species. The day of the centaur was
over, as quickly as it had begun,

It was sort of a sad ending to the story, and that was one
reason I decided to fly over to Antikythira the following
spring, to see how Mark and his sister were doing. I feared
I'd have difficulty finding them, imagining that they'd re-
treated deep into their caves after their brush with fame, but 1
was wrong. Mark was running a messenger service—a sort of
Centaur Express—and Carza had fully recovered from her
injury.

"She's too old for the game," Mark explained. "I remem-
ber her playing ball when I was only a child."

12

Edward D. Hoch

"Will you ever play again?" I asked.

"Not in America. I heard they'd banned centaurs. But
Carza and i arc talking about starting a league over here. An
all-centaur league. We think there are enough good players,
and it would make a great tourist attraction. We hope to get
started by next year."

When I told Lippy Lewis about it, back in the States, he
was interested. "Might be some betting action there," he
decided, "once they get organized. But I'm sorry he didn't
stay in this country and let me handle him."

"There are no more centaurs in baseball, Lippy," I re-
minded him.

"Who's talking baseball? I wanted to run him in the
Kentucky Derby!"

DRAGOH

The concept of the dragon was originally built up out of
the fears of early human beings for the largest and most
threatening reptiles with which they came in contact, the
largest snakes and crocodiles. The very word comes from
the Greek drakon, meaning a large snake.

Like the crocodile, the dragon was thick-bodied and had
small legs. From the snake, some of which (though not the
largest) were poisonous, it developed a fiery breath. (The
poison, we can well imagine, might burn like fire when
one is bitten by a snake.) Also because the snake moves
unseen through the underbrush and comes upon you un-
aware. the notion of rapid movement, hence flight, was
sometimes applied to the dragon, and it developed wings.
(In the nineteenth century, scientists discovered the fossils
of flying reptiles remarkably like dragons in some ways.
but they had ail died out 65 million years ago and the
similarity to the legend is purely coincidence.)

Size, wings, fiery breath—so mighty, in imagination,
did the dragons become that they began to represent ele-
mental forces of nature, cruel and malevolent. Finally,
they were viewed as the embodiment of the drive toward
chaos, toward the destruction of the order built by the
creative gods. In the Greek myths, the world could not be
reconstructed after a universal flood till Apollo had slain a
monstrous dragon called Python. (Large snakes are still
called pythons today.) Similarly, in the Babylonian myths,
the gods could not create the world till they had slain the

13

4                   George R.R. Martin

dragon Tiamat. and there are rather obscure references in
the Bible to God slaying Leviathan, who is pictured as the
dragon of chaos.

In the/allowing story, a dragon is pictured as a personi-
fication of cold, not common in legend, and as not entirely
malevolent.

THE ICE DRAGON

George R. R. Martin

Adara liked the winter best of all, for when the world grew
cold the ice dragon came.

She was never quite sure whether it was the cold that
brought the ice dragon or the ice dragon that brought the
cold. That was the sort of question that often troubled her
brother Geoff, who was two years older than her and insatia-
bly curious, but Adara did not care about such things. So
long as the cold and the snow and the ice dragon all arrived on
schedule, she was happy.

She always knew when they were due because of her
birthday. Adara was a winter child, born during the worst
freeze that anyone could remember, even Old Laura, who
lived on the next farm and remembered things that had hap-
pened before anyone else was bom. People still talked about
that freeze. Adara often heard them.

They talked about other things as well. They said it was the
chili of that terrible freeze that had killed her mother, stealing
in during her long night of labor past the great fire that
Adara's father had built, and creeping under the layers of
blankets dial covered the birthing bed. And they said that the
cold had entered Adara in the womb, that her skin had been
pale blue and icy to the touch when she came forth, and that
she had never wanned in all the years since. The winter had
touched her, left its mark upon her, and made her its own.

It was true that Adara was always a child apart. She was a
very serious little girl who seldom cared to play with the
others. She was beautiful, people said, but in a strange,

15

16 George R.R. Martin

distant son of way. with her pale skin and biond hair and
wide clear blue eyes. She smiled, but not often. No one had
ever seen her cry. Once when she was five she had stepped
upon a nail imbedded in a board that lay concealed beneath a
snowbank, and it had gone clear through her foot, but Adara
had not wept or screamed even then. She had puiled her foot
loose and walked back to the house, leaving a trail of blood
in the snow, and when she had gotten there she had said only,
"Father, I hurt myself." The sulks and tempers and tears of
ordinary childhood were not for her.

Even her family knew that Adara was different- Her father
was a huge, gruff bear of a man who had little use for people
in general, but a smile always broke across his face when
Geoff pestered him with questions, and he was full of hugs
and laughter for Ten, Adara's older sister, who was golden
and freckled, and fluted shamelessly with all the local boys.
Every so often he would hug Adara as well, especially when
he was drunk, which was frequent during the long winters-
But there would be no smiles then. He would only wrap his
arms around her, and pull her small body tight against him
with all his massive strength, sob deep in his chest, and fat
wet tears would run down his ruddy cheeks. He never hugged
her at all during the summers. During the summers he was
too busy.

Evefyone was busy during the summers except for Adara.
Geoff would work with his father in the fields and ask endless
questions about this and that, learning everything a farmer
had to know. When he was not working he would run with
his friends to the river, and have adventures. Teri ran the
house and did the cooking, and worked a bit at the inn by the
crossroads during the busy season. The innkeeper's daughter
was her friend, and his youngest son was more than a friend,
and she would always come back giggly and full of gossip
and news from travelers and soldiers and king's messengers.
For Teri and Geoff the summers were the best time, and both
of them were too busy for Adara-

Their father was the busiest of all. A thousand things
needed to be done each day, and he did them, and found a
thousand more. He worked from dawn to dusk. His muscles

THE ICE DRAGON              17

grew hard and lean in summer, and he stank from sweat each
night when he came in from the fields, but he always came in
smiling. After supper he would sit with Geoff and tell him
stories and answer his questions, or teach Ten things she did
not know about cooking, or stroll down to the inn. He was a
summer man, truly.

He never drank in summer, except for a cup of wine now
and again to celebrate his brother's visits.

That was another reason why Teri and Geoff loved the
summers, when the world was green and hot and bursting
with life. It was only in summer that Uncle Hal, their father's
younger brother, came to call. Hal was a dragonrider in
service to the king, a tall slender man with a face like a
noble. Dragons cannot stand the cold, so when winter fell Hal
and his wing would fly south. But each summer he returned,
brilliant in the king's green-and-gold uniform, en route to the
battlegrounds to the north and west of them. The war had
been going on for all of Adara's life-

Whenever Hal came north, he would bring presents; toys
from the king's city, crystal and gold jewelry, candies, and
always a bottle of some expensive wine that he and his
brother could share. He would grin at Teri and make her
blush with his compliments, and entertain Geoff with tales of
war and castles and dragons. As for Adara, he often tried to
coax a smile out of her. with gifts and jests and hugs. He
seldom succeeded -

For all his good nature, Adara did not like Hal; when Hal
was there, it meant that winter was far away.

Besides, there had been a night when she was only four,
and they thought her long asleep, that she overheard them
talking over wine. "A solemn little thing," Hal said. "You
ought to be kinder to her, John. You cannot blame her for what

happened."

"Can't I?" her father replied, his voice thick with wine.
"No, I suppose not. But it is hard. She looks like Beth, but
she has none of Bern's warmth. The winter is in her, you
know. Whenever I touch her I feel me chill, and I remember
that it was for her that Bern had to die."

18 George R.R. Martin

"You are cold to her. You do not love her as you do the
others."

Adara remembered the way her father laughed then. "Love
her? Ah, Hal. 1 loved her best of all, my little winter child.
But she has never loved back. There is nothing in her for me,
or you, any of us. She is such a cold little girl." And then he
began to weep, even though it was summer and Hal was with
him. In her bed, Adara listened and wished that Hal would
fly away. She did not quite understand all that she had heard,
not then, but she remembered it, and the understanding came
later.

She did not cry; not at four, when she heard, or six, when
she finally understood. Hat left a few days later, and Geoff
and Ten waved to him excitedly when his wing passed
overhead, thirty great dragons in proud formation against the
summer sky. Adara watched with her small hands by her
sides.

There were other visits in other summers, but Hal never
made her smile, no matter what he brought her.

Adara's smiles were a secret store, and she spent of them
only in winter. She could hardly wait for her birthday to
come, and with it the cold. For in winter she was a special
child.

She had known it since she was very little, playing with the
others in the snow. The cold had never bothered her the way
it did Geoff and Ten and their friends. Often Adara stayed
outside alone for hours after the others had fled in search of
warmth, or run off to Old Laura's to eat the hot vegetable
soup she liked to make for the children. Adara would find a
secret place in the far comer of the fields, a different place
each winter, and there she would build a tall white castle,
patting the snow in place with small bare hands, shaping it
into towers and battlements like those Hal often talked about
on the king's castle in the city. She would snap icicles off
from the lower branches of trees, and use them for spires and
spikes and guardposts, ranging them all about her castle. And
often in the dead of winter would come a brief thaw and a
sudden freeze, and overnight her snow castle would turn to
ice, as hard and strong as she imagined real castles to be. All

THE ICE DRAGON              19

through the winters she would build on her castle, and no one
ever knew. But always the spring would come, and a thaw
not followed by a freeze; then all the ramparts and walls
would melt away, and Adara would begin to count the days
until her birthday came again.

Her winter castles were seldom empty. At the first frost
each year, the ice lizards would come wriggling out of their
burrows, and me fields would be overrun with the tiny blue
creatures, darting this way and that, hardly seeming to touch
the snow as they skimmed across it. All the children played
with the ice lizards. But the others were clumsy and cruel,
and they would snap the fragile little animals in two, breaking
mem between their fingers as they might break an icicle
hanging from a roof. Even Geoff, who was too kind ever to
do something like that, sometimes grew curious, and held the
lizards too long in his efforts to examine them, and the heat
of his hands would make them melt and bum and finally die.

Adara's hands were cool and gentle, and she could hold the
lizards as long as she liked without harming them, which
always made Geoff pout and ask angry questions. Sometimes
she would lie in the cold, damp snow and let the lizards crawl
all over her, delighting in the light touch of their feet as they
skittered across her face. Sometimes she would wear ice
lizards hidden in her hair as she went about her chores,
though she took care never to take them inside where the heat
of the fires would kill them. Always she would gather up
scraps after the family ate, and bring them to the secret place
where her castle was a-building, and there she would scatter
them. So the castles she erected were full of kings and
courtiers every winter; small furry creatures that snuck out
from the woods, winter birds with pale white plumage, and
hundreds and hundreds of squirming, struggling ice lizards,
cold and quick and fat. Adara liked the ice lizards better than
any of the pets the family had kept over the years.

But it was the ice dragon that she loved.

She did not know when she had first seen it. It seemed to
her that it had always been a part of her life, a vision
glimpsed during the deep of winter, sweeping across the
frigid sky on wings serene and blue. Ice dragons were rare,

20

George R.R. Martin

even in those days, and whenever it was seen die children
would all point and wonder, while the old folks muttered and
shook their heads. It was a sign of a long and bitter winter
when ice dragons were abroad in the land. An ice dragon had
been seen flying across the face of the moon on the night
Adara had been bom, people said, and each winter since it
had been seen again, and those winters had been very bad
indeed, the spring coming later each year. So the people would
set fires and pray and hope to keep the ice dragon away, and
Adara would fill with fear.

But it never worked. Every year the ice dragon returned.
Adara knew it came for her.

The ice dragon was large, half again the size of the scaled
green war dragons that Hal and his fellows flew. Adara had
heard legends of wild dragons larger than mountains, but she
had never seen any. Hal's dragon was big enough, to be sure.
five times the size of a horse, but it was small compared to
the ice dragon, and ugly besides.

The ice dragon was a crystalline white, that shade of white
that is so hard and cold that it is almost blue. It was covered
with hoarfrost, so when it moved its skin broke and crackled
as the crust on the snow crackles beneath a man's boots, and
flakes of rime fell off.

Its eyes were clear and deep and icy.

Ils wings were vast and batlike, colored all a faint translu-
cent blue. Adara could see the clouds through them, and
oftentimes the moon and stars, when the beast wheeled in
frozen circles through the skies.

Its teeth were icicles, a triple row of them, jagged spears of
unequal length, white against its deep blue maw.

When the ice dragon beat its wings, the cold winds blew
and the snow swirled and scurried and the world seemed to
shrink and shiver. Sometimes when a door flew open in the
cold of winter, driven by a sudden gust of wind, the house-
holder would run to bolt it and say, "An ice dragon flies

nearby."

And when the ice dragon opened its great mouth, and
exhaled, it was not fire mat came streaming out, the burning
sulfurous stink of lesser dragons.

THE ICE DRAGON              21

The ice dragon breathed cold.

Ice formed when it breathed. Warmth fled. Fires guttered
and went out, shriven by the chill. Trees froze through to
their slow secret souls, and their limbs turned brittle and
cracked from their own weight. Animals turned blue and
whimpered and died. their eyes bulging and their skin cov-
ered over with frost.

The ice dragon breathed death into the world; death and
quiet and cold. But Adara was not afraid. She was a winter
child, and the ice dragon was her secret.

She had seen it in the sky a thousand times. When she was
four, she saw it on the ground.

She was out building on her snow castle, and it came and
landed close to her, in the emptiness of the snow-covered
fields. All the ice lizards ran away. Adara simply stood. The
ice dragon looked at her for ten long heartbeats, before it took
to the air again- The wind shrieked around her and through
her as it beat its wings to rise, but Adara felt strangely
exalted.

Later that winter it returned, and Adara touched it. Its skin
was very cold. She took off her glove nonetheless. It would
not be right otherwise. She was half afraid it would burn and
melt at her touch, but it did not. It was much more sensitive
to heat than even the ice lizards, Adara knew somehow. But
she was special, the winter child, cool. She stroked it, and
finally gave its wing a kiss that hurt her lips. That was the
winter of her fourth birthday, the year she touched the ice
dragon.

The winter of her fifth birthday was the year she rode upon
it for the first time.

It found her again, working on a different castle at a
different place in the fields, alone as ever. She watched it
come, and ran to it when it landed, and pressed herself
against it. That had been the summer when she had heard her
father talking to Hal.

They stood together for long minutes until finally Adara,
remembering Hal, reached out and tugged at the dragon's
wing with a small hand. And the dragon beat its great wings
once, and then extended them flat against the snow, and

22 George R.R. Martin

Adara scrambled up to wrap her arms about its cold white
neck.

Together, for the first time, they flew.

She had no harness or whip, as the king's dragonriders use,
At times the beating of the wings threatened to shake her
loose from where she clung, and the coldness of the dragon's
flesh crept through her clothing and bit and numbed her
child's, flesh. But Adara was not afraid.

They flew over her father's farm, and she saw Geoff
looking very small below, startled and afraid, and knew he
could not see her. It made her laugh an icy, tinkling laugh, a
laugh as bright and crisp as the winter air.

They fiew over the crossroads inn, where crowds of people
came out to watch them pass.

They flew above the forest, all white and green and silent.

They flew high into the sky, so high that Adara could not
even see the ground below, and she thought she glimpsed
another ice dragon, way off in the distance, but it was not
half so grand as hers.

They flew for most of the day, and finally the dragon
swept around in a great circle, and spiraled down, gliding on
its stiff and glittering wings. It let her off in the field where it
had found her, just after dusk.

Her father found her there, and wept to see her, and
hugged her savagely. Adara did not understand that, nor why
he beat her after he had gotten her back to the house. But
when she and Geoff had been put to sleep, she heard him
slide out of his own bed and come padding over to her. "You
missed it all," he said. "There was an ice dragon, and it
scared everybody. Father was afraid it had eaten you."

Adara smiled to herself in the darkness, but said nothing.

She flew on the ice dragon four more times that winter,
and every winter after that. Each year she flew farther and
more often than the year before, and the ice dragon was seen
more frequently in the skies above their farm.

Each winter was longer and colder than the one before.

Each year the thaw came later.

And sometimes there were patches of land, where the ice

THE ICE DRAGON              23

dragon had lain to rest. that never seemed to thaw properly at
all.

There was much talk in the village during her sixth year,
and a message was sent to the king. No answer ever came.

"A bad business, ice dragons," Hal said that summer when
he visited the farm. "They're not like real dragons, you
know. You can't break them or train them. We have tales of
those that tried, found frozen with their whip and harness in
hand. I've heard about people that have lost hands or fingers
just by touching one of them. Frostbite. Yes, a bad business."

"Then why doesn't the king do something?" her father
demanded. "We sent a message- Unless we can kill the beast
or drive it away, in a year or two we won't have any planting
season at all."

Hal smiled grimly. "The king has other concerns. The war
is going badly, you know. They advance every summer, and
they have twice as many dragonriders as we do. I tell you,
John, it's hell up there. Some year I'm going to come back.
The king can hardly spare men to go chasing an ice dragon."
He laughed. "Besides, I don't think anybody's ever kilted
one of the things. Maybe we should just let the enemy take
this whole province. Then it'd be his ice dragon."

But it wouldn't be, Adara thought as she listened. No
matter what king ruled the land, it would always be her ice
dragon.

Hal departed and summer waxed and waned. Adara counted
the days until her birthday. Hal passed through again before
me first chill, taking his ugly dragon south for the winter. His
wing seemed smaller when it came flying over the forest that
fall, though, and his visit was briefer than usual, and ended
with a loud quarrel between him and her father.

"They won't move during the winter," Hal said. "The
winter terrain is loo treacherous, and they won't risk an
advance without dragonriders to cover them from above. But
come spring, we aren't going to be able to hold them. The
king may not even try. Sell the farm now, while you can still
get a good price. You can buy another piece of land in the
south."

"This is my land," her father said. "I was bom here. You

24 George R.R. Martin

too, though you seem to have forgotten. Our parents were
buried here. And Beth too. I want to lie beside her when 1

go-"

"You'll go a lot sooner than you'd like if you don't listen

to me," Hal said angrily. "Don't be stupid, John. 1 know
what the land means to you, but it isn't worth your life." He
went on and on, but her father would not be moved. They
ended the evening swearing at each other, and Hal left in me
dead of night, slamming the door behind him as he went.

Adara, listening, had made a decision. It did not matter
what her father did or did not do. She would stay- If she
moved, the ice dragon would not know where to find her
when winter came, and if she went too far south it would
never be able to come to her at all.

It did come to her, though, just after her seventh birthday.
The winter was the coldest one of alL She flew so often and
so far that she scarcely had time to work on her ice castle.

Hal came again in the spring. There were only a dozen
dragons in his wing, and he brought no presents that year. He
and her father argued once again. Hal raged and pleaded and
threatened, but her father was stone. Finally Hal left, off to
the battlefields.

That was the year the king's line broke, up north near some
town with a long name that Adara could not pronounce.

Teri heard about it first. She returned from the inn one
night flushed and excited. "A messenger came through, on
his way to the king," she told them. "The enemy won some
big battle, and he's to ask for reinforcements. He said our
army is returning."

Their father frowned, and worry lines creased his brow.
"Did he say anything of me king's dragonriders?" Argu-
ments or no, Hal was family.

"1 asked," Teri said. "He said the dragonriders are me
rear guard. They're supposed to raid and bum, delay the
enemy while our army pulls back safely. Oh, I hope Uncle
Hal is safe!"

"Hal will show them," Geoff said. "Him and Brimstone
will bum 'em all up."

THE ICE DRAGON              25

Their father smiled. "Hal could always take care of him-
self. At any rate, there is nothing we can do. Teri, if any more
messengers come through, ask them how it goes."

She nodded, her concern not quite covering her excite-
ment. It was all quite thrilling.

In the weeks that followed, the thrill wore off, as the people
of the area began to comprehend the magnitude of the disas-
ter. The king's highway grew busier and busier, and all the
traffic flowed from north to south, and all the travelers wore
green-and-gold. At first the soldiers marched in disciplined
columns, led by officers wearing plumed golden helmets, but
even then they were less than stirring. The columns marched
wearily, and the uniforms were filthy and torn, and the
swords and pikes and axes the soldiers carried were nicked
and oftimes stained. Some men had lost their weapons; they
limped along blindly, empty-handed. And the trains of wounded
that followed the columns were often longer than the columns
themselves. Adara stood in the grass by the side of me road
and watched them pass. She saw a man with no eyes support-
ing a man with only one leg, as the two of them walked
together. She saw men with no legs, or no arms, or both. She
saw a man with his head split open by an axe, and many men
covered with caked blood and filth, men who moaned low in
their throats as they walked. She smelted men with bodies
that were horribly greenish and puffed-up. One of them died
and was left abandoned by the side of the road, Adara told
her father and he and some of the men from the village came
out and buried him.

Most of all, Adara saw the burned men. There were dozens
of them in every column that passed, men whose skin was
black and seared and falling off, who had lost an arm or a leg
or half of a face to the hot breath of a dragon. Ten told them
what the officers said, when they stopped at the inn to drink
or rest; the enemy had many, many dragons.

For almost a month the columns flowed past, more every
day. Even Old Laura admitted that she had never seen so
much traffic on the road. From time to time a lone messenger
on horseback rode against the tide, galloping towards the

26 George R.R. Martin

north, but always alone. After a time everyone knew there
would be no reinforcements.

An officer in one of the last columns advised the people of
the area to pack up whatever they could carry, and move
south- "They are coming," he warned. A few listened to
him, and indeed for a week the road was full of refugees from
towns farther north. Some of them told frightful stories.
When they left. more of the local people went with them.

But most stayed. They were people like her father, and the
land was in their blood.

The last organized force to come down the road was a
ragged troop of cavalry, men as gaunt as skeletons riding
horses with skin pulled tight around their ribs. They thun-
dered past in the night, their mounts heaving and foaming,
and the only one to pause was a pale young officer, who
reined his mount up briefly and shouted, "Go, go. They are
burning everything!" Then he was off after his men.

The few soldiers who came after were alone or in small
groups. They did not always use the road, and they did not
pay for the things they look. One swordsman killed a farmer
on the other side of town, raped his wife, stole his money,
and ran. His rags were green-and-gold.

Then no one came at all. The road was deserted.

The innkeeper claimed he could smell ashes when the wind
blew from the north. He packed up his family and went
south. Ten was distraught. Geoff was wide-eyed and anxious
and only a bit frightened. He asked a thousand questions
about the enemy, and practiced at being a warrior. Their
father went about his labors, busy as ever. War or no war, he
had crops in the field. He smiled less than usual, however,
and he began to drink, and Adara often saw him glacing up at
the sky while he worked.

Adara wandered the fields above, played by herself in the
damp summer heat, and tried to think of where she would
hide if her father tried to take them away.

Last of all, the king's dragonriders came, and with them
Hal.

There were only four of them. Adara saw me first one, and
went and toid her father, and he put his hand on her shoulder

THE ICE DRAGON              27

and together they watched it pass, a solitary green dragon
with a vaguely tattered look. It did not pause for mem.

Two days later, three dragons flying together came into
view, and one of them detached itself from the others and
circled down to their farm while the other two headed south.

Uncle Hal was thin and grim and sallow-looking. His
dragon looked sick. Its eyes ran, and one of its wings had
been partially burned, so it flew in an awkward, heavy man-
ner, with much difficulty. "Now will you go?*' Hal said to
his brother, in front of all the children.

"No. Nothing has changed."

Hal swore. "They will be here within three days," he said.
"Their dragonriders may be here even sooner."

"Father. I'm scared," Teri said.

He looked at her, saw her fear, hesitated, and finally
turned back to his brother. "I am staying. But if you would, I
would have you take the children."

Now it was Hal's turn to pause. He thought for a moment,
and finally shook his head. "I can't, John. I would, will-
ingly, joyfully, if it were possible. But it isn't. Brimstone is
wounded. He can barely carry me. If I took on any extra
weight, we might never make it."

Teri began to weep.

"I'm sorry, love," Hal said to her. "Truly I am." His
fists clenched helplessly.

"Teri is almost full-grown," their father said. "If her
weight is too much, then take one of the others.'"

Brother looked at brother, with despair in their eyes. Hal
trembled. "Adara," he said finally. "She's small and light."
He forced a laugh. "She hardly weighs anything at all. I'll
take Adara. The rest of you take horses, or a wagon, or go on
foot. But go, damn you, go."

"We will see," their father said noncommittally. "You
take Adara, and keep her safe for us."

"Yes," Hal agreed. He turned and smiled at her- "Come,
child. Uncle Hal is going to take you for a ride on Brimstone-"

Adara looked at him very seriously. "No," she said. She
turned and slipped through the door and began to run.

They came after her, of course, Hal and her father and

28 George R.R. Martin

even Geoff. But her father wasted time standing in the door,
shouting at her to come back, and when he began to run he
was ponderous and clumsy, while Adara was indeed small
and light and fleet of foot. Hal and Geoff stayed with her
longer, but Hal was weak, and Geoff soon winded himself,
though he sprinted hard at her heels for a few moments. By
the time Adara reached the nearest wheat field, the three of
them were well behind her. She quickly lost herself amid the
grain, and they searched for hours in vain while she made her
way carefully towards the woods.

When dusk fell, they brought out lanterns and torches and
continued their search. From time to time she heard her father
swearing, or Hal calling out her name. She stayed high in the
branches of the oak she had climbed, and smiled down at
their lights as they combed back and forth through the fields.
Finally she drifted off to sleep, dreaming about the coming of
winter and wondering how she would live until her birthday.
It was stilt a long time away.

Dawn woke her, dawn and a noise in the sky.

Adara yawned and blinked, and heard it again. She shin-
nied to the uppermost limb of the tree, as high as it would
bear her, and pushed aside the leaves.

There were dragons in the sky.

She had never seen beasts quite like these. Their scales
were dark and sooty, not green like the dragon Hal rode.
One was a rust color and one was the shade of dried blood
and one was black as coal. All of them had eyes like glowing
embers, and steam rose from their nostrils, and their tails
flicked back and forth as their dark, leathery wings beat the
air. The rust-colored one opened its mouth and roared, and
the forest shook to its challenge, and even the branch that
held Adara trembled just a little. The black one made a noise
too, and when it opened its maw a spear of flame lanced
out, all orange and blue, and touched the trees below. Leaves
withered and blackened, and smoke began to rise from where
the dragon's breath had fallen. The one the color of blood
flew close overhead, its wings creaking and straining, its
mouth half-open. Between its yellowed teeth Adara saw soot

THE ICE DRAGON              29

and cinders, and the wind stirred by its passage was fire and
sandpaper, raw and chafing against her skin. She cringed.

On the backs of the dragons rode men with whip and lance,
in uniforms of black-and-orange, their faces hidden behind
dark helmets. The one on the rust dragon gestured with his
lance, pointing at the farm buildings across the fields. Adara
looked.

Hai came up to meet them.

His green dragon was as large as their own, but somehow
it seemed small to Adara as she watched it climb upwards
from the farm. With its wings fully extended, it was plain to
see how badly injured it was; the right wing tip was charred,
and it leaned heavily to one side as it flew. On its back, Hal
looked like one of the tiny toy soldiers he had brought them
as a present years before.

The enemy dragonriders split up and came at him from
three sides. Hal saw what they were doing. He tried to turn.
to throw himself at the black dragon head-on, and flee the
other two. His whip flailed angrily, desperately. His green
dragon opened its mouth, and roared a weak challenge, but its
flame was pale and short and did not (each the oncoming
enemy.

The others held their fire. Then, on a signal, their dragons
all breathed as one. Hal was wreathed in flames.

His dragon made a high wailing noise, and Adara saw that
it was burning, he was burning, they were all burning, beast
and master both. They fell heavily to me ground, and lay
smoking amidst her father's wheat.

The air was ftilt of ashes.

Adara craned her head around in the other direction, and
saw a column of smoke rising from beyond the forest and the
river. That was the farm where Old Laura lived with her
grandchildren and their children.

When she looked back, the three dark dragons were cir-
cling lower and lower above her own farm. One by one they
landed. She watched the first of the riders dismount and
saunter towards their door.

She was frightened and confused and only seven, after all-
And the heavy air of summer was a weight upon her, and it

30 George R.R. Martin

filled her with a helplessness and thickened all her fears. So
Adara did the only thing she knew, without thinking, a thing
that came naturally to her. She climbed down from her tree
and ran. She ran across the fields and through the woods,
away from the farm and her family and the dragons, away
from it all. She ran until her legs throbbed with pain, down in
the direction of the river. She ran to the coldest place she
knew, to the deep caves underneath the river bluffs, to chill
shelter and darkness and safety.

And there in the cold she hid. Adara was a winter child,
and cold did not bother her. But still, as she hid, she trembled.

Day turned into night. Adara did not leave her cave.

She tried to sleep, but her dreams were full of burning
dragons.

She made herself very small as she lay in the darkness, and
tried to count how many days remained until her birthday.
The caves were nicely cool; Adara could almost imagine that
it was not summer after all, that it was winter, or near to
winter. Soon her ice dragon would come for her, and she
would ride on its back to the land of always-winter, where
great ice castles and cathedrals of snow stood eternally in
endless fields of while, and the stillness and silence were all.

It almost felt like winter as she lay there. The cave grew
colder and colder, it seemed. It made her feel safe. She
napped briefly. When she woke, it was colder still. A white
coating of frost covered the cave walls, and she was sitting on
a bed of ice. Adara jumped to her feet and looked up towards
the mouth of the cave, filled with a wan dawn light. A cold
wind caressed her. But it was coming from outside, from the
world of summer, not from the depths of the cave at all.

She gave a small shout of joy, and climbed and scrambled
up the ice-covered rocks.

Outside, the ice dragon was waiting for her.

It had breathed upon the water, and now the river was
frozen, or at least a part of it was, although she could see that
the ice was fast melting as the summer sun rose. It had
breathed upon the green grass that grew along the banks,
grass as high as Adara, and now the tall blades were white
and brittle, and when the ice dragon moved its wings the

THE ICE DRAGON             31

grass cracked in half and tumbled, sheared as clean as if it
had been cut down with a scythe.

The dragon's icy eyes met Adara's, and she ran to it and
up its wing, and threw her arms about it. She knew she had to
hurry. The ice dragon looked smaller than she had ever seen
it, and she understood what the heat of summer was doing to
it.

"Hurry, dragon," she whispered. "Take me away, take
me to the land of always-winter. We'll never come back here,
never. I'll build you the best castle of all, and take care of
you, and ride you every day. Just take me away, dragon, take
me home with you."

The ice dragon heard and understood. Its wide translucent
wings unfolded and beat the air, and bitter arctic winds
howled through the fields of summer. They rose. Away from
the cave- Away from the river. Above the forest. Up and up.
The ice dragon swung around to the north. Adara caught a
glimpse of her father's farm, but it was very small and
growing smaller. They turned their back to it, and soared.

Then a sound came to Adara's ears. An impossible sound,
a sound that was too small and too far away for her to ever
have heard it, especially above the beating of the ice dragon's
wings. But she heard it nonetheless. She heard her father
scream.

Hot tears ran down her cheeks, and where they fell upon
the ice dragon's back they burned smal! pockmarks in the
frost. Suddenly the cold beneath her hands was biting, and
when she pulled one hand away Adara saw the mark that it
had made upon the dragon's neck. She was scared, but still
she clung. "Turn back," she whispered. "Oh, please, dragon.
Take me back."

She could not see the ice dragon's eyes, but she knew what
they would look like. Its mouth opened and a blue-white
plume issued, a long cold streamer that hung in the air. It
made no noise; ice dragons are silent. But in her mind Adara
heard the wild keening of its grief.

"Please," she whispered once again. "Help me." Her
voice was thin and small.

The ice dragon turned.

32 George R.R. Martin

The three dark dragons were outside of the barn when
Adara returned, feasting on the burned and blackened car-
casses of her father's stock. One of the dragonriders was
standing near them, leaning on his lance and prodding his
dragon from time to time.

He looked up when the cold gust of wind came shrieking
across the fields, and shouted something, and sprinted for the
black dragon. The beast tore a last hunk of meat from her
father's horse, swallowed, and rose reluctantly into the air.
The rider flailed his whip.

Adara saw the door of the farmhouse burst open. The other
two riders rushed out. and ran for their dragons. One of them
was struggling into his pants as he ran. He was barechested.

The black dragon roared, and its fire came blazing up at
them. Adara felt the searing blast of heat, and a shudder went
through the ice dragon as the flame played along its belly.
Then it craned its long neck around, and fixed its baleful
empty eyes upon the enemy, and opened its frost-rimed jaws.
Out from among its icy teeth its breath came streaming, and
that breath was pale and cold.

It touched the left wing of the coal-black dragon beneath
them, and the dark beast gave a shrill cry of pain, and when it
beat its wings again, the frost-covered wing broke in two.
Dragon and dragonrider began to fall.

The ice dragon breathed again.

They were frozen and dead before they hit the ground.

The rust-colored dragon was flying at them, and the dragon
the color of blood with its barechested rider. Adara's ears
were filled with their angry roaring, and she could feel their
hot breath around her, and see the air shimmering with heat,
and smell the stink of sulfur.

Two long swords of fire crossed in midair, but neither
touched the ice dragon, though it shriveled in the heat, and
water flew from it like rain whenever it beat its wings.

The blood-colored dragon flew too close, and the breath of
the ice dragon blasted the rider. His bare chest turned blue
before Adara's eyes, and moisture condensed on him in an
instant, covering him with frost. He screamed, and died, and
fell from his mount, though his harness hand remained be-

THE ICE DRAGON               33

hind, frozen to the neck of his dragon- The ice dragon closed
on it, wings screaming the secret song of winter, and a blast
of flame met a blast of cold. The ice dragon shuddered once
again, and twisted away, dripping. The other dragon died.

But the last dragonrider was behind them now, the enemy
in full armor on the dragon whose scales were the brown of
rust. Adara screamed, and even as she did the fire enveloped
the ice dragon's wing. It was gone in less than an instant, but
the wing was gone with it, melted, destroyed.

The ice dragon's remaining wing beat wildly to slow its
plunge, but it came to earth with an awful crash. Its legs
shattered beneath it, and its wings snapped in two places, and
the impact of the landing threw Adara from its back. She
tumbled to the soft earth of the field, and rolled, and strug-
gled up, bruised but whole.

The ice dragon seemed very small now, and very broken.
Its long neck sank wearily to the ground, and its head rested
amid the wheat.

The enemy dragonrider came swooping in, roaring with
triumph. The dragon's eyes burned. The man flourished his
lance and shouted.

The ice dragon painfully raised its head once more, and
made the only sound that Adara ever heard it make: a terrible
thin cry full of melancholy, like the sound the north wind
makes when it moves around the towers and battlements of
the while castles that stand empty in the land of always"
winter.

When the cry had faded, the ice dragon sent cold into the
world one final time: a long smoking blue-white stream of
cold that was mil of snow and stillness and the end of all
living things. The dragonrider flew right into it, still bran-
dishing whip and lance. Adara watched him crash.

Then she was running, away from the fields, back to the
house and her family within, running as fast as she could,
running and panting and crying all the while like a seven-year-
old.

Her father had been nailed to the bedroom wall. They had
wanted him to watch while they took their turns with Teri-
Adara did not know what to do, but she untied Ten, whose

34 George R.R. Martin

tears had dried by then, and they freed Geoff, and then they
got their father down. Ten nursed him and cleaned out his
wounds. When his eyes opened and he saw Adara, he smiled.
She hugged hhn very hard, and cried for him.

By night he said he was fit enough to travel. They crept
away under cover of darkness, and took the king's road
south.

Her family asked no questions then, in those hours of
darkness and fear. But later, when they were safe in the
south, there were questions endlessly. Adara gave them the
best answers she could. But none of them ever believed her,
except for Geoff, and he grew out of it when he got older.
She was only seven, after all, and she did not understand that
ice dragons are never seen in summer, and cannot be tamed
nor ridden.

Besides, when they left the house that night, there was no
ice dragon to be seen. Only the huge dark corpses of three
war dragons, and the smaller bodies of three dragonriders in
black-and-orange. And a pond that had never been there
before, a small quiet pool where the water was very cold.
They had walked around it carefully, headed towards the
road.

Their father worked for another fanner for three years in
the south. His hands were never as strong as they had been,
before the nails had been pounded through them, but he made
up for that with the strength of his back and his arms, and his
determination. He saved whatever he could, and he seemed
happy. "Hal is gone, and my land," he would tell Adara.
"and I am sad for that. But it is all right. I have my daughter
back." For the winter was gone from her now, and she
smiled and laughed and even wept like other little girls.

Three years after they had fled, the king's army routed the
enemy in a great battle, and the king's dragons burned the
foreign capital. In the peace that followed, the northern prov-
inces changed hands once more. Ten had recaptured her spirit
and married a young trader, and she remained in the south.
Geoff and Adara returned with their father to the farm.

When the first frost came, all the ice lizards came out, just

THE ICE DRAGON              35

as they had always done. Adara watched them with a smile
on her face, remembering the way it had been. But she did
not try to touch them. They were cold and fragile little things,
and the warmth of her hands would hurt them.

FIREDRAKE

The firedrake is a form of dragon. The second syllable,
' 'drake,'' does not refer to a male duck, but is a shortened
form of the Greek drakon {large snake, or dragon).

Where emphasis is placed upon the dragon's fiery breath,
it can be called a "fire-dragon" or firedrake. Both Sigurd
(Siegfried) and Beowulf kilted firedrakes as culminating
deeds of heroism.

The firedrake is, in the following story, abstracted into a
principle of heat. People have, after all, always suffered
from excess of heat and cold (depending on the season.
altitude, and latitude) and have tended to maievolize them
(if I may coin a word).

The sun is the obvious principle of heat, but it is diffi-
cult to maievolize the sun unless you live in an unusually
hot, dry climate. The sun is too obviously a bnnger of
welcome warmth and light, and is clearly a fructifying
force on which life depends. A firedrake must then be
converted into the principle of excessive heat. The discov-
ery of fire gave humanity something else that showed this
double aspect. It could warm and give life like the sun and
could burn and kill like the firedrake.

There is no natural principle of cold—for cold is only
the absence of heat. It is possible to invent one, however.
The Scandinavians in their myths had, among the enemies
of the gods, both the fire-giants and the frost-giants. Natu-
rally, considering the Scandinavian climate, it was frost-
giants who were emphasized.

36

PRINCE PRIGIO                 37

In the following utterly charming story not only is there a
firedrake but also a sort of frost-giant which the author
calls the Remora (a name also given to a small fish with a
sucker organ on its back that hitches rides on sharks). The
Remora, as described, seems even more frightful, though
less malevolent, than [he firedrake.

PRINCE PR1GIO

Andrew Lang

CHAPTER I

How the Fairies Were Not Invited to Court

Once upon a time there reigned in Pantouflia a king and a
queen. With'almost everything else lo make them happy, they
wanted one thing: they had no children. This vexed the King
even more than the Queen, who was very clever and teamed,
and who had hated dolls when she was a child. However, she
too, in spite of all me books she read and all the pictures she
painted, would have been glad enough to be a mother of a
little prince. The King was anxious to consult the faines, but
the Queen would not hear of such a thing. She did not believe
in fairies: she said that they had never existed; and that she
maintained, though The History of the Royal Family was mil
of chapters about nothing else.

Well, at long and at last they had a little boy, who was
generally regarded as the finest baby that had ever been
seen. Even Her Majesty herself remarked that, though she
could never believe all the courtiers told her, yet he certainly
was a fine child—a very fine child.

Now the time drew near for the christening party, and the
King and Queen were sitting at breakfast in their summer
parlour talking over it. It was a splendid room, hung with
portraits of the royal ancestors. There was Cinderella, the

38

PRINCE PR1GIO                  39

grandmother of the reigning monarch, with her little fool in
her glass slipper thrust out before her. There was the Marquis
de Carabas, who, as everyone knows, was raised to the
throne as prince consort after his marriage with the daughter
of the king of the period. On the arm of the throne was seated
his celebrated cat. wearing boots. There, too, was a portrait
of a beautiful lady, sound asleep: this was Madame La Belle
au Bois-dormant, also an ancestress of the royal family.
Many other pictures of celebrated persons were hanging on
the walls.

"You have asked all the right people, my dear?" said the
King.

"Everyone who should be asked," answered the Queen.

"People are so touchy on these occasions," said His Maj-
esty. "You have not forgotten any of our aunts?"

"No; the old cats!" replied the Queen; for the King's aunts
were old-fashioned, and did not approve of her, and she knew
it.

"They are very kind old ladies in their way," said the
King, "and were nice to me when I was a boy."

Then he waited a little, and remarked: "The fairies, of
course, you have invited? It has always been usual in our
family, on an occasion like this; and I think we have ne-
glected them a little of late."

"How can you be so absurdV cried the Queen. "How
often must I tell you that there are no fairies? And even if
there were—but, no matter; pray let us drop the subject."

"They are very old friends of our family, my dear, that's
all," said the King timidly. "Often and often they have been
godmothers to us. One, in particular, was most kind and most
serviceable to Cinderella I, my own grandmother."

"Your grandmother!" interrupted Her Majesty. "Fiddle-
dee-dee' If anyone puts such nonsense into the head of my
little Prigio—"

But here the baby was brought in by the nurse, and the
Queen almost devoured it with kisses. And so the fairies were
not invited! It was an extraordinary thing, but none of the
nobles could come to the christening party when they learned
that the faines had not been asked. Some were abroad; sev-

40 Andrew Long

era! were ill; a few were in prison among the Saracens; others
were captives in the dens of ogres. The end of it was that the
King and Queen had to sit down alone, one at each end of a
very long table, arrayed with plates and glasses for a hundred
guests—for a hundred guests who never came!

"Any soup, my dear?" shouted the King, through a
speaking-trumpet; when suddenly the air was filled with a
sound like the rustling of the wings of birds.

Flitter, flitter, flutter, went the noise; and when the Queen
looked up, lo and behold! on every seat was a lovely fairy,
dressed in green, each with a most interesting-looking parcel
in her hand. Don't you like opening parcels? The King did,
and he was most friendly and polite to the fairies. But the
Queen, though she saw them distinctly, took no notice of
them. You see, she did not believe in fairies, nor in her own
eyes, when she saw mem. So she talked across the fairies to
the King. just as if they had not been there; but the King
behaved as politely as if they were real—which, of course,
they were.

When dinner was over, and when the nurse had brought in
the baby, all the fairies gave him the most munificent pres-
ents. One offered a purse which could never be empty; and
one a pair of seven-league boots; and another a cap of dark-
ness, that nobody might see the Prince when he put it on; and
another a wishing-cap; and another a carpet, on which, when
he sat, he was carried wherever he wished to Find himself.
Another made him beautiful forever; and another, brave; and
another, lucky; but me last fairy of all, a cross old thing,
crept up and said: "My child, you shall be too clever!"

This fairy's gift would have pleased the Queen, if she had
believed in it, more than anything else, because she was so
clever herself. But she took no notice at ail; and the fairies
went each to her own country, and none of them stayed there
at the palace, where nobody believed in them, except the
King, a little. But the Queen tossed all their nice boots and
caps, carpets, purses, swords and all away into a dark lumber
room; for, of course, she thought that they were all nonsense,
and merely old rubbish out of books or whatever.

PRWCE PRIGIO                41

CHAPTER II

Prince Prigio and His Family

Well, the little prince grew up. I think I've told you that his
name was Prigio—did I not? Well, that was his name. You
cannot think how clever he was. He argued with his nurse as
soon as he could speak, which was very soon. He argued that
he did not like to be washed because the soap got into his
eyes. However, when he was told all about the pores of the
skin, and how they could not be healthy if he was not
washed, he at once ceased to resist, for he was very reason-
able. He argued with his father that he did not see why there
should be kings who were rich while beggars were poor, and
why the King—who was a little greedy—should have poached
eggs and plumcake at afternoon tea while many other persons
went without dinner. The King was so surprised and hurt at
these remarks that he boxed the Prince's ears, saying: *TU
teach you to be too clever, my lad." Then he remembered the
awful curse of the oldest fairy, and was sorry for the rudeness
of the Queen. And when the Prince, after having his ears
boxed, said that "force was no argument," the King went
away in a rage.

Indeed, I cannot tell you how the Prince was hated by all!
He would go down into the kitchen and show the cook how to
make soup. He would visit the poor people's cottages and
teach them how to make the beds, and how to make plum-
pudding out of turnip-tops and venison cutlets out of rusty
bacon. He showed the fencing-master how to fence, and the
professional cricketer how to bowl, and instructed the rat-
catcher in breeding terriers. He sent sums to the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and assured the Astronomer Royal that the
sun does not go round the earth—which, for my part, I
believe it does. The young ladies of the Court disliked danc-

42 Andrew Lang

ing with him, in spite of his good looks, because he was
always asking: "Have you read this?" and "Have you read
that?"—and when they said they hadn't, he sneered; and
when they said they had, he found them out.

He found out all his tutors and masters in the same horrid
way; correcting the accent of his French teacher, and trying to
get his German tutor not to eat peas with his knife. He also
endeavoured to teach the Queen-dowager, his grandmother, an
art with which she had long been perfectly familiar! In fact,
he knew everything better than anybody else; and the worst of
it was that he did: and he never was in the wrong, and he
always said; "Didn't I tell you so?" And, what was more, he
had\

As time went on, Prince Prigio had two younger brothers,
whom everybody liked. They were not a bit clever, but jolly.
Prince Alphonso, the third son, was round, fat, good-humoured,
and as brave as a lion. Prince Enrico, the second, was tall,
thin, and a little sad, but never too clever- Both were in love
with two of (heir own cousins (with the approval of their dear
parents); and all the world said: "What nice, unaffected
princes they are!" But Prigio nearly got the country into
several wars by being too clever for the foreign ambassadors.
Now, as Pantouflia was a rich, lazy country, which hated
righting, this was very unpleasant, and did not make people
love Prince Prigio any better.

CHAPTER IU

About the Firedrake

Of all the people who did not like Prigio, his own dear papa,
King Grognio, disliked him most. For the King knew he was
not clever himself. When he was in the counting-house,
counting out his money, and when he happened to say:

PRINCE PRIGIO                43

"Sixteen shillings and fourteen and twopence are three pounds,
fifteen," it made him wild to hear Prigio whisper: "One
pound, ten, and twopence"—which of course it is. And the
King was afraid that Prigio would conspire, and get made
king himself—which was the last thing Prigio really wanted.
He much preferred to idle about, and know everything with-
out seeming to take any trouble.

Well, the King thought and thought. How was he to get
Prigio out of the way, and make Enrico or Alphonso his
successor? He read in books about it; and all the books
showed that, if a king sent his three sons to do anything, it
was always the youngest who did it and got the crown. And
he wished he had the chance. Well, it arrived at last.

There was a very hot summer! It began to be hot in March.
All the rivers were dried up. The grass did not grow. The corn
did not grow. The thermometers exploded with heat. The barom-
eters stood at SET FAIR. The people were much distressed, and
came and broke the palace windows—as they usually do
when things go wrong in Pantouflia.

The King consulted the learned men about the Court, who
told him that probably a FIREDRAKE was in the neighborhood.

Now the Firedrake is a beast, or bird, about the bigness of
an elephant. Its body is made of iron, and it is always red
hot. A more terrible and cruel beast cannot be imagined; for,
if you go near it, you are at once broiled by the Firedrake.

But the King was not ill-pleased: "for," thought he, "of
course my three sons must go after the brute, the eldest first,
and, as usual, it will kilJ the first two and be beaten by the
youngest. It is a little hard on Enrico, poor boy; but anything
to get rid of that Prigio!"

Then the King went to Prigio, and said that his country was
in danger, and that he was determined to leave the crown to
whichever of them would bring him the horns (for it has homs)
and tail of the Firedrake.

"It is an awkward brute to tackle," the King said, "but
you are the oldest, my lad; go where glory waits you! Put on
your armour and be off with you!"

This the King said, hoping that either the Firedrake would
roast Prince Prigio alive (which he could easily do, as 1 have

44 Andrew Long

said; for he is all over as hot as a red-hot poker), or that, if
the Prince succeeded, at least his country would be freed
from the monster.

But the Prince, who was lying on the sofa doing sums in
compound division, for fun, said in the politest way:

"Thanks to the education Your Majesty has given me, I
have teamed that the Firedrake, like the siren, the fairy, and
so forth, is a fabulous animal which does not exist. But even
granting, for the sake of argument, that there is a Firedrake,
Your Majesty is well aware that there is no kind of use in
sending me. It is always the eldest son who goes out first, and
comes to grief on these occasions, and it is always the third
son that succeeds. Send Aiphonso" (this was the youngest
brother), "and he will do the trick at once. At least, if he
fails, it will be most unusual, and Enrico can try his luck."

Then he went back to his arithmetic and his slate, and the
King had to send for Prince Alphonso and Prince Enrico.
They both came in very warm; for they had been whipping
tops, and the day was unusually hot.

"Look here," said the King, "just you two younger ones
look at Prigio! You see how hot it is, and how coolly he takes
it, and the country suffering; and all on account of a Fire-
drake, you know, which has apparently built Ilis nest not far
off. Well, I have asked that lout of a brother of yours to kill
it, and he says—"

"That he does not believe in Firedrakes," interrupted Prigio.
"The weather's warm enough without going out hunting!"

"Not believe in Firedrakes!" cried Alphonso. "I wonder
what you do believe in! Just let me get at the creature!" For
he was as brave as a lion. "Hi! page, my chain-armour,
helmet, lance, and buckler! A Molinda! A Molinda!" (which
was his war cry).

The page ran to get the armour, but it was 50 uncom-
monly hot that he dropped it, and put his fingers to his
mouth, crying!

"You had better put on flannels, Aiphonso, for this kind of
work," said Prigio. "And if I were you I'd take a light
garden engine, full of water, to squirt at the enemy."

"Happy thought!" said Alphonso. "I will!" And off he

PRINCE PRIGIO                45

went, kissed his dear Molinda, bade her keep a iot of dances
for him (there was to be a dance when he had killed the
Firedrake), and then he rushed to the field!

But he never came back any more!

Everyone wept bitterly—everyone but Prince Prigio; for he
thought it was a practical joke, and said that Alphonso had
taken the opportunity to start off on his travels and see the

world.

"There is some dreadful mistake, sir," said Prigio to the
King. "You know as well as I do that the youngest son has
always succeeded up to now. But I entertain great hopes for

Enrico!"

And he grinned; for he fancied it was all nonsense, and that
there were no Firedrakes.

Enrico was present when Prigio was consoling the King in
this unfeeling way.

"Enrico, my boy," saidtiis Majesty, "the task awaits you
and the honour. When you come back with the horns and tail
of the Firedrake you shall be crown prince; and Prigio shall
be made an usher at the grammar school—it is all he is fit

for."

Enrico was not quite so confident as Alphonso had been. He
insisted on making his will; and he wrote a poem about the
pleasures and advantages of dying young. This is part of it:

The violet is a blossom sweet,

That droops before the day is done—
Slain by thine overpowering heat,
OSun!

And I, like that sweet purple flower,

May roast, or boil, or broil, or bake.
If burned by thy terrific power,
Firedrake!

This poem comforted Enrico more or less, and he showed
it to Prigio. But the Prince only laughed, and said that the
second line of the last verse was not very good, for violets do
not "roast, or boil, or broil, or bake."

46 Andrew Long

Enrico tried to improve it but could not. So he read it to his
cousin. Lady Kathleena, just as it was; and she cried over it
(though I don't think she understood it); and Enrico cried a
little too-

However, next day he started, with a spear, a portable
refrigerator, and a lot of bottles people throw at fires to put
them out-
But he never came back again!

After shedding torrents of tears the King summoned Prince
Prigio to his presence.

"Dastard!" he said. "Poltroon! Your turn, which should
have come first, has arrived at last. You must fetch me the
horns and the tail of the Firedrake. Probably you will be
grilled, thank goodness; but who will give me back Enrico
and Alphonso?"

"Indeed, Your Majesty," said Prigio, "you must permit
me to correct your policy. Your only reason for dispatching
your sons in pursuit of this dangerous but I believe fabulous
animal was to ascertain which of us would most worthily
succeed to your throne, at the date—long may it be de-
ferred!—of your lamented decease. Now, there can be no
further question about the matter. I, unworthy as I am, repre-
sent the sole hope of the royal family. Therefore to send me
after the Firedrake were* both dangerous and unnecessary.
Dangerous, because, if he treats me as you say he did my
brothers—my unhappy brothers—the throne of Pantouflia will
want an heir. But if I do come back alive—why, I cannot be
more the true heir than I am at present; now can I? Ask the
Lord Chief Justice, if you don't believe me."

These arguments were so clearly and undeniably correct
that the King, unable to answer them, withdrew into a soli-
tary place where he could express himself with freedom and
give rein to his passions.

"Subjunctive mood- He was a great grammarian!

47

PRINCE PRIGIO

CHAPTER IV

How Prince Prigio Was Deserted by
Evesybody

Meanwhile Prince Prigio had to suffer many unpleasant things.
Though he was the crown prince (and though his arguments
were unanswerable) everybody shunned him for a coward.
The Queen, who did not believe in Firedrakes, alone took his
side. He was not only avoided by all, but he had most
disagreeable scenes with his own cousins. Lady Molinda and
Lady Kathleena. In the garden Lady Molinda met him walk-
ing alone, and did not bow to him.

"Dear Molly," said the Prince, who liked her, "how have
I been so unfortunate as to offend you?"

"My name. sir, is Lady Molinda." she said very proudly;

"and you have sent your own brother to his grave!"

"Oh, excuse me." said the Prince, "1 am certain he has
merely gone off on his travels. He'll come back when he is
tired: there are no Firedrakes; a French writer says they are
purement fabuleux. purely fabulous, you know."

"Prince Alphonso has gone on his travels, and will come
back when he is tired! And was he then—tired—of me?"
cried poor Molinda, bursting into tears, and forgetting her

dignity.

"Oh! I beg your pardon, I never noticed; I'm sure I'm very
sorry," cried the Prince, who, never having been in love
himself, never thought of other people. And he tried to take
Molinda's hand. but she snatched it from him and ran away
through me garden to the palace, leaving Prince Prigio to feel
foolish for once, and ashamed.

As for Lady Kathleena, she swept past him like a queen,
without a word- So the Prince, for all his cleverness, was not
happy.

48 Andrew Long

After several days had gone by the King returned from the
solitary place where he had been speaking his mind. He now
felt calmer and better, and so at last he came back to the
palace. But on seeing Prince Prigio, who was lolling in a
hammock, translating Egyptian hieroglyphs into French po-
etry for his mother, the King broke out afresh, and made use
of the most cruel and impolite expressions.

At last he gave orders that all the Court should pack up and
move to a distant city; and that Prince Prigio should be left
alone in the palace by himself. For he was quite unendurable,
the King said, and he could not trust his own temper when he
thought of him. And he grew so fierce that even the Queen
was afraid of him now.

The poor Queen cried a good deal; Prigio being her favour-
ite son, on account of his acknowledged ability and talent.
But the rest of the courtiers were delighted at leaving Prince
Prigio behind. For his part, he, very good-naturedly, showed
them the best and shortest road to Falkenstein, the city where
they were going; and easily proved that neither the Chief
Secretary for Geography nor the General of the Army knew
anything about the matter—which, indeed, they did not.

The ungrateful courtiers left Prigio with hoots and yells,
for they disliked him so much that they forgot he would be
king one day. He therefore reminded them of this little fact in
future history, which made them feel uncomfortable enough,
and then lay down in his hammock and went asleep.

When he wakened the air was cold and the day was
beginning to grow dark. Prince Prigio thought he would go
down and dine at a tavern in the town, for no servants had
been left with him. But what was his annoyance when he
found that his boots, his sword, his cap, his cloak—all his
clothes, in fact, except those he wore—had been taken away
by the courtiers, merely to spite him! His wardrobe had been
ransacked, and everything that had not been carried off had
been cut up, burned, and destroyed. Never was there such a
spectacle of wicked mischief. It was as if hay had been made
of everything he possessed. What was worse, he had not a
penny in his pocket to buy new things; and his father had
stopped his allowance of £50,000 a month.

PRINCE PRIGIO                49

Can you imagine anything more cruel and unjust than this
conduct? For it was not the Prince's fault that he was so
clever. The cruel fairy had made him so. But even if the
Prince had been bom clever (as may have happened to you),
was he to be blamed for that? The other people were just as
much at fault for being bom so stupid; but the world, my dear
children, can never be induced to remember this. If you are
clever, you will find it best not to let people know it—if you
want them to like you.

Welt. here was the Prince in a pretty plight. Not a pound in
his pocket, not a pair of boots to wear, not even a cap to
cover his head from the rain; nothing but cold meat to eat,
and never a servant to answer the bell.

CHAPTER V

What Prince Prigio Found in the Garret

The Prince walked from room to room of the palace, but,
unless he wrapped himself up in a curtain, there was nothing
for him to wear when he went out in the rain. At last he
climbed up a turret stair in the very oldest part of the castle,
where he had never been before; and at the very top was a
Ittle round room, a kind of garret. The Prince pushed in the
door with some difficulty—not that it was locked, but the
handle was rusty, and the wood had swollen with the damp.
The room was very dark; only the last grey light of the rainy
evening came through a slit of a window, one of those narrow
windows that they used to fire arrows out of in old times.

But in the dusk the Prince saw a heap of all sons of things
lying on the floor and on the table. There were two caps; he
put one on—an old, grey, ugly cap it was, made of felt.
There was a pair of boots; and he kicked off his slippers, and

50 Andrew Long

got into them. They were a good deal worn, but fitted as if
they had been made for him. On the table was a purse with
just three gold coins—old ones too—in it; and this, as you
may fancy, the Prince was very well pleased to put in his
pocket. A sword, with a sword-belt, he buckled about his
waist; and the rest of the articles, a regular collection of odds
and ends, he left just where they were lying. Then he ran
downstairs and walked out of the hall door.

CHAPTER VI

What Happened to Prince Prigio in Town

By this time the Prince was very hungry. The town was just
three miles off; but he had such a royal appetite that he did
not like to waste it on bad cookery, and the people of the
royal town were bad cooks.

"I wish I were in the Bear, at Gluckstein," said he to
himself; for he remembered that mere was a very good cook
there. But then the town was twenty-one leagues away—sixty-
three long miles!

No sooner had the Prince said this, and taken just three
steps, than he found himself at the door of the Bear Inn at
Gluckstein!

"This is the most extraordinary dream," said he to him-
self; for he was far too clever of course to believe in seven-
league boots. Yet he had a pair on at that very moment, and it
was they which had carried him in three strides from the
palace to Gluckstein!

The truth is that the Prince, in looking about the palace for
clothes, had found his way into the very old lumber room
where the magical gifts of the fairies had been thrown by his

PRINCE PRiGfO                 51

clever mother, who did not believe in them. But this of
course the Prince did not know.

Now you should be told that seven-league boots only take
those prodigious steps when you say you wont to go a long
distance. Otherwise they would be very inconvenient—when
you only want to cross the room, for example. Perhaps this
has not been explained to you by someone?

Well, the Prince walked into the Bear, and it seemed odd
to him that nobody took any notice of him. And yet his face
was as well known as that of any man in Pantouflia; for
everybody had seen it, at least in pictures. He was so puzzled
by not being attended to as usual that he quite forgot to take
off his cap. He sat down at a table, however, and shouted
"Kellner!" at which all the waiters jumped, and looked
round in every direction, but nobody came to him. At first he
thought they were too busy, but presently another explanation
occurred to him.

"The King," said he to himself, "has threatened to exe-
cute anybody who speaks to me, or helps me in any way.
Well, I don't mean to starve in the midst of plenty, anyhow;

here goes!"

The Prince rose and went to the table in the midst of the
room, where a huge roast turkey had just been placed. He
helped himself to half the breast, some sausages, chestnut
stuffing, bread sauce, potatoes, and a bottle of red wine—
Burgundy. He then went back to a table in a comer, where he
dined very well, nobody taking any notice of him. When he
had finished, he sat watching the other people dining, and
smoking his cigarette. As he was sitting thus, a very tall man,
an officer in the uniform of the Guards, came in, and,
walking straight to the Prince's table, said: "Kellner, clean
this table, and bring in the bill of fare."

With these words, the officer sat down suddenly in the
Prince's lap, as if he did not see him at all. He was a heavy
man, and the Prince, enraged at the insult, pushed him away
and jumped to his feet. As he did so, his cap dropped off.
The officer fell on his knees at once, crying: "Pardon, my
Prince, pardon! I never saw you!"

This was more than the Prince could be expected to believe.

52 Andrew Long

"Nonsense! Count Frederick von Matterhom," he said,
"you must be intoxicated. Sir! you have insulted your Prince
and your superior officer. Consider yourself under arrest!
You shall be sent to a prison tomorrow!"

On this, the poor officer appealed piteously to everybody
in the tavern. They all declared that they had not seen the
Prince, nor even had an idea that he was doing them the
honour of being in the neighbourhood of their town.

More and more offended, and convinced that there was a
conspiracy to annoy and insult him, the Prince shouted for the
landlord, called for his bill, threw down his three pieces of
gold without asking for change, and went into the street.

"It is a disgraceful conspiracy," he said. "The King shall
answer for this! I shall write to the newspapers at once!"

He was not put in a better temper by me way in which
people hustled him in the street. They ran against him exactly
as if they did not see him, and then staggered back in the
greatest surprise, looking in every direction for me person
they had jostled. In one of these encounters, the Prince
pushed so hard against a poor old beggar woman that she fell
down. As he was usually most kind and polite, he pulled off
his cap to beg her pardon, when, behold, the beggar woman
gave one dreadful scream, and fainted! A crowd was collect-
ing, and the Prince, forgetting that he had thrown down all
his money in the tavern, pulled out his purse. Then he
remembered what he had done, and expected to find it empty;

but, lo, there were three pieces of gold in it! Overcome with
surprise, he thrust the money into the woman's hand, and put
on his cap again. In a moment the crowd, which had been
staring at him, rushed away in every direction, with cries of
terror, declaring that there was a magician in the town, and a
fellow who coutd appear and disappear at pleasure!

By this time, you or I, or anyone who was not so ex-
tremely clever as Prince Prigio, would have understood what
was me matter. He had put on, without knowing it, not only
the seven-league boots, but the cap of darkness, and had
taken Fortunatus's purse, which could never be empty, how-
ever often you took all the money out. All those and many
other delightful wares the fairies had given him at his chris-

PR/NCE PRIGIO                 53

tening, and the Prince had found them in the dark garret. But
the Prince was so extremely wise, and learned, and scientific,
that he did not believe in fairies nor in fairy gifts.

"It is indigestion," he said to himself- "Those sausages
were not of the best; and that Burgundy was extremely strong.
Things are not as they appear."

Here, as he was arguing with himself, he was nearly run
over by a splendid carriage and six, the driver of which never
took the slightest notice of him. Annoyed at this, the Prince
leaped up behind, threw down the two footmen, who made
no resistance, and so was carried to the door of a magnificent
palace. He was determined to challenge the gentleman who
was in the carriage; but noticing that he had a very beautiful
young lady with him, whom he had never seen before, he
followed them into the house, not wishing to alarm the girl,
and meaning to speak to me gentleman when he found him
alone.

A great ball was going on; but, as usual, nobody took
notice of the Prince. He walked among the guests, being
careful not to jostle them, and listening to their conversation.

It was all about himself! Everyone had heard of his dis-
grace, and almost everyonce cried, "Serve him right!" They
said that the airs he gave himself were quite unendurable—
that nothing was more rude than to be always in the right—
that cleverness might be carried far too far—that it was better
even to be bom stupid ("Like the rest of you," thought the
Prince); and, in fact, nobody had a good word for him.

Yes, one had! It was the pretty lady of the carriage- I never
could tell you how pretty she was. She was tall, with cheeks
like white roses blushing, she had dark hair, and very large
dark-grey eyes, and her face was the kindest in the world! The
Prince first thought how nice and good she looked, even
before he thought how pretty she looked. She stood up for
Prince Prigio when her partner would speak ill of him. She
had never seen the Prince, for she was but newly come to
Pantouflia; but she declared that it was his misfortune, not his
fault, to be so clever. "And then, think how hard they made
him work at school! Besides," said this kind young lady, "1
hear he is extremely handsome, and very brave; and he has a

54 Andrew Long

good heart, for he was kind. I have heard, to a poor boy, and
did all his examination papers for him, so that the boy passed
first in everything. And now he is Minister of Education,
though he can't do a line of Greek prose!"

The Prince blushed at this. for he knew his conduct had not
been honourable. But he at once fell over head and ears in
love with the young lady, a thing he had never done in his
life before, because—he said—"women are so stupid!" You
see he was so clever!

Now, at this very moment—when the Prince, all of a
sudden, was as deep in love as if he had been the stupidest
officer in the room—an extraordinary thing happened! Some-
thing seemed to give a whirr! in his brain, and in one instant
he knew all about it! He believed in fairies and fairy gifts,
and understood that his cap was the cap of darkness, and his
shoes the seven-league boots, and his purse the purse of
Fortunatus! He had read about those things in historical books:

but now he believed in them.

CHAPTER VII

The Prince Faffs in Love

He understood all this, and burst out laughing, which nearly
frightened an old lady near him out of her wits. Ah! how he
wished he were only in evening dress, that he might dance
with the charming young lady. But there he was, dressed just
as if he were going out to hunt, if anyone couid have seen
him. So, even if he took off his cap of darkness and became
visible, he was no figure for a ball. Once he would not have
cared, but now he cared very much indeed.

But the Prince was not clever for nothing. He thought for a
moment, then went out of the room, and in three steps of the

PRINCE PRIGIO                 55

seven-league boots was at his empty, dark, cold palace again.
He struck a light with a flint and steel, lit a torch, and ran
upstairs to the garret. The flaring light of the torch fell on the
pile of "rubbish," as the Queen would have called it, which
he turned over with eager hands. Was there—yes, there was
another cap! There it lay, a handsome green one with a red
feather. The Prince pulled off the cap of darkness, put on the
other, and said: "/ wish I were dressed in my best suil of
white and gold, with the royal Pantouflia diamonds!"

In one moment there he was in white and gold, the greatest
and most magnificent dandy in the whole world, and the hand-
somest man!

"How about my boots, I wonder," said the Prince; for his
seven-league boots were stout riding-boots, not good to dance
in. whereas now he was in elegant shoes of silk and gold.

He threw down the wishing cap, put on the other—the cap
of darkness—and made three strides in the direction of
Gluckstein. But he was only three steps nearer it than he had
been, and the seven-league boots were standing beside him
on the floor!

"No," said the Prince, "no man can be in two different
pairs of boots at one and the same time! That's mathematics!"

He then hunted about in the lumber room again till he
found a small, shabby, old Persian carpet, the size of a
hearthrug. He went to his own room, took a portmanteau in
his hand, sat down on the carpet, and said: "I wish I were in
Gluckstein!"

In a moment there he found himself; for this was mat
famous carpet which Prince Hussein bought long ago, in the
market at Bisnagar, and which the fairies had brought with
the other presents to the christening of Prince Prigio.

When he arrived at the house where the ball was going on,
he put the magical carpet in the portmanteau, and left it in the
cloakroom, receiving a numbered ticket in exchange. Then he
marched in all his glory (and of course without the cap of
darkness) into the room where they were dancing. Everybody
made place for him. bowing down to the ground, and the
loyal band struck up The Prince's March:

56                    Andrew Long

Heaven bless our Prince Prigio!
What is there he doesn't know?

Greek, Swiss, German (High and Low),
And the names of the mountains in Mexico,
Heaven bless the Prince!

He used to be very fond of this march, and the words—some
people said he had made them himself. But now, somehow,
he didn't much like it. He went straight to the Duke of
Stumpfelbahn, the Hereditary Master of the Ceremonies, and
asked to be introduced to the beautiful young lady. She was
the daughter of the new English Ambassador, and her name
was Lady Rosalind. But she nearly fainted when she heard
who it was that wished to dance with her, for she was not at
all particularly clever; and the Prince had such a bad character
for snubbing girls, and asking them difficult questions. How-
ever, it was impossible to refuse, and so she danced with the
Prince, and he danced very well. Then they sat out in the
conservatory, among the flowers, where nobody came near
them; and then they danced again, and then the Prince took
her down to supper. And all the time he never once said:

"Have you read thisT' or "Have you read that?" or "What!
you never heard of Alexander the Great?" or Julius Caesar,
or Michelangelo, or whoever it might be—horrid,' difficult
questions he used to ask. That was the way he used to go on:

but now he only talked to the young lady about herself; and
she quite left off being shy or frightened, and asked him all
about his own country, and about the Firedrake shooting, and
said how fond she was of hunting herself. And the Prince
said: "Oh, if you wish it, you shall have the horns and tail of
a Firedrake to hang up in your hall, tomorrow evening!"

Then she asked if it was not very dangerous work, Fire-
drake hunting; and he said it was nothing, when you knew the
trick of it; and he asked her if she would not give him a rose
out of her bouquet; and, in short, he made himself so agree-
able and unaffected that she thought him very nice indeed.

For even a clever person can be nice when he likes—above
all when he is not thinking about himself. And now the
Prince was thinking of nothing in the world but the daughter

PRINCE PRIGIO                 57

of the English Ambassador, and how to please her. He got
introduced to her father too, and quite won his heart; and at
last he was invited to dine next day at the embassy.

In Pantouflia, it is the custom that a ball must not end
while one of the royal family goes on dancing. This ball
lasted till the light came in, and the birds were singing out of
doors, and all the mothers present were sound asleep. Then
nothing would satisfy the Prince but that they all should go
home singing through the streets: in fact, there never had
been so merry a dance in alt Pantouflia. The Prince had made
a point of dancing with almost every girl there; and he had
suddenly become the most beloved of the royal family. But
everything must end at last; and the Prince, putting on the cap
of darkness and sitting on the famous carpet, flew back to his
ionely castle.

CHAPTER Vm

The Prince Is Puzzled

Prince Prigio did not go to bed. It was bright daylight, and he
had promised to bring the horns and tail of a Firedrake as a
present to a pretty lady- He had said it was easy to do this;

but now, as he sat and thought it over, he did not feel so
victorious.

"First," he said, "where is the Firedrake?"
He reflected for a little, and then ran upstairs to the garret.
"It should be here!" he cried, tossing the fairies' gifts
about, "and, by George, here it is!"

Indeed, he had found the spy-glass of carved ivory which
Prince Ali, in the Arabian Nights, bought in the bazaar in
Schiraz. Now this glass was made so that by looking through
it you could see anybody or anything you wished, however

58 Andrew Long

far away. Prigio's first idea was to look at his lady. "But she
does not expect to be looked at," he thought, "and I won't!"
On the other hand, he determined to look at the Firedrake; for
of course he had no delicacy about spying on him, the brute.

The Pnnce clapped the glass to his eye, stared out of the
window, and there, sure enough, he saw the Firedrake. He
was floating about in a sea of molten lava, on the top of a
volcano. There he was, swimming and diving for pleasure,
tossing up the flaming waves, and blowing fountains of fire
out of his nostrils, like a whale spouting!

The Pnnce did not like the looks of him.

"With all my cap of darkness, and my shoes of swiftness,
and my sword of sharpness, I never could get near that
beast," he said; "and if I did stalk him, I could not hurt him.
Poor little Alphonso! poor Enrico! what plucky fellows they
were! I fancied that there was no such thing as a Firedrake:

he's not in the Natural History books; and I thought the boys
were only making fun, and would be back soon, safe and
sound. How horrid being too clever makes one! And now,
what am I to do?"

What was he to do indeed? And what would you have
done? Bring the horns and tail he must, or perish in the
adventure. Otherwise, how could he meet his lady?—why,
she would think him a mere braggart.

The Prince sat down and thought and thought; and the day
went on, and it was now high noon.

At last he jumped up and rushed into the library, a room
where nobody ever went except himself and the Queen. There
he turned the books upside down, in his haste, till he found
an old one by a French gentleman, Monsieur Cyrano de
Bergerac. It was an account of a voyage to the moon, in
which there is a great deal of information about matters not
generally known; for few travellers have been to the moon. In
that book, Prince Prigio fancied he would find something he
half-remembered, and that would be of use to him. And he
did! So you see that cleverness, and minding your book, have
some advantages, after all. For here the Prince learned that
there is a very rare beast called a Remora, which is at least as
cold as the Firedrake is hot!

PRINCE PRIGIO                59

"Now," thought he, "i// can only make these two fight,
why, the Remora may kill the Firedrake, or take the heat out
of him, at least, so that I may have a chance."

Then he seized the ivory glass, clapped it to his eye, and
looked for the Remora. Just the tip of his nose, as white as
snow and as smooth as ice, was sticking out of a chink in a
frozen mountain, not far from the burning mountain of the
Firedrake.

*' Hooray!'' said the Prince softly to himself; and he jumped
like mad into the winged shoes of swiftness, stuck on the cap
of darkness, girdled himself with the sword of sharpness, and
put a good slice of bread, with some cold tongue, in a wallet,
which he slung on his back. Never you fight, if you can help
it, except with plenty of food to keep you going and in good
heart. Then off he flew, and soon he reached the volcano of
the Firedrake.

CHAPTER IX

The Prince and the Firedrake

It was dreadfully hot, even high up in the air, where the
Prince hung invisible. Great burning stones were tossed up by
the volcano, and nearly hit him several times. Moreover, the
steam and smoke, and the flames which the Firedrake spouted
like foam from his nostrils, would have daunted even the
bravest man. The sides of the hill too were covered with the
blackened ashes of his victims, whom he had roasted when
they came out to kill him. The garden engine of poor little
Alphonso was lying in the valley, all broken and useless. But
the Firedrake, as happy as a wild duck on a lonely loch, was
rolling and diving in the liquid flame, all red-hot and full of
frolic.

60 Andrew Long

"Hi!" shouted the Prince.

The Firedrake rose to the surface, his horns as red as a red
crescent moon, only bigger, and lashing the fire with his
hooves and his blazing tail.

"Who's there?" he said in a hoarse, angry voice. "Just let
me get at you!"

"It's me," answered the Prince. It was the first time he
had forgotten his grammar, but he was terribly excited.

"What do you want?" grunted the beast, "1 wish I could
see you"; and, horrible to relate, he rose on a pair of wide,
flaming wings, and came right at the Prince, guided by the
sound of his voice.

Now the Prince had never heard that Firedrakes could fly;

indeed, he had never believed in them at all, till the night
before. For a moment he was numb with terror; then he flew
down like a stone to the very bottom of the hill and shouted:

"Hi!"

"Well," grunted the Firedrake, "what's the matter? Why
can't you give a civil answer to a civil question?"

"Will you go back to your hole and swear, on your honour
as a Firedrake, to listen quietly?"

"On my sacred word of honour," said the beast, casually
scorching an eagle that flew by into ashes. The cinders fell,
jingling and crackling, round the Prince in a little shower.

Then the Firedrake dived back, with an awful splash of
flame, and the mountain roared round him.

The Prince now flew high above him, and cried: "A
message from the Remora. He says you are afraid to fight
him."

"Don't know him," grunted the Firedrake.

"He sends you his glove," said Prince Prigio, "as a
challenge to mortal combat, till death do you part!"

Then he dropped his own glove into the fiery lake.

"Does he?" yelled the Firedrake. "Just let me get at
him!" and he scrambled out, all red-hot as he was.

"I'll go and tell him you're coming." said the Prince; and
with two strides he was over the frozen mountain of the
Remora.

PRINCE PRIGIO                 61

CHAPTER X

The Prince and the Remora

If he had been too warm before, the Prince was too cold now.
The hill of the Remora was one solid mass of frozen steel,
and the cold rushed out of it like the breath of some icy beast,
which indeed it was. All around were things like marble
statues of men in armour: they were the dead bodies of the
knights, horses and all, who had gone out of old to fight the
Remora, and who had been frosted up by him. The Prince felt
his blood stand still, and be grew faint; but he took heart, for
mere was no time to waste. Yet he could nowhere see the
Remora.

"Hi!" shouted the Prince.

Then, from a narrow chink at the bottom of the smooth,
black hill—a chink no deeper than that under a door, but a
mile wide—stole out a hideous head!

It was as flat as the head of a skate-fish, it was deathly
pale, and two chill-blue eyes, dead-coloured like stones,
looked out of it.

Then there came a whisper, like the breath of the bitter east
wind on a wintry day: "Where are you, and how can I come
to you?"

"Here I am!" said the Prince from the top of the hill.

Then the flat, white head set itself against the edge of the
chink from which it had peeped, and slowly, like the move-
ment of a sheet of ice, it slipped upwards and curled up-
wards, and up, and up! There seemed no end to it at alt; and
it moved horribly, without feet, holding on by its own frost to
the slippery side of the frozen hill. Now all the lower part of
me black hill was covered with the horrid white thing coiled
about it in smooth, fiat, shiny coils; and stilt the head was

62 Andrew Lang

higher than the rest; and still the icy cold came nearer and
nearer, like Death,

The Prince almost fainted; everything seemed to swim; and
in one moment more he would have fallen stiff on the mountain-
top, and the white head would have crawled over him, and
the cold coils would have slipped over him and turned him to
stone. And still the thing slipped up from the chink under the
mountain.

But the Prince made a great effort; he moved, and in two
steps he was far away, down in the valley where it was not so
very cold.

**Hi!" he shouted, as soon as his tongue could move
within his chattering teeth.

There came a clear, hissing answer, like frozen words drop-
ping round him: "Wait till I come down. What do you want?"

Then the white folds began to slide, like melting ice, from
the black hill.

Prince Prigio felt the air getting wanner behind him, and
colder in front of him.

He looked round, and there were the trees beginning to
blacken in the heat, and the grass looking like a sea of fire
along the plains; for the Firedrake was coming!

The Prince just took time to shout: ' "The Firedrake is going
to pay you a visit!" and then soared to the top of a neighbouring
hill, and looked on at what followed.

CHAPTER XI

The Battle

It was an awful sight to behold! When the Remora heard the
name of the Firedrake, his hated enemy, he slipped with
wonderful speed from the cleft of the mountain into the
valley. On and on and on he poured over rock and tree, as if

PRINCE PRIGIO                63

a frozen river could slide downhill; on and on, till there were
miles of him stretching along the valley—miles of the smooth-
ribbed, icy creature, crawling and slipping forwards. The
green trees dropped their leaves as he advanced; the birds fell
down dead from the sky, slain by his frosty breath! But, fast
as the Remora stole forward, the Firedrake came quicker yet,
flying and clashing his fiery wings. At last they were within
striking distance; and the Firedrake, stooping from the air.
dashed with his burning horns and flaming feet slap into the
body of the Remora.

Then there rose a steam so dreadful, such a white yet fiery
vapour of heat, that no one who had not the Prince's magic
glass could have seen what happened. With horrible grunts
and roars the Firedrake tried to bum his way right through the
flat body of the Remora, and to chase him to his cleft in the
rock. But the Remora. hissing terribly and visibly melting
away in places, yet held his ground; and the Prince could see
his cold white folds climbing slowly up the hooves of the
Firedrake—up and up till they reached his knees, and me
great burning beast roared like a hundred bulls with the pain.
Then up the Firedrake leaped, and hovering on his fiery
wings he lighted in the midst of the Remora's back, and
dashed into it with his homs. But the flat, cruel head writhed
backwards, and, slowly bending over on itself, the wounded
Remora slid greedily to fasten again on the limbs of the
Firedrake.

Meanwhile, the Prince, safe on his hill. was lunching on
me loaf and the cold tongue he had brought with him.

"Go to it, Remora! Go to it, Firedrake! You're gaining.
Give it to him, Remora!" he shouted in the wildest excitement.

Nobody had ever seen such a battle; he had it all to
himself, and he never enjoyed anything more. He hated the
Remora so much, that he almost wished the Firedrake could
beat it; for me Firedrake was the more natural beast of the
pair. Still, he was alarmed when he saw the vast flat body of
the Remora was now slowly coiling backwards, backwards,
into the cleft below the hill; while a thick wet mist showed
how cruelly it had suffered. But the Firedrake too was in an
unhappy way; for his legs were now cold and black, his homs

64 Andrew Long

were black also, though his body, especially near the heart,
glowed still like red-hot iron.

"Go to it, Remora!" cned the Prince, "his legs are giving
way; he's groggy on his pins! One more effort, and he won't
be able to move!"

Encouraged by this advice, the white slippery Remora
streamed out of his cavern again, more and more of him
uncoiling as if the mountain were quite full of him. He had
lost strength no doubt: for the steam and mist went up from
him in clouds, and the hissing of his angry voice grew fainter;

but so did the roars of the Firedrake. Presently they sounded
more like groans; and at last the Remora slipped up his legs
above the knees, and fastened on his very heart of fire. Then
the Firedrake stood groaning like a black bull, knee-deep in
snow; and still the Remora climbed and climbed.

"Go to it now, Firedrake!" shouted the Prince; for he
knew that if the Remora won, it would be too cold for him to
draw near the place and cut off the Firedrake's head and tail.

"Go to it, Drake! he's slackening!" cried the Prince again;

and the brave Firedrake made one last furious effort, and
rising on his wings, dropped just on the spine of his enemy.

The wounded Remora curled back his head again on him-
self, and again crawled, steaming terribly, towards his enemy.
But the struggle was too much for the gallant Remora. The
flat, cruel head moved slower; the steam from his thousand
wounds grew fiercer; and he gently breathed his last just as the
Firedrake too fell over and lay exhausted. With one final roar,
like the breath of a thousand furnaces, the Firedrake expired.

The Prince, watching from the hill-top, could scarcely
believe that these two awful scourges a/Nature, which had so
long devastated his country, were actually dead. But when he
had looked on for half an hour, and only a river ran where the
Remora had been, while the body of the Firedrake lay stark
and cold, he humed to the spot.

Drawing the sword of sharpness he hacked off, at two
blows, the iron head and the tail of the Firedrake. They were
a weary weight to cany; but in a few strides of the shoes of
swiftness he was at his castle, where he threw down his
burden and nearly fainted with excitement and fatigue.

PRINCE PRIGIO                65

But the castle clock struck half past seven; dinner was at
eight, and the poor Prince crawled on hands and knees to the
garret. Here he put on the wishing-cap; wished for a pint of
champagne, a hot bath, and his best black velvet and diamond
suit. In a moment these were provided; he bathed, dressed,
drank a glass of wine, packed up the head and tail of the
Firedrake, sat down on the flying carpet, and knocked at the
door of the English Ambassador as the clocks were striking
eight in Gluckstein.

Punctuality is the politeness of princes; and a prince is
polite when he is in love!

The Prince was received at the door by a stout porter and
led into the hall, where several butlers met him, and he
laid the mortal remains of the Firedrake under the cover of
the flying carpet.

Then he was led upstairs, and he made his bow to the pretty
lady, who, of course, made him a magnificent curtsy. She
seemed prettier and kinder than ever. The Prince was so happy
that he never noticed how something went wrong about the din-
ner. The ambassador looked about, and seemed to miss some-
one, and spoke in a low voice to one of the servants, who
answered also in a low voice, and what he said seemed to
displease me ambassador. But the Prince was so busy in talking
to his lady, and in eating his dinner too, that he never observed
anything unusual. He had never been at such a pleasant dinner!

CHAPTER XII

A Terrible Misfortune

When the ladies left, and the Prince and the other gentlemen
were alone, the ambassador appeared more gloomy than ever.
At last he took the Prince into a corner on pretense of
showing him a rare statue.

66 Andrew Long

"Does Your Royal Highness not know," he asked, "that
you are in considerable danger?"

"Stiti?" said the Prince, thinking of the Firedrake.

The ambassador did not know what he meant, for he had
never heard of the fight, but he answered gravely: "Never
more than now."

Then he showed the Prince two proclamations, which had
been posted all about the town.

Here is the first:

TO ALL LOYAL SUBJECTS

Whereas,

Our eldest son, Prince Prigio, hath of late been guilty of
several crimes and misdemeanours.

First: By abandoning the post of danger against the Fire-
drake, whereby our beloved sons, Prince Alphonso and Prince
Enrico, have perished, and been overdone by thai monster.

Secondly: By attending an unseemly revel in the town of
Gluckstein, where he brawled in the streets.

Thirdly: By trying to seduce away the hearts of our loyal
subjects in that city, and to blow up a party against our crown
and our peace.
This is to give warning,

That whoever consorts with, comforts, aids or abets the
said Prince Prigio, is thereby a partner in his treason; and

That a reward of FIVE THOUSAND PURSES will be
given to whosoever brings the said prince, alive, to our
Castle of Falkenstein.

GROGNIO R.

And here is the second proclamation;

REWARD
THE FIREDRAKE

Whereas,

Our dominions have lately been devastated by a Firedrake
(the Salamander Furiosus of Buffon);

This is to advise all,

PRINCE PRIGIO                67

That whosoever brings the homs and tail of the said Fire-
drake to our Castle of Falkenstein, shall receive FIVE THOU-
SAND PURSES, the position of Crown Prince, with the
usual perquisites, and the hand of the King's niece, the Lady
Molinda.

GROGNIO R.

"H'm," said the Prince, "I did not think His Majesty
wrote so weU," and he would have liked to say: "Don't you
think we might join the ladies?"

"But. sir," said the ambassador, "the streets are lined
with soldiers; and I know not how you have escaped them.
Here. under my roof, you are safe for the moment; but a
prolonged stay—excuse my inhospitality—could not but strain
the harmonious relations which prevail between the Govern-
ment of Pantouflia and that which I have the honour to
represent."

"We don't want to fight; and no more, I think, do you,"
said the Prince, smiling.

"Then how does Your Royal Highness mean to treat the
proclamations?"

"Why, by winning these ten thousand purses. I can tell
you £1,000,000 is worth having," said the Prince- "I'll
deliver up the said prince, alive, at Falkenstein this very
night; also the horns and tail of the said Firedrake. But I don't
want to marry my Cousin Molly."

"May I remind Your Royal Highness that Falkenstein is
three hundred miles away? Moreover, my head butler, Ben-
son, disappeared from the house before dinner, and I fear he
went to warn Captain Kopzoffski that you are here'."

"That is nothing." said the Prince, "but, my dear Lord
Kelso, may I not have the pleasure of presenting Lady Rosa-
lind with a little gift, the forfeit of a game which 1 lost to her
last night, merely the head and tail of a Firedrake which I
stalked this morning?"

The ambassador was so very astonished that he ran straight
upstairs, forgetting his manners, and crying: "Linda! Linda!
come down at once; here's a surprise for you!"

Lady Rosalind came sweeping down, with a smile on her

68 Andrew Long

kind face. She guessed what it was, though the Prince had
said nothing about it at dinner.

"Lead the way, Your Royal Highness!" cried the ambas-
sador, and tfie Prince, offering Lady Rosalind his arm, went
out into the halt, where he saw neither his carpet nor the
horns and tail of the Firedrake!

He turned quite pale, and said: "Will you kindly ask me
servants where the little Persian prayer-rug and the parcel
which I brought with me have been placed?"

Lord Ketso rang the bell, and in came all the servants, with
William, the under-butler, at their head.

"William," said his lordship, "where have you put His
Royal Highness's parcel and his carpet?"

"Please, your lordship," said William, "we think Benson
have took them away with him."

"And where is Benson?"

*'We don't know, your lordship. We think he have been
come for!"

"Come for—by whom?"

William stammered, and seemed at a loss for a reply.

"Quick! Answer! What do you know about it?"

William said at last, rather as if he were making a speech:

"Your Royaliness, and my lords and ladies, it was like this.
His Royaliness corned in with a rug over his arm and summat
under it. And he lays it down on that there seat, and Thomas
shows him into the droring room. Then Benson says: 'Dinner'll
be ready in five minutes; how tired I do feel!' Then he takes
the Hbbuty of sitting hisself down on His Royaliness's rug,
and he says, asking your pardon, 'I've had about enough
of service here, I'm about tired, and I thinks of bettering
myself. 1 wish I was at the King's court, and butler.'
But before the words was out of his mouth, off he flies
like a shot through the open door, and His Royaliness's
parcel with him. I run to the door, and there he was fly-
ing right hover the town, in a northerly direction. And
mat's all I know; for I would not tell a lie, not if it was
never so. And me, and Thomas—as didn't see it—and cook,
we thinks as how Benson was come for. And cook says as

PRINCE PRIGIO                69

she don't wonder at it, neither; for a grumblinger, more ill-
conditioneder—"

"Thank you, William," said Lord Kelso, "that will do;

you can go, for the present."

CHAPTER Xm

Surprises

The Prince said nothing, the ambassador said nothing. Lady
Rosalind said never a word till they were in the drawing
room. It was a lovely warm evening, and the French windows
were wide open on the balcony, which looked over the town
and away north to the hills. Below them flowed by the clear,
green water of the Gluckthal. And still nobody said a word-

At last the Prince spoke: "This is a very strange story.
Lord Kelso!"

"Very, sir!" said the ambassador.

"But true," added the Prince, "at least, there is no reason
in the nature of things why it shouldn't be true."

"I can hardly believe, sir, that the conduct of Benson,
whom I always found a most respectable man, deserved—'*

"That he should be 'come for,' " said the Prince. "Oh no;

it was a mere accident, and might have happened to any of us
who chanced to sit down on my carpet."

And then the Prince told them, shortly, all about it: how
the carpet was one of a number of fairy properties which had
been given him at his christening; and how, probably, the
carpet had carried the butler where he had said he wanted to
go—namely, to the King's Court at Falkenstem.

"It would not matter so much," added the Prince, "only I
had relied on making my peace with His Majesty, my father,
by aid of those homs and that tail. He was set on getting

70 Andrew Lung

them; and if die Lady Rosalind had not expressed a wish for
them, they would today have been in his possession."

"Oh, sir, you honour us too highly," murmured Lady
Rosalind; and the Prince blushed and said: "Not at all!
Impossible!"

Then, of course, die ambassador became quite certain that
his daughter was admired by the Crown Prince, who was on
bad terms with the King of the country; and a more uncom-
fortable position for an ambassador—however, they are used
to them.

"What on earth am I to do with the young man?" he
thought. "He can't stay here forever; and without his carpet
he can't get away, for the soldiers have orders to seize him as
soon as he appears in the street. And in the meantime Benson
wit! be pretending that he killed the Firedrake—for he must
have got to Falkenslein by now—and they will be for marry-
ing him to the King's niece, and making my butler crown
prince to the kingdom of Pantouflia! It is dreadful!"

Now all this 'time the Prince was on the balcony telling
Lady Rosalind all about how he got the Firedrake done for, in
the most modest way; for, as he said: "/ didn't kill him: and
it is really the Remora, poor fellow, who should marry
Molly; but he's dead."

At this very moment there was a whizz in the air; some-
thing shot past them, and, through the open window, the
King, the Queen, Benson. and the mortal remains of the
Firedrake were shot into the ambassador's drawing roonr!

PRINCE PRIG 10                71

CHAPTER XIV

The King Explains

The first who recovered his voice and presence of mind was
Benson.

"Did your lordship ring for coffee?" he asked quietly; and
when he was told "Yes," he bowed and withdrew, with
majestic composure.

When he had gone, the Prince threw himself at the King's
feet, crying: "Pardon, pardon, my hege!"

"Don't speak to me. sir!" answered the King very angrily;

and the poor Prince threw himself at the feet of the Queen.

But she took no notice of him whatever, no more than if he
had been a fairy; and the Prince heard her murmur, as she
pinched her royal arms: "I shall waken presently; this is
nothing out of the way for a dream. Dr. Rumpfino ascribes it
to imperfect nutrition."

All this time the Lady Rosalind, as pale as a marble statue,
was leaning against me side of the open window. The Prince
thought he could do nothing wiser than go and comfort her,
so he induced her to sit down on a chair on the balcony—for
he felt that he was not wanted in the drawing room; and soon
they were talking happily about the stars, which had begun to
appear in the summer night.

Meanwhile the ambassador had induced the King to take a
scat; but there was no use in talking to the Queen.

"It would be a miracle," she said to herself, "and mira-
cles do not happen; therefore this has not happened. Pres-
ently, I shall wake up in my own bed at Falkenstein."

Now, Benson, William, and Thomas brought in the coffee,
but the Queen took no notice. When they went away the rest
of the company slipped off quietly, and the King was left

72 Andrew Long

alone with the ambassador; for the Queen could hardly be
said to count.

"You want to know all about it, I suppose?" said His
Majesty in a sulky voice. "Well, you have a right to it, and 1
shall tell you. We were just sitting down to dinner at
Falkenstein, rather late—hours get later every year, I think—
when I heard a row in the premises, and the Captain of the
Guard, Colonel McDougal, came and told us that a man had
arrived with the horns and tail of the Firedrake, and was
claiming the reward. Her Majesty and I rose and went into
the outer court, where we found, sitting on that carpet with a
glass of beer in his hand, a respectable-looking upper-servant,
whom I recognized as your butler. He informed us that he
had just killed the beast, and showed us the horns and tail,
sure enough; there they are! The tail is like the iron handle of
a pump, but the horns are genuine. A pair were thrown up by
a volcano, in my great-grandfather's time, Giglio I.* Excel-
lent coffee this, of yours!"

The ambassador bowed.

"Well, we asked him where he killed the Firedrake, and he
said in a garden near Gluckstein. Then he began to speak
about the reward, and the 'perkisits,' as he called them,
which it seems he had read about in my proclamation. Rather
a neat thing; drew it up myself." added His Majesty.

"Very much to the point," said the ambassador, wonder-
ing what the King was coming to.

"Glad you like it," said me King. much pleased. "Well,
where was I? Oh yes; your man said he had killed the
creature in a garden, quite near Gluckstein. I didn't much like
the whole affair: he is an alien, you see; and then there was
my niece, Molinda—poor girl, she was certain to give trou-
ble. Her heart is buried, if I may say so, with poor Alphonso.
But the Queen is a very remarkable woman—very remark-
able—''

"Very!" said the ambassador, with perfect truth.

The history of this prince may be read in a treatise called The Rose and the
Rmg by W.M. Thackeray [now published by the Pierpont Morgan Library—
Ed.].

PRINCE PRIGIO                73

" 'Caitiff!' she cried to your butler," His Majesty went
on; " 'perjured knave, thou liest in thy throat! Gluckstein is a
hundred leagues from here, and how sayest thou that thou
slowest the monster, and earnest hither in a few hours' space?*
This had not occurred to me—I am a plain king, but I at once
saw the force of Her Majesty's argument. *Yes,' said I; 'how
did you manage it?' But he—your man, 1 mean—was not a
bit put out. 'Why, Your Majesty,' says he, '1 just sat down
on that there bit of carpet, wished I was here, and here I ham.
And I'd be glad, having had the trouble—and my time not
being my own—to see the colour of them perkisits, according
to the proclamation.' On this Her Majesty grew more indig-
nant, if possible. 'Nonsense!' she cried, 'a story out of the
Arabian Nights is not suited for a modern public and fails to
win aesthetic credence.' These were her very words."

"Her Majesty's expressions are ever choice and appropri-
ate," said the ambassador.

" *Sit down there, on the carpet, knave,' she went on,
'ourself and consort'—meaning me—'will take our places by
thy side, and I shall wish us in Gluekstein, at thy master's!
When the experiment has failed, thy head shall from thy
shoulders be shorn!' So your man merely said: 'Very well,
mum—Your Majesty, I mean,' and sat down. The Queen
took her place at the edge of the carpet; I sat between her and
the butler, and she said; *1 wish I were in Gluckstein!' Then
we rose, flew through the air at an astonishing pace, and here
we are! So I suppose the rest of the butler's tale is true, which
1 regret; but a king's word is sacred, and he shall take the
place of that sneak, Prigio. But as we left home before
dinner, and as yours is over, may I request your lordship to
believe that I should be delighted to take something cold?"

The ambassador at once ordered a sumptuous collation, to
which the King did full justice; and His Majesty was shown
to the royal chamber, as he complained of fatigue. The Queen
accompanied him, remarking that she was sound asleep, but
would waken presently. Neither of them said "Good night"
to the Prince. Indeed, they did not see him again, for he was
on the balcony with Lady Rosalind. They found a great deal
to say to each other, and at last the Prince asked her to be his

74 Andrew Lang

wife; and she said that if the King and her father gave their
permission—why, then she would! After this she went to
bed; and the Prince, who had not slept at all the night before.
felt very sleepy also. But he knew that first he had something
that must be done. So he went into the drawing room, took
his carpet, and wished to be—now where do you suppose?
Beside the dead body of the Firedrake! There he was in a
moment; and dreadful the body looked, lying stark and cold
in the white moonshine. Then the Prince cut off its four
hooves, put them in his wallet, and with these he flew back in
a second, and met the ambassador just as he came from
ushering the King to bed. Then the Prince was shown to his
own room, where he locked up the hooves, the carpet, the
cap of darkness, and his other things in an iron box; and so he
went to bed and dreamed of his Lady Rosalind.

CHAPTER XV

The King's Cheque

When they all awakened next morning, their first ideas were
confused. It is often confusing to wake in a strange bed,
much more so when you have flown through the air. like the
King, the Queen, and Benson the butler. For her part, the
Queen was the most perplexed of all; for she did undeniably
wake, and yet she was not at home, where she had expected
to be. However, she was a determined woman, and stood to it
that nothing unusual was occurring. The butler made up his
mind to claim the crown princeship and the hand of the Lady
Molinda; because, as he justly remarked to William, here was
such a chance to better himself as might not soon come in his
way again. As for the King, he was only anxious to get back
to Falkenstein, and have the whole business settled in a

PRINCE PRIGIO                75

constitutional manner. The ambassador was not sorry to get
rid of the royal party; and it was proposed mat they should all
sit down on the flying carpet and wish themselves at home
again. But me Queen would not hear of it: she said it was
childish and impossible; so the carriage was got ready for her,
and she started without saying a word of goodbye to anyone.
The King, Benson, and the Prince were not so particular, and
they simply flew back to Falkenstein in the usual way, arriv-
ing there at 11:35—a week before Her Majesty.

The King at once held a Court; the horns and tail of the
monster were exhibited amidst general interest, and Benson
and the Pnnce were invited to state their claims.

Benson's evidence was taken first- He declined to say
exactly where or how he killed the Firedrake. There might be
more of them left, he remarked—young ones, that would take
a lot of killing—and he refused to part with his secret. Only
he claimed the reward, which was offered, if you remember,
not to me man who killed the beast, but to him who brought
its horns and tail. This was allowed by the lawyers present to be
very sound law; and Benson was cheered by the courtiers,
who decidedly preferred him to Prigio, and who, besides,
thought he was going to be crown prince. As for Lady
Molinda, she was torn by the most painful feelings; for, much
as she hated Prigio, she could not bear the idea of marrying
Benson. Yet one or the other choice seemed certain-
Unhappy lady! Perhaps no girl was ever more strangely
beset by misfortune!

Prince Prigio was now called on to speak. He admitted that
the reward was offered for bringing the horns and tail, not for
killing the monster. But were the King's intentions to go for
nothing? When a subject only meant well, of course he had to
suffer; but when a king said one thing, was he not to be sup-
posed to have meant another? Any fellow with a wagon could
bring the horns and tail; the difficult thing was to kill the
monster. If Benson's claim was allowed, the royal prerogative
of saying one thing and meaning something else was in danger.

On hearing this argument the King so far forgot himself as
to cry: "Bravo, well said!" and to clap his hands, whereon
all the courtiers shouted and threw up their hats.

76 Andrew Long

The Prince then said that whoever had killed the monster
could of course tell where to find him, and could bring his
hooves- He was ready to do this himself. Was Mr. Benson
equally ready? On this being interpreted to him—for he did
not speak Pantouflian—Benson grew pale with horror, but
fell back on the proclamation. He had brought the horns and
tail, and so he must have the perquisites, and the Lady
Molinda!

The King's mind was so much confused by this time that
he determined to leave it to the Lady Molinda herself.

"Which of them will you have, my dear?" he asked, in a
kind voice.

But poor Molinda merely cried. Then His Majesty was
almost driven to say that he would give me reward to who-
ever produced the hooves by that day of the following week.
But no sooner had he said this than the Prince brought them
out of his wallet, and displayed them in open Court. This
ended the case; and Benson, after being entertained with
sherry and sandwiches in the steward's room, was sent back
to his master. And 1 regret to say that his temper was not at
all improved by his failure to better himself. On the contrary,
he was unusually cross and disagreeable for several days; but
we must perhaps make some allowance for his disappointment.

But if Benson was irritated, and suffered from the remarks
of his fellow servants, I do not think we can envy Prince
Prigio. Here he was, restored to his position indeed, but by
no means to the royal favour. For the King disliked him as
much as ever, and was as angry as ever about the deaths of
Enrico and Alphonso. Nay, he was even more angry; and,
perhaps, not without reason- He called up Prigio before the
whole Court, and thereon the courtiers cheered like anything,
but the King cried:

"Silence! McDougal, drag the first man that shouts to the
serpent-house in the zoological gardens, and lock him up
with the rattlesnakes!"

After that the courtiers were very quiet.

"Prince," said the King, as Prigio bowed before die throne,
"you are restored to your position, because I cannot break
my promise. But your base and malevolent nature is even

PRINCE PRIGIO                 77

more conspicuously manifest in your selfish success than in
your previous dastardly contempt of duty. Why, confound
you!" cried the King, dropping the high style in which he
had been speaking, and becoming the father, not the monarch,
"why, if you could kill the Firedrake, did you let your poor
little brothers go and be b-b-b-broiled? Eh! what do you say,
you sneak? You didn't believe there were any Hredrakes?
That just comes of your eternal conceit and arrogance! If you
were clever enough to kill the creature—and I admit that—
you were clever enough to know that what everybody said
must be true. You have not generally found it so? Well, you
have this time, and let it be a lesson to you; not that there is
much comfort in that, for it is not likely you will have
another chance"—exactly the idea that had occurred to Benson.

Here the King wept, among the tears of the Lord Chief
Justice, the Poet Laureate (who had been awfully frightened
when he heard of the rattlesnakes), the maids of honour, the
Chaplain Royal, and everyone but Colonel McDougal, a
Scottish soldier of fortune, who maintained a military reserve.

When His Majesty had recovered, he said to Prigio (who had
not been crying, being too much absorbed): "A king's word
is his bond. Bring me a pen, somebody, and my cheque-book."

The royal cheque-book, bound in red morocco, was brought
in by eight pages, with ink and a pen. His Majesty then filled
up and signed the following satisfactory document:



i (]	MaWt9610.47 F^lkenstein J>uy (O.m	t
	^ cnfte^ankfff-fantoufCiaJ. ifAtktMSTUN BRANCH '	t() !
	Pay to ^faMcL^fugie on Orderen •7^yu'sa»n< 'PuA^M-'j^ooo.ooo ^MQr^V^	
	h-www

78 Andrew Long

"There!" said His Majesty, crossing his cheque and throw-
ing sand over it, for blotting paper had not yet been invented.
"There, take that, and be off with you!"

Prince Prigio was respectfully but rapidly obeying his royal
command, for he thought he had better cash the royal cheque
as soon as possible, when His Majesty yelled: "Hi, there!
Come back! 1 forgot something; you've got to many Moiinda!"

CHAPTER XVI

A Melancholy Chapter

The Prince had gone some way when the King called after
him. How he wished he had the seven-league boots on, or
that he had the cap of darkness in his pocket! If he had been
so lucky, he would now have got back to Gluckstein. and
crossed the border with Lady Rosalind. A million of money
may not seem much, but a pair of young people who really
love each other could live happily on less than the cheque he
had in his pocket. However, the King shouted very loud, as
he always did when he meant to be obeyed, and the Prince
sauntered slowly back again.

"Prigio!" said His Majesty, "where were you off to?
Don't you remember that this is your wedding day? My
proclamation offered not only the money (which you have),
but the hand of the Lady Moiinda, which the Court chaplain
will presently make your own. I congratulate you, sir; Moiinda
is a dear girl."

"I have the highest affection and esteem for my cousin,
sir," said the Prince, "but—"

"I'll never marry him!" cried poor MoHnda, kneeling at
the throne, where her streaming eyes and hair made a pretty
and touching picture. "Never! I despise him!"

PRINCE PRIGIO                79

"I was about to say, sir," the Prince went on, "that I
cannot possibly have the pleasure of wedding my cousin."

"The family gallows, I presume, is in good working or-
der?" asked the King of the family executioner, a tall gaunt
man in black and scarlet, who was only employed in the case
of members of the biood royal.

"Never better, sire," said the man, bowing with more
courtliness than his profession indicated.

"Very well," said the King. "Prince Prigio, you have
your choice. There is the gallows, here is Lady Moiinda. My
duty is painful, but clear. A king's word cannot be broken.
Molly, or be hanged!"

The Prince bowed respectfully to Lady Moiinda.

"Madam, my cousin," said he, "your clemency will ex-
cuse my answer, and you will not misinterpret the apparent
discourtesy of my conduct. I am compelled, most unwill-
ingly, to slight your charms, and to select the Extreme Rigour
of the Law. Executioner, lead on! Do your duty; for me,
Prigio est pret!"—for this was his motto, and meant that he
was ready.

Poor Lady Moiinda could not but be hurt by the Prince's
preference for death over marriage to her, little as she liked
him. "Is life then so worthless? and is Moiinda so terrible a
person, that you prefer those arms." and she pointed to the
gallows, "to theseT'—here she held out her own, which
were very white, round, and pretty; for Moiinda was a good-
hearted girl, she could not bear to see Prigio put to death; and
then, perhaps, she reflected that there are worse positions
than the queenship of Pantouflia. For Alphonso was gone—
crying would not bring him back.

"Ah, madam!'* said the Prince, "you are forgiving—"

"For you are brave!" said Moiinda, feeling quite a respect
for him.

"But neither your heart nor mine is ours to give. Since
mine is another's, I understand too well this feeling of yours'.
Do not let us buy life at the price of happiness and honour."

Then, turning to the King, the Prince said: "Sir, is there no
way but by death or marriage? You say you cannot keep half
only of your promise; and that if I accept the reward I must

80 Andrew Long

also unite myself with my unwilling cousin. Cannot the whole
proclamation be annulled, and will you consider the bargain
void if I tear up this flimsy scroll?"

And here the Prince fluttered in the air the cheque for
£!,000.000.

For a moment the King was tempted; but then he said to
himself: "Never mind, it's only an extra penny on the income-
tax." Then: "Keep your dross," he shouted, meaning the
million; "but let me keep my promise. To chapel at once,
or—" and he pointed to the executioner. "The word of a
king of Pantouflia is sacred."

"And so is that of a crown prince," answered Prigio, "and
mine is pledged to a lady."

"She shall be a mourning bride," cried the King savagely,
"unless"—here he paused for a moment—"unless you bring
me back Alphonso and Enrico, safe and well!"

The Prince thought for the space of a flash of lightning. "I
accept the alternative," he said, "if Your Majesty will grant
me my conditions."

"Name them!" said the King.

"Let me be transported to Gluckstein, left there unguarded,
and if, in three days, I do not return with my brothers safe
and well, Your Majesty shall be spared a cruet duty. Prigio of
Pantouflia will perish by his own hand."

The King, whose mind did not work very quickly, took
some minutes to think it over. Then he saw that by granting
the Prince's conditions, he would either recover his ,dear
sons, or, at least, get rid of Prigio, without the unpleasantness
of having him executed. For, though some kings have put
their eldest sons to death, and most have wished to do so,
they have never been better loved by the people for their
Roman virtue.

"Honour bright?" said the King at last.

"Honour bright!" answered the Prince, and for the first
time in many months, the royal father and son shook hands.

"For you, madam," said Prigio in a stately way to Lady
Molinda, "in less than a week I trust we shall be taking our
vows at the same altar, and that the close of the ceremony
which finds us cousins will leave us brother and sister."

PRWCE PRtGIO                81

Poor Molinda merely stared; for she could not imagine
what he meant. In a moment he was gone; and having taken,
by me King's permission, the flying carpet, he was back at
the ambassador's house in Gluckstein.

CHAPTER XVII

The Black Cat and the Brethren

Who was glad to see the Prince, if it was not Lady Rosalind?
The white roses of her cheeks turned to red roses in a
moment, and men back to white again, they were so alarmed
at the change. So the two went into the gardens together, and
talked about a number of things; but at last the Prince told her
that, before three days were over, all would be well, or alt
would be over with him. For either he would have brought
his brothers back, sound and well. to Falkenstein, or he
would not survive his dishonour.

"It is no more than right," he said, "for had I gone first,
neither of them would have been sent to meet the monster
after I had fallen. And I should have fallen, dear Rosalind, if
I had faced the Firedrake before I knew you."

Then when she asked him why, and what good she had
done him, he told her all the story; and how, before he fell in
love with her. he didn't believe in fairies, or Firedrakes, or
caps of darkness, or anything nice and impossible, but only in
horrid useless facts, and chemistry, and geology, and arith-
metic, and mathematics, and even political economy. And the
Firedrake would have made a mouthful of him then.

So she was delighted when she heard this, almost as much
delighted as she was afraid that he might fail in the most
difficult adventure. For it was one thing to egg on a Remora

82 Andrew Long

to kill a Firedrake, and quite another to find the princes if
they were alive, and restore them if they were dead!

But the Prince said he had his plan, and he stayed that
night at the ambassador's. Next morning he rose very early,
before anyone else was up, that he might not have to say
"Goodbye" to Lady Rosalind. Then he flew in a moment to
the old lonely castle, where nobody went for fear of ghosts,
ever since the Court retired to Falkenstein.

How still it was, how deserted; not a sign of life, and yet
the Prince was looking everywhere/or some living thing. He
hunted through the castle in vain, and then went out to the
stable yard; but all the dogs of course had been taken away,
and the neighbouring fanners had offered homes to the poul-
try. At last, stretched at full length in a sunny place, the
Prince found a very old, half-blind, miserable cat. The poor
creature was lean, and its fur had fallen off in patches; it
could no longer catch birds, nor even mice, and there was
nobody to give milk to it. But cats do not look far into the
future; and this old black cat—Frank was his name—had got
a breakfast somehow, and was happy in the sun. The Prince
stood and looked at him pityingly, and he thought that even a
sick old cat was, in some ways, happier than most men.

"Well," said the Prince at last, "he could not live long
anyway, and it must be done. He will feel nothing."

Then he drew the sword of sharpness, and with one turn of
his wrist cut the cat's head clean off.

It did not at once change into a beautiful young lady, as
perhaps you expect; no, that was improbable and, as the
Prince was in love already, would have been vastly inconve-
nient. The dead cat lay there, like any common cat.

Then the Prince built up a heap of straw, with wood on it;

and mere he laid poor puss, and set fire to the pile. Very soon
there was nothing of old black Frank left but ashes!

Then the Prince ran upstairs to the fairy cupboard, his heart
beating loudly with excitement. The sun was shining through
the arrow-shot window; all the yellow motes were dancing in
its rays. The light fell on the strange heaps of fairy things—
talismans and spells. The Prince hunted about here and there,
and at last he discovered six ancient water vessels of black

PRINCE PRIGIO                83

leather, each with a silver plate on it, and on the plate letters
engraved. This was what was written on the plates:

AQVA. DE. FONTE. LEONUM.*

"Thank Heaven!" said the Prince. "I thought they were
sure to have brought it!"

Then he look one of the old black leather bottles, and ran
downstairs again to the place where he had burned the body
of the poor old sick cat.

He opened the bottle and poured a few drops of the water
on the ashes and the dying embers-
Up there sprang a tall, white flame of fire, waving like a
tongue of light; and forth from the heap jumped the most
beautiful, strong, furry black cat that ever was seen!

It was Frank as he had been in the vigour of his youth; and
he knew the Prince at once, and rubbed himself against him
and purred.

The Prince lifted up Frank and kissed his nose for joy; and
a bright tear rolled down on Frank's face, and made him rub
his nose with his paw in the most comical manner.

Then the Prince set him down, and he ran round and round
after his tail; and, lastly, cocked his tail up, and marched
proudly after the Prince into the castle.

"Oh, Frank!" said Prince Pngio, "no cat since the time of
Puss in Boots was ever so well taken care of as you shall be.
For if the fairy water from the Fountain of Lions can bring you
back to life—why, there is a chance for Aiphonso and Enrico!"

Then Prigio bustled about, got ready a cold luncheon from
the storeroom, took all his fairy things thai he was likely to
need, sat down with them on the flying carpet, and wished
himself at the mountain of the Firedrake.

Off he flew; and there he was in a second, just beside poor
Alphonso's garden engine. Then Prigio, seeing a little heap
of grey ashes beside the engine, watered them with the fairy
water; and up jumped Aiphonso, as jolly as ever, his sword in
his hand.

•Water from the Fountain of Lions

84 Andrew Long

"Hallo, Prigio!" cried he. "Are you come after the mon-
ster too? I've been asleep, and I had a kind of dream that he
beat me. But me pair of us will tackle him. How is Molinda?"

"Prettier than ever." said Prigio, "but very anxious about
you. However, the Firedrake's dead and done for; so never
mind him. But ! left Enrico somewhere about. Just you sit
down and wait a minute, till I fetch him." The Prince said
this because he did not wish Alphonso to know mat he and
Enrico had not had quite the best of it in the affair with the
monster.

"All right, old fellow," says Alphonso, "but have you
any luncheon with you? Never was 1 so hungry in my life!"

Prince Prigio had thought of this, and he brought out some
coid sausage (to which Alphonso was partial) and some bread,
with which the younger prince expressed himself satisfied.
Then Prigio went up the hill some way, first warning Alphonso
not to sit on his carpet for fear of accidents like that which
happened to Benson. In a hollow of the hill, sure enough
there was the sword of Enrico, the diamonds of the hilt
gleaming in the sun. And there was a little heap of grey ashes.

The Prince poured a few drops of the water from the
Fountain of Lions on them and up of course jumped Enrico,
just as Alphonso had done.

"Sleepy old chap you are, Enrico," said me Prince; "but
come on, Alphonso will have finished the grub unless we
look smart."

So back they came in time to get their share of what was
going; and they drank to the Remora's very good health,
when Prigio told them about the fight. But neither of them
ever knew that they had been dead and done for; because
Prigio invented a story that the mountain was enchanted, and
that, as long as the Firedrake lived, everyone who came there
fell asleep. He did tell them about the flying carpet, however,
which of course did not much surprise them. because they
had read all about it in the Arabian Nights and other historical
works.

"And now I'll show you fun'" said Prigio; and he asked
mem both to take their seats on the carpet, and wished to be
in the valley of the Remora.

PRINCE PRIGIO                 85

There they were in a moment, among the old knights
whom, if you remember, the Remora had frozen into stone.
There were quite a troop of them, in all sorts of armour—
Greek and Roman, and Knights Templar like Front de Boeuf
and Brian du Bois Gilbert—all the brave warriors that had
tried to fight the Remora since the world began.

Then Prigio gave each of his brothers some of the water in
their caps, and told them to go round pouring a drop or two
on each frozen knight. And as they did it. lo and behold! each
knight came alive, with his horse, and lifted his sword and
shouted:

"LONG LIVE PRINCE PRIGIO!"

in Greek, Latin, Egyptian, German, and Spanish—all of
which the Prince perfectly understood, and spoke like a native.

So he marshalled them in order, and sent them off to nde
to Falkenstein and cry: "Prince Prigio is coming!"

Off they went, the horses' hooves clattering, banners flying,
sunshine glittering on the spear points. Off they rode to
Falkenstein; and when the King saw them come galloping in,
I can tell you he had no more notion of hanging Prigio.

CHAPTER XVffl

The Very Last

The Princes returned to Gluckstein on the carpet, and went to
the best inn, where thei' dined together and slept. Next
morning they, and the ambassador, who had been told all the
story, and Lady Rosalind, floated comfortably on the carpet,
back to Falkenstein, where the King wept like anything on
the shoulders of Alphonso and Enrico. They could not make

86 Andrew Lang

out why he cried so, nor why Lady Molinda and Lady
Kathleena cried; but soon they were all laughing and happy
again. But then—would you believe he could be so mean?—he
refused to keep his royal promise, and restore Prigio to his
crown princeship! Kings are like that.

But Prigio, very quietly asking for the head of the Fire-
drake, said he'd pour the magic water on that, and bring the
Firedrake back to life again, unless His Majesty behaved
rightly. This threat properly frightened King Grognio, and he
apologized. Then me King shook hands with Prigio in public,
and thanked him, and said he was proud of him. As to Lady
Rosalind, the old gentleman quite fell in love with her, and
he sent at once to the Chaplain Royal to get into his surplice,
and marry all the young people off at once, without waiting
for wedding cakes and milliners and all the rest of it.

Now, just as they were forming a procession to march into
church, who should appear but the Queen* Her Majesty had
been travelling by post all the time, and, luckily, had heard of
none of the doings since Prigio, Benson, and the King left
Gluckstein. I say luckily because if she had heard of them,
she would not have believed a word of them. But when she
saw Alphonso and Enrico, she was much pleased, and said:

"Naughty boys! Where have you been hiding? The King had
some absurd story about your having been killed by a fabu-
lous monster. Bah! don't tell me. I always said you would
come back after a little trip—didn't I, Prigio?"

"Certainly, madam," said Prigio, "and I said so too.
Didn't I say so?" And all the courtiers cried: "Yes, you
did"; but some added, to themselves, "He always says,
'Didn't 1 say so?' "

Then the Queen was introduced to Lady Rosalind, and she
said it was "rather a short engagement, but she supposed
young people understood their own affairs best." And they
do! So the three pairs were married, with the utmost rejoic-
ings; and Her Majesty never, her whole life long, could be
got to believe that anything unusual had occurred.

The honeymoon of Prince Prigio and the Crown Princess
Rosalind was passed at me castle, where the Prince had been
deserted by the Court. But now it was delightfully fitted up;

PRINCE PRIGIO                87

and Master Frank marched about the house with his tail in the
air, as if the place belonged to him.

Now, on the second day of their honeymoon, the Prince
and Princess were sitting in the garden together, and the
Prince said: "Are you quite happy, my dear?" and Rosalind
said: "Yes; quite."

But the Prince did not tike the tone of her voice, and he
said: "No, there's something; do tell me what it is."

"Well," said Rosalind, putting her head on his shoulder,
and speaking very low, "1 want everybody to love you as much
as I do. No, not quite so very much—but I want them to like
you. Now they can't, because they are afraid of you; for you
are so awfully clever. Now, couldn't you take the wishing
cap, and wish to be no cleverer than other people? Then
everybody would like you!"

The Prince thought a minute, then he said: "Your will is
law, my dear; anything to please you. Just wait a minute!"

Then he ran upstairs, for the last time, to the fairy garret,
and he put on the wishing cap.

"No," thought he to himself, "I won't wish that. Every
man has one secret from his wife, and this shall be mine."

Then he said aloud: "I WISH TO SEEM NO CLEVERER THAN

OTHER PEOPLE."

Then he ran downstairs again, and the Princess noticed a
great difference in him (though of course there was really
none at alt), and so did everyone. For the Prince remained as
clever as ever he had been; but, as nobody observed it, he
became the most popular prince, and finally the best beloved
king who had ever sat on the throne of Pantouflia.

But occasionally Rosalind would say: "I do believe, my
dear, that you are really as clever as^-ever!"

And he was!

GORGON

The gorgons appear m the Greek myths as terrifying mon-
sters. The very word is from the Greek gorgos, meaning
"terrifying." In some of the myths there are three gor-
gons, but the one that is usually the only one dealt with is
the one named Medusa.

The most frightening aspect of the gorgon is Us hair.
which is pictured as consisting of living snakes. The no-
tion of snakes coiling and uncoiling on the head of a
•woman, usually pictured as beautiful in a ghastly way, is
indeed unnerving, but it is an easy thing to imagine. You
have only to see a sea anemone or an octopus and you will
find a creature that seems to have living snakes as part of
itself. In fact, I have always thought the gorgons and other
snake-haired monsters to be inspired by the octopus.

The gorgon is pictured as so terrifying thai people who
unwittingly glance at the gorgon face turn into stone.

But, then, it is an instinct in some young animals to
freeze when danger looms, for many predators will not see
their prey if it does not move. Some animals will even
feign death, if frightened, since some predators will not
touch dead bodies. And we freeze, too, temporarily, when
frightened, and if is an easy leap from that to suppose that
if the fright were great and intense enough, we would
freeze permanently.

The gorgon may also symbolize the nightmare. A very
common nightmare is to have to catch someone or some-
thing, or to be pursued, and despite all possible efforts to

88

THE GORGON

89

be unable to move. I have always thought this to be a
natural reaction to entanglement in the bedclothes. The
inability to move, in reality, is shifted to the dream, which
becomes a nightmare. So the nightmare-freezing becomes
the Gorgon-freezing. —But see what the author in the
following story does with the legend.

THE GORGON

Tanith Lee

The small island, which lay off the larger island of Daphaeu,
obviously contained a secret of some son, and day by day,
and particularly night by night, began to exert an influence on
me, so that I must find it out.

Daphaeu itself (or more correctly herself, for she was a
female country, voluptuous and cruel by turns in the true
antique fashion of the Goddess) was hardly enormous. A
couple of roads, a tangle of sheep tracks, a precarious, esca-
lating village, rocks and hillsides thatched by blistered grass.
All of which overhung an extraordinary sea, unlike any sea
which I have encountered elsewhere in Greece. Water which
might be mistaken for blueness from a distance, but which,
from the harbour, or the multitude of caves and coves that
undermined the island, revealed itself a clear and succulent
green, like milky limes, or the bottle glass of certain spirits.

On my first morning, having come on to the natural' ter-
race, the only recommendation of the hovel-like accommoda-
tion, to look over this strange green ocean, I saw the smaller
island, lying like a tittle boat of land moored just wide of
Daphaeu's three hills. The day was clear, the water frilled
with white where it hit the fangs in the interstices below the
terrace. About the smaller island, barely a ruffle showed. It
seemed to glide up from the sea, smooth as a mirror. The
little island was verdant, also. Unlike Daphaeu's limited stands
of stone-pine, cypress and cedar, the smaller sister was clouded
by a still, lambent haze of foliage, that looked to be woods.
Visions of groves, springs, a ruined temple, a statue of Pan

90

THE GORGON               91

playing the panpipes forever in some glade—where only
yesterday, it might seem, a thin column of aromatic smoke
had gone up—these images were enough fancifully to draw
me into inquiries about how the small island might be reached.
And when my inquiries met first with a polite bevy of ex-
cuses, next with a refusal, lastly with a blank wall of silence,
as if whomever I mentioned the little island to had gone
temporarily deaf or mad, 1 became, of course determined to
get to it, to find out what odd superstitious thing kept these
people away- Naturally, the Daphaeui were not friendly to me
at any time, beyond the false friendship one anticipates ex-
tended to a man of another nationality and clime, who can be
relied on to pay his bills, perhaps allow himself to be over-
charged, even made a downright monkey of in order to
preserve goodwill. In the normal run of things, I could have
had anything I wanted, in exchange for a pack of local lies, a
broad loca! smile, and a broader local price. That I could not
get to the tittle island puzzled me. I tried money, and I tried
barter. I even, in a reckless moment, probably knowing 1
would not succeed, offered Pitos, one of the younger fisher-
men, the gold and onyx ring he coveted. My sister had made
it for me, the faithful copy of an intaglio belonging to the
house of Borgia, no less. Generally, Pitos could not pass the
time of day with me without mentioning the ring, adding
something in the nature of: "If ever you want a great service,
any great service, I will do it for that ring." I half believe he
would have stolen or murdered for it, certainly shared the bed
with me. But he would not, apparently, even for the Borgia
ring, take me to the little island.

"You think too much of foolish things," he said to me.
"For a big writer, that is not good."

I ignored the humorous aspect of "big," equally inappro-
priate in the sense of height, girth or fame. Pitos' English was
fine, and when he slipped into mild inaccuracies, h was likely
to be a decoy.

"You're wrong, Pitos. That island has a story in it some-
where, I'd take a bet on it."

"No fish today," said Pitos. "Why you think that is?"

I refrained from inventing a tale for him that I had seen

92 Tanith Lee

giant swordfish leaping from the shallows by the smaller

island.

I found 1 was prowling Daphaeu, but only on the one side,
the side where I would get a view, or views, of the small
island. I would climb down into the welter of coves and
smashed emerald water, to look across at the small island. I
would climb up and stand, leaning on the sunblasted walls of
a crumbling church, and look at the small island. At night,
cruched over a bottle of wine, a scatter of manuscript, moths
falling like rain in the oil lamp, my stare stayed fixed on the
small island, which, as the moon came up, would seem
turned to silver, or to some older metal, Nemean metal
perhaps, sloughed from the moon herself.

Curiosity accounts for much of this, and contra-suggestive-
ness. But the influence I presently began to feel, that I cannot
account for exactly. Maybe it was only the writer's desire to
fantasize rather than to work. But every time I reached for the
manuscript 1 would experience a sort of distraction, a son of
calling, uncanny, poignant, like nostalgia, though for a place
I had never visited.

I am very bad at recollecting my dreams, but once or
twice, just before sunrise, I had a suspicion I had dreamed of
the island. Of walking there, hearing its inner waters, the
leaves brushing my hands and face.

Two weeks went by, and precious little had been done in
the line of work. And I had come to Daphaeu with the sole
intention of working. The year before. I had accomplished so
much in a month of similar islands—or had they been similar?
—that I had looked for results of some magnitude- In all of
fourteen days I must have squeezed out two thousand words,
and most of those dreary enough that the only covers they
would ever get between would be those of the trash can- And
yet, it was not that I could not produce work, it was mat I
knew. with blind and damnable certainty, that the work I
needed to be doing sprang from that spoonful of island.

The first day of the third week I had been swimming in the
calm stretch of sea west of the harbour, and had emerged to
sun myself and smoke on the parched hot shore. Presently
Pilos appeared, having scented cigarettes. Surgical and gov-

THE GORGON               93

emment health warnings have not yet penetrated to spots like
Daphaeu, where filtered tobacco continues to symbolize Hol-
lywood, or some other amorphous, anachronistic surrealism
stiil hankered after and long vanished from the world beyond.
Once Pitos had acquired his cigarette, he sprawled down on
the dry grass, grinned, indicated the Borgia ring, and men-
tioned a beautiful cousin of his, whether male or female I
cannot be sure. After this had been cleared out of the way, I
said to him,

"You know how the currents run. I was thinking of a
slightly more adventurous swim. But I'd like your advice."

Pitos glanced at me warily. I had had the plan as I lazed in
the velvet water. Pitos was already starting to guess it.

"Currents are very dangerous. Not to be trusted, except by
harbour."

"How about between Daphaeu and the other island? it
can't be more than a quarter mile. The sea looks smooth
enough, once you break away from the shoreline here."

"No," said Pitos. I waited for him to say there were no
fish, or a lot of fish, or that his brother had got a broken
thumb, or something of the sort. But Pitos did not resort to
this. Troubled and angry, he stabbed my cigarette into the
turf half-smoked. "Why do you want to go to the island so
much?"

"Why does nobody else want me to go there?"

He looked up then, and into my eyes. His own were very
black, sensuous, carnal, earthbound eyes, full of orthodox
sins, and extremely young in a sense that had nothing to do
with physical age. but with race. I suppose, the youngness of
ancient things, like Pan himself, quite possibly.

"Well," I said at last, "are you going to tell me, or not?
Because believe me, I intend to swim over there, today or
tomorrow."

"No," he said again. And then; "You should not go. On
me island there is a—" and he said a word in some tongue
neither Greek nor Turkish, not even the corrupt Spanish that
sometimes peregrinates from Malta.

"A what?"

Pitos shrugged helplessly. He gazed out to sea, safe sea

94 Tanith Lee

without islands. He seemed to be putting something together
in his mind, and ! let him do it, very curious now, pleasantly
unnerved by this waft of the occult I had already suspected to
be the root cause of the ban.

Eventually he turned back to me, treated me once more to
the primordial innocence of his stare, and announced:

"The cunning one."

"Ah," I said. Both irked and amused, 1 found myself
smiling. At this, Pitos' face grew savage with pure rage, an
expression I had never witnessed before—the facade kept for
foreigners had wel! and truly come down.

"Pitos," I said, "I don't understand."

"Meda," he said then. the Greek word, old Greek.

"Wait," I said. I caught at the name, which was wrong,
trying to fit it to a memory. Then the list came back to me,
actually from Graves, the names which meant "the cunning"
—Meda, Medea, Medusa.

"Oh," I said. I hardly wanted to offend him further by
bursting into loud mirth. At the same time, even while I was
trying not to laugh, I was aware of the hair standing up on my
scalp and neck. "You're telling me there is a gorgon on the
island."

Pitos grumbled unintelligibly, stabbing the dead cigarette
over and over into the ground.

"I'm sorry, Pitos, but it can't be Medusa. Someone cut her
head off quite a few years ago. A guy called Perseus."

His face erupted into the awful expression again, mouth in
a rictus, tongue starting to protrude, eyes flaring at me—quite
abruptly I realized he wasn't raging, but imitating the visual
panic-contortions of a man turning inexorably to stone. Since
that is what the gorgon is credited with, literally petrifying
men by the sheer horror of her countenance, it now seemed
almost pragmatic of Pitos to be demonstrating. It was, too, a
creditable facsimile of the sculpted gorgon's face sometimes
used to seal ovens and jars. I wondered where he had seen
one to copy it so well.

"All right," 1 said. "O.K.. Pitos, fine." I fished in my
shirt, which was lying on the ground, and took out some
money to give him, but he recoiled. "I'm sorry," I said, "I

THE GORGON                95

don't think it merits the ring. Unless you'd care to row me
over there after all."

The boy rose. He looked at me with utter contempt, and
without another word, before striding off up the shore. The
mashed cigarette protruded from the grass, and I lay and
watched it, the tiny strands of tobacco slowly crisping in the
heat of the sun, as I plotted my route from Daphaeu.

Dawn seemed an amiable hour. No one in particular about
on that side of the island, the water chill but flushing quickly
with warmth as the sun reached over it. And the tide in the
right place to navigate the rocks. . . .

Yes, dawn would be an excellent time to swim out to the
gorgon's island.

The gods were on my side, I concluded, as I eased myself
out into the open sea the following morning. Getting clear of
the rocks was no problem, their channels only half filled by
the returning tide. While just beyond Daphaeu's coast I
picked up one of those contrary currents that lace the island's
edges and which, tide or no, would funnel me away from
shore.

The swim was ideal, the sea limpid and no longer any
more than cool. Sunlight filled in the waves and touched
Daphaeu's retreating face with gold. Barely altered in a
thousand years, either rock or sea or sun. And yet one knew
that against all the claims of romantic fiction, this place did
not look now as once it had. Some element in the air, or in
time itself, changes things. A young man of the Bronze Age,
falling asleep at sunset in his own era, waking at sunrise in
mine, looking about him, would not have known where he
was. I would swear to that.

Some thoughts I had leisure for in my facile swim across to
the wooded island moored off Daphaeu.

As I had detected, the approach was smooth, virtually
inviting. I cruised in as if sliding on butter. A rowboat
would have had no more difficulty. The shallows were clear,
empty of rocks, and if anything greener than the water off
Daphaeu.

96 Tanith Lee

I had not looked much at Medusa's Island (I had begun
jokingly to call it this), as I crossed, knowing I would have
all the space on my arrival. So I found myself wading in on a
seamless beach of rare glycerine sand, and looking up, saw
the mass of trees spilling from the sky-

The effect was incredibly lush, so much heavy green, and
seemingly quite impenetrable, although the sun struck in
glistening shafts, lodging like arrows in the foliage, which
reminded me very intensely of huge clusters of grapes on a
vine- Anything might lie behind such a barricade.

It was already beginning to be hot. Dry, I put on the loose
cotton shirt, and ate breakfast packed in the same waterproof
wrapper, standing on the beach impatient to get on.

As I moved forward, a bird shrilled somewhere in its cage
of boughs, sounding an alarm of invasion. But surely the
birds, too, would be stone, on Medusa's Island, if the legends
were correct? And when I stumbled across the remarkable
stone carving of a man in the forest, I would pause in
shocked amazement at its verisimilitude to the life. . . .

Five minutes into the thickets of the wood, I did indeed
stumble on a carving, but it was of a moss-grown little faun.
My pleasure in the discovery was considerably lessened,
however, when investigation told me it was scarcely classical
in origin. Circa 1920 would be nearer the mark.

A further minute and I had put the faun from my mind.
The riot of waterfalling plants through which I had been
picking my way broke open suddenly on an inner vista much
wider than 1 had anticipated, while the focal point of the vista
threw me completely. 1 cannot say what I had really been
expecting. The grey-white stalks of pillars, some temple shrine,
the spring with its votary of greenish rotted bronze, none of
these would have surprised me. On the other hand, to find a
house before me took me completely by surprise. I stood and
looked at it in abject dismay, cursing its wretched normalcy,
until I gradually began to see the house was not normal, in
the accepted sense.

It had been erected probably at the turn of the century,
when such things were done. An eccentric two-storeyed build-
ing, intransigently European, that is, the Europe of the North,

THE GORGON               97
<

with its dark walls and arched roofing. Long windows, smoth-
ered by the proximity of the wood, received and refracted no
light. The one unique and startling feature—startling because
of its beauty—was the parade of columns that ran along the
terrace, in form and choreography for all the world like the
columns of Knossos, differing only in colour. For these stems
of the gloomy house were of a luminous sea-green marble,
and shone as the windows did not.

Before the house was a stretch of rough-cut lawn, tama-
risk. and one lost dying olive free. As I was staring, an
apparition seemed to manifest out of me centre of the tree.
For a second we peered at each other, before he came from
the bushes with a clashing of gnarled brown forearms. He
might have been an elderly satyr; I. patently, was only a
swimmer, with my pale foreigner's tan, my bathing trunks,
the loose shirt. It occurred to me at last that I was conceiva-
bly trespassing. 1 wished my Greek were better.

He planted himself before me and shouted intolerantly, and
anyone's Greek was good enough to get his drift. "Go! Go!"
He was ranting, and he began to wave a knife with which,
presumably, he had been pruning or mutilating something.
"Go, you go!"

I said 1 had been unaware anybody lived on the island. He
took no notice. He went on waving the knife, and his attitude
provoked me. I told him sternly to put the knife down, that I
would leave when I was ready, that I had seen no notice to
the effect that the island was private property. Generally I
would never take a chance like this with someone so obvi-
ously qualified to be a lunatic, but my position was so
vulnerable, so ludicrous, so entirely indefensible, that 1
fell bound to act firmly. Besides which, having reached the
magic grotto and found it was not as I had visualized, I was
still very reluctant to abscond with only a memory of dark
windows and sea-green columns to brood upon.

The maniac was by now quite literally foaming, due most
likely to a shortage of teeth, but the effect was alarming, not
to mention unaesthetic. As I was deciding which fresh course
to take and if there might be one, a woman's figure came out
on to the terrace. I had the impression of a white frock,

98 Tanith Lee

before an odd, muffled voice called out a rapid—too rapid for
my translation—stream of peculiarly accented Greek. The old
1^6 swung around, gazed at the figure, raised his arms, and
baited another foaming torrent to the effect that I was a
bandit, or some other kind of malcontent. While he did so,
agitated as I was becoming, I nevertheless took in what I
could of the woman standing between the columns. She was
mostly in shadow, just the faded white dress, with a white
scarf at the neck, marking her position. And then there was an
abrupt flash of warmer pallor that was her hair. A blonde Greek,
or maybe just a peroxided Greek. At any rate, no snakes.

The drama went on, from his side, from hers. I finally got
tired of it, went by him and walked toward the terrace,
pondering, rather too late, if 1 might not be awarded the knife
in my back. But almost as soon as I started to move, she
leaned toward a little, and she called another phrase to him,
which this time I made out, telling him to let me come on.

When 1 reached the foot of the terrace steps, I halted,
really involuntarily, struck by something strange about her.
^•^Just as the strangeness of the house had begun to strike me,
{,-^ibt its evident strangeness, the ill-marriage to location, the
green pillars, but a strangeness of atmosphere, items the
unconscious eye notices, where the physical eye is blind, and
" will not explain. And so with her. What was it? Still in
shadow, I had the impression she might be in her early
thirties, from her figure, her movements, but she had turned
\ away as 1 approached, adjusting some papers on a wicker
' table.

"Excuse me," I said. I stopped, and spoke in English. For
some reason I guessed she would be familiar with the lan-
guage, perhaps only since it was current on Daphaeu. "Ex-
cuse me. I had no idea the island was private. No one gave
me the slightest hint—''

"You are English," she broke in, in the vernacular, prov-
ing the guess to be correct.

"Near enough. I find it easier to handle than Greek, I
confess."

"Your Greek is very good," she said, with the indifferent
patronage of one who is multi-lingual. I stood there under the

THE GORGON                99

steps, already fascinated. Her voice was the weirdest I had
ever heard, muffled, almost unattractive, and with the most
incredible accent, not Greek at all. The nearest approXima^n
1 could come up with was Russian, but I could not be sure.

"Well," I said. I glanced over my shoulder and registered
that the frothy satyr had retired into his shrubbery; the knife
glinted as it slashed tamarisk in lieu of me. "Well, I suppose
I should retreat to Daphaeu. Or am I permitted to stay?"

"Go, stay," she said. "I do not care at all."

She turned then, abruptly, and my heart slammed into the
base of my throat. A childish silly reaction, yet I was quite
unnverved, for now I saw what it was that had seemed vaguely
peculiar from a distance. The lady on Medusa's island was
masked.

She remained totally still, and let me have my reaction,
neither helping nor hindering me.

It was an unusual mask, or usual—I am unfamiliar with the
norm of such things. It was made of some matte light sub-
stance that toned well with the skin of her arms and hands,
possibly not so well with that of her neck, where the scari^
provided camouflage. Besides which, .the chin of the mask,
this certainly an extra to any mask I had ever seen, continued
under her own. The mask's physiognomy was bland, nondes-
criptly pretty in a way that was somehow grossly insulting to
her. Before confronting the mask, if I had tried to judge the
sort of face she would have. I would have suspected a coarse,
rather heavy beauty, probably redeemed by one chiseled fea-
ture, a small slender nose, perhaps. The mask. however, was
vacuous- It did not suit her, was not true to her. Even after
three minutes I could tell as much, or thought I could, which
amounts to the same thing.

The blonde hair, seeming natural as the mask was not,
cascaded down, lush as the foliage of the island. A blonde
Greek, then. like the golden Greeks of Homer's time. when
gods walked the earth in disguise.

In the end, without any help or hindrance from her, as I
have said. I pulled myself together. As she had mentioned no
aspect of her state, neither did I. I simply repeated what I had
said before: "Am 1 permitted to stay?"

100 Tanith Lee

The mask went on looking at me. The astonishing voice
said:

"You wish to stay so much; what do you mean to do
here?"

Talk to you, oblique lady, and wonder what lies behind the
painted veil.

"Look at the island, if you'll let me. I found the statue of a
faun near the beach," elaboration implied 1 should lie: "Some-
one told me there was an old shrine here."

"Ah!" She barked. It was apparently a laugh. "No one,"
she said, "told you anything about this place."

I was at a loss. Did she know what she said? "Frankly
then, I romantically hoped there might be."

"Unromantically, there is not. No shrine. No temple. My
father bought the faun in a shop, in Athens. A tourist shop.
He had vulgar tastes, but he knew it, and that has a certain
charm, does it not?"

"Yes, I suppose it does. Your father—"

She cut me short again.

"The woods cover all the island. Except for an area behind
the house. We grow things there, and we keep goats and
chickens. We are very domesticated. Very sufficient for our-
selves. There is a spring of fresh water, but no votary. No
. genius loci. I am so sony to dash your dreams to pieces."
'r '. It suggested itself to me, from her tone of amusement,
from little inflections in her shoulders, that she might be
enjoying this, enjoying, if you like, putting me down as an
idiot. Presumably visitors were rare. Perhaps it was even fun
for her to talk to a man, youngish and unknown, though
admittedly never likely to qualify for anyone's centrefold.

"But you have no objections to my being here," I pur-
sued. "And your father?"

"My parents are dead," she informed me. "When I em-
ployed the plural, I referred to him," she gestured, a broad
sweep of her hand, to the monster on the lawn, "arid a
woman who attends to the house. My servants, my unpaid
servants. I have no money anymore. Do you see this dress? It
is my mother's dress. How lucky I am the same fitting as my
mother, do you not think?"

THE GORGON               101

"Yes. . . ."

I was put in mind, suddenly, of myself as an ambassador at
the court of some notorious female potentate, Cleopatra, say,
or Catherine de Medici.

"You are very polite," she said, as if telepathically privy
to my fantasies.

"I have every reason to be."

"What reason?"

"I'm trepassing. You treat me like a guest."

"And how," she said, vainglorious all at once, "do you
rate my English?"

"It's wonderful."

"I speak eleven languages fluently," she said, with off-
handed boastfulness- "Three more I can read very well."

I liked her. This display, touching and magnificent at once,
her angular theatrical gesturings, which now came more and
more often, her hair, her flat-waisted figure in its 1940's
dress, her large, well-made hands, and her challenging me
with the mask, saying nothing to explain it, all this hypno-
tised me.

I said something to express admiration, and she barked
again, throwing back her blonde head and irresistibly, though
only for a moment, conjuring Garbo's Queen Christina.

Then she walked down the steps, straight to me, demon-
strating something else I had deduced, that she was only
about an inch shorter than I.

"I," she said, "will show you the island. Come."

She showed me the island. Unsurprisingly, it was small.
To go directly round it would maybe have taken less than
thirty minutes. But we lingered, over a particular tree, a
view, and once we sat down on the ground near the gushing
milk-white spring. The basin under the spring, she informed
me, had been added in 1910. A little bronze nymph presided
over the spot, dating from me same year, which you could
tell in any case from the way her classical costume and her
filletted hair had been adapted to the fashions of hobble skirt
and Edwardian coiffeur. Each age imposes its own overlay on
the past.

102 Tanith Lee

Behind the house was a scatter of the meagre white dwell-
ings that make up such places as the village on Daphaeu, now
plainly unoccupied and put to other uses. Sheltered from the
sun by a colossal cypress, six goats played about in the grass.
Chickens, and an assortment of other fowl, strutted up and
down, while a pig, or pigs, grunted somewhere out of sight.
Things grew in strips and patches, and fruit trees and vines
ended the miniature plantation before the woods resumed.
Self-sufficiency of a tolerable kind, I suppose. But there
seemed, from what she said, no contact maintained with any
other area, as if the world did not exist. Postulate that a
blight, or harsh weather, intervened, what then? And me old
satyr, how long would he last to tend the plots? He looked
two hundred now. which on the islands probably meant sixty.
1 did not ask her what contingency plans she had for these
emergencies and inevitabilities- What good, after all, are
most plans? We could be invaded from Andromeda tomor-
row, and what help for us all then? Either it is in your nature
to survive, somehow, anyhow, or it is not.

She had well and truly hooked me. of course. If I had met
her in Athens, some sun-baked afternoon, I would have felt
decidedly out of my depth, taken her for cocktails, and
foundered before we had even reached the dinner hour. But
here. in this pulsing green bubble of light and leaves straight
out of one's most irrational visions of the glades of Arcadia,
conversation, however erratic, communication, however ec-
centric, was happening. The most inexplicable thing of all
was that the mask had ceased, almost immediately, to bother
me. 1 cannot, as I look back, properly account for this, for to
spend a morning, a noon. an afternoon, allowing yourself to
become fundamentally engaged by a woman whose face you
have not seen, whose face you are actively being prevented
from seeing, seems now incongruous, to the point of perver-
sity. But there it is. We discussed Ibsen. Dickens. Euripides
and Jung. I remembered trawling anecdotes of a grandfather,
mentioned my sister's jewellery store in St. Louis, listened to
an astonishing description of wild birds flying in across a
desert from a sea. 1 assisted her over rocky turf. flirted with
her, fell excited by and familiar with her, all this with her

THE GORGON              103

masked face before me. As if the mask, rather than being a
part of her, meant no more than the frock she had elected to
wear, or the narrow-heeled vanilla shoes she had chosen to
put on. As if I knew her face totally and had no need to be
shown it, the face of her movements and her ridiculous voice.

But in fact, I could not even make out her eyes, only the
shine in them when they caught the light, flecks of lumines-
cence but not colour, for the eyeholes of the mask were
long-lidded and rather small. I must have noticed, too, that
there was no aperture in the lips, and this may have informed
me that the mask must be removed for purposes of eating or
drinking. I really do not know. I can neither excuse nor quite
understand myself, seen in the distance there, with her, on
her island. Hartley tells us that the past is another country.
Perhaps we also were other people, strangers, yesterday. But
when I think of this, I remember, too, the sense of drawing I
had had, of being magnetised to that shore, those trees, the
nostalgia for a place I had never been to. For she, it may be
true to say, was a figment of her nostalgia, as if I had known
her and come back to her. Some enchantment, then. Nol
Medusa's island, but Circe's.

The afternoon, even through the dapple L'Apr^s-midi d'ua
Faune effect of the leaves, was a viridian furnace, when we
regained the house. I sat in one of the wicker chairs on the
terrace, and woke with a start of embarrassment to hear her
laughing at me.

"You are tired and hungry. I must go into the house for a
while. I will send Kleia to you with some wine and food."

It made a bleary sense, and when I woke again it was to
find an old fat woman in the ubiquitous Grecian island black—
demonstrably Kleia—setting down a tray of pale red wine,
amber cheese and dark bread.

"Where is—" I realized I did not know the enchantress's
name.

In any event, me woman only shook her head, saying
brusquely in Greek: **No English. No English."

And when I attempted to ask again in Greek where my
hostess had got to, Kleia waddled away leaving me unan-
swered. So I ate the food, which was passable, and drank the

104 Tanith Lee

wine, which was very good, imagining her faun-buying father
putting down an enormous patrician cellar, then fell asleep
again, sprawled in the chair.

When I wakened, the sun was setting and the clearing was
swimming in red light and rusty violet shadows. The columns
burned as if they were internally on fire, holding the core of
me sunset, it appeared, some while after the sky had cooled
and the stars became visible, a trick of architectural position-
ing that won my awe and envy. I was making a mental note
to ask her who had been responsible for the columns, and
jumped when she spoke to me, softly and hoarsely, almost
seductively, from just behind my chair—thereby promptly
making me forget to ask any such thing.

"Come into me house, now. We will dine soon."

I got up, saying something lame about imposing on her,
though we were far beyond that stage.

"Always," she said to me, "you apologise. There is no
imposition. You will be gone tomorrow."

How do you know? 1 nearly inquired, but prevented my-
self. What guarantee? Even if the magic food did not change
roe into a swine, perhaps my poisoned dead body would be
carried from the feast and cast into the sea, gone, well and
truly, to Poseidon's fishes. You see. I did not trust her, even
though 1 was somewhat in love with her. The element of her
danger—for she was dangerous in some obscure way—may
well have contributed to her attraction.

We went into me house, which in itself alerted me. I had
forgotten a great curiosity I had had to look inside it. There
was a shadowy unlit entrance hall, a sort of Roman atrium of
a thing. Then we passed, she leading, into a small salon that
took my breath away. It was lined, all over, floor, ceiling,
walls, with the sea-green marble the columns were made of.
Whether in good taste or bad I am not qualified to say, but
the effect, instantaneous and utter, was of being beneath me
sea. Smoky oil lamps of a very beautiful Art Nouveau design
hung from the profundity of the green ceiling, lighting the
dreamlike swirls and oceanic variations of the marble, so they
seemed to breathe, definitely to move, like nothing else but

THE GORGON               105

waves. Shoes on that floor would have squeaked or clattered
unbearably, but I was barefoot, and now so was she.

A mahogany table, with a modest placing for eight, stood
centrally. Only one place was laid.

I looked at it. and she said,

"I do not dine, but that will not prevent you."

An order. I considered vampires, idly, but mainly I was
subject to an infantile annoyance. I had looked for the sub-
traction of the mask when she ate. without quite realizing it,
and now this made me very conscious of the mask for the
first time since I had orginally seen it.

We seated ourselves, she two places away from me. And I
began to feel nervous. To eat this meal while she watched me
did not appeal. And now the idea of the mask. unconsidered
all morning, all afternoon, stole over me like an incoming
tide.

Inevitably, I had not dressed for dinner, having no means,
but she had changed her clothes, and was now wearing a
high-collared long grey gown, her mother's again, no doubt
It had the fragile look of age. but was very feminine and
appealing for all that. Above it, the mask now reared, stuck
out like the proverbial sore thumb.

The mask. What on earth was I going to do, leered at by
the myopic soulless face which had suddenly assumed such
disastrous importance.

Kleia waddled in with the dishes. I cannot recall the meal,
save that it was spicey, and mostly vegetable. The wine came
too, and I drank it. As I drank the wine, I began to consider
seriously, for the first time (which seems very curious indeed
to me now), the reason for the mask. What did it hide? A
scar, a birthmark? I drank her wine, and I saw myself snatch
off the mask, take in the disfigurement, unquelled, and be-
hold the painful gratitude in her eyes as she watched me. 1
would inform her of the genius of surgeons. She would
repeat, she had no money. I would promise to pay for the
operation.

Suddenly she startled me by saying: "Do you believe that
we have lived before?"

I looked in my glass, that fount of wisdom and possibility,

106 Tanith Lee

and said, "It seems as sensible a proposition as any of the
3thers I've ever heard."

I fancied she smiled to herself, and do not know why I
thought that; I know now I was wrong.

Her accent had thickened and distorted further when she
said,

"I rather hope that I have lived before. 1 could wish to
think I may live again."

"To compensate for this life?" I said brutishly. 1 had not
needed to be so obvious when already I had been given the
implication on a salver.

"Yes. To compensate for this."

I downed all the wisdom and possibility left in my glass,
swallowed an extra couple of times, and said, "Are you
going to tell me why you wear a mask?"

As soon as I said it, I grasped that I was drunk. Nor was it
a pleasant drunkenness. I did not like the demanding tone 1
had taken with her. but I was angry at having allowed the
game to go on for so long. I had no knowledge of the rules,
or pretended I had not. And I could not stop myself. When
she did not reply, I added on a note of ghastly banter, "Or
shall I guess?"

She was still, seeming very composed. Had this scene been
enacted before? Finally she said, "I would suppose you do
guess it is to conceal something that I wear it."

"Something you imagine worth concealing, which, per-
haps, isn't."

That was the stilted fanfare of bravado. I had braced
myself, flushed with such stupid confidence.

"Why not," I said, and I grow cold when I remember how I
spoke to her, "take the damn tiling off. Take off die mask,
and drink a glass of wine with me."

A pause. Then, "No," she said.

Her voice was level and calm. There was neither eagerness
nor fear in it.

"Go on," I said, the drunk not getting his way, aware (oh
God) he could get it by the power of his intention alone,
"please. You're an astounding woman. You're like this is-

THE GORGON                107

land. A fascinating mystery. But I've seen the island. Let me
see you."

"No," she said.

I started to feel, even through the wine, that I had made an
indecent suggestion to her, and this, along with the awful
cliches. 1 was bringing out, increased my anger and my
discomfort.

"For Heaven's sake," I said. "Do you know what they
call you on Daphaeu?"

"Yes."

"This is absurd. You're frightened—"

"No. I am not afraid."

"Afraid. Afraid to let me see. But maybe I can help you."

"No. You cannot help me."

"How can you be sure?"

She turned in her chair, and all the way to face me with the
mask. Behind her, everywhere about her, the green marble
dazzled.

"If you know," she said, "what I am called on Daphaeu,
are you not uneasy as to what you may see?"

"Jesus. Mythology and superstition and ignorance. I assure
you, I won't turn to stone."

"It is I," she said quietly, "who have done that."

Something about the phrase, the way in which she said it,
chilled me. I put down my glass, and in that instant, her
hands went to the sides of the mask and her fingers worked at
some complicated strap arrangement which her hair had covered.

"Good," I said, "good. I'm glad—"

But I faltered over it. The cold night sea seemed to fill my
veins where the warm red wine had been- I had been heroic
and sure and bold, the stuff of celluloid. But now I had my
way, with hardly any preliminary, what would I see? And
then she drew the plastic away and I saw.

I sat there, and then I stood up. The reflex was violent, and
me chair scraped over the marble with an unbearable noise.
There are occasions, though rare, when the human mind
grows blank of all thought. 1 had no thought as I looked at
her. Even now, I can evoke those long, long empty seconds,
that lapse of time. I recollect only the briefest confusion,

108 Tanith Lee

when I believe she still played some kind of hideous game,
that what I witnessed was a product of her decision and her
will, a gesture—

After all, Pitos had done this very thing to illustrate and
endorse his argument, produced this very expression, the eyes
bursting from the head, the jaw rigidly outthrust, the tendons
in the neck straining, the mouth in the grimace of a frozen,
agonised scream, the teeth visible, the tongue slightly pro-
truding. The gorgon's face on the jar or the oven. The face so
ugly, so demented, so terrible, it could petrify.

The awful mouth writhed.

"You have seen," she said. Somehow the stretched and
distorted lips brought out these words. There was even that
nuance of humour I had heard before, the smile, although
physically, a smile would have been out of the question.
"You have seen."

She picked up the mask again, gently, and put it on, easing
the underpart of the plastic beneath her chin, to hide the
convulsed tendons in her throat. I stood there, motionless.
Childishly, I informed myself that now I comprehended the
reason for her peculiar accent, which was caused, not by
some exotic foreign extraction, but by the atrocious malfor-
mation of jaw, tongue and lips, which somehow must be
fought against for every sound she made.

I went on standing there, and now the mask was back in
place.

"When I was very young," she said, "I suffered, without
warning, from a form of fit, or stroke.' Various nerve centres
were paralysed. My father took me to the very best of sur-
geons, you may comfort yourself with that. Unfortunately,
any effort to correct the damage entailed a penetration of my
brain so uncompromisingly delicate that it was reckoned im-
possible, for it would surely render me an idiot. Since my
senses, faculties and intelligence were otherwise unaffected,
it was decided not to risk this dire surgery, and my doctors
resorted instead to alternative therapies, which, patently, were
unsuccessful. As the months passed, my body adjusted to the
unnatural physical tensions resulting from my facial paraly-
sis. The pain of the rictus faded, or grew acceptable. I

THE GORGON               109

learned both how to eat, and how to converse, although the
former activity is not attractive, and I attend to it in private.
The mask was made for me in Athens. I am quite fond of it.
The man who designed it had worked a great many years in
the theatre, and could have made me a face of enormous
beauty or character, but this seemed pointless, even wasteful."

There was a silence, and I realized her explanation was
finished.

Not once had she stumbled. There was neither hurt nor
madness in her inflexion. There was something ... at the
time. I missed it, though it came to me after. Then I knew
only that she was far beyond my pity or my anguish, far away
indeed from my terror.

"And now," she said. rising gracefully, "I will leave you
to eat your meal in peace. Good night."

I wanted, or rather I felt impelled, to stay her with actions
or sentences, but I was incapable of either. She walked out of
the green marble room, and left me mere- It is a fact that for
a considerable space of time, I did not move.

I did not engage the swim back to Daphaeu that night, I
judged myself too drunk, and slept on the beach at the edge
of the trees, where at sunrise the tidal water woke me with a
strange low hissing. Green sea. green sunlight through leaves.
I swam away and found my course through the warming
ocean and fetched up, exhausted and swearing, bruising my-
self on Daphaeu's fangs that had not harmed me when I left
her. I did not see Pitos anywhere about, and that evening I
caught me boat which would take me to the mainland.

There is a curious thing which can happen with human
beings. It is the ability to perform for days or weeks like
balanced and cheerful automata, when some substratum, some-
tiling upon which our codes or our hopes had firmly rested,
has given way. Men who lose their wives or their God are
quite capable of behaving in this manner, for an indefinite
season. After which the collapse is brilliant and total. Some-
thing of this sort had happened to me. Yet, to fathom what I
had lost, what she had deprived me of, is hard to say. I found
its symptoms, but not the sickness which it was.

110 Tanilh Lee

Medusa (I must call her that, she has no other name I
know), struck by the extraordinary arrow of her misfortune,
condemned to her relentless, uncanny, horrible isolation, her
tragedy most deeply rooted in the fact that she was not a
myth, not a fabulous and glamorous monster . - - For it came
to me one night in a bar in Corinth, to consider if the first
Medusa might have been also such a victim, felled by some
awesome fit, not petrifying but petrified, so appalling to the
eyes, and, more significantly, to the brooding aesthetic spirit
that lives in man, that she too was shunned and hated, and
slain by a murderer who would observe her only in a polished
surface.

1 spent some while in bars that summer. And later, much
later, when the cold climate of the year's end closed the
prospect of travel and adventure, ! became afraid for myself,
that dreadful writer's fear which has to do with the death of
the idea, with the inertia of hand and heart and mind. Like
one of the broken leaves, the summer's withered plants, ! had
dried. My block was sheer. 1 had expected a multitude of
pages from the island, but instead I saw those unborn pages
die on the horizon, where the beach met the sea.

And this, merely a record of marble, water, a plastic shell
strapped across a woman's face, this is the last thing, it
seems, which I shall commit to paper. Why? Perhaps only
because she was to me such a lesson in the futility of things,
the waiting fiat of chance, the random despair we name the
World.

And yet, now and then, I hear that voice of hers, I hear the
way she spoke to me. I know now what I heard in her voice,
which had neither pain nor shame in it, nor pleading, nor
whining, nor even a hint of the tragedy, the Greek tragedy, of
her life. And what I heard was not dignity, either, or accep-
tance, or nobleness. It was contempt. She despised me. She
despised all of us who live without her odds, who struggle
with our small struggles, incomparable to hers. "Your Greek
is very good," she said to me, with the patronage of one who
is multi-lingual. And in that same disdain she says, over and
over to me: "that you live is very good." Compared to her

THE GORGON              111

life, her existence, her multi-lingual endurance, what are my
life or my ambitions worth? Or anything.

it did not occur immediately, but still it occurred. In its
way, the myth is perfectly accurate. I see it in myself, scent
it, taste it, like the onset of inescapable disease. What they
say about the gorgon is true. She has turned me to stone.

GRIFFIN

"Griffin" can also be spelled "griffon" or, more cor-
rectly. though this spelling is not often used, "gryphon."
The word is from the Greek gryps, meaning "having a
hooked nose," for reasons that will soon be plain.

The griffin is a composite creature, like the centaur, and
such composites are common in mythology, in early peri-
ods of history, it was common to deify the animals on
which a hunting society lives. Perhaps, as people grow
more sophisticated, they become embarrassed at having
their gods in the form of animals, and they compromise by
making those gods human, but with animal heads. Thus
the Egyptians had human gods with the head of a hawk,
or an ibis: the Indians had human gods with the head of a
monkey or an elephant, and so on.

One could also make a composite of a monster, so that
one could combine the characteristics of several dangerous
creatures into one. The most familiar such composite is the
chimera, from a Greek word for "goat." since it had the
body of a goat. However, it had the head of a lion and its
tail was a serpent. (Sometimes it was pictured as a creature
with three heads, one of a lion, one of a goat, and one of a
serpent). It was slain by the Greek hero Bellerophon.
Nowadays, plants and animals made up of mixtures of
material from different species, through human manipula-
tion, are called chimeras.

The griffin has the body of a lion, but the head and
wings of an eagle, and, sometimes, a serpent tail. It is a

112

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON      113

kind of dragon in its functioning, and may be viewed as
breathing fire. It is usually pictured as guarding treasures,
as dragons are commonly represented as doing, and, in
modern limes, it is frequently represented in grotesque
carvings as in the story you are about to read.

It is the curved beak of an eagle, by the way, that is the
"hooked nose" that gives it its name.

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR
CANON

Frank R. Stockton

Over the great door of an old, o!d church, which stood in a
quiet town of a faraway land, there was carved in stone the
figure of a large griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his
work with great care. but the image he had made was not a
pleasant one to took at. It had a large head, with enormous
open mouth and savage teeth. From its back arose great
wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs. It had stout tegs
in front, with projecting claws, but there were no legs behind,
the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished
off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up
under him, the end sticking up just back of his wings.

The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone
figure, had evidently been very much pleased with it, for
little copies of it, also in stone, had been placed here and
there along the sides of the church, not very far from the
ground, so that people could easily look at them and ponder
on their curious forms. There were a great many other sculp-
tures on the outside of this church—saints, martyrs, grotesque
heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other
creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows
exactly what they were. But none were so curious and inter-
esting as the great gnffin over the door and the little griffins
on the sides of the church.

A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of
dreadful wilds scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin
whose image had been put up over the church door. In some
way or other the old-time sculptor had seen him, and after-

114

THE GRIFFW AND THE MINOR CANON      115

wards, to the best of his memory, had copied his figure in
stone. The Griffin had never known this until, hundreds of
years afterwards, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal,
or in some manner which is not easy to find out, that there
was a likeness of him on the old church in the distant town.

Now, this Griffin had no idea whatever how he looked. He
had never seen a mirror, and the streams where he lived were
so turbulent and violent that a quiet piece of water, which
would reflect the image of anything looking into it, could not
be found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the very last
of his race, he had never seen another griffin. Therefore it
was that, when he heard of this stone image of himself, he
became very anxious to know what he looked like, and at last
he determined to go to the old church and see for himself
what manner of being he was- So he started off from the
dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he came to the
countries inhabited by men. where his appearance in the air
created great consternation. But he alighted nowhere, keeping
up a steady flight until he reached the suburbs of the town
which had his image on its church. Here, late in the after-
noon, he alighted in a green meadow by the side of a brook,
and stretched himself on the grass to rest. His great wings
were tired, for he had not made such a long flight in a century
or more.

The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and
the people, frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of
so extraordinary a visitor, fled into their houses and shut
themselves up. The Griffin called loudly for some one to come
to him; but the more he called, the more afraid the people were
to show themselves. At length he saw two laborers hurrying
to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible voice he
commanded them to stop. Not daring to disobey, the men
stood, trembling.

"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is
there not a man in your town who is brave enough to speak to
me?"

"I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so
that his words could hardly be understood, "that—perhaps—
the Minor Canon—would come."

116 Frank R. Stockton

"Go, call him, then!" said the Griffin. "I want to see
him."

The Minor Canon, who filled a subordinate position in the
old church, had just finished the afternoon service, and was
coming out of a side door, with three aged women who had
formed the week-day congregation. He was a young man of a
kind disposition, and very anxious to do good to the people of
the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where he
conducted services every week-day, he visited the sick and
the poor; counselled and assisted persons who were in trou-
ble, and taught a school composed entirely of the bad chil-
dren in the town, with whom nobody else would have anything
to do. Whenever the people wanted something difficult done
for them, they always went to me Minor Canon. Thus it was
that the laborer thought of the young priest when he found
that some one must come and speak to the Griffin.

The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event.
which was known to the whole town except himself and the
three old women, and when he was informed of it, and was
told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he was greatly
amazed and frightened.

"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What
should he want with me?"

"Oh, you must go instantly!" cried the two men. "He is
very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long,
and nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to
him."

The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut
off than go out to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was
his duty to go, for it would be a woeful thing if injury should
come to the people of die town because he was not brave
enough to obey me summons of the Griffin; so, pale and
frightened, he started off.

"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came
near, "I am glad to see mat there is someone who has the
courage to come to me."

The Minor Canon did not feel very courageous, but he
bowed his head.

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON      117

"Is this the town." said the Griffin, "where there is a
church with a likeness of myself over one of the doors?"

The Minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before
him, and saw that it was, without doubt, exactly like the
stone image on the church. "Yes," he said, "you are right."

"Well, then," said the Grifin, "will you take me to it? I
wish very much to see it."

The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin en-
tered the town without the people knowing what he came for,
some of them would probably be frightened to death, and so
he sought to gain time to prepare their minds.

"It is growing dark now," he said, very much afraid, as he
spoke, that his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects
on the front of the church cannot be seen clearly. It will be
better to wait until morning, if you wish to get a good view of
the stone image of yourself."

"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you
are a man of good sense. I am tired, and I wil! take a nap
here on this soft grass, white I cool my tail in the little stream
that runs near me. The end of my tail gets red-hot when I am
angry or excited, and it is quite warm now. So you may go;

but be sure and come early tomorrow morning, and show me
the way to the church."

The Minor Canon was glad enough to take his leave, and
hurried into the town. In front of the church he found a great
many people assembled to hear his report of his interview
with the Griffin. When they found that he had not come to
spread ruin and devastation, but simply to see his stony
likeness on the church, they showed neither relief nor gratifi-
cation, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for consenting
to conduct the creature into the town.

"What could I do?" cried the young man. "If I should not
bring him he would come himself, and perhaps end by setting
fire to the town with his red-hot tail."

Still the people were not satisfied, and a great many plans
were proposed to prevent the Griffin from coming into the
town. Some elderly persons urged that the young men should
go out and kill him. But the young men scoffed at such a
ridiculous idea. Then some one said it would be a good thing

118 Frank R. Stockton

to destroy the stone image, so that the Griffin would have no
excuse for entering the town. This proposal was received with
such favor that many of the people ran for hammers, chisels,
and crowbars with which to tear down and break up the stone
griffin. But the Minor Canon resisted this plan with ail the
strength of his mind and body. He assured the people that this
action would be impossible to conceal from him that his
image had been destroyed during the night.

But they were so determined to break up the stone griffin
that the Minor Canon saw that there was nothing for him to
do but stay there and protect it. All night he walked up and
down in front of the church door, keeping away the men who
brought ladders by which they might mount to the great stone
griffin and knock it to pieces with their hammers and crow-
bars. After many hours the people were obliged to give up
their attempts, and went home to sleep. But the Minor Canon
remained at his post till early morning, and then he hurried
away to the field where he had left the Griffin.

The monster had just awakened, and rising to his forelegs
and shaking himself, he said that he was ready to go into the
town. The Minor Canon, therefore, walked back, the Griffin
flying slowly through the air at a short distance above the
head of his guide. Not a person was to be seen in the streets,
and they proceeded directly to the front of the church, where
the Minor Canon pointed out the stone griffin.

The real Griffin settled down in the little square before the
church and gazed earnestly at his sculptured likeness. For a
long time he looked at it. First he put his head on one side,
and then he put it on the other. Then he shut his right eye and
gazed with his left, after which he shut his left eye and gazed
with his right. Then he moved a little to one side and looked
at the image, then he moved the other way. After a while he
said to the Minor Canon, who had been standing by all this
time:

"It is, it must be, an excellent likeness! That breadth
between the eyes, that expansive forehead, those massive
jaws! I feel that it must resemble me. If there is any fault to
find with it, it is that the neck seems a little stiff. But that is
nothing. It is an admirable likeness—admirable!"

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON      119

The Griffin sat looking at his image all the morning and all
the afternoon. The Minor Canon had been afraid to go away
and leave him, and had hoped all through the day that he
would soon be satisfied with his inspection and fly away
home. But by evening the poor young man was utterly ex-
hausted, and felt that he must eat and sleep. He frankly
admitted this fact to the Griffin, and asked him if he would
not like something to eat. He said this because he fell obliged
in politeness to do so; but as soon as he had spoken the
words, he was seized with dread lest the monster should
demand half a dozen babies, or some tempting repast of that
kind.

"Oh, no," said the Griffin, "1 never eat between the
equinoxes. At the vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a
good meal, and that lasts me for half a year. I am extremely
regular in my habits, and do not think it healthful to eat at
odd times. But if you need food, go and get it, and I will
return to the soft grass where I slept last night, and take
another nap."

The next day the Griffin came again to the little square
before the church, and remained there until evening, stead-
fastly regarding the stone griffin over the door. The Minor
Canon came once or twice to look at him, and the Griffin
seemed very glad to see him. But the young clergyman could
not stay as he had done before, for he had many duties to
perform. Nobody went to the church, but the people came to
the Minor Canon's house, and anxiously asked him how long
the Griffin was going to stay.

"I do not know," he answered, "but I think he will soon
be satisfied with looking at his stone likeness, and then he
will go away."

But the Griffin did not go away. Morning after morning he
went to the church, but after a time he did not stay there all
day. He seemed to have taken a great fancy to Minor Canon,
and followed him about as he pursued his various avocations.
He would wait for him at the side door of the church, for the
Minor Canon held services every day, morning and evening,
though nobody came now. "If any one should come," he
said to himself, "I must be found at my post." When the

120 Frank R. Stockton

young man came out, the Griffin would accompany him in his
visits to the sick and the poor, and would often look into the
windows of the school-house where the Minor Canon was
teaching his unruly scholars. All the other schools were closed,
but the parents of the Minor Canon's scholars forced them to
go to school, because they were so bad they could not endure
mem all day at home—griffin or no griffin. But it must be said
they generally behaved very well when that great monster sat
up on his tail and looked in at the school-room window.

When it was perceived that the Griffin showed no sign of
going away, all the people who were able to do so left the
town. The canons and the higher officers of the church had
fled away during the first day of the Griffin's visit, leaving
behind only the Minor Canon and some of the men who
opened the doors and swept the church. All me citizens who
could afford it shut up their houses and travelled to distant
parts, and only the working-people and the poor were left
behind. After some days these ventured to go about and
attend to their business, for if they did not work they would
starve. They were getting a little used to seeing the Griffin,
and having been told that he did not eat between equinoxes,
they did not feel so much afraid of him as before.

Day by day the Griffin became more and more attached to
the Minor Canon. He kept near him a great part of the time,
and often spent the night in front of the little house where the
young clergyman lived alone. This strange companionship
was often burdensome to the Minor Canon. But, on me other
hand, he could not deny that he derived a great deal of benefit
and instruction from it. The Griffin had lived for hundreds of
years, and had seen much, and he told the Minor Canon
many wonderful things.

"It is like reading an old book," said the young clergyman
to himself. "But how many books I would have had to read
before I would have found out what the Griffin has told me
about the earth, the air, the water, about minerals, and met-
als. and growing things, and all the wonders of the world!"

Thus the summer went on, and drew toward its close. And
now the people of the town began to be very much troubled
again.

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON      121

"It will not be long." they said, "before the autumnal
equinox is here, and then that monster will want to eat. He
will be dreadfully hungry, for he has taken so much exercise
since his last meal. He will devour our children. Without
doubt, he will eat them all. What is to be done?"

To this question no one could give an answer, but all
agreed that the Griffin must not be allowed to remain until the
approaching equinox. After talking over the matter a great
deal, a crowd of the people went to me Minor Canon, at a
time when the Griffin was not with him.

"It is all your fault," they said, "that that monster is
among us. You brought him here, and you ought to see that
he goes away. It is only on your account that he stays here at
all, for, although he visits his image every day, he is with
you the greater part of the time. If you were not here he.
would not stay. It is your duty to go away, and then he will
follow you, and we shall be free from the dreadful danger
which hangs over us."

"Go away!" cried the Minor Canon, greatly grieved at
being spoken to in such a way. "Where shall I go? If I go to
some other town, shall I not take this trouble there? Have I a
right to do that?"

"No," said the people, "you must not go to any other
town. There is no town far enough away. You must go to the
dreadful wilds where the Griffin lives, and then he will
follow you and stay there."

They did not say whether or not they expected the Minor
Canon to stay there also. and he did not ask them anything
about it. He bowed his head, and went into his house to
think. The more he thought, the more clear it became to his
mind that it was his duty to go away, and thus free the town
from the presence of the Griffin.

That evening he packed a leather bag full of bread and
meat, and early the next morning he set out on his journey to
the dreadful wilds. It was a long, weary, and doleful journey,
especially after he had gone beyond the habitations of men;

but the Minor Canon kept on bravely, and never faltered. The
way was longer than he had expected, and his provisions
soon grew so scanty that he was obliged to eat but a little

122 Frank R. Swckion

every day; but he kept up his courage, and pressed on, and
after many days of toilsome travel he reached the dreadful
wilds.

When the Griffin found that the Minor Canon had left the
town, he seemed sorry, but showed no disposition to go and
look for him. After a few days had passed, he became much
annoyed, and asked some of the people where the Minor
Canon had gone. But although the citizens had been so
anxious that the young clergyman should go to the dreadful
wilds, thinking that me Griffin would immediately follow
him, they were now afraid to mention the Minor Canon's
destination, for the monster seemed angry already, and if he
should suspect their trick, he would doubtless become very
much enraged. So every one said he did not know, and the
Griffin wandered about disconsolate. One morning he looked
into the Minor Canon's school-house, which was always
empty now, and thought that it was a shame that everything
should suffer on account of the young man's absence, •

"It does not-matter so much about the church," he said,
"for nobody went there. But it is a pity about the school- I
think I will teach it myself until he returns."

It was the hour for opening the school, and the Griffin
went inside and pulled the rope which rang the school bell.
Some of the children who heard the bell ran in to see what
was tfie matter, supposing it to be a joke of one of their
companions. But when they saw the Griffin they stood aston-
ished and scared.

"Go tell the other scholars," said the monster, "that school
is about to open, and that if they are not all here in ten
minutes 1 shall come after them."

In seven minutes every scholar was in place.

Never was seen such an orderly school. Not a boy or giri
moved or uttered a whisper- The Griffin climbed into the
master's seat, his wide wings spread on each side of him,
because he could not lean back in his chair while they stuck
out behind, and his great tail coiled around in front of the
desk, the barbed end sticking up, ready to tap any boy or girl
who might misbehave. The Griffin now addressed the schol-
ars, telling them that he intended to teach them while their

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON      123

master was away. In speaking he endeavored to imitate, as
far as possible, the mild and gentle tones of the Minor Canon,
but it must be admitted that in this he was not very success-
ful. He had paid a good deal of attention to the studies of the
-school, and he determined not to attempt to teach them
anything new, but to review them in what they had been
studying. So he called up the various classes, and questioned
them upon their previous lessons. The children racked their
brains to remember what they had learned. They were so
afraid of the Griffin's displeasure that they recited as they had
never recited before. One of the boys, far down in his class,
answered so well that the Griffin was astonished.

"I should think you would be at the head," said he. "I am
sure you have never been in the habit of reciting so well.
"Why is this?"

"Because I did not choose to take the trouble." said the
boy, trembling in his boots. He felt obliged to speak the
truth, for all the children thought that the great eyes of the
Griffin could see right through them, and that he would know
when they told a falsehood.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said the Griffin.
"Go down to the very tail of the class, and if you are not at
the head in two days, I shall know the reason why."

The next afternoon this boy was number one.

It was astonishing how much these children now learned of
what they had been studying. It was as if they had been
educated over again. The Griffin used no severity toward
them, but there was a look about him which made them
unwilling to go to bed until they were sure they knew their
lessons for the next day.

The Griffin now thought that he ought to visit the sick and
the poor, and he began to go about the town for this purpose.
The effect upon the sick was miraculous. All, except those
who were very ill indeed, jumped from their beds when they
heard he was coming, and declared themselves quite well. To
those who could not get up he gave herbs and roots, which
none of them had ever before thought of as medicines, but
which me Griffin had seen used in various parts of me world,
and most of them recovered. But, for all that. they afterwards

124 Frank R. Stockton

said that no matter what happened to them, they hoped that
they should never again have such a doctor coming to their
bedsides, feeling their pulses and looking at their tongues.

As for the poor, they seemed to have utterly disappeared-
All those who had depended upon charity for their daily bread
were now at work in some way or other, many of them
offering to do odd jobs for their neighbors just for the sake of
their meals—a thing which before had been seldom heard of
in the town. The Griffin could find no one who needed his
assistance.

The summer now passed, and the autumnal equinox was
rapidly approaching. The citizens were in a state of great
alarm and anxiety. The Griffin showed no signs of going
away, but seemed to have settled himself permanently among
them. In a short time the day for his semi-annual meal would
arrive, and then what would happen? The monster would
certainly be very hungry, and would devour all their children.

Now they greatly regretted and lamented that they had sent
away the Minor Canon. He was the only one on whom they
could have depended in this trouble, for he could talk freely
with the Griffin, and so find out what could be done. But it
would not do to be inactive. Some step must be taken
immediately. A meeting of the citizens was called, and two
old men were appointed to go and talk to the Griffin. They
were instructed to offer to prepare a splendid dinner for him
on equinox day—one which would entirely satisfy his hun-
ger. They would offer him the fattest mutton, the most tender
beef, fish and game of various sorts, and anything of the kind
he might fancy. If none of these suited, they were to mention
that there was an orphan asylum in the next town.

"Anything would be better," said the citizens, "than to
have our dear children devoured."

The old men went to the Griffin, but their propositions
were not received with favor.

"From what I have seen of the people of this town," said
the monster, "I do not think I could relish anything which
was prepared by them. They appear to be all cowards, and,
therefore, mean and selfish. As for eating one of them, old or
young, 1 could not think of it for a moment. In fact, there was

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON      125

only one creature in the whole place for whom I could have
had any appetite, and that is the Minor Canon, who has gone
away. He was brave, and good, and honest, and I mink I
should have relished him."

"Ah!" said one of the old men, very politely, "in that
case I wish we had not sent him to the dreadful wilds'"

"What!" cried the Griffin. "What do you mean? Explain
instantly what you are talking about?"

The old man, terribly frightened at what he had said. was
obliged to tell how the Minor Canon had been sent away by
the people, in the hope that the Griffin might be induced to
follow him.

When the monster heard this he became furiously angry.
He dashed away from the old men and, spreading his wings.
flew backward and forward over the town. He was so much
excited that his tail became red-hot, and glowed like a meteor
against the evening sky. When at last he settled down in the
little field where he usually rested, and thrust his tail into the
brook, the steam arose like a cloud, and the water of the
stream ran hot through the town. The citizens were greatly
frightened, and bitterly blamed the old man for telling about
Ihe Minor Canon.

"It is plain," they said, "that the Griffin intended at last to
go and look for him, and we should have been saved. Now
who can tell what misery you have brought upon us?"

The Griffin did not remain long in the little field. As soon
as his tail was cool he flew to the town hall and rang the bell.
The citizens knew that they were expected to come there, and
although they were afraid to go, they were still more afraid to
stay away, and they crowded into the hall. The Griffin was
on the platform at one end, flapping his wings and walking up
and down, and the end of his tail was still so warm that it
slightly scorched the boards as he dragged it after him.

When everybody who was able to come was there, the
Griffin stood still and addressed the meeting.

"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said,
"ever since I discovered what cowards you are, but I had no
idea that you were so ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now
find you to be. Here was your Minor Canon, who labored day

126 Frank R. Stockton

and night for your good, and thought of nothing else but how
he might benefit you and make you happy; and as soon as
you imagine yourselves threatened with danger—for well I
know you are dreadfully afraid of me—you send him off.
caring not whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to
save yourselves. Now, I had conceived a great iiking for that
young man, and had intended, in a day or two, to go and look
him up. But I have changed my mind about him. I shall go
and find him, but I shall send him back here to live among
you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of his labor
and his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the
church, who so cowardly ran away when 1 first came here.
and tell them never to return to this town under penalty of
death. And if, when your Minor Canon comes back to you,
you do not bow yourselves before him, put him in the highest
place among you, and serve and honor him all his life,
beware of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good
things in this town: the Minor Canon and the stone image of
myself over your church door. One of these you have sent
away, and the other I shall carry away myself."

With these words he dismissed the meeting; and it was
time, for the end of his tail had become so hot that there was
danger of its setting fire to the building.

The next morning me Griffin came to the church, and
tearing the stone image of himself from its fastenings over the
great door, he grasped it with his powerful forelegs and flew
up into the air. Then, after hovering over the town for a
moment, he gave his tail an angry shake, and took up his
flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached this desolate
region, he set the stone griffin upon a ledge of a rock which
rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the
image occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had
over the church door; and the Griffin, panting with the exer-
tion of carrying such an enormous load to so great a distance,
lay down upon the ground, and regarded it with much satis-
faction. When he felt somewhat rested he went to look for the
Minor Canon. He found the young man, weak and half
starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking him
up and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a

THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON      127

distant marsh, where he procured some roots and herbs which
he well knew were strengthening and beneficial to man,
though he had never tasted them himself. After eating these
the Minor Canon was greatly revived, and sat up and listened
while the Griffin told him what had happened in the town.

"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished,
"dial I have had, and still have, a great liking for you?"

"i am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with
his usual politeness.

"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin,
"if you thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we
will not consider that now. If some things were different,
other things would be otherwise. I have been so enraged by
discovering the manner in which you have been treated that I
have determined that you shall at last enjoy the rewards and
honors to which you arc entitled. Lie down and have a good
sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."

As he heard the words, a look of trouble came over the
young man's face.

"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Grif-
fin, "about my return to the town. I shall not remain there.
Now that I have that admirable likeness of myself in front of
my cave, where 1 can sit at my leisure and gaze upon its
noble features and magnificent proportions, I have no wish to
see that abode of cowardly and selfish people."

The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and
dropped into a doze; and when he was sound asleep, the
Griffin took him up and carried him back to the town. He
arrived just before daybreak, and putting the young man
gently on the grass in the little field where he himself used to
rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of the
people, flew back to his home.

When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morn-
ing among the citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with
which he was received were truly wonderful. He was taken to
a house which had been occupied by one of the banished high
officers of the place, and every one was anxious to do all that
could be done for his health and comfort. The people crowded
into the church when he held services, so that the three old

128 Frank R. Stockion

women who used to be his week-day congregation could not
get the best seats, which they had always been in the habit of
taking; and the parents of the bad children determined to
reform them at home, in order that he might be spared the
trouble of keeping up his former school. The Minor Canon
was appointed to the highest office of the old church, and
before he died he became a bishop.

During the First years after his return from the dreadful
wilds, the people of the town looked up to him as a man to
whom they were bound to do honor and reverence. But they
often, also. looked up to the sky to see if there were any signs
of the Griffin coming back. However, in the course of lime
they learned to honor and reverence their former Minor Canon
without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.

But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The
autumnal equinox day came round, and the monster ate noth-
ing. If he could not have the Minor Canon, he did not care
for anything. So, lying down with his eyes fixed upon the
great stone griffin, he gradually declined, and died. it was a
good thing for some of the people of the town that they did
not know this.

If you should ever visit me old town, you would still see
the little griffins on the sides of the church, but the great
stone griffin that was over the door is gone.

KRAGEN

The sea is a natural repository of enormous beasts, since
the buoyancy of water largely neutralizes gravity. The blue
whale with a top mark of 150 tons is far larger than any
land creature thai ever lived; larger even than the largest
dinosaurs.

Furthermore, water, in depths greater than a few yards,
is opaque, so who knows what might be hidden in the
deep. Even today, the relatively small Loch Ness in
Scotland is thought to harbor a "monster," while the
ocean itself is supposed to contain "sea serpents" of all
kinds.

The Norwegians had legends of an enormous sea mon-
ster they called the kraken (is this another form of the
Greek drakon? / wonder). It was pictured as an enormous
round creature, possibly a mile and a half in circumfer-
ence. To its rim were attached long tentacles, with which
it could seize and pull under even the largest ships. When
it submerged suddenly, it left a whirlpool in its wake, and
sometimes whirlpools themselves were referred to as krakens.

In 1752, a Norwegian bishop, Erik Pontoppidan, pub-
lished a Natural History of Norway in which the kraken
was popularized.

There may be a germ of truth in even the wildest legend,
however. The kraken sounds tike a large and monstrous
octopus, and. indeed, in recent times the "giant squid"
had been discovered. It does not normally come to the
surface but it is the preferred food of the sperm whale, and

129

0                    Jack Vance

dying squid that have had a fight with a sperm whale come
to the surface on occasion. They are far, far smaller than
the kraken, but one must allow for the exaggerations of
legend.

In the following story, we have a large sea monster. It is
not a giant squid. It is, rather, extraterrestrial, but the
author indicates its conceptual origin in its name. which is
almost kraken.

THE KRAGEN

Jack Vance

CHAPTER!

Among the people of the Floats caste distinctions were fast
losing their old-time importance. The Anarchists and Procur-
ers had disappeared altogether; intercaste marriages were by
no means uncommon, especially when they involved castes
of approximately the same social status. Society of course
was not falling into chaos; the Bezzlers and the Incendiaries
still maintained their traditional aloofness; the Advertisermen
still could not evade a subtle but nonetheless general dises-
teem, and where the castes were associated with a craft or
trade, they functioned with undiminished effectivesness. The
Swindlers comprised the vast majority of those who fished
from coracles; Blackguards constructed all the sponge-arbors
in every lagoon; the Hoodwinks completely monopolized the
field of hood-winking. This last relationship always excited
the curiosity of the young, who would inquire, "Which first:

the Hoodwinks or hood-winking?" To which the elders cus-
tomarily replied, "When the Ship of Space discharged our
ancestors upon these blessed floats, there were four Hood-
winks among the Eighty-three. Later, when the towers
were built and the lamps established, there were hoods to
wink, and it seemed nothing less than apposite that the
Hoodwinks should occupy themselves at the trade. It may
well be that matters stood so in the Outer Wildness, before

131

132

Jack Vance

the Escape. It seems likely. There were undoubtedly lamps
to be flashed and hoods to be winked. Of course there is
much we do not know, much concerning which the dicta are

silent.''

Whether or not the Hoodwinks had been drawn to the
trade by virtue of ancient use, it was now me rare Hood-
wink who did not in some measure find his vocation upon the
towers, either as a rigger, a lamp-tender, or as full-fledged

hoodwink.

Another caste, the Larceners, constructed the towers, which
customarily stood sixty to ninety feet high at the center of the
float, directly above the primary stalk of the sea-plant; there
were usually four legs of woven withe, which passed through
holes in the pad to join a stout stalk twenty or thirty feet
below the surface. At the top of the tower was a cupola, with
walls of split withe, a roof of gummed and laminated pad-
skin. Yard-arms extending to either side supported lattices.
each carrying nine lamps arranged in a square, three to the
side, together with the hoods and trip-mechanisms. Within
the cupola, windows afforded a view across the water to the
neighboring floats—as much as two miles or as little as a
quarter-mile distant. The Master Hoodwink sat at a panel. At
his left hand were nine tap-rods, cross-coupled to lamp-hoods
on the lattice to his right. Similarly the tap-rods at his right
hand controlled the hoods to his left. By this means the
configurations he formed and those he received, from his
point of view, were of identical aspect and caused him no
confusion. During the day time, the lamps were not lit and
white targets served the same function. The hoodwink set his
configuration with quick strokes of right and left hands,
kicked the release, which thereupon flicked the hoods or
shutters at the respective lamps or targets. Each configuration
signified a word; the mastery of a lexicon and a sometimes
remarkable dexterity where the Master Hoodwink's stock in
trade- All could send at speeds approximating that of speech;

all knew at least four thousand, and some six, seven or even
nine thousand configurations. The folk of the floats could in
varying degrees read the configurations, which were also

THE KRAGEN                133

employed in the keeping of the archives, and other communi-
cations, memoranda and messages.*

On Tranque Float, at the extreme east of the group, the
Master Hoodwink was one Chaezy Zander, a rigorous and
exacting old man with a mastery of over eight thousand
configurations. His first assistant, Sklar Hast, had well over
five thousand configurations at his disposal. There were two
further assistants, as well as three apprentices, two riggers, a
lamp-tender and a maintenance witheweaver, this latter a
Larcener. Chaezy Zander tended the tower from dusk until
middle evening: the busy hours during which gossip, an-
nouncements, news and notifications regarding King Kragen
flickered up and down the fifty-mile-line of the floats.

Sklar Hast winked hoods during the afternoon; then, when
Chaezy Zander appeared in the cupola, he looked to mainte-
nance and supervised the apprentices. A relatively young
man, Sklar Hast had achieved his status by working in accor-
dance with a simple and uncomplicated policy: without com-
promise and with great tenacity he strove for excellence, and
sought to instill me same standards into the apprentices. He
was an almost brutally direct man, without affability, know-

*The orthography had been adopted in the earliest days and was highly
systematic. The cluster at the left indicated the genus of the idea. the cluster
ai die right denoted the specific. In such a fashion ... at the left. signified
color, and hence:

«

White

Black

Red

Pink

Dark
Red

and so forth.

134 Jack Vance

ing nothing of either malice, guile, tact or patience. The
apprentices disliked but respected him; Chaezy Zander con-
sidered him overpragmatic and deficient in reverence for his
betters, notably himself. Sklar Hast cared nothing one way or
the other. Chaezy Zander must soon retire; in due course
Sklar Hast would become Master Hoodwink. He was in no
hurry; on this placid, limpid, changeless world, time drifted
rather than throbbed. In the meantime, life was easy and for
the most part pleasant. Sklar Hast owned a small pad of
which he was the sole occupant. The pad, a leaf of spongy
tissue a hundred feet in diameter braced by tough woody
radial ribs, floated in the lagoon, separated from the main
float by twenty feet of water. Sklar Hast's hut was of stan-
dard construction: sea-plant withe bent and lashed, then sheathed
with sheets of pad-skin, the tough near-transparent membrane
peeled from the bottom of the sea-plant pad. All was then
coated with well-aged varnish, prepared by boiling sea-plant
sap until the water was driven off and the resins amalgamated.

On the pad grew other vegetation: shrubs rooted in the
spongy tissue, a thicket of bamboolike rods yielding a good-
quality withe, epiphytes hanging from the central spike of the
sea-plant—this rising twenty or thirty feet to terminate in a
coarse white spore-producing organ. Most of the plants of the
pad yielded produce of benefit to man: fruit, fiber, dye, drug
or decorative foliage. On other pads the plants might be
ordered according to aesthetic theory; Sklar Hast had small
taste in these matters, and the center of his pad was little
more than an untidy copse of various stalks, fronds, tendrils
and leaves, in various shades of black, green and rusty orange.

Sklar Hast reckoned himself a lucky man. As a Hoodwink
by caste and assistant Master Hoodwink by trade he enjoyed a
not inconsiderable prestige. Standing before his hut, Sklar
Hast watched the gold and lavender dusk and its dark pastel
reflection in the ocean. The afternoon rain had freshened and
cooled the air; now the evening breeze arose to rustle the
foliage and brush susurrations across the water . . . Chaezy
Zander was growing old, Sklar Hast wondered how long the
old man would persist in fulfilling the rigorous exactitude of
his duties. True, he showed no lapse whatever in precision or

THE KRAGEN               135

flexibility of usage, but almost insensibly his speed was falling
off. Sklar Hast could outwink him without difficulty should
he choose to do so; a capability which Sklar Hast, for all his
blunmess, had so far not demonstrated. Useless folly to irri-
tate the old man! Sklar Hast suspected that even now he
delayed his retirement mainly out of jealousy and antipathy
toward Sklar Hast.

There was no hurry. Life seemed to extend ahead of him as
wide and lucid as the dreaming expanse of water and sky
which filled his vision. On this water-world, which had no
name, there were no seasons, no tides, no storms, no change.
very little anxiety regarding time. Sklar Hast was currently
testing five or six girls of orthodox Hoodwink background for
marital suitability. In due course, he would make a choice,
and enlarge his hut. And forever abandon privacy, Sklar Hast
reflected wistfully. There was definitely no need for haste.
He would continue to test such girls as were eligible, and
perhaps a few others as well- Meanwhile, life was good. In
the lagoon hung arbors on which grew the succulent spongelike
organisms which when cleaned, plucked and boiled formed
the staple food of the Hoat-folk. The lagoon teemed likewise
with other edible fish, separated from the predators of the
ocean by the enormous net which hung in a great hemisphere
from various buoys, pads and the main float—this a complex
of ancient pads, compressed, wadded and interlocked to cre-
ate an unbroken surface five acres in area and varying from
two feet to six feet in thickness. There was much other food
available: spores from the sea-plant fruiting organ, from which
a crusty bread could be baked. There were in addition other
flowers, tendrils and bulbs, as well as the prized flesh of the
gray-fish to take which the Swindlers must fare forth in their
coracles and cunningly swindle from the ocean, which hori-
zon to horizon, pole to pole, enveloped the entire surface of
me world.

Sklar Hast turned his eyes up to the skies, where the
constellations already blazed with magnificent ardor. To the
south, half up the sky, hung a cluster of twenty-five middle-
bright stars, from which, so tradition asserted, his ancestors
had fled in the Ship of Space, finally to reach the world of

136 Jack Vance

water. Eighty-three persons, of various castes, managed to
disembark before the ship foundered and sank; the eighty-
three had become twenty thousand, scattered east and west
along fifty miles of floating sea-plant. The castes so jealously
differentiated during the first few generations, with the Bezzlers
at the top and the Advertisermen at the bottom, had now
accommodated themselves to one another and were even
intermingling. There was little to disturb the easy flow of life;

nothing harsh nor unpleasant—except, perhaps, King Kragen.

Sklar Hast made a sour face and examined those three of
his arbors which only two days before had been plucked clean
by King Kragen, whose appetite as well as his bulk grew by
the year. Sklar Hast scowled westward across the ocean, in
the direction from which King Kragen customarily appeared,
moving with long strokes of his four propulsive vanes, in a
manner to suggest some vast, distorted, grotesquely ugly
anthropoid form swimming by means of the breaststroke. There,
of course, the resemblance to man ended. King Kragen's
body was tough black cartilage, a cylinder on a rectangle,
from the comers of which extended the vanes. The cylinder
comprising King Kragen's main bulk opened forward in a
maw fringed with four mandibles and eight palps, and aft in
an anus. Atop this cylinder, somewhat to the front, rose a
turret from which the four eyes protruded: two peering for-
ward, two aft. During Sklar Hast's lifetime King Kragen had
grown perceptibly, and now measured perhaps sixty feet in
length. King Kragen was a terrible force for destruction, but
luckily could be placated. King Kragen enjoyed copious quan-
tities of sponges and when his appetite was appeased he
injured no one and did no damage; indeed he kept the area
clear of other marauding kragen, which either he killed or
sent flapping and skipping in a panic across the ocean.

Sklar Hast's attention was attracted by a dark swirl in the water
at the edge of the net: a black bulk surrounded by glistening cusps
and festoons of starlit water. Sklar Hast ran forward to the edge
of the pad, peered. No question about it! A lesser kragen was
attempting to break the net that it might plunder the lagoon!

Sklar Hast shouted a curse, shook his fist, turned, ran at

THE KRAGEN               137

full speed across the pad. He jumped into his coracle, crossed
the twenty feet of water to the central float. He delayed only
long enough to tie the coracle to a stake formed of a human
femur, then ran at top speed to the hoodwink tower.

A mile to the west me tower on Thrasneck Float flickered its
lamps, the configurations coming with the characteristic style
of Durdan Fair, the Thrasneck Master Hoodwink: "... thir-
teen . . . bushels . . . of . . . salt . . . lost . . . when . . . a
. . . barge . . . took . . . water . . . between . . . Sumber
. . . and . . . Adelvine . . ."

Sklar Hast climbed the ladder, burst into the cupola. He
pointed to the lagoon. "A rogue, breaking the nets. I just saw
him. Call King Kragen!"

Chaezy Zander instantly flashed the cut-in signal. His fin-
gers jammed down rods, he kicked the release. "Call . . .
King . . . Kragen!" he signaled. "Rogue . . . in . . . Tranque
. . . Lagoon!"

On Thrasneck Float Durden Fan- relayed the message to me
tower on Bickle Float, and so along the line of floats to
Sciona at the far west, who thereupon returned the signal:

"King . . . Kragen . . . is . . . nowhere ... or ... hand."

Back down the line of towers flickered die message, re-
turning to Tranque Float in something short of sixty seconds.
Sklar Hast read the message as it left the Bickle Tower.
before reaching Thrasneck, and rushed over to the side of the
cupola, to peer down into the lagoon.

. Others had now discovered the rogue kragen and set up a
shout to the tower "Call King Kragen!" Sklar Hast shouted
In return, "He can't be found!" Chaezy Zander, tight-lipped,
was already dispatching another message: "To . . . the . . .
various . . . intercessors . . . along . . . the . . . line. Kindly
. . . summon . . . King . . . Kragen . . . and . . . direct . . .
him . . . to . . . Tranque . . . Float."

Sklar Hast pointed and bellowed, "Look! The beast has
broken the net! Where is Voidenvo?"

He swung down the ladder, ran to the edge of the lagoon.
The kragen, a beast perhaps fifteen feet in length, was surg-
ing easily through the water, a caricature of a man performing
the breaststroke. Starlight danced and darted along the dis-

138 Jack Vance

turbed water, and so outlined the gliding black bulk. Sklar Hast
cried out in fury: the bnite was headed for his arbors, so
recently devastated by the appetite of King Kragen! It could
not be borne! He ran to his coracle, returned to his. pad.
Already the kragen had extended its palps and was feeling for
sponges. Sklar Hast sought for an implement which might
serve as a weapon; there was nothing to hand: a few articles
fashioned from human bones and fish cartilage. Leaning against
the hut was a boat-hook, a stalk ten feet long, carefully
straightened, scraped, and seasoned, to which a hook-shaped
human rib had been lashed. He took it up and now from the
central pad came a cry of remonstrance. "Sklar Hast! What
do you do?" This was the voice of Semon Voidenvo the
Intercessor. Sklar Hast paid him no heed. He ran to the edge
of the pad, jabbed the boat-hook at the kragen's turret. It
scraped uselessly along resilient cartilage. The kragen swung
up one of its vanes, knocked the pole aside. Sklar Hast
jabbed the pole with all his strength at what he considered the
kragen's most vulnerable area: a soft pad of receptor-endings
directly above the maw. Behind him he heard Semon
Voidenvo's outraged protest: "This is not to be done! This is
not to be done! Desist!"

The kragen quivered at the blow, twisted its massive turret
to gaze at Sklar Hast. Again it swung up its fore-vane, smash-
ing the pole, slashing at Sklar Hast, who leapt back with
inches to spare. From the central pad Semon Voidenvo bawled,
"By no means molest the kragen; it is a matter for the King!
We must respect the King's perquisites."

Sklar Hast stood back in fury as the kragen resumed its
feeding. As if to punish Sklar Hast for his assault, it passed
close beside the arbors, worked its vanes, and the arbors,
sea-plant stalk lashed with fiber, collapsed. Sktar Hast groaned.
"No more than you deserve," called out Semon Voidenvo
with odious complacence. "You interfered with the duties of
King Kragen; now your arbors are destroyed. This is justice."

" 'Justice'? Bah!" bellowed Sklar Hast. "Where is King
Kragen? You, Voidenvo the Intercessor! Why don't you sum-
mon the great gluttonous beast?"

THE KRAGEN               139

"Come, come," admonished Semon Voidenvo. "This is
not the tone in which to speak of King Kragen."

Sklar Hast thrust himself and his coracle back to the central
float, where now stood several hundred folk of Tranque
Float. He pointed. "Look. See that vile beast of the sea. He
is plundering us of our goods. I say, kill him. I say that we
need not suffer such molestation."

Semon Voidenvo emitted a high-pitched croak. "Are you
insane? Someone, pour water on this maniac Hoodwink, who
has too long focused his eyes on flashing lights."

In the lagoon the kragen moved to the arbors of the Belrod
family, deep-divers for stalk and withe, of the Advertiserman
caste and prone to a rude and surly vulgarity. The Belrod
elder, Poe, a squat large-featured man, still resilient and
vehement despite his years, emitted a series of hoots, in-
tended to distract the kragen. which instead tore voraciously
at the choicest Belrod sponges.

"I say, kill the beast!*' cried Sklar Hast. "The King
despoils us; must we likewise feed all the kragen of the
ocean?"

"Kill the beast!" echoed the younger Belrods.

Semon Voidenvo gesticulated in vast excitement, but Poe
Belrod shoved him roughly aside. "Quiet, let us listen to the
Hoodwink. How would we kill me kragen?"

"Come! 1 will show you how!"

Thirty or forty men followed him, mostly Swindlers,
Advertisermen, Blackguards and Extorters. The remainder
hung dubiously back. Sklar Hast led the way to a pile of
poles intended for the construction of a storehouse. Each
pole, fabricated from withes laid lengthwise and bound in
glue, was twenty feet long by eight inches in diameter, and
combined great strength with lightness.

Sklar Hast found rope, worked with vicious energy. "Now—
lift! Across to my pad!"

Excited by his urgency, me men shouldered the pole,
carried it to the lagoon, floated it across to Sklar Hast's pad.
Then, crossing in coracles, they dragged the pole up on the
pad and carried it across to the edge of the lagoon. At Sklar
Hast's direction, they set it down with one end resting on the

140

Jack Vance

hard fiber of a rib. "Now," said Sklar Hast. "Now we kill
the kragen." He made a noose in the end of a light hawser,
advanced toward the kragen, which watched him through the
rear-pointing eyes of its turret- Sklar Hast moved slowly, so
as not to alarm the creature, which continued to pluck sponges
with a contemptuous disregard.

Sklar Hast, crouching, approached the edge of the pad.
"Beast!" he called. "Ocean brute! Come closer. Come." He
bent, splashed water at the kragen. Provoked, it surged toward
him- Sklar Hast waited, and just before it swung its vane,
he tossed the noose over its turret. He signaled his men.
"Now!" They heaved on the line dragged the thrashing
kragen through the water. Sklar Hast guided the line to the
end of the pole. The kragen surged suddenly forward; in the
confusion and the dark the men heaving on the rope fell
backward. Sklar Hast seized the slack, and dodging a murder-
ous slash of the kragen's fore-vane he flung a hitch around the
end of the pole. He danced back. "Now!" he called. "Pull,
pull! Both lines! The beast is as good as dead!"

On each of a pair of lines tied to me head of the pole
fifteen men heaved. The pole rose up on its base; the line
tautened around the kragen's turret, the men dug in their
heels, the base of the pole bit into the hard rib. The pole rose,
braced by the angle of the ropes. With majestic deliberation
the thrashing kragen was lifted from the water and swung up
into the air. From those watching on the central pad came a
murmurous moan of fascination and dread.

The kragen made gulping noises, reached its vanes this
way and that, to no avail. Sklar Hast surveyed the creature,
somewhat at a loss as how to proceed. The project thus far
had gone with facility: what next? The men were looking at
the kragen in awe, uncomfortable at their own daring, and
already were stealing furtive glances out over the ocean.
Perfectly calm, it glistened with the reflections of the blazing
constallations. Sklar Hast thought to divert their attention.
"The nets!" he called out to those on the float. "Where are
the Extorters? Repair the nets before we lose all our fish' Are
you helpless?"

Certain net-makers, a trade dominated by the Extorter caste,

THE KRAGEN               141

detached themselves from the group, went out in coracles to
repair the broken net.

Sklar Hast returned to a consideration of the dangling
kragen. At his orders the ropes supporting the tilted pole were
made fast to ribs on the surface of the pad; the men now
gathered gingerly about the dangling kragen, and speculated
as to the best means to kill the creature. Perhaps it was
already dead? Someone posed the question; a lad of the
Belrods prodded the kragen with a length of stalk and suf-
fered a broken collarbone from a quick blow of the fore-vane.

Sklar Hast stood somewhat apart, studying the creature. Its
hide was tough; its cartilaginous tissue even tougher. He sent
one man for a boat-hook, another for a sharp femur-slake,
and from the two fashioned a spear.

The kragen hung limp, the vanes swaying, occasionally
twitching. Skiar Hast moved forward cautiously, touched the
point of the spear to the side of the turret, thrust with all his
weight. The point entered the tough hide perhaps half an
inch. then broke. The kragen jerked, snorted, a vane slashed
out. Sklar Hast sensed the dark flicker of motion, dodged and
felt the air move beside his face. The spear shaft hurtled out
over the pond; the vane struck the pole on which the kragen
hung, bruising the fibers.

"What a quarrelsome beast!" declared Sklar Hast. "Bring
more rope; we must prevent any further such demonstrations. * *

From the main float came a harsh command: "You arc
madmen; who do you risk the displeasure of King Kragen? I
decree that you desist from your rash acts!"

This was the voice of Ixon Myrex, the Tranque Arbiter, a
Bezzler of great physical power and moral conviction, a man
with recognized powers and large prestige- Sklar Hast could
not ignore Ixon Myrex as he had Semon Voidenvo. He
considered the dangling kragen, looked about at the dubious
faces of his comrades. They were hesitating; Ixon Myrex was
not a man to be trifled with. Sklar Hast walked truculently to
the edge of the pad, peered across the intervening water to the
shape of Ixon Myrex.

142

Jack Vance

"The kragen is destroying our arbors, Arbiter Myrex. The
King is slothful about his duties, hence—"

Ixon Myrex's voice shook with wrath. "That is no way to
speak! You violate the spiht of our relationship with King

Kragen!"

Sklar Hast said in a reasonable voice, "King Kragen is
nowhere to be seen. The Intercessors who claim such large
power run back and forth in futility. We must act for our-
selves. Cross the water to my pad. Join us in killing this

ravenous beast."

Ixon Myrex held up his hands, which trembled in indigna-
tion. "Return the kragen to the lagoon, that thereby—"

"That thereby it may destroy more arbors?" demanded
Sklar Hast. "This is not the result 1 hope for." He took a deep
breath and made his decision. "Where is the rope?"

Arbiter Myrex called out in his sternest tones, "You men
on the pad! This is how 1 interpret the customs of Tranque
Roat: the kragen must be restored to the water, with all haste.
No other course is consistent with custom."

Sklar Hast waited. There was an uneasy stirring among the
men. He said nothing, but taking up the rope. formed a
noose. He crawled forward, flipped up the noose to catch a
dangling vane, then crawling back and rising to his feet he
circled the creature, binding the dangling vanes. The kragen's
motions became increasingly constricted and finally were
reduced to spasmodic shudders. Sklar Hast approached the
creature from the rear, careful to remain out of reach of
mandibles and palps, and made the bonds secure. "Now—the
vile beast can only squirm. Lower it to the pad and we will
find a means to make its end." The guy ropes were shifted,
the pole tilted and swung; the kragen fell to the surface of the
pad, where it lay passive, palps and mandibles moving slightly
in and out. It showed no agitation, nor discomfort; perhaps it
felt none: the exact degree of the kragen's sensitivity and
ratiocinative powers had never been determined.

In the east the sky was lightening where the cluster of
flaring blue and white suns known as Phocan's Cauldron
began to rise. The ocean glimmered with a leaden sheen, and

THE KRAGEN                143

the folk who stood on the central pad began to glance fur-
tively along the obscure horizon, muttering and complaining.
Some few called out encouragement to Sklar Hast, recom-
mending the most violent measures against the kragen. Be-
tween these and certain others furious arguments raged. Chaezy
Zander had descended from the tower, to join Semon Voidenvo
and Ixon Myrex, obviously in disapprovel of Sklar Hast's
activity. Of the Caste Elders only Elmar Pronave, Jackleg and
Master Witheweaver, defended Sklar Hast and his unconven-
tional acts.

Sklar Hast ignored all. He sat watching the black hulk with
vast distaste, furious with himself for having become in-
volved in so perilous a project. What had been gained? The
kragen had broken his arbors; he had revenged himself and
prevented more destruction. On the other hand he had in-
curred the ill-will of the most influential folk of the Float,
including Ixon Myrex and Chaezy Zander: no small matter.
He likewise had involved those others who had trusted him
and looked to him for leadership, and toward whom he now
felt responsibility.

He rose to his feet- There was no help for it; the sooner the
beast was disposed of, the more quickly life would return to
normal. He approached the kragen, examined it gingerly. The
mandibles quivered in their anxiety to sever his torso; Sklar
Hast stayed warily to the side. How to kill the beast?

Elmar Pronave crossed over from the main float the better
to examine the kragen. He was a tall man with a high-bridged
broken nose and black hair worn in the two ear-plumes of the
old Procurer Caste, now no longer in existence save for a few
aggressively unique individuals scattered through the floats,
who used the caste-marks to emphasize their emotional
detachment.

Pronave circled the hulk, kicked at the rear vane, bent to
peer into one of the staring eyes. "If we could cut it up, its
parts might be of some use."

"The hide is too tough for our knives," growled Sklar Hast.
"There's no neck to be strangled."

"There are other ways to kill."

Sklar Hast nodded. "We could sink the beast into the

144 Jack Vfwce

depths of the ocean—but what to use for weight? Bones? Far
too valuable. We could load bags with ash, but there is not
that much ash to hand. We could bum every hut on the float
as well as the hoodwink tower, and stilt not secure sufficient.
To bum the kragen would require a like mountain of fuel."

A young Larcener who had worked with great enthusiasm
during the trapping of the kragen spoke forth; "Poison exists!
Find me poison, 1 will fix a capsule to a stick and push it into
the creature's maw!"

Elmar Pronave gave a sardonic bark of laughter. "Agreed;

poisons exist, hundreds of them, derived from various sea-
plants and animals—but which are sufficiently acrid to de-
stroy this beast? And where is it to be had? I doubt if there is
that much poison nearer than Sankeston Float."

Sklar Hast went again to survey the black hulk, and now
J?hocan's Cauldron, rising into the sky, revealed me kragen in
miter detail. Sklar Hast examined the four blind-seeming eyes
in the turret, the intricate construction of the mandibles and
tentacles at the maw. He touched the turret, peered at the
dome-shaped cap of chitin which covered it. The turret itself
seemed laminated, as if constructed of stacked rings of carti-
lage, the eyes protruding fore and aft in inflexible tubes of a
rugose harsh substance. Others in the group began to crowd
close; Sklar Hast jumped forward, thrust at a young Felon
boat-builder, but too late. The kragen flung out a palp. seized
the youth around the neck. Sklar Hast cursed, heaved, tore;

the clenched palp was unyielding. Another curled out for his
leg; Sklar Hast kicked, danced back, still heaving upon the
Felon's writhing form. The kragen drew the Felon slowly
forward, hoping, so Sklar Hast realized, to pull him within
easier reach. He loosed his grip, but the kragen allowed its
palp to sway back to encourage Sklar Hast, who once more
tore at me constricting palp. Again the kragen craftily drew
its captive and Sklar Hast forward; the second palp snapped
out once more and this time coiled around Sklar Hast's leg-
Sklar Hast dropped to the ground, twisted himself around and
broke the hold, though losing skin. The kragen petulantly
jerked the Felon to within reach of its mandible, neatly

THE KRAGEN               145

snipped off the young man's head, tossed body and head
aside. A horrified gasp came from the watching crowd. Ixon
Myrex bellowed, "Sklar Hast, a man's life is gone, due to
your savage obstinacy! You have much to answer for! Woe to
you!*'

Sklar Hast ignored the imprecation. He ran to his hut,
found chisels and a mallet with a head of dense sea-plant
stem, brought up from a depth of two hundred feet.* The
chisels had blades of pelvic bone ground sharp against a
board gritted with the silica husks of foraminifera. Sklar Hast
returned to the kragen, put the chisel against the pale lamellum
between the chitin dome and the foliations of the turret. He
tapped; the chisel penetrated; this, the substance of a new
layer being added to the turret, was relatively soft, the consis-
tency of cooked gristle. Sklar Hast struck again; the chisel cut
deep. The kragen squirmed-

Sklar Hast worked the chisel back out, made a new inci-
sion beside rile first, then another and another, working around
me periphery of the chitin dome, which was approximately
two feet in diameter. The kragen squirmed and shuddered.
whether in pain or apprehension it alone knew. As Sklar Hast
worked around to the front, the palps groped back for him,
but he shielded himself behind the turret, and finally gouged
out the lamellum completely around the circumference of the
turret.

His followers watched in awe and silence; from the main
float came somber mutters, and occasional whimpers of su-
perstitious dread from the children.

The channel was cut; Sklar handed chisel and mallet back
to Elmar Pronave. He mounted the body of the kragen, bent
his knees, hooked fingers under me edge of the chitin dome,
heaved. The dome ripped up and off, almost unbalancing
Sklar Hast. The dome rolled down to the pad, the turret stood
like an open-topped cylinder; within were coils and loops of

*The Avertisennan takes below a pulley which he attaches to a sea-plant
Stalk. By means of ropes, buckets of air are pulled down, allowing him to
remain under water as long as he chooses- Using two such systems, alter-
nately lowered, the diver can descend to a depth of two hundred feet, where
the sea-plant stalks grow dense and rigid.

146 Jack Vance

something like dirty gray string. There were knots here,
nodes there, on each side a pair of kinks, to the front a great
tangle of kinks and loops.

Sklar Hast looked down in interest. He was joined by
Elmar Pronave. "The creature's brain, evidently," said Sklar
Hast. "Here the ganglions terminate. Or perhaps they are
merely the termini of muscles."

Elmar Pronave took the mallet and with the handle prodded
at a node. The kragen gave a furious jerk. "Well, well," said
Pronave. "Interesting indeed." He prodded further: here,
there. Every time he touched the exposed ganglions the kragen
jerked. Sklar Hast suddenly put out his hand to halt him.
"Notice. On the right, those two long loops; likewise on the
left. When you touched this one here, the fore-vane jerked."
He took the mallet, prodded each of the loops in turn; and in
turn each of the vanes jerked.

"Aha!" declared Elmar Pronave. "Should we persist, we
could teach the kragen to jig."

"Best we should kill the beast," said Sklar Hast. "Day is
approaching and who knows but what ..." From me float
sounded a sudden low wail, quickly cut off as by the constric-
tion of breath. The group around the kragen stirred; someone
vented a deep sound of dismay. Skiar Hast jumped up on the
kragen, looked around. The population on the float were
staring to sea; he looked likewise, to see King Kragen. He
floated under the surface, only his turret above water. The
eyes stared forward, each a foot across; lenses of tough
crystal behind which flickered milky films and pale blue
sheen. King Kragen had either drifted close down the trail of
Phocan's Cauldron on the water, or approached subsurface.

Fifty feet from the lagoon nets he let his bulk come to the
surface; first the whole of his turret, then the black cylinder
housing the maw and the digestive process, finally the great
flat sub-body: this, five feet thick, thirty feet wide, sixty feet
long. To the sides protruded the propulsive vanes, thick as
the girth of three men. Viewed from dead ahead King Kragen
appeared a deformed ogre swimming the breaststroke. His
forward eyes, in their hom tubes, were turned toward the
float of Sklar Hast, and seemed fixed upon the hulk of the

THE KRAGEN                147

mutilated kragen. The men stared back. muscles stiff as
sea-plant stalk. The kragen which they had captured, once so
huge and formidable, now seemed a miniature, a doll, a toy.
Through its after-eyes it saw King Kragen, and gave a fluting
whistle, a sound completely lost and desolate-

Sklar Hast suddenly found his tongue. He spoke in a husky
urgent tone. "Back. To the back of the pad. Swim to the
float."

From the main float rose the voice of Semon Voidenvo the
Intercessor. In quavering tones he called out across the water:

"Behold, King Kragen, the men of Tranque Float! Now we
denounce the presumptuous bravado of these few heretics!
Behold, this pleasant lagoon, with its succulent sponges,
devoted to the well-being of the magnanimous King Kragen—"
The reedy voice faltered as King Kragen twitched his great
vanes and eased forward. The great eyes stared without dis-
cernible expression, but behind there seemed to be a leaping
and shifting of pale pink and pale blue lights. The folk on the
float drew back as King Kragen breasted close to the net.
With a twitch of his vanes, he ripped the net; two more
twitches shredded it. From the folk on the float came a moan
of dread; King Kragen had not been mollified.

King Kragen eased into the tagoon, approached Sklar Hast's
pad, which now was deserted except for the helpless kragen.
The bound beast thrashed feebly, sounded its fluting whistle.
King Kragen reached forth a palp, seized it, lifted it into the
^ air, where it dangled helplessly. King Kragen drew it con-
temptuously close to his great mandibles, chopped it quickly
into slices of gray and black gristle. These he tossed away,
out into the ocean. He paused to drift a moment, to consider.
Then he surged on Sklar Hast's pad. One blow of his fore-
vane demolished the hut, another cut a great gouge in the
pad. The after-vanes thrashed among the arbors; water, de-
bris, broken sponges boiled up from below. King Kragen
thrust again, wallowed completely up on the pad. which
slowly crumpled and sank beneath bis weight.

King Kragen pulled himself back into the lagoon, cruised
:   back and forth destroying arbors, shredding the net. smashing

148 Jack Vcmce

the huts of all the pads of the lagoon. Then he turned his
attention to the main float, breasting up to the edge. For a
moment he eyed the population, which started to set up a
terrified keening sound, then thrust himself forward, wallowed
up on the float, and the keening became a series of hoarse
cries and screams. The folk ran back and forth with jerky
scurrying steps.

King Kragen bulked on the float like a toad on a lilypad.
He struck with his vanes; the float split. The hoodwink tower,
the great structure so cunningly woven, so carefully con-
trived, tottered. King Kragen lunged again, the tower top-
pled, falling into the huts along the north edge of the float.

King Kragen floundered across the float. He destroyed the
granary, the bushels of yellow meal laboriously scraped from
sea-plant pistils streamed into the water. He crushed the racks
where stalk, withe and fiber were stretched and flexed; he
dealt likewise with the ropewalk. Then, as if suddenly in a
hurry, he swung about, heaved himself to the southern edge
of the float. A number of huts and thirty-two of the folk,
mostly aged and very young, were crushed or thrust into the
water and drowned.

King Kragen regained the open sea. He floated quietly a
moment or two, palps twitching in the expression of some
unknowable emotion. Then he moved his vanes and slid off
across the calm ocean.

Tranque Float was a devastation, a tangle, a scene of wrath
and grief- The lagoon had returned to the ocean, with the
arbors reduced to rubbish and the shoals of food-fish scat-
tered- Many huts had been crushed. The hoodwink tower lay
toppled. Of a population of four hundred and eighty, forty-
three were dead, and as many more injured. The survivors
stood blank-eyed and limp, unable to comprehend the full
extent of the disaster which had come upon them.

Presently they roused themselves, and gathered at the far
western edge where the damage had been the least. Ixon
Myrex sought through the faces, eventually spied Sklar Hast
sitting on a fragment of the fallen hoodwink tower. He raised
his hand slowly, pointed. "Sklar Hast! 1 denounce you- The

THE KRAGEN               149

evil you have done to Tranque Float cannot be uttered in
words. Your arrogance, your callous indifference to our pleas,
your cruel and audacious villainy—how can you hope to expi-
ate them?"

Sklar Hast looked off across the sea.

"In my capacity as Arbiter of Tranque Float. I now declare
you to be a criminal of the basest sort, together with all those
who served you as accomplices, and most noteworthy Elmar
Pronave! Elmar Pronave, show your shameful face! Where do
you hide?"

But Elmar Pronave had been drowned and did not answer.

Chaezy Zander limped across the area to stand beside Ixon
Myrex. **! likewise denounce Sklar Hast and declare him
Assistant Master Hoodwink no longer. He has disgraced his
caste and his calling: I hereby eject him from the fellowship
of both!"

Semon Voidenvo the Intercessor rose to speak. "Denuncia-
tions are not enough. King Kragen, in wreaking his terrible
but just vengeance, intended that the primes of the deed
should die. I now declare the will of King Kragen to be
death, by either strangulation or bludgeoning, of Sklar Hast
and all his accomplices."

"Not so fast," said Sklar Hast at last. "It appears to me
that a certain confusion is upon us. Two kragen, a large one
and small one, have injured us. 1, Sklar Hast, and my friends,
are those who hoped to protect the float from depredation.
We failed. We are not criminals; we are simply not as strong
nor as wicked as King Kragen."

"You are aware," Semon Voidenvo persisted, "that King
Kragen reserves to himself the duty of guarding us from the
lesser kragen? You are aware that in assaulting die kragen,
you in effect assaulted King Kragen?"

Sklar Hast considered. "We will need more powerful tools
than ropes and chisels to kill King Kragen."

Semoo Voidenvo turned away speechless. The people looked
apathetically toward Sklar Hast. Few seemed to share the
indignation of the elders.

Ixon Myrex sensed the general feeling of misery and fa-
dguc. "This is no time for recrimination. There is work to be

150 Jack- Vance

done, vast work; all our structures to be rebuilt, our tower
rendered operative, our net rewoven. But Sklar Hast's crime
must not go without appropriate punishment. I therefore pro-
pose a Grand Convocation to take place one week from
today, on Apprise Float. The fate of Sklar Hast and his gang
will be inexorably decided by a Council of Elders."

CHAPTER II

The ocean had never been plumbed. At two hundred feet, the
maximum depth attempted by stalk-cutters and pod-gatherers,
the sea-plant stems were still a tangle. One Waller Murven, a
man half-daredevil, half-maniac, had descended to three hun-
dred feet, and in the indigo gloom noted the stalks merging to
disappear into the murk as a single great trunk. But attempts
to sound the bottom, by means of a line weighted with a bag
of bone chippings, were unsuccessful. How then had the
sea-plants managed to anchor themselves? Some supposed
that the plants were of great antiquity, and had developed
during a time when the water was much lower. Others con-
jectured a sinking of the ocean bottom; still others were
content to ascribe the feat to an innate tendency of the
sea-plants.

Of all the floats Apprise was the largest and one of the first
to be settled. The central agglomeration was perhaps seven
acres in extent; the lagoon was bounded by thirty or forty
smaller pads. Apprise Float was the traditional site of the
convocations, which occurred at approximately yearly inter-
vals and which were attended by the active and responsible
adults of the system. Drama and excitement attended the
holding of the convocations- The folk of the floats seldom
ventured far from home, since it was widely believed that
King Kragen disapproved of travel. He ignored the coracles
of swindlers, and also the rafts of withe or stalk which

THE KRAGEN               151

occasionally passed back and forth between the floats; but on
various occasions he had demolished boats or coracles which
seemed to have no ostensible business or purpose. Coracles
conveying folk to a convocation had never been molested,
however, even though King Kragen always seemed aware
that a convocation was in progress, and often watched pro*
ceedings from a distance of a half-mile or so. How King
Kragen gained his knowledge was a matter of great mystery:

some asserted that on every float lived a man who was a man
in semblance only: who inwardly was a manifestation of King
Kragen. It was through this man, according to the supersti-
tion, that King Kragen knew what transpired on the floats.

For three days preceding the convocation there was inces-
sant flickering along the line of the hoodwink towers; the
destruction of Tranque Float was reported in full detail, to-
gether with Ixon Myrex's denunciation of Sklar Hast and
Sklar Hast's rebuttal. On each of die floats there was intense
discussion and a certain degree of debate. But since, in most
cases, the Arbiter and the Intercessor of each float inveighed
against Sklar Hast, there was little organized sentiment in his
favor.

On the morning of the convocation, early, before me morn-
ing sky showed blue, coracles full of folk moved between the
floats. The survivors of the Tranque Float disaster, who for
the most part had sought refuge on Thrasneck and Bickle,
were among the first underway, as were the folk from Almack
and Seiona, to the far west.

All morning the coracles shuttled back and forth between
the floats; shortly before noon the first groups began to arrive
on Apprise. Each group wore me distinctive emblems of its
float; and those who felt caste distinction important likewise
wore the traditional hair-stylings, forehead plaques and dorsal
ribbons; otherwise all dressed in much the same fashion: shirts
and pantlets of coarse linen woven from sea-plant fiber; san-
dals of rug-fish learner, ceremonial gauntlets and epaulettes of
sequins cut from the kernels of a certain half-animal, half-
vegetable mollusc.

As the folk arrived they trooped to the famous old Apprise

152 Jack Vance

Inn, where they refreshed themselves at a table on which was
set forth a collation of beer, pod-cakes and pickled fmger-
Ungs; after which the newcomers separated to various quar-
ters of the float, in accordance with traditional caste distinctions-
In the center of the float was a rostrum and on benches
surrounding the notables took their places: craft-masters,
caste-chiefs. Arbiters and Intercessors. The rostrum was at all
times open to any who wished to speak, so long as they
gained the sponsorship of one of the notables. The first
speakers at the convocations customarily were elders intent
on exhorting the younger folk to excellence and virtue; so it
was today. An hour after the sun had reached the zenith the
first speaker made his way to the rostrum; a portly old
Incendiary from Maudelinda Boat who had in just such a
fashion opened the speaking at the last five convocations. He
sought and was perfunctorily granted sponsorship—by now
his speeches were regarded as a necessary evil; he mounted
the rostrum and began to speak. His voice was rich, throb-
bing, voluminous; his periods were long, his sentiments well-
used, his illuminations unremarkable:

"We meet again; I am pleased to see so many of the faces
which over the years have become familiar and well-beloved;

and alas there are certain faces no more to be seen, those who
have slipped away to the Bourne, many untimely, as those
who suffered punishment only these few days past before the
wrath of King Kragen, of which we all stand in awe. A
dreadful circumstance thus to provoke the majesty of this
Elemental Reality; it should never have occurred; it would
never have occurred if all abided by the ancient disciplines.
Why must we scorn the wisdom of our ancestors? Those
noble and most heroic of man who dared to revolt against the
tyranny of the mindless helots, seize the Ship of Space which
was taking them to brutal confinement, and seek a haven here
on this blessed world! Our ancestors knew the benefits of
order and rigor they designated the castes and set them to
tasks for which they presumably had received training on the
Home World. In such a fashion the Swindlers were assigned
the task of swindling fish; the Hoodwinks were set to winking
hoods; the Incendiaries, among whom I am proud to number

THE KRAGEN                153

myself, wove ropes; while the Bezzler gave us the Interces-
sors who have procured the favor and benevolent guardian-
ship of King Kragen.

"Like begets like; characteristics persist and distill: why
then are the castes crumbling and giving way to helter-skelter
disorder? I appeal to the young of today: read me old books:

the Dicta. Study the artifacts in the Museum, renew your
dedication to the system formulated by our forefathers: you
have no heritage more precious than your caste identity!"

The old Incendiary spoke on in such a vein for several
minutes further, and was succeeded by another old man, a
former Hoodwink of good reputation, who worked until films
upon his eyes gave one configuration much the look of
another. Like the old Incendiary he too urged a more fervent
dedication to the old-time values. "I deplore the sloth and
pudicity of today's youth! We are becoming a race of slug-
gards! It is sheer good fortune that King Kragen protects us
from the gluttony of the lesser kragen. And what if the tyrants
of out-space discovered our haven and sought once more to
enslave us? How would we defend ourselves? By hurling
fishheads? By diving under the floats in the hope that our
adversaries would follow and drown themselves? 1 propose that
each float form a militia, well-trained and equipped with darts
and spears, fashioned from the most durable stalk obtainable!"

The old Hoodwink was followed by the Sumber Float
Intercessor, who courteously suggested that should the out-space
tyrants appear. King Kragen would be sure to visit upon them
the most poignant punishments, the most absolute of rebuffs,
so that the tyrants would flee in terror never to return. "King
Kragen is mighty. King Kragen is wise and benevolent,
unless his dignity is impugned, as in the detestable incident at
Tranque Float, where the wilfulness of a bigoted free-thinker
caused agony to many." Now he modestly turned down his
head. "It is neither my place nor my privilege to propose a
punishment suitable to so heinous an offense as the one under
discussion. But I would go beyond this particular crime to dwell
upon the underlying causes; namely the bravado of certain
folk. who ordain themselves equal or superior to the accepted
ways of life which have served us so well so long ..."

154 Jack Vance

Presently he descended to the float. His place was taken by
a somber man of stalwart physique, wearing the plainest of
garments. "My name is Sklar Hast," he said. "! am that
so-called 'bigoted free-thinker' just referred to. 1 have much
to say, but 1 hardly know how to say it. I will be blunt.
King Kragen is not the wise beneficent guardian the Interces-
sors like to pretend. King Kragen is a gluttonous beast who
every year becomes more enormous and more gluttonous. I
sought to kill a lesser kragen which 1 found destroying my
arbors; by some means King Kragen learned of this attempt
and reacted with insane malice."

"Hist! Hist!" cried the Intercessors from below. "Shame!
Outrage!"

"Why does King Kragen resent my effort? After all. he
kills any lesser kragen he discovers in the vicinity. It is
simple and self-evident. King Kragen does not want men to
mink about killing kragen for fear they will attempt to kill
him. i propose that this is what we do. Let us put aside this
ignoble servility, this groveling to a sea-beast, let us turn our
best efforts to the destruction of King Kragen."

"Irresponsible maniac!" "Foot!" "Vile-minded ingrate!"
called the Intercessors in wrath.

Sklar Hast waited, but the invective increased in volume.
Finally Phyral Berwick the Apprise Arbiter mounted the ros-
trum and held up his hands. "Quiet! Let Sklar Hast speak!
He stands on the rostrum; it is his privilege to say what he
wishes."

"Must we listen to garbage and filth?" called Semon
Voidenvo. "This man has destroyed Tranque Float; now he
urges his frantic lunacy upon the rest of us."

"Let him urge," declared Phyral Berwick. "You are under
no obligation to comply."

Sklar Hast said, "The Intercessors naturally resist these
ideas; they are bound closely to King Kragen, and claim to
have some means of communicating with him. Possibly mis
is so. Why else should King Kragen arrive so opportunely
at Tranque Float? Now here is a very cogent point: if we can
agree to liberate ourselves from King Kragen, we must pre-
vent the Intercessors from making known our plans to him,

THE KRAGEN               155

otherwise we shall suffer more than necessary. Most of you
know in your hearts that 1 speak truth. King Kragen is a
crafty beast with an insatiable appetite and we are his slaves.
You know this truth but you fear to acknowledge it. Those
who spoke before me have mentioned our forefathers: the
men who captured a ship from the tyrants who sought to
immure them on a penal planet. What would our forefathers
have done? Would they have submitted to this gluttonous
ogre? Of course not.

"How can we kill King Kragen? The plans must wait upon
agreement, upon the concerted will to act, and in any event
must not be told before the Intercessors. If there are any here
who believe as 1 do, now is the time for them to make
themselves heard."

He stepped down from the rostrum. Across the float was
silence. Men's faces were frozen. Sklar Hast looked to right
and to left. No one met his eye.

Semon Voidenvo mounted the rostrum. "You have lis-
tened to the shameless murderer. On Tranque Float we con-
demned him to death for his malevolent acts. According to
custom he demanded the right to speak before a convocation;

now he has done so. Has he confessed his great crime; has he
wept for the evil he has visited upon Tranque Float? No; he
gibbers his plans for further enormities; he outrages decency
by mentioning our ancestors in the same breath with bis foul
proposals. Let the convocation endorse the verdict of Tranque
Float; let all those who respect King Kragen and benefit from
his ceaseless vigilance, raise now their hands in the clenched
fist of death!"

"Death!" roared the Intercessors and raised their fists. But
elsewhere through me crowd there was hesitation and uneasi-
ness. Eyes shifted backwards and forwards; there were furtive
glances out to sea. Semon Voidenvo once more called for a
signal, and now a few fists were raised.

Phyral Berwick, me Apprise Monitor, rose to his feet. "I
remind Semon Voidenvo that he has now called twice for the
death of Sklar Hast. If he calls once more and fails to achieve
an affirmative vote Sklar Hast is vindicated."

156 Jack Vance

Semon Voidenvo's face sagged. He looked uncertainly
over the crowd, and without further statement descended.

The rostrum was empty. No one sought to speak. Finally
Phyral Berwick himself mounted the steps. He was a stocky
square-faced man with gray hair, ice-blue eyes, a short gray
beard. He spoke slowly. "You have heard Sklar Hast. who
calls for the death of King Kragen. You have heard Semon
Voidenvo, who calls for the death of Sklar Hast. I will tell
you my feelings. 1 have great fear in the first case and great
disinclination in the second. I have no clear sense of what I
should do."

From the audience a man called "Question!" Phyral Ber-
wick nodded. "State your name, caste and craft, and pro-
pound your question."

"I am Mem Cagno; I am by blood a Larcener, although I
no longer follow caste custom; my craft is that of Scrivener.
My question has this background: Sklar Hast has voiced a
conjecture which I think deserves an answer namely, that
Semon Voidenvo, me Tranque Intercessor, called King Kragen
to Tranque Float. This is a subtle question, because much
depends upon not only if Semon Voidenvo issued the call, but
precisely when. If he did so when the rogue kragen was first
discovered, welt and good. But—if he called after Sklar Hast
made his attempt to kill the rogue. Semon Voidenvo is more
guilty of the Tranque disaster than Sklar Hast. My question
then: what is the true state of affairs? Do the Intercessors,
secretly communicate with King Kragen? Specifically, did
Semon Voidenvo call King Kragen to Tranque Float in order
that Sklar Hast should be punished?''

Phyral Berwick deliberated. "1 cannot answer your ques-
tion. But I think it deserves an answer. Semon Voidenvo,
what do you say?"

"I say nothing."

"Come," said Phyral Berwick reasonably. "Your craft is
Intercessor, your responsibility is to the men whom you
represent, not to King Kragen, no matter how fervent your
respect. Any evasion or secrecy can only arouse our misgiv-
ings."

"It is to be understood," said Semon Voidenvo tartly,

THE KRAGEN                157

"that if I did indeed summon King Kragen, my motives were
of the highest order."

"Well, then did you do so?"

Semon Voidenvo cast about for a means to escape from his
dilemma, and found none. Finally he said, "There is a means
by which the Intercessors are able to summon King Kragen in
the event that a rogue kragen appears. This occuired; I so
summoned King Kragen."

"Indeed." Phyral Berwick drummed his fingers on the rail
of the rostrum. "Are these the only occasions that you sum-
mon King Kragen?"

"Why do you question me?" demanded Semon Voidenvo.
"I am Intercessor; the criminal is Sklar Hast."

"Easy, then; the questions illuminate the extent of the
alleged crime. For instance, let me ask this: do you ever
summon King Kragen to feed from your lagoon in order to
visit a punishment upon the folk of your float?"

Semon Voidenvo blinked. "The wisdom of King Kragen is
inordinate. He can detect delinquencies, he makes his presence
known—"

"Specifically then, you summoned King Kragen to Tranque
Float when Sklar Hast sought to kill the lesser kragen?"

"My acts are not in the balance. I see no reason to answer
the question."

Phyral Berwick spoke to me crowd in a troubled voice,
"There seems no way to determine exactly when Semon
Voidenvo called King Kragen. If he did so after Sklar Hast
had begun his attack upon the rogue, then in my opinion,
Semon Voidenvo the Intercessor is more immediately respon-
sible for the Tranque disaster man Sklar Hast. Thereupon it
becomes a travesty to visit any sort of penalty upon Sklar Hast.
Unfortunately there seems no way of settling this question."

The Apprise Intercessor, Barquan BIasdel, rose slowly to
his feet. "Arbiter Berwick, I fear that you are seriously
confused. Sklar Hast and his gang committed an act know-
ingly proscribed both by the Tranque Monitor Ixon Myrex
and by the Tranque Intercessor Semon Voidenvo. The conse-
quences stemmed from this act; hence Sklar Hast is guilty."

158 Jack Vance

"Barquen Blasdel," said Phyra! Berwick, "you are Ap-
prise Intercessor. Have you ever summoned King Kragen to
Apprise Float?"

"As Semon Voidenvo pointed out, Sklar Hast is the criminal
at die bar, not the conscientious Intercessors of the various
floats. By no means may Sklar Hast be allowed to evade his
punishment. King Kragen is not lightly to be defied. Even
though the convocation will not raise their collective fist to
smite Sklar Hast, I say that he must die."

Phyral Berwick fixed his pale blue eyes upon Barquan
Btasdel. "If the convocation gives Sklar Hast his life, he will
not die unless I die before him."

Meth Cagno came forward. "And 1 likewise."

The men of Tranque Float who had joined Sklar Hast in the
killing of the rogue kragen came toward the rostrum, shouting
their intention of joining Sklar Hast either in life or death,
and with them came others, from various floats.

Barquan Blasdel climbed onto the rostrum, held his hands
wide- "Before others declare themselves—look out to sea-
King Kragen watches, attentive to learn who is loyal and who
is faithless."

The crowd swung about as if one individual. A hundred
yards off the float the water swirled lazily around King
Kragen^ great turret. The crystal eyes pointed like telescopes
toward Apprise Float. Presently the turret sank beneath the
surface. The blue water roiled, then flowed smooth and
featureless.

Sklar Hast went to the ladder, started to mount to the
rostrum. Barquen Blasde) the Intercessor halted him. "The
rostrum must not become a shouting-place. Stay till you are
summoned!" But Sklar Hast pushed him aside, went to face
the crowd- He pointed toward the smooth ocean. "There you
have seen the vile beast, our enemy! Why should we deceive
ourselves? Intercessors, arbiters, all of us—let us forget our
differences, let us join our crafts and our resources! If we do
so, we can evolve a method to kill King Kragen! So
now—decide!"

Barquan Blasdel threw back his head aghast. He took a

THE KRAGEN                159

step toward Sklar Hast. as if to seize him. then turned to the
audience. "You have heard this madman—twice you have
heard him- You have also observed the vigilance of King
Kragen, whose force is known to all. You can choose there-
fore cither to obey the exhortations of a twitching lunatic, or
be guided by your ancient trust in the benevolence of mighty
King Kragen. In one manner only does Sklar Hast speak
truth: there must be a definite resolution to this matter. We
can have no half-measures! Sklar Hast must die! So now hold
high your fists—each and all! Silence the frantic screamings
of Sklar Hast! King Kragen is near at hand! Death to Sktar
Hast!" He thrust his fist high into the air.
The Intercessors followed suit. "Death to Sklar Hast!"
Hesitantly, indecisively, other fists raised, then others and
others- Some changed their minds and drew down their fists;

others submitted to arguments and either drew down their
fists or thrust them high; some raised their fists only to have
others pull them down. Altercations sprang up across the
float; the hoarse sound of contention began to make itself
heard. Barquan Blasdel leaned forward in sudden concern,
calling for calm. Sklar Hast likewise started to speak, but he
desisted—because suddenly words were of no avail. In a
bewildering, almost magical, shift the placid convocation
had become a melee. Men and women tore savagely at each
other, screaming, cursing, raging, squealing. Emotion accu-
mulated from childhood, stored and constrained, had sud-
denly exploded; and the identical fear and hate had prompted
opposite reactions. Across the float the tide of battle surged,
out into the water where staid Bezzlers and responsible Larce-
ners sought to drown each other. Few weapons were avail-
able: clubs of stalk, a bone axe or two, a half-dozen stakes,
as many knives. While the struggle was at its most intense
King Kragen once more surfaceed, this time a quarter-mile to
the north from whence he turned his vast incurious gaze upon
the float.

The fighting slowed and dwindled, from sheer exhaustion.
The combatants drew apart into panting bleeding groups. In
tile lagoon floated half a dozen corpses; on the float lay as

160 Jack Vance

many more. Now for the first time it could be seen that those
who stood by Sklar Hast were considerably outnumbered, by
almost two to one, and also that this group included for the
most part the most vigorous and able of the craftsmen, though
few of the Masters: about half of the Hoodwinks, two-thirds
of the Scriveners, relatively few from the Jacklegs, Adver-
tisermen. Niggiers and other low castes, fewer still of the
Arbiters and no Intercessors whatever.

Barquan Blasdel, still on the rostrum, cried out, "This is a
sorry day indeed; a sorry day! Sklar Hast, see the anguish you
have brought to the floats! There can be no mercy for you
now!"

Sklar Hast came forward, pale and flaming-eyed. Blood
coursed down his face from me slash of knife. Ignoring
Blasdel, he mounted the rostrum, and addressed the two
groups:

"As Blasdel the Intercessor has said, there is no turning
back now. So be it. Let those who want to serve King Kragen
remain. Let those who want free lives go forth across the sea.
There are floats to north and south, to east and west, floats as
kind and hospitable as these, where we will soon have homes
as rich and modern—perhaps more so."

Barquan Blasdel stroked forward. "Go then! AU you faith-
less, you irreverent ones—get hence and good riddance! Go
where you will, and never seek to return when the teeming
kragen, unchided by the great King, devour your sponges,
tear your nets, crush your coracles!"

"The many cannot be as rapacious as the one," said Sklar
Hasl. "You who will go then, return to your floats, load tools
and cordage, all your utile goods into your coracles. In two
days we depart. Our destination and other details must remain
secret. I need not explain why." He cast an ironic look
toward Barquan Blasdel.

"You need not fear our interference," said Blasdel. "You
may depart at will; indeed we will facilitate your going."

"On the morning of the third day hence, then, when the
wind blows fair, we depart."

THE KRAGEN               161

CHAPTER ffl

Barquan Blasdel the Apprise Intercessor, with his spouse and
six daughters, occupied a pad to Ac north of the main float,
somewhat isolated and apart. It was perhaps the choicest and
most pleasant pad of the Apprise complex, situated where
Blasdel could read the hoodwink towers of Apprise, of Qua-
trefoil and the Bandings to the east, of Granolt to the west.
The pad was delightfully overgrown with a hundred different
plants and vines: some yielding resinous pods. others cap-
sules of fragrant sap, others crisp tendrils and shoots. Certain
shrubs produced stains and pigment; a purple-leaved epiphyte
yielded a rich-flavored pith. Other growths were entirely
ornamental—a situation not too usual along the floats, where
space was at a premium and every growing object weighed
for its utility. Along the entire line of floats few pads could
compare to that of Barquan Blasdel for beauty, variety of
plantings, isolation and calm.

In late afternoon of the second day after the turbulent
convocation, Barquan Blasdel returned to his pad. He dropped
the painter of his coracle over a stake of carved bone, gazed
appreciatively into the west. The sun had only just departed
the sky, which now glowed with effulgent greens, blues, and.
at die zenith, a purple of exquisite purity. The ocean, shud-
dering to the first whispers of the evening breeze, reflected
me sky, Blasdel felt surrounded, immersed in color. He
aimed away, marched to his house, whistling a complacent
time between his teeth. On the morrow the most troublesome
elements of all the floats would depart on the morning breeze,
and no more would be heard from them ever. And Blasdel's
whistling became slow and thoughtful. Although life flowed
smoothly and without contention, over the years a certain
uneasiness and dissatisfaction had begun to make itself felt.
Dissident elements had begun to question the established
order. The sudden outbreak of violence at the convocation

162

Jack Vance

perhaps had been inevitable: an explosion of suppressed or
even unconscious tensions. But all was working out for the
best. The affair could not have resolved itself more smoothly
if he had personally arranged the entire sequence of events.
At one stroke all the skeptics, grumblers, ne'er-do-wells, the
covertly insolent, the obstinate hardheads—at one stroke, all
would disappear, never again to trouble the easy and ortho-
dox way of life.

Almost jauntily Barquan Blasdel ambled up the path to his
residence: a group of five semidetached huts. screened by the
garden from the main float, and so providing a maximum of
privacy for Blasdel, his spouse and his six daughters. Blasdel
halted. On a bench beside the door sat a man. Twilight murk
concealed his face. Blasdel frowned, peered. Intruders upon
his private pad were not welcome. Blasdel marched forward.
The man rose from the bench and bowed: it was Phyral
Berwick, the Apprise Arbiter. "Good evening," said Ber-
wick. "I trust I did not startle you."

"By no means," said Blasdel shortly. With rank equal to
his own Berwick could not be ignored, although after his
unconventional actions at the convocation Blasdel could not
bring himself to display more man a minimum of formal
courtesy. He said, "Unfortunately I was not expecting callers
and can offer you no refreshment."

"A circumstance of no moment," declared Berwick. "I
desire neither food nor drink." He waved his hand around the
pad. "You live on a pad of surpassing beauty, Barquan
Blasdel. There are many who might envy you."

Blasdel shrugged. "Since my conduct is orthodox, I am
armored against adverse opinion. But what urgency brings
you here? I fear that 1 must be less than ceremonious; I am
shortly due at the hoodwink tower to participate in a coded
all-float conference."

Berwick made a gesture of polite acquiescence. "My busi-
ness is of small moment. But I would not keep you standing
out here in the dusk. Shall we enter?"

Blasdel grunted, opened the door. allowed Berwick to
enter. From a cupboard he brought luminant fiber, which he

THE KRAGEN               163

set aglow and arranged in a holder. Turning a quick side
glance toward Berwick he said. "In all candor I am some-
what surprised to see you. Apparently you were among the
most vehement of those dissidents who planned to depart."

"I may well have given that impression," Berwick agreed.
"But you must realize that declarations uttered in the heat
of emotion are occasionally amended in the light of sober
reason."

Blasdel nodded curtly. "True enough. I suspect that many
of the ingrates will think twice before joining this harebrained
expedition."

"This is partly the reason for my presence here," said
Berwick. He looked around the room. "An interesting cham-
ber. You own dozens of valuable artifacts. But where are the
others of your family?"

"In the domestic area. This is my sanctum, my workroom,
my place of meditation."

"Indeed." Berwick inspected the walls. "Indeed, indeed!
I believe 1 notice certain relics of the forefathers'"

"True," said Blasdel. "This small flat object is of the
substance called 'metal,' and is extremely hard. The best
bone knife will not scratch it. The purpose of this particular
object I cannot conjecture. It is an heirloom. These books are
exact copies of the Dicta in the Hall of Archives, and present
the memoirs of me Forefathers- Alas! 1 find them beyond my
comprehension. There is nothing more of any great interest.
On the shelf—my ceremonial headdresses; you have seen
them before. Here is my telescope. It is old; the case is
warped, the gum of the lenses has bulged and cracked. It was
poor gum, to begin with. But I have little need for a better
instrument. My possessions are few. Unlike many Interces-
sors and certain Arbiters." here he cast a meaningful eye at
Phyral Berwick, "I do not choose to surround myself with
sybaritical cushions and baskets of sweetmeats."

Berwick laughed ruefully. "You have touched upon my
weaknesses. Perhaps the fear of deprivation has occasioned
second thoughts in me."

"Ha hah!" Blasdel became jovial. "I begin to understand-
The scalawags who set off to wild new floats can expect

164 Jack Vance

nothing but hardship: wild fish, homy sponges, new varnish
with little more body than water; in short they will be return-
ing to the life of savages. They must expect to suffer the
depredations of lesser kragen, who will swiftly gather. Per-
haps in time ..." His voice dwindled, his face took on
a thoughtful look.

"What was it you were about to say?" prompted Phyral
Bcwick.

Blasdel gave a noncommittal laugh. "An amusing, if far-
fetched, conceit crossed my mind- Perhaps in time one of
these lesser kragen will vanquish the others, and drive them
away. When this occurs, those who flee King Kragen will
have a king of their own. who may eventually . . ." Again
his voice paused.

"Who may eventually rival King Kragen in size and force?"
Berwick supplied. "The concept is not unreasonable—although
King Kragen is already enormous from long feasting, and
shows no signs of halting his growth." An almost impercepti-
ble tremor moved the floor of the hut. Blasdel went to look
out the door. "I thought I felt the arrival of a coracle."

"Conceivably a gust of wind," said Berwick. "Well, to
my errand. As you have guessed I did not come to examine
your relics or comment upon the comfort of your cottage. My
business is this. I feel a certain sympathy for those who are
leaving and I feel that no one, not even the most violently
fanatic intercessor, would wish this group to meet King
Kragen upon the ocean. King Kragen, as you are aware,
disapproves of exploration, and becomes petulant, even wrath-
ful, when he finds men venturing out upon the ocean- Per-
haps he fears the possibility of the second King Kragen
concerning which we speculated. Hence I came to inquire the
whereabouts of King Kragen- In the morning the wind blows
east, and the optimum location for King Kragen would be to
the far west at Tranque or Thrasneck."

Blasdel nodded sagely- "The emigrants are putting their
luck to the test. Should King Kragen chance to be waiting in
the east tomorrow morning and should he spy the flotilla,
his wrath might well be excited, to the detriment of the
expedition.''

THE KStAGEN                165

"And where," inquired Berwick, "was King Kragen at
last notification?"

Barquan Blasdel knit his brows. "I believe I noted a
hoodwink message to the effect that he was seen cruising in a
westerly direction to the south of Maudelinda Float, toward
Bickle. 1 might well have misread the flicker, I only noted the
configuration from the comer of my eye—but such was my
understanding."

"Excellent," declared Berwick. "This is good news. The
emigrants should make their departure safely and without
interference."

"So we hope," said Blasdel. "King Kragen of course is
subject to unpredictable whims and quirks."

Berwick made a confidential sign. "Sometimes—so it is
rumored—he responds to signals transmitted in some mysteri-
ous manner by the Intercessors. Tell me, Barquan Blasdel, is
mis the case? We are both notables and together share respon-
sibility for the welfare of Apprise Hoat. Is it true then that the
Intercessors communicate with King Kragen, as has been
alleged?"

"Now then, Arbiter Berwick," said Blasdel. "this is hardly
a pertinent question. Should I answer yes, then I would be
divulging a craft secret. Should I answer no, then it would
seem that we Intercessors boast of nonexistent capabilities.
So you must satisfy yourself with those hypotheses which
seem the most profitable."

"Fairly answered," said Phyral Berwick. "However—and
in the strictest confidence—I will report to you an amusing
circumstance. As you know, at the convocation I declared
myself for the party of Sklar Hast. Subsequently I was ac-
cepted into their most intimate counsels. I can inform you
with authority—but first, you will assure me of your silence?
As under no circumstances would I betray Sklar Hast or
compromise the expedition."

"Certainly, indeed; my lips are sealed as with fourteen-
year-old varnish."

"Well then, I accept you at your word. This is Sklar Hast's
amusing lactic: he has arranged that a group of influential
Intercessors shall accompany the group. If all goes well, the

166 Sack Vance

Intercessors live. If not. like all the rest, they arc crushed in
the mandibles of King Kragen.*' And Phyral Berwick, stand-
ing back, watched Barquan Blasdel with an attentive gaze.
"What do you make of that?"

Blasdel stood rigid, fingering his fringe of black beard. He
darted a quick glance toward Berwick. "Which Intercessors
are to be kidnapped?"

"Aha," said Berwick. "That, like the response of me
question I put to you, is in the nature of a craft secret. I doubt
if lesser men will be troubled, but if I were Intercessor for
Aumerge, or Sumber, or Quatrefoil, or even Apprise, I be-
lieve that I might have cause for caution."

Blasdel stared at Berwick with mingled suspicion and un-
easiness. "Do you take this means to warn me? If so, I would
thank you to speak less ambiguously. Personally I fear no
such attack. Within a hundred feet are three stalwarts, testing
my daughters for marriage. A loud call would bring instant
help from the float, which is scarcely a stone's throw beyond
the garden."

Berwick nodded sagely. "It seems then that you are utterly
secure."

"Still, I must hurry to the float," said Blasdel. "I am
expected at a conference, and the evening grows no younger."

Berwick bowed and stood aside. "You will naturally re-
member to revea! nothing of what I told you, to vouchsafe no
oblique warning, to hint nothing of the matter—in fact to
make no reference to it whatever."

Blasdel considered. "I will say nothing beyond my original
intention, to the effect that the villain Sklar Hast obviously
knows no moderation, and that it behooves all notables and
craft masters to guard thcmsleves against some form of final
vegeance."

Berwick paused. "I hardly think you need go quite so far-
Perhaps you could phrase it somewhat differently. In this wise:

Sklar Hast and his sturdy band take their leave in the morn-
ing; now is me last chance for persons so inclined to cast in
their lot with the group; however, you hope mat all Interces-
sors will remain at their posts."

"Pah," cried Barquan Blasde! indignantly. "That conveys

THE KRAGEN               167

no sense of imminence. I will say, Sklar Hast is desperate;

should he decide to take hostages, his diseased mind would
select Intercessors as the most appropriate persons."

Berwick made a Firm dissent. "This, I believe, transcends
the line I have drawn. My honor is at stake and I can agree to
no announcement which baldly states the certainty as a proba-
bility .If you choose to make a jocular reference, or perhaps
urge that not too many Intercessors join the expedition, then
all is well: a subtle germ of suspicion has been planted, you
have done your duty and my honor has not been compromised.''

"Yes, yes." cried Bia&del, "I agree to anything. But I
must hurry to the hoodwink tower. While we quibble Sklar
Hast and his bandits are kidnaping Intercessors."

"And what is the harm there?" inquired Berwick mildly.
"You state that King Kragen has been observed from
Maudelinda Float proceeding to the west; hence the Interces-
sors are in no danger, and presumably will be allowed to
return once Sklar Hast is assured that King Kragen is no
longer a danger. Conversely, if the Intercessors have betrayed
Sklar Hast and given information to King Kragen so that he
waits off Sciona Float, then they deserve to die with the rest.
It is justice of the most precise and exquisite balance."

"That is the difficulty," muttered Blasdel, trying to push
past Berwick to the door. "I cannot answer for the silence of
me other Intercessors. Suppose one among them has notified
King Kragen? Then a great tragedy ensues."

"Interesting! So you can indeed summon King Kragen
when you so desire?"

"Yes, yes, but, mind you, this is a secret. And now—"

"It follows then that you always know the whereabouts of
King Kragen. How do you achieve mis?"

"There is no time to explain; suffice it to say that a means
is at hand."

"Right here? In your workroom?"

"Yes indeed. Now stand aside. After I have broadcast me
warning I will make all clear. Stand aside then!"

Berwick shrugged and allowed Blasdel to run from the
cottage, through the garden to the edge of the pad.

168 Jack Vance

Blasdel stopped short 2t the water's edge. The coracle had
disappeared. Where previously Apprise Float had raised its
foliage and its great hoodwink tower against the dusk. there
was now only blank water and blank sky. The pad floated free;

urged by the west wind of evening it already had left Apprise
Float behind.

Blasdel gave an inarticulate cry of fury and woe. He turned
to find Berwick standing behind him. "What has happened?"

"It seems that while we talked, divers cut through the stem
of your pad. At least this is my presumption."

"Yes, yes," grated Blasdel. "So much is obvious. What
else?"

Berwick shrugged. "It appears that willy-nilly, whether we
like it or not, we are part of the great emigration. Now that
such is the case I am relieved to know that you have a means
to determine the whereabouts of King Kragen. Come. Let us
make use of this device and reassure ourselves."

Blasdel made a guttural sound deep in his throat. He
crouched and for a moment appeared on the point of hurling
himself at Phyral Berwick. From the shadows of the verdure
appeared another man. Berwick pointed. "I believe Sklar
Hast himself is at hand.''

"You tricked me," groaned Barquan Blasdel between
clenched teeth. "You have performed an infamous act, which
you shall regret."

"I have done no such deed, although it appears that you
may well have misunderstood my position. Still, the time for
recrimination is over. We share a similar problem, which is
how to escape the malevolence of King Kragen. I suggest that
you now proceed to locate him."

Without a word Blasdel turned, proceeded to his cottage.
He entered the main room, with Berwick and Sklar Hast close
behind. He crossed to the wall, lifted a panel to reveal an
inner room. He brought more lights; all entered. A hole had
been cut in the floor, and through the pad. the spongy tissue
having been painted with a black varnish to prevent its grow-
ing together. A tube fashioned from fine yellow stalk perhaps
four inches in diameter led down into the water. "At the
bottom," said Blasdel curtly, "is a carefully devised hom, of

THE KRAGEN               169

exact shape and quality. The end is four feet in diameter and
covered with a diaphragm of seasoned and varnished pad-
skin. King Kragen emits a sound to which this hom is sensitive."
He went to the tube, put down his ear, listened, slowly turned
the tube around a vertical axis. He shook his head. "I hear
nothing. This means that King Kragen is at least ten miles
distant. If he is closer I can detect him- He passed to the east
early today; presumably he swims somewhere near Sumber,
or Adelvine."

Sklar Hast laughed quietly. "Urged there by the Interces-
sors?"

Blasdel shrugged sourly. "As to that I have nothing to
say."

"How then do you summon King Kragen?"

Blasdel pointed to a rod rising from the floor, the top of
which terminated in a crank. "In the water below is a drum.
Inside this drum fits a wheel. When the crank is turned, the
wheel, working in resin, rubs against the drum and emits a
signal- King Kragen can sense this sound from a great
distance—once again about ten miles. When he is needed, at
say Bickle Float, the Intercessor at Aumerge calls him, until
the hom reveals him to be four or five miles distant, where-
upon me Intercessor at Paisley calls him a few miles, then the
Maudelinda Intercessor, and so forth until he is within range
of the Intercessor at Bickle Float."

Sklar Hast nodded. "I see. In this fashion Semon Voidenvo
called King Kragen to Tranque. Whereupon King Kragen
destroyed Tranque Boat and killed forty-three persons."

"That is the case."

Sklar Hast turned away. Phyral Berwick told Blasdel, "I
believe that Semon Voidenvo is one of the Intercessors who
are accompanying the emigration. His lot may not be a happy
one."

"This is unreasonable," Barquan Blasdel declared heated-
ly." He was as faithful to his convictions as Sklar Hast is to
his own. After all, Voidenvo did not enjoy the devastation of
Tranque Float. It is his home. Many of those killed were his
friends. But he gives his faith and trust to King Kragen."

Sklar Hast swung around. "And you?"

170

Jack Vance

Blasdel shook his head. "Not with such wholeheanedness."
Sklar Hast looked toward Berwick. "What should we do

with this apparatus? Destroy it? Or preserve it?"
Berwick considered. "We might on some occasion wish to

listen for King Kragen. I doubt if we ever will desire to

summon him.'*

Sklar Hast gave a sardonic jerk of the head. "Who knows?
To his death perhaps." He turned to Blasdel. "What persons
are aboard the pad in addition to us?"

"My spouse—in the cottage two roofs along. Three young
daughters who weave ornaments for the Star-cursing Festival.
Three older daughters are attempting to prove themselves to
three stalwarts who test them for wives. All are unaware that
their home floats out on the deep ocean. None wish to
become emigrants to a strange line of floats."

Sklar Hast said, "No more were any of the rest of us—
until we were forced to choose. I feel no pity for them, or for
you. Undoubtedly there will be ample work for all hands.
Indeed, we may formulate a new guild: the Kragen-killers. If
rumor is accurate, they infest the ocean."                        n

He left the room, went out into the night. Blasdel cast a      >
wry look at Phyral Berwick, went to listen once more at the
detecting hom. Then he likewise left the room. Berwick
followed, and lowered the panel. Both joined Sklar Hast at
the edge of the pad, where now several coracles were tied. A
dozen men stood in the garden. Sklar Hast turned to Blasdel.
"Summon your spouse, your daughters and those who test
them. Explain the circumstances, and gather your belongings-
The evening breeze will soon die and we cannot tow the

pad.'*

Blasdel departed, accompanied by Berwick. Sklar Hast and
the others entered the workroom, carried everything of value
or utility to the coracles, including the small metal relict, the
Books of Dicta, the listening horn and the summoning drum.
Then all embarked in the coracles, and Barquan Blasdel's       ;"
beautiful pad was left to drift solitary upon the ocean.              li

THE KRAGEN               171

CHAPTER IV

Morning came to the ocean and with it the breeze from the
west. The floats could no longer be seen; the ocean was a
blue mirror in all directions, Sklar Hast lowered Blasdel's
horn into the water, listened. Nothing could be heard. Barquan
Blasdel did the same and agreed that King Kragen was
nowhere near.

There were perhaps six hundred coracles in the flotilla,
each carrying from four to eight persons, with as much gear,
household equipment and tools as possible, together with
sacks of food and water.

Late in the afternoon they noted a few medium-sized floats
to the north, but made no attempt to land- King Kragen was
yet too near at hand.

The late afternoon breeze arose. Rude sails were rigged
and the oarsmen rested. At dusk Sklar Hast ordered all the
coracles connected by lines to minimize the risk of separa-
tion. When the breeze died and seas reflected the dazzling
stars, the sails were brought down and alt slept.

The following day was like the first, and also the day after.
On the morning of the fourth day a line of splendid floats
appeared ahead, easily as large and as rich of foliage as those
they had left. Sklar Hast would have preferred to sail on
another week, but the folk among the coracles were fervent in
their rejoicing, and he clearly would have encountered near-
unanimous opposition. So the flotilla landed upon three closely
adjoining floats, drove stakes into the pad surface, tethered
the coracles.

Sklar Hast called an informal convocation. "In a year or
two," he said, "we can live lives as comfortable as those we
left behind us- But this is not enough. We left our homes
because of King Kragen. who is now our deadly enemy. We
shall never rest secure until we find a means to make our-
selves supreme over all the kragen- To this purpose we must

172

Jack Vance

live different lives ihan we did in the old days—until King
Kragen is killed. How to kill King Kragen? I wish 1 knew.
He is a monster, impregnable to any weapon we now can use
against him. So this must be our primary goal: weapons
against King Kragen." Sklar Hast paused, looked around the
somber group. "This is my personal feeling. I have no
authority over any of you, beyond that of the immediate
circumstances, which are transient. You have a right to dis-
credit me, to think differently—in which case I will muster
those who feel as I do, and sail on to still another float, where
we can dedicate ourselves to the killing of King Kragen. If
we are all agreed, that our souls are not our own until King
Kragen is dead, then we must formalize this feeling. Author-
ity must be given to some person or group of persons.
Responsibilities must be delegated; work must be organized.
As you see I envision a life different to the old. It will be
harder in some respects, easier in others. First of all, we need
not feed King Kragen. ..."

A committee of seven members was chosen, to serve as a
temporary governing body until the needs of the new commu-
nity required a more elaborate system. As a matter of course
Sklar Hast was named to the committee, as well as Phyral
Berwick, who became the first chairman, and also Mem
Cagno the Scrivener. The captured Intercessors sat aside in a
sullen group and took no part in the proceedings.

The committee met for an hour, and as its first measure,
ordained a census, that each man's caste and craft might be

noted.
After the meeting Meth Cagno took Sklar Hast aside.

"When you captured Barquan Blasdel, you brought his books."

"True."
"I have been examining these books. They are a set of me

Ancient Dicta."

"So I understand."

"This is a source of great satisfaction to me. No one
except the Scrivener reads tile Dicta nowadays, though every-
one professes familiarity. As the generations proceed, the

THE KRAGEN               173

lives of our ancestors and the fantastic environment from
which they came seem more like myth than reality."

"I suppose this is true enough- I am a Hoodwink by trade
and only know Hoodwink configurations. The Dicta are writ-
ten in ancient calligraph, which puzzles me."

"It is difficult to read, that I grant," said Cagno. "How-
ever, a patient examination of the Dicta can be profitable.
Each volume represents the knowledge of one of our ances-
tors, to the extent that he was able to organize it. There is
also a great deal of repetition and dullness; our ancestors,
whatever their talents, had a few literary skills. Some are
vainglorious and devote pages to self-encomium. Others are
anxious to explain in voluminous detail the vicissitudes which
led to their presence on the Ship of Space. They seem to have
been a very mixed group, from various levels of society.
There are hints here and there which I, for one. do not
understand. Some describe the Home World as a place of
maniacs. Others seem to have held respected places in this
society until, as they explain it, the persons in authority
turned on them and instituted a savage persecution, ending,
as we know. in our ancestors seizing control of the Ship of
Space and fleeing to this planet."

"It is all very confusing," said Sklar Hast, "and none of it
seems to have much contemporary application. For instance,
they do not tell us how they boiled varnish on the Home
World, or how they propelled their coracles. Do creatures
like the kragen infest the Home World? If so, how do the
Home Folk deal with them? Do they kill them or feed them
sponges? Our ancestors are silent on these points."

Meth Cagno shrugged. "Evidently they were not overly
concerned, or they would have dealt with these matters at
length. But I agree that there is much they fail to make clear.
As in our own case, the various castes seemed trained to
explicit trades. Especially interesting are the memoirs of James
Brunei. His caste, that of Counterfeiter, is now extinct among
us. Most of his Dicta are rather conventional exhortations to
virtue, but toward the middle of the book he says this."
Here Cagno opened a book and read:

*' 'To those who follow us, to our children and grandchil-

174 Jack Vtince

dren, we can leave no tangible objects of value. We brought
nothing to the world but ourselves and the wreckage of our
lives. We will undoubtedly die here—a fate probably prefera-
ble to New Ossining, but by no means the destiny any of us
had planned for ourselves. There is no way to escape. Of the
entire group I alone have a technical education, most of
which i have forgotten. And to what end could 1 turn it? This
is a soft world. It consists of ocean and seaweed. There is
land nowhere. To escape—even if we had the craft to build a
new ship, which we do not—we need metal and metal there
is none. Even to broadcast a radio signal we need metal.
None. ... No clay to make pottery, no silica for glass, no
limestone for concrete, no ore from which to smelt metal.
Presumably the ocean carries various salts, but how to extract
the metal without electricity? There is iron in our blood: how
to extract it? A strange helpless sensation to live on this world
where tfie hardest substance is our own bone! We have,
during our lives, taken so many things for granted, and now it
seems that no one can evoke something from nothing. . . .
This is a problem on which I must think. An ingenious man
can work wonders, and I, a successful counterfeiter—or,
rather, almost successful—am certainly ingenious.' "

Meth Cagno paused in his reading. "This is the end of the
chapter."

"He seems to be a man of no great force," mused Sklar
Hast. "It is true mat metal can be found nowhere." He took
the bit of metal from his pocket which had once graced the
workroom of Barquan Blasdel. "This is obdurate stuff in-
deed, and perhaps it is what we need to kill King Kragen."

Meth Cagno returned to the book. "He writes his next
chapter after a lapse of months:

" 'I have considered the matter at length. But before 1
proceed I must provide as best I can a picture of the way the
universe works, for it is clear that none of my colleagues are
in any position to do so, excellent fellows though they are.
Please do not suspect me of whimsy: our personalities and
social worth undoubtedly vary with the context in which we
live.' "

Here Cagno looked up. "I don't completely understand his

THE KRAGEfrf                175

meaning here. But I suppose that the matter is unimportant."
He turned the pages. "He now goes into an elaborate set of
theorizations regarding the nature of the world, which, I
confess, I don't understand. There is small consistency to his
beliefs. Either he knows nothing, or is confused, or the world
essentially is inconsistent. He claims that all matter is com-
posed of less than a hundred 'elements,' joined together in
'compounds,' The elements are constructed of smaller enti-
ties: 'electrons,' 'protons,' 'neutrons,' which are not neces-
sarily matter, but forces, depending on your point of view.
When electrons move the result is an electric current: a
substance or condition—he is not clear here—of great energy
and many capabilities. Too much electricity is fatal; in smaller
quantities we use it to control our bodies. According to
Brunei all sorts of remarkable things can be achieved with
electricity."

"Let us provide ourselves an electric current then," said
Sklar Hast. "This may become our weapon against the kragen."

"The matter is not so simple. In me first place the electric-
ity must be channeled through metal wires,"

"Here is metal," said Sklar Hast, tossing to Meth Cagno
the bit of metal he had taken from Blasdel, "though it is
hardly likely to be enough."

"The electricity must also be generated," said Cagno,
"which on the Home Planet seems to be a complicated
process, requiring a great deal of metal."

"Then how do we get metal?"

"On other planets there seems to be no problem. Ore is
refined and shaped into a great variety of tools. Here we have
no ore. In other cases, metals are extracted from the sea, once
again using electricity."

"Hmph," said Sklar Hast. "To procure metal, one needs
electricity. To obtain the electricity, metal is required. It
seems a closed circle, into which we are unable to break."

Cagno made a dubious face. "It may well be. Brunei
mentions various means to generate electricity. There is me
'voltaic cell'—in which two metals are immersed in acid, and
be describes a means to generate the acid, using water, brine,
and electricity. Then there is thermo-electricity, photo-

176 Jack Vance

electricity, chemical electricity, electricity produced by the
Rous effect, electricity generated by moving a wire near
another wire in which electricity flows. He states that all
living creatures produce small quantities of electricity."

"Electricity seems rather a difficult substance to obtain,"
mused Sklar Hast. "Are there no simple methods to secure
metal?"

"Brunei mentions that blood contains a small quantity of
iron. He suggests a method for extracting it, by using a high
degree of heat. But he also points out that there is at hand no
substance capable of serving as a receptacle under such ex-
tremes of heat. He states that on the Home World many
plants concentrate metallic compounds, and suggests that cer-
tain of the sea-plants might do me same. But again either heat
or electricity are needed to secure the pure metal."

Sklar Hast ruminated. "Our first and basic problem, as I
see it, is self-protection. In short, we need a weapon to kill
King Kragen. It might be a device of metal—or it might be a
larger and more savage kragen. if such exist. ..." He con-
sidered. "Perhaps you should make production of metal and
electricity your goal, and let no other pursuits distract you. I
am sure that the council will agree, and put at your disposal
such helpers as you may need."

"I would gladly do my best."

"Andi," said Sklar Hast, "I will reflect upon the kragen."

Three days later the first kragen was seen, a beast of not
inconsiderable size, perhaps twenty feet in length. It came
cruising along the edge of the float, and observing the men,
stopped short and for twenty minutes floated placidly, swiri-
ing water back and forth with its vanes. Then slowly it swung
about and continued along the line of floats.

By this time a large quantity of stalk and withe had been
cut, scraped and racked, as well as a heap of root-wisp, to
cure during the rigging of a ropewalk.A week later the new
rope was being woven into net.

Two large pads were cut from the side of the float, stripped
of rib-trussing, upper and lower membrane, men set adrift.
The space thus opened would become a lagoon. Over the

THE KRAGEN                177

severed stalks sleeves were fitted with one end above water.
the sap presently exuding would be removed, boiled and aged
for varnish and glue. Meanwhile arbors were constructed,
seeded with sponge-floss, and lowered into the lagoon. When
the withe had cured, hut frames were constructed, pad mem-
brane stretched over the mesh and daubed inside and out with
varnish.

In a month the community had achieved a rude measure of
comfort. On four occasions a kragen had passed by, and the
fourth occurrence seemed to be a return visit of the first. On
this fourth visit the kragen paused, inspected the lagoon with
care. It tentatively nudged the net, backed away and presently
floated off.

Sklar Hast watched the occurrence, went to inspect the
new-cut stalk, which now was sufficiently cured. He laid out
a pattern and work began. First a wide base was built near the
mouth of the lagoon, with a substructure extending down to
the main stem of the float. On this base was erected an
A-frame derrick of glued withe, seventy feet tall, with inte-
gral braces, the entire structure whipped tightly with strong
line and varnished. Another identical derrick was built to
overhang the ocean- Before cither of the derricks were com-
pleted a smalt kragen broke through the net to feast upon the
yet unripe sponges. Sklar Hast laughed grimly at the incident.
"At your next visit, you will not fare so well," he called to
the beast. "May the sponges rot in your stomach!"

The kragen swam lazily off down the line of floats,
unperturbed by the threat. It returned two days later. This
time the derricks were guyed and in place, but not yet fitted
with tackle. Again Sklar Hast reviled the beast, which this
time ate with greater fastidiousness, plucking only those sponges
which like popcorn had overgrown their husks. The men worked
far into the night installing the strut which, when the derrick
tilted out over the water, thrust high the topping-halyard to
provide greater leverage-
On the next day the kragen returned, and entered the
lagoon with insulting assurance: a beast somewhat smaller
than that which Sklar Hast had captured on Tranque Float,

178

Jack Vance

but nonetheless a creature of respectable size. Standing on the
float, a stalwart old Swindler Hung a noose around the crea-
ture's turret, and on the pad a line of fifty men marched away
with a heavy rope. The astonished kragen was towed to the
outward leaning derrick, swung up and in. The dangling
vanes were lashed; it was lowered to the float. As soon as the
bulk collapsed the watching folk, crying out in glee, shoved
forward, almost dancing into the gnashing mandibles. "Back,
fools!" roared Sklar Hast. "Do you want to be cut in half?
Back!" He was largely ignored. A dozen chisels hacked at
the horoy hide; clubs battered at the eyes- "Back!" raged
Sklar Hast. "Back! What do you achieve by antics such as
this? Back!" Daunted, the vengeful folk moved aside. Sklar
Hast took chisel and mallet and as he had done on Tranque
Float, cut at the membrane joining dome to turret. He was
joined by four others; the channel was swiftly cut and a dozen
hands ripped away the dome. Again, with pitiless outcry, the
crowd surged forward- Sklar Hast's efforts to halt them were
fruitless. The nerves and cords of the creature's ganglionic
center were torn from the turret, while the kragen jerked and
fluttered and made a buzzing sound with its mandibles. The
turret was plucked clean of the wet-string fibers as well as
other organs, and the kragen lay limp. Sklar Hast moved
away in disgust. Another member of the Seven, Nicklas Rile,
stepped forward; "Halt now—no more senseless hacking! If
the kragen has bones harder than our own, we will want to
preserve them for use. Who knows what use can be made of a
kragen's cadaver? The hide is tough; the mandibles are harder
than the deepest stalk. Let us proceed intelligently!"

Sklar Hast watched from a little distance as the crowd
examined the dead beast. He had no further interest in the
kragen. A planned experiment had been foiled almost as soon
as the hate-driven mob had rushed forward. But there would
be more kragen for his derricks; hopefully they could be
noosed by the sea-derrick before they broke into the lagoon.
In years to come, strongboats or barges equipped with der-
ricks might even go forth to hunt the kragen. ... He ap-
proached the kragen once again, peered into me empty turret,
where now welled a viscous milky blue fluid. James Brunei,

THE KRAGEN               179

in his Dicta, had asserted that the metal iron was a constituent
of human blood; conceivably other metals or metallic com-
pounds might be discovered in me blood of a kragen. He
found Meth Cagno, who had been watching from a dignified
distance, and communicated his hypothesis. Cagno made no
dissent. "It may well be the case. Our basic problem, how-
ever, remains as before; separating the metal from the dross."

"You have no idea how to proceed?"

Meth Cagno smiled slightly. "I have one or two ideas. In
fact, tomorrow, at noon precisely, we will test one of these
ideas."

The following day, an hour before noon. Sklar Hast rowed
to the isolated pad on which Meth Cagno had established his
workshop. Cagno himself was hard at work on an intricate
contrivance whose purpose Sklar Hast could not fathom. A
rectangular frame of stalk rose ten feet in the air, supporting a
six-foot hoop of woven withe in a plane parallel to the surface
of the float. To the hoop was glued a rather targe sheet of
pad-skin, which had been scraped, nibbed and oiled until it
was almost transparent. Below Meth Cagno was arranging a
box containing ashes. As Sklar Hast watched, he mixed in a
quantity of water and some gum, enough to make a gray
dough, which he worked with his fingers and knuckles, to
leave a saucer-shaped depression.

The sun neared the zenith; Cagno signaled two of his
helpers. One climbed up the staging; the other passed up
buckets of water. The first poured these upon the transparent
membrane, which sagged under the weight.

Sklar Hast watched silently, giving no voice to his perplex-
ity. The membrane, now brimming, seemed to bulge peril-
ously. Meth Cagno, satisfied with his arrangements, joined
Sklar Hast. "You are puzzled by this device; nevertheless it is
very simple. You own a telescope?"

"I do. An adequately good instrument, though the gum is
clouded."

"The purest and most highly refined gum discolors, and
even with the most careful craftsmanship, lenses formed of
gum yield distorted images, of poor magnification. On the

180

Jack Vance

Home World, according to Brunei, lenses are formed of a
material called 'glass.* "

The sun reached the zenith; Sklar Hast's attention was
caught by a peculiar occurrence in the box of damp ash. A
white-hot spot had appeared; the ash began to hiss and smoke.
He drew near in wonderment. "Glass would seem to be a
useful material." Meth Cagno was saying. "Brunei describes
it as a mixture of substances occuring in ash together with a
compound called 'silica' which is found in ash but also
occurs in the husks of sea-ooze: 'plankton,' so Brunei calls it.
Here I have mixed ash and sea-ooze; I have constructed a
water-lens to condense sunlight, I am trying to make
glass. . . ." He peered into the box, then lifted it a trifle,
bringing the image of the sun to its sharpest focus. The ash
glowed red, orange, yellow; suddenly it seemed to slump.
With a rod Cagno pushed more ash into the center, until the
wooden box gave off smoke, whereupon Cagno pulled it
aside, and gazed anxiously at the molten matter in the center.
"Something has happened; exactly what we will determine
when the stuff is cool." He turned to his bench, brought
forward another box, this half-full of powdered charcoal. In
a center depression rested a cake of black-brown paste.

"And what do you have there?" asked Sklar Hast, already
marveling at Cagno's ingenuity.

"Dried blood. I and my men have drained ourselves pale.
Brunei reveals that blood contains iron. Now I will try to
bum away the various unstable fluids and oozes, to discover
what remains. I hope to find unyielding iron." Cagno thrust
the box under the lens. The dried blood smoldered and smoked,
then burst into a reeking flame which gave off a nauseous
odor. Cagno squinted up at the sun. "The lens bums well
only when the sun is overhead, so our time is necessarily

limited."

"Rather than water, transparent gum might be used, which
men would harden, and the sun could be followed across the
sky."

"Unfortunately no gum is so clear as water," said Cagno
regretfully. "Candle-plant sap is yellow. Bindlebane seep
holds a blue fog."

THE KRAGEN               181

"What if the two were mixed, so that the blue defeated the
yellow? And then the two might be filtered and boiled. Or
perhaps water can be coagulated with tincture of bone."

Cagno assented. "Possibly feasible, both."

They turned to watch the blood, now a glowing sponge
which tumbled into cinders and then, apparently consumed,
vanished upon the surface of the blazing charcoal. Cagno
snatched the crucible out from under the lens. "Your blood
seems not over-rich," Sklar Hast noted critically. "It might be
wise to tap Barquan Blasdel and the other Intercessors; they
appear a hearty lot."

Cagno clapped a cover upon the box. "We will know
better when the charcoal goes black," He went to his bench,
brought back another box. In powdered charcoal stood an-
other tablet, this of black paste. "And what substance is
this?" inquired Sklar Hast.

"This," said Meth Cagno, "is kragen blood, which we
boiled last night. If man's blood carries iron, what will
kragen blood yield? Now we discover." He thrust it under
me lens. Like the human blood it began to smolder and bum,
discharging a smoke even more vile than before. Gradually
the tablet flaked and tumbled to the surface of the charcoal; as
before Cagno removed it and covered it with a lid. Going to
his first box, he prodded among the cinders with a bit of
sharp bone, scooped out a congealed puddle of fused material
which he laid on the bench. "Glass. Beware- It is yet hot."

Sklar Hast, using two pieces of bone, lifted the object. "So
dlis is glass. Hmm. It hardly seems suitable for use as a
telescope lens. But it may well prove useful otherwise. It
seems dense and hard—indeed, almost metallic."

Cagno shook his head in deprecation. "I had hoped for
greater transparency. There are probably numerous impurities
in the ash and sea-ooze. Perhaps they can be removed by
washing the ash or treating it with acid, or something of the
sort."

"But to produce acid, electricity is necessary, or so you
tell me."

"1 merely quote Brunei."

"And electricity is impossible?"

182 Jack Vance

Cagno pursed his Ups. "That we will see. I have hopes.
One might well think it impossible to generate electricity
using only ash. wood, water and sea-stuff—but we shall sec.
Brunei offers a hint or two. But first, as to our iron. . . ."

The yield was small: a nodule of pitted gray metal half the
size of a pea. "That bit represents three flasks of blood."
Cagno remarked glumly. "If we bled every vein on the float
we might win sufficient iron for a small pot."

"This is not intrinsically an unreasonable proposal," said
Sklar Hast. "We can all afford a flask of blood, or two, or
even more during the course of months. To think—we have
produced metal entirely on our own resources!"

Cagno wryly inspected the iron nodule. "There is no prob-
lem to burning me blood under the lens. If every day ten of
the folk come to be bled, eventually we will sink the pad
under the accumulated weight of iron." He removed the lid
from the third box. "But observe here! We have misused our
curses! The kragen is by no means a creature to be despised!"

On the charcoal rested a small puddle of reddish-golden
metal: three times as large as the iron nodule. "I presume this
metal to be copper, or one of its alloys." said Cagno- "Bru-
net describes copper as a dark red metal, very useful for the
purpose of conducting electricity."

Sklar Hast lifted the copper from the coals, tossed it back
and forth till it was cool. "Metal everywhere! Nicklas Rile
has been hacking apart the kragen for its bones. He is dis-
carding the internal organs, which are black as snuff-flower-
Perhaps they should also be burned under the lens."

"Convey them here, I will bum them. And then, after we
bum the kragen's liver, or whatever the organ, we might
attempt to bum snuff-flowers as well."

The kragen's internal organs yielded further copper. The
snuff-flowers produced only a powder of whitish-yellow ash
which Mem Cagno conscientiously stored in a tube labeled:

ash of snuff-flower.

Four days later the largest of the kragen seen so far reap-
peared. It came swimming in from the west, paralleling the
line of floats. A pair of Swindlers, returning to the float with

THE KRAGEN               183

a catch of gray-fish, were the first to spy the great black
cylinder surmounted by its four-eyed turret. They bent to
their oars, shouting the news ahead. A well-rehearsed plan
now went into effect. A team of four young swindlers ran to a
lightweight coracle, shoved off, paddled out to intercept the
kragen. Behind the coracle trailed two ropes, each controlled
by a gang of men. The kragen, lunging easily through the
water, approached, swimming fifty yards off the float. The
coracle eased forward, with one named Bade Beach going
forward to stand on the gunwhales. The kragen halted the
motion of its vanes, to drift and eye the coracle and the
derricks with flint-eyed suspicion.

The two swindlers yet at the oars eased the coracle closer.
Bade Beach stood tensely, twitching a noose, while the fourth
man controlled the lines to the float. The kragen. contemptu-
ous of attack, issued a few nonplussed clicks of the mandi-
bles, twitched the tips of its vanes, creating four whirlpools.
The coracle eased closer, to within a hundred feet, eighty—
sixty feet. Bade Beach bent forward. The kragen decided to
punish the men for their provocative actions and thrust sharply
forward. When it was but thirty feet distant. Bade Beach
tossed a noose toward the turret—and missed. From the float
came groans of disappointment; one of the gangs hastily
jerked the coracle back. The kragen swerved, turned, made a
second furious charge which brought it momentarily to within
five feet of the coracle, whereupon Bade Beach dropped the
noose over its turret. From the float came a cheer; both gangs
hauled on their lines, one snatching the coracle back to
safety, the other tightening the noose and pulling the kragen
aside, almost as it touched the coracle.

Thrashing and jerking, the kragen was dragged over to the
sea-leaning derrick, and hoisted from the water in the same
fashion as the first. This was a large beast: the derrick
creaked, the float sagged; before the kragen heaved clear
from the water sixty-five men were tugging on the end of the
lift. The derrick tilted back, the kragen swung in over the float.
The vanes were lashed, the beast lowered. Again the onlookers
surged forward, laughing, shouting, but no longer exemplifying
the fury with which they had attacked the first kragen.

184 Jack Vance

At a distance a group of Intercessors watched with curled
lips. They had not reconciled themselves to their new circum-
stances, and conscious of their status as the lowest of castes
worked as little as possible. Chisels and mallets were plied
against the kragen turret; the dome was pried loose, the
nerve nodes destroyed. Fiber buckets were brought, the body
fluids were scooped out and carried off to evaporation trays.

Sklar Hast had watched from the side. This had been a
large beast—about the size of King Kragen when first he had
approached the Old Hoats, a hundred and fifty years pre-
viously. Since they had successfully dealt with this creature,
they need have small fear of any other—except King Kragen.
And Sklar Hast was forced to admit that the answer was not
yet known. No derrick could hoist King Kragen from the
water. No line could restrain the thrust of his vanes. No float
could bear his weight. Compared to King Kragen, his dead
hulk now being hacked apart was a pygmy. . . -

From behind came a rush of feet; a woman tugged at his
elbow, gasping and gulping in the effort to catch her breath.
Sklar Hast, scanning the float in startlement, could see noth-
ing to occasion her distress. Finally she was able to blurt:

"Barquan Blasdel has taken to the sea, Barquan Blasdel is
gone!"

"What!" cried Sklar Hast.

The woman told her story. For various reasons, including
squeamishness and pregnancy, she had absented herself from
the killing of the kragen, and kept to her hut at the far side of
the float. Seated at her loom she observed a man loading bags
into a coracle, but preoccupied with her own concerns she
paid him little heed, and presently arose to the preparation of
the evening meal. As she kneaded the pulp from which the
breadstuff known as pangolay was baked, it came to her that
the man's actions had been noticeably furtive. Why had he
not participated in the killing of the kragen? The man she had
seen was Barquan Blasdel! The implications of the situation
stunned her for a moment. Wiping her hands, she went to the
hut where Blasdel and his spouse were quartered, to find no
one at home. It was still possible that she was mistaken;

Biasdel might even now be watching the killing of the kragen.

THE KRAGEN               185

So she hurried across the float to investigate. But on the way
the conviction hardened: the man indeed had been Barquan
Blasdel, and she had sought out Sklar Hast with the information.

From the first Barquan Blasdel had made no pretense of
satisfaction with his altered circumstances. His former rank
counted nothing, in fact aroused antagonism among his float-
fellows. Barquan Blasdel grudgingly adapted himself to his
new life, building sponge arbors and scraping withe. His
spouse, who on Apprise Float had commanded a corps of
four maidens and three garden-men, at first rebelled when
Blasdel required her to bake pangolay and core sponges "like
any low-caste slut," as she put it, but finally she surrendered
to the protests of her empty stomach. Her daughters adopted
themselves with better grace, and indeed the four youngest
participated with great glee at the slaughter of the kragen.
The remaining two stayed in the background, eyebrows raised
disdainfully at the vulgar fervor of their sisters.

Barquan Blasdel, his spouse, his two older daughters and
their lovers were missing, as was a sturdy six-man coracle
together with considerable stores. Sklar Hast dispatched four
coracles in pursuit, but evening had brought the west wind,
and there was no way of determining whether Blasdel had
paddled directly east. or had taken refuge in the jungle of
floats at the eastern edge of the chain, where he could hide
indefinitely.

The coracles returned to report no sign of the fugitives.
The Council of Seven gathered to consider the situation.
"Our mistake was leniency," complained Robin Magi-am, a
gnarled and weather-beaten old Swindler. "These Intercessors—
Barquan Blasdel and all the rest—are our enemies. We should
have made a complete job of it, and strangled them. Our
qualms have cost us our security."

"Perhaps." said Sklar Hast. "But I for one cannot bring
myself to commit murder—even if such murder is in our best
interest."

"These other Intercessors now—" Margram jerked his
thumb to a group of huts near the central pinion "—what of
them? Each wishes us evil. Each is now planning the same

186 Jack Vance

despicable act as that undertaken by Barquan Blasdel and his
spouse. I feel that they should be killed at once—quietly,
without malice, but with finality."

His proposal met no great enthusiasm- Arrel Sincere, a
Bezzler of complete conviction and perhaps the most caste-
conscious man on the float, said glumly, "What good do we
achieve? If Barquan Btasdel returns to the Old Floats, our
refuge is known and we must expect inimical actions."

"Not necessarily," contended Meth Cagno. "The folk of
the Old Boats gain nothing by attacking us."

Sklar Hast made a pessimistic dissent. "We have escaped
King Kragen, we acknowledge no overlord. Misery brings
Jealousy and resentment. The Intercessors can whip them to a
sullen fury." He pitched his voice in a nasal falsetto. '* 'Those
insolent fugitives' How dare they scamp their responsibility
to noble King Kragen? How dare they perform such bestial
outrages against the lesser kragen? Everyone aboard the cora-
cles! We go to punish the iconoclasts!* "

"Possibly correct," said Meth Cagno. "But the Interces-
sors are by no means the most influential folk of the Floats.
The Arbiters will hardly agree to any such schemes."

"In essence," said Phyral Berwick, "we have no informa-
tion. We speculate in a void. In fact Barquan Blasdel may
lose himself on the ocean and never return to the Old Floats.
He may be greeted with apathy or with excitement. We talk
without knowledge. It seems to me that we should take steps
to inform ourselves as to the true state of affairs: in short, that
we send spies to derive this information for us.''

Phyral Berwick's proposal ultimately became the decision
of the Seven. They also ordained that the remaining Interces-
sors be guarded more carefully, until it was definitely learned
whether or not Barquan Blasdel had returned to the Old
Floats. If such were the case the location of the New Floats
was no longer a secret, and the concensus was that the
remaining Intercessors should likewise be allowed to return,
should they choose to do so. Nicklas Rile considered the
decision soft-headed. "Do you think they would warrant us

THE KRAGEN               187

like treatment in a similar situation? Remember, they planned
that King Kragen should waylay us!"

"True enough," said Arrel Sincere wearily, "but what of
that? We can either kill them, hold them under guard, or let
them go their ways, the last option being the least taxing and
the most honorable."

Nicklas Rile made no further protest, and the council then
concerned itself with the details of the projected spy opera-
tion. None of the coracles at hand were considered suitable,
and it was decided to build a coracle of special design—long,
light, low to the water, with two sails of fine weave to catch
every whisper of wind. Three men were named to the opera-
tion, all originally of Almack Float, a small community far to
the east, in fact next to Seonia. the end of the chain. None of
the three men had acquaintance on Apprise and so stood
minimal chances of being recognized.

The coracle was built at once. A light keel of laminated
and glued withe was shaped around pegs; ribs were bent and
lashed into place; diagonal ribs were attached to these, then
me whole frame was covered with four layers of varnished
pad-skin.

At midmoming of the fourth day after Barquan Blasdel's
flight, the coracle, which was almost a canoe, departed to the
east, riding easily and swiftly over the sunny blue water. For
three hours it slid along the line of floats, each an islet
bedecked in blue, green and purple verdure, surmounted by
the arching fronds of prime plant, each surrounded by its
constellation of smaller pads. The coracle reached the final
float of the group and struck out east across the water. Water
swirled and sparkled behind the long oars; the men in their
short-sleeved white smocks working easily. Afternoon waned;

the rain clouds formed and came scudding with black brooms
hanging below. After the rain came sunset, making a glorious
display among the broken clouds- The breeze began to blow
from the west; the three men crouched and rowed with only
sufficient force to maintain headway. Then came the mauve
dusk with the constellations appearing and then night with the
stars blazing down on the glossy black water. The men took
turns sleeping, and the night passed. Before dawn the favor-

188 Jack Vance

ing wind rose; the sails were set, the coracle bubbled ahead,
with a chuckling of bow-wave and wake. The second day was
like the first. Just before dawn of the third day the men
lowered the horn into the water and listened.
Silence.

The men stood erect, looked into the west. Allowing for
the increased speed of their passage, Tranque Float should be
near at hand. But nothing could be seen but the blank horizons.

The dawn wind came; the sails were set, the coracle surged
west. At noon the men, increasingly dubious, ceased paddling,
and once more searched the horizons carefully. As before
there was nothing visible save the line dividing dark blue
from bright blue. The floats by now should be well within
sight- Had they veered too far north or too far south?

The men deliberated, and decided that while their own
course had generally been true west, the original direction of
flight might have been something south of east: hence the
floats in all probability lay behind the northern horizon. They
agreed to paddle four hours to the north, then if nothing were
seen, to return to the south.

Toward the waning of afternoon, with the rain-clouds pil-
ing up, far smudges showed themselves. Now they halted,
lowered the hom, to hear crunch crunch crunch, with star-
tling loudness. The men twisted the tube, to detect the direc-
tion of the sound. It issued from the north. Crouching low
they listened, ready to paddle hastily away if the sound grew
louder. But it seemed to lessen and the direction veered to the
east. Presently it died to near inaudibility, and the men pro-
ceeded.

The floats took on substance, extending both east and west;

soon the characteristic profiles could be discerned, and then
the hoodwink towers- Dead ahead was Aumergc, with Ap-
prise Float yet to the west-

So they paddled up the chain, the floats with familiar and
beloved names drifting past, floats where their ancestors had
lived and died: Aumerge, Quincunx, Fay, Hastings, Quatrc-
foil, with its curious cloverleaf configuration, and then the

THE KRAGEN               189

little outer group, the Bandings, and beyond, after a gap of a
mile. Apprise Float.

The sun set, the hoodwink towers began to flicker, but me
configurations could not be read. The men paddled the cora-
cle toward Apprise. Verdure bulked up into the sky; the
sounds and odors of the Old Floats wafted across the water,
inflicting nostalgic pangs upon each of me men. They landed
in a secluded little cove which had been described to them by
Phyral Berwick, covered the coracle with leaves and rubbish.
According to the plan, two remained by the coracle, while the
third, one Henry Bastaff, moved across the float toward the
central common and Apprise Market.

Hundreds of people were abroad on this pleasant evening,
but Henry Bastaff thought their mood to be weary and even a
trifle grim. He went to the ancient Apprise Inn, which claimed
to be the oldest building of the floats: a long shed beamed
with twisted oldstalks, reputedly cut at the astounding depth
of three hundred feet. Within was a long bar of laminated
strips, golden-brown with wax and use; shelves behind dis-
played jars and tubes of arrack, beer, and spirits of life, while
buffets to each end offered various delicacies and sweet-
meats. To the front wide eaves thatched with garwort frond
and lit by yellow and red lanterns protected several dozen
tables and benches where travelers rested and lovers kept
rendezvous. Henry Bastaff seated himself where he could
watch both the Apprise hoodwink tower and that of Quatre-
foil to the east. The serving maid approached; he ordered beer
and nut-wafers. As he drank and ate he listened to conversa-
tions at nearby tables and read the messages which flickered
up and down die line of floats.

The conversations were uninformative; the hoodwink mes-
sages were the usual compendium of announcements, mes-
sages, banter. Then suddenly in midmessage came a blaze,
all eighteen lights together, to signal news of great impor-
tance. Henry Bastaff sat up straight on the bench.

"Important . . . information! This . . . afternoon . . . Ap-
prise . . . Intercessor , , . Barquan Blasdel . . . kidnaped
. . . by ... the . . . rebels . . . returned . . . to . . . the . • .

190 Jack Vance

Floats . . . with . . . his . . . spouse . . . and . . . several
. . . dependents. They . . . have ... a ... harrowing . . .
tale . . . to . . . tell. The . . . rebels . . . are . . . established
... on ... a ... float . . . to . . . the . . . east . . . where
. . . they . . . kill . . . fcragen , . . with . . . merciless . . .
glee . . . and . . . plan ... a ... war ... of ... ex-
termination . . . upon . . . the . . . folk . . . of . . . the
. . . old . . . floats. Barquan Btasdel . . . escaped . . . and
. . . after ... on ... unnerving . . . voyage . . . across . . .
the . . . uncharted . . . ocean . . . late today . . . landed
... on ... Green Lamp Float. He . . . has . . . called . . .
for ... an ... immediate . . . convocation ... fo ...
consider . . . what . . . measures ... to ... take . . .
against. . . the . . . rebels . . . who . . . daily . . . wax . . .
in . . . arrogance."

CHAPTER V

Four days later Henry Bastaff reported to the Seven. "Our
arrival was precarious, for our initial direction took us many
miles to the south of the Old Floats. Nevertheless we arrived.
Apparently Blasdel experienced even worse difficulties, for
he reached Green Lamp Float about the same time that we
landed on Apprise. I sat at the Old Tavern when the news
came, and I saw great excitement. The people seemed more
curious than vindictive, even somewhat wistful. A convoca-
tion was called for the following day. Since the folk of
Almack Float would attend, I thought it best that Maibte and
Barway remain hidden. I stained my face, shaved eyebrows,
mustache and hair, and at the convocation looked eye to eye
with my Uncle Fodor the withe-peeler, who never gave a
second glance.

"The convocation was vehement and lengthy- Barquan
Blasdel resumed his rank of Apprise Intercessor. In my opin-

THE KRAGEN               191

ion Vrink Smathe, who had succeeded to the post, found no
joy in Blasdel's return.

"With great eamestness Blasdel called for a punitive expe-
dition. He spoke of those who had departed as 'iconoclasts.'
'monsters,' 'vicious scum of me world, which it was the duty
of all decent folk to expunge,'

"He aroused only lukewarm attention. No one showed
heart for the project. The new Intercessors in particular were
less than enthusiastic. Blasdel accused them of coveting their
new posts, which they would lose if the old Intercessors
returned. The new Intercessors refuted the argument with
great dignity, 'Our concern is solely for the lives of men,'
they said. 'What avail is there in destroying these folk? They
are gone; good riddance. We shall maintain our ancient ways
with more dedication because the dissidents have departed.'

"One of the new Intercessors had a crafty thought: 'Of
course, if by some means we can direct King Kragen's
attention to these fugitives, that is a different story.'

"Barquan Blasdel was forced to be content with this much.
'How can we do this?'

" 'By our usual means for summoning King Kragen: how
else?'

"Blasdel agreed. 'It is necessary to hurry. These evil folk
kill kragen and smelt metal from the blood. They plan mis-
chief against us, and we must rebuff them with decisive
severity.'

"There was further discussion, but no clear resolutions,
which exasperated Barquan Blasdel. The convocation dis-
solved; we caught the evening wind to the east."

The Seven considered Henry Bastaffs report. "At least we
are in no immediate; peril," ruminated Robin Magram. "It
appears that our surest guarantee of security is our custody of
the old Intercessors, who would supersede the new officials if
rescued. So here is a powerful deterrent against any large-
scale attack."

"Still, we always must fear discovery by King Kragen,"
stated Sklar Hast. "King Kragen is our basic enemy; it is
King Kragen whom we must destroy."

192 Jack Vance

After a minute's silence Arrel Sincere said, "That, at the
moment, is in the nature of a remote day-dream, in the mean-
time we must prepare for various contingencies, including
demolishmem by King Kragen of our new facilities. Also we
must maintain a continued source of information: in short,
spies must presently return to the Old Floats."

Henry Bastaff looked uncomfortably at his mates. "I will
volunteer, for at least one more trip. Much effort and delay could
be avoided if it were possible to sail with more assurance of
reaching the destination."

Meth Cagno said, "Brunei mentions the 'compass'—an
iron needle which points always to the north. The iron is
'magnetized* by wrapping it in a coil of copper strands and
passing an electric current through these strands. We have
copper, we have iron."

"But no electricity."

*'No electricity," agreed Melh Cagno-

"And no means of obtaining electricity."

"As to that—we shall see."

Four days later Meth Cagno summoned the Seven to his
workshop. "You will now see electricity produced."

"What? In that device?" Sklar Hast inspected the clumsy
apparatus. To one side a tube of hollow stalk five inches in
diameter and twenty feet high was supported by a scaffold.
The base was contained at one end of a long box holding
what appeared to be wet ashes. The far end of the box was
closed by a slab of compressed carbon, into which were
threaded copper wires. At the opposite end, between the tube
and wet ashes was another slab of compressed carbon.

"This is admittedly a crude device, unwieldy to operate and
of no great efficiency," said Meth Cagno. "It does however
meet our peculiar requirements; which is to say. it produces
electricity without metal, through the agency of water pres-
sure. Brunei describes it in his Dicta. He calls it the 'Rous
machine.' The tube is filled with water, which is thereby
forced through the mud, which is a mixture of ashes and
sea-slime. The water carries an electric charge which it com-
municates to the porous carbon as it seeps through. By this

THE KRAGEN                193

means a small but steady and quite dependable source of
electricity is at our hand. As you may have guessed, I have
already tested the device, and so can speak with confidence."
He turned, snapped his fingers, and his helpers mounted the
scaffold carrying buckets of water which they poured into the
tube. Meth Cagno connected the wires to a coil of several
dozen revolutions. He brought forward a dish. On a cork
rested a small rod of iron.

"I have already magnetized this iron," said Cagno. "Note
how it points to the north? Now—I bring it near the end of
the coil. See it jerk! Electricity is flowing in the wire!"

The other members of the Seven were impressed. "And
this iron needle will now serve to guide Henry Bastaff?"

"So I believe. But the Rous machine provides an even
more dramatic possibility. With electricity we can disassoci-
ate seawater to produce, after certain operations, the acid of
salt. and a caustic of countering properties as well. The acid
can then be used to produce more highly concentrated streams
of electricity—if we are able to secure more metal. There is
iron in our blood: I ask myself, where does the iron originate?
Which of our foods contains the iron? I plan to reduce each of
our foods under the lens, as well as any other distinctive
substance which might yield a concentration of metal." He
turned, went to the table, returned with a glistening object.
"Look. A bottle of glass. Bolin Hyse has produced this
bottle. He fashioned a tube of copper, fixed it to a longer tube
of withe, dipped the copper into molten glass and blew. The
result"—Meth Cagno inspected the object critically—"is not
beautiful. The glass is gray and streaked with ash. The shape
is uncertain. Nevertheless—here is a glass bottle, produced
from ash and sea-ooze. Eventually, we will be building de-
vices of great intricacy."

"Subject to the indulgence of King Kragen," muttered
Sklar Hast.

Meth Cagno threw up his hands. "King Kragen bah! We
shall kill him. When next a kragen is brought to the derrick,
allow me to deal with it. There are tests I wish to make."

194 Jack Vance

CHAPTER VI

On the world which had no name, there were no seasons, no
variations of climate except those to be found by traversing
the latitudes. Along the equatorial doldrums, where floats of
sea-plant grew in chains and clots, each day was like every
other, and the passage of a year could be detected only by
watching the night sky. Though the folk had small need for
accurate temporal distinctions, each day was numbered and
each year named for some significant event. A duration of
twenty-two years was a "surge," and was also reckoned by
number. Hence a given date might be known as the 349th day
in the Year of Malvinon's Deep Dive during the Tenth Surge.
Time-reckoning was almost exclusively the province of the
Scriveners. To most of the folk life seemed as pellucid and
effortless as the glassy blue sea at noon,

King Kragen's attack upon Tranque Hoat occurred toward
me year's end, which thereupon became the Year of Tranque's
Abasement, and it was generally assumed that the following
year would be known as the Year of the Dissenters' Going.

As the days passed and the year approached its midpoint,
Barquan Blasdel, Apprise Intercessor, instead of allowing the
memory of his kidnapping to grow dim, revived it daily with
neverflagging virulence. Each evening saw a memorandum
from Barquan Blasdel flicker up and down the chain of floats:

"Vigilance is necessary. The dissidents are led by seven men
of evil energy. They flout the majesty of King Kragen; they
despise the folk who maintain old traditions and most espe-
cially the Intercessors. They must be punished and taught
humility. Think well on this matter. Ask yourself, how may
the dissidents most expeditiously be chastened?"

The other Intercessors, while politely attending Blasdel's
urgencies, did little to give them effect. Blasdel daily became
more hectic. At a Conclave of Notables his demands that the
floats assemble an armada to invade the new floats and

THE KRAGEN               195

destroy me dissidents was vetoed by the Arbiters, Guild
Masters and Caste Chiefs, on the grounds of utter infeasibility
and pointlessness. "Let them be," growled Emacho Feroxibus,
Chief of the Quatrefoil Bezzlers. "So long as they do not
molest us, why should we molest them? I for one don't care
to risk drowning for so dismal a cause."

Barquan Blasdel, containing his temper, explained care-
fully, "The matter is more complex than this. Here is a group
who have fled in order to avoid paying their due to King
Kragen. If they are allowed to prosper, to make profit of their
defection, then other folk may be tempted to wonder, why do
we not do likewise? !f the sin of kragen-kilfing becomes
vulgar recreation, where is reverence? Where is continuity?
Where is obedience to High Authority?"

"This may be true," stated Providence Dringle, Chief
Hoodwink for the Populous Equity Float. "Nonetheless in
my opinion me cure is worse than the complaint. And to risk
a heretical opinion, I must say the benefits we derive from
High Authority no longer seem commensurate with the price
we pay."

Blasdel swung about in shock, as did the other Interces-
sors, "May I ask your meaning?" Blasdel inquired icily.

"I mean that King Kragen consumes six to seven bushels
of choice sponges daily. He maintains his rule in the waters
surrounding the floats, true, but what do we need fear from
the lesser kragen? By your own testimony the dissidents have
developed a method to kill the kragen with facility."

Blasdel said with frigid menace, "I can not overlook the
fact that your remarks are identical to the preposterous rav-
ings of the dissidents, who so rightly shall be obliterated."

"Do not rely on my help," said Providence Dringle.

"Nor mine," said Emacho Feroxibus.

The conclave had divided into two antagonistic camps, the
Intercessors and certain others supporting Barquan Blasdel,
though few favored the more extreme of his propositions.

From the foliage which surrounded the scene of the con-
clave came a crash and a muttered exclamation. A number of
men sprang into the shrubbery. There was a confused scuffle,

196

Jack Vance

the sound of blows and exclamations, and presently a man
was dragged out into the lamplight. His skin was dark. his
face was bland and bare of hair.

Barquan Blasdel marched forward. "Who are you? Why
do you iurk in these forbidden precincts?"

The man staggered and blinked foolishly. "Is this the
tavern? Pour out the arrack, pour for all! 1 am a stranger on
Apprise, I would know the quality of your food and drink."

Emacho Feroxibus snorted, "The fool is drunk. Turn him

off the float."

"No!" roared Blasdel, jerking forward in excitement. "This
is a dissident, this is a spy! 1 know him well! He has shaved
his head and his face, but never can he defeat my acuity! He
is here to learn our secrets!"

The group turned their attention upon the man, who blinked
even more vehemently. "A spy? Not I. I came to find the

Old Tavern."

Blasdel sniffed the air in front of the captive's face- "There
is no odor: neither beer nor arrack nor spirits of life. Come!
All must satisfy themselves as to this so that there will be no
subsequent contradictions and vacillations."

"What is your name?" demanded Vogel Womack, the
Parnassus Arbiter. "Your float and your caste?"

The captive took a deep breath, cast off his pretense of
drunkenness. "I am Henry Bastaff. 1 am a dissident. I am
here to learn if you plan evil against us. That is my sole

purpose."

"A spy!" cried Barquan Blasdel in a voice of horror. "A
self-confessed spy!"

"It is a serious matter," said Emacho Feroxibus, "but the
truth of the matter is undoubtedly as he has averred."

The Intercessors set up a chorus of indignant hoots and
jibes. Barquan Blasde! said, "He is guilty of at least a double
offense: first, the various illegalities entering into his dissi-
dence; and second, his insolent attempt to conspire against us,
the staunch and the faithful- The crime has occurred on
Apprise Float, and affects our relations with King Kragen.
Hence, I, Barquan Blasdel, am compelled to demand an ex-
treme penalty. Parler Denk, the new Apprise Arbiter, in such

THE KRAGEN                197

instance, can implement such a penalty by simple executive
command, without consultation with the council. Arbiter Denk,
what is your response?"

"Be not hasty," warned Vogel Womack. "Tomorrow the
man's deed will not appear so grave."

Barquan Blasdel ignored him. "Parler Denk, what is your
response?"

"1 agree, in all respects. The man is a vile dissident, an
agent of turmoil and a spy. He must suffer an extreme
penalty. To this declaration there will be allowed no appeal."

On the following day a significant alteration was made in
the method by which King Kragen was tendered his custom-
ary oblation. Previously, when King Kragen approached a
lagoon with the obvious intent of feasting, arbors overgrown
with sponges were floated to the edge of me net, for King
Kragen to pluck with his palps. Now the sponges were
plucked, heaped upon a great tray and floated forth between a
pair of coracles. When the tray was in place, Barquan Blasdel
went to his sanctum. King Kragen was close at hand; the
scraping of his chitin armor sounded loud in Blasdel's listen-
ing device. Blasdel sounded his submarine horn; the scraping
ceased, then began once more, increasing in intensity. King
Kragen was approaching.

He appeared from the east, turret and massive torso riding
above the surface, the great rectangular swimming platform
gliding through the ocean on easy strokes of his vanes.

The forward eyes noted the offering. King Kragen ap-
proached casually, inspected the tray, began to scoop the
sponges into his maw with his forward palps.

From the float folk watched in somber speculation mingled
with awe. Barquan Blasdel came gingerly forth to stand on
the edge of the pad, to gesticulate in approval as King Kragen
ate.

The tray was empty. King Kragen made no motion to
depart; Blasdel swung about, gestured to an understudy. "The
sponges: how many were offered?"

"Seven bushels. King Kragen usually eats no more."

"Today be seems to hunger. Are others plucked?"

198 Jack Vance

"Those for the market: another five bushels."
"They had best be tendered King Kragen; it is not well to
stint." While King Kragen floated motionless, the coracles
were pulled to the float, another five bushels were poured
upon the tray, and the tray thrust back toward King Kragen.
Again he ate, consuming all but a bushel or two. Then,
replete, he submerged till only his turret remained above the
water. And there he remained, moving sluggishly a few feet
forward, a few feet backward.

Nine days later a haggard Denis Maible reported the cap-
ture of Henry Bastoff to the Seven. "On the following day
King Kragen had not yet moved. It was clear that the new
method of feeding had impressed him favorably. So at noon
the tray was again filled, with at least ten bushels of sponge,
and again King Kragen devoured the lot.

"During this time we learned that Henry Bastaff had been
captured and condemned—indeed the news had gone out over
the hoodwink towers—but we could not discover where he
was imprisoned or what fate had been planned for him.

"On the third day Blasdel made an announcement, to the
effect that the dissident spy had sinned against King Kragen
and King Kragen had demanded the privilege of executing
him.

"At noon the tray went out. At the very top was a wide
board supporting a single great sponge; and below, the usual
heap. King Kragen had not moved fifty yards for three days.
He approached the tray, reached for the topmost sponge. It
seemed fastened to the board. King Kragen jerked, and so
decapitated Henry Bastaff, whose head had been stuffed into
the sponge. It was a horrible sight, with the blood spouting
upon the pile of sponges. King Kragen seemed to devour
them with particular relish.

"With Henry Bastaff dead, we no longer had reason to
delay—except for curiosity. King Kragen showed no signs of
moving, of visiting the other floats. It was clear that he found
the new feeding system to his liking. By then, Apprise Float
was bereft of sponges.

"The Intercessors conferred by hoodwink and apparently

THE KRAGEN               199

arrived at a means of dealing with the situation. King Kragen's
meal on the fourth day was furnished by Granolt Float and
ferried to Apprise by coracle. On the fifth day the sponges
were brought from Sankeston. It appears that King Kragen is
now a permanent guest at Apprise Float. ... On the evening
of the fifth day we launched our coracle and returned to New
Float."

The Seven were silent. Phyral Berwick finally made a
sound of nausea. "It is a repulsive situation. One which I
would like to change."

Sklar Hast looked toward Meth Cagno. "There is the man
who smelts metal."

Meth Cagno smiled wryly. "Our enterprises are multiply-
ing. We have found a number of sources which when bumed
in sufficiently large quantities produce at least four different
metals. None seem to be iron. We have bled everyone on the
float, twice or three times: this blood has yielded several
pounds of iron, which we have hammered and refined until
now it is hard and keen beyond all belief. Our electrical
device has produced twenty-four flasks of acid of salt, which
we maintain in bottles blown by our glass shop, which is now
an establishment completely separated from the smelting."

"This is encouraging and interesting," said Robin Magram,
"but what will it avail against King Kragen?"

Meth Cagno pursed his lips. "I have not yet completed my
experiments, and I am unable to make an unequivocal an-
swer. But in due course our preparations wit! be complete."

CHAPTER VII

Some two hundred days later, toward the end of the year,
swindlers working the waters to the east of Tranque Float
spied the armada from me east. There were two dozen canoes
sheathed with a dull black membrane. Each canoe carried a

200 Jack Vance

crew of thirty, who wore helmets and corselets of the. same
black substance, and carried lances tipped with orange metal.
They accompanied a strange craft, like none ever seen before
along the floats. It was rectangular, and rode on four parallel
pontoons. A bulwark of the black sheathing completely encir-
cled the barge, to a height of five feet. Fore and aft rose stout
platforms on which were mounted massive crossbowlike con-
trivances, the arms of which were laminated stalk and kragen
chitin, and the string cables woven from strips of kragen leather.
The hold of the barge contained two hundred glass vats, each
of two quarts capacity, each two-thirds full of pale liquid.
The barge was propelled by oars—a score on either side—and
moved with not inconsiderable speed.

The swindlers paddled with all speed to Tranque Float and
the hoodwink towers flickered an alarm: The . . . dissidents
. . . are . . . returning ... m ... force! They . . . come
. . . in . . . strange . . . black . . . canoes . . . and ... art
. . . even . . . more . . . peculiar. . . black . . . barge. They
. . . show . . . no . . . fear.

The flotilla continued up the line of floats: Thrasneck,
Bickle, Green Lamp, and at last Fay, Quatrefoil, and finally
Apprise.

In the water before the lagoon lolled King Kragen—a
bloated monstrous King Kragen, dwarfing the entire flotilla.

King Kragen swung about, the monstrous vanes sucking
whirlpools into the ocean. The eyes with opalescent films
shifting back and forth within, fixed upon the black sheathing
of canoe, barge and armor, and he seemed to recognize the
substance as kragen hide, for he emitted a snort of terrible
displeasure, jerked his vanes, and the ocean sucked and
swirled.

The barge swung sidewise to King Kragen. The two cross-
bows, each cocked and strung, each armed with MI iron
harpoon smelted from human blood, were aimed.

King Kragen sensed menace. Why otherwise should men
be so bold? He twitched his vanes, inched forward—to within
a hundred feet. Then he lunged. Vanes dug the water; with an
ear-shattering shriek King Kragen charged, mandibles snapping.

The men at die crossbows were pale as sea-foam; their

THE KRAGEN                201

fingers twitched. Sklar Hast turned to call, "Fire!" but his
voice caught in his throat and what he intended for an incisive
command sounded as a startled stammer. But the command
was understood. The left crossbow thudded, snapped, sang:

the harpoon, trailing a black cable sprang at King Kragen's
turret, buried itself. King Kragen hissed.

The right crossbow fired; the second harpoon stabbed deep
into the turret. Skiar Hast motioned with his hand to the men
in the hold. "Connect." The men joined copper to copper.
In the hold two hundred voltaic cells, each holding ten
thin-leaved cathodes and ten thin-leaved anodes, connected
first in four series of fifty, and these four series in parallel,
poured a gush of electricity along the copper cables wrapped
in varnished pad-skin, which led to the harpoons. Into King
Kragen's turret poured the energy, and King Kragen went
stiff. His vanes protruded at right angles to his body. Sklar
Hast said to Meth Cagno, "Your experiments seem to be as
valid as with the lesser kragen—luckily."

"1 never doubted," said Meth Cagno.

Sklar Hast waved to the canoes. They swung toward King
Kragen. beaching on the rigid subsurface platform. The men
swarmed up the torso. With mallets and copper chisels they
attacked the lining between dome and turret wall. There was
thirty feet of seam, but many hands at work. The lining was
broken; bars were inserted into the crack; all heaved. With a
splitting sound the dome was dislodged. It slid over and into
the water; the men leaped down into the knotted gray cords
and nodes and began hacking.

On Apprise Float a great throng had garnered. One man,
running back and forth, was Barquan Blasdel. Finally he
persuaded several score of men to embark in coracles and
attack the flotilla. Eight black canoes were on guard. Paddles
dug the water, the canoes picked up momentum, crashed into
the foremost coracles, crushing the fragile shells, throwing
n»e men into the water. The canoes backed away, turned
toward the other coracles, which retreated.

Out in the lagoon King Kragen's nerve nodes had been cast

202 Jack Vance

into the sea. The harpoons were extracted, the flow of elec-
tricity extinguished-

King Kragen floated limp, a lifeless hulk. The men plunged
into the sea to wash themselves, clambered back up on the
dead swimming platform, boarded their canoes.

The barge now eased toward Apprise Float. Barquan Blasde)
gesticulated to the folk like a crazy man. "To arms! Stakes,
chisels, mallets, knives, bludgeons! Smile the miscreants!"

Sklar Hast called to the throng, "King Kragen is dead.
What do you say to this?"

There was silence; then a faint cheer and a louder cheer,
and finally uproarious celebration.

Sklar Hast pointed a finger at Barquan Blasdel "That man
must die. He murdered Henry Bastaff. He has fed your food
to the vile King Kragen. He would have continued doing so
until King Kragen overgrew the entire float."

Barquan Blasdet made the mistake of turning to flee—an act
which triggered the counterimpulse to halt him. When he was
touched, he smote, and again he erred, for the blow brought a
counterblow and Barquan Blasdel was presently torn to pieces.

"What now?" called the crowd. "What now, Sklar Hast?"

"Nothing whatever, unless you choose to kill the other
Intercessors. King Kragen is dethroned; our duty is done. We
now return to the New Floats."

From the shore someone called out. "Come ashore, men of
the New Floats, and share our great joy- Greet your old
friends, who long have been saddened at your absence! To-
night the arrack will flow and we will play the pipes and
dance in the light of our yellow lamps!"

Sklar Hast shook his head, waved his hand and called
back: "Now we return to the New Floats. In a week certain
of us will return, and the weeks after that will see constant
traffic between Old and New Floats, and out to floats still
unknown. King Kragen is dead, the lesser kragen are our
prey, so who is there to stop us? Now that we know metal
and glass and electricity, all things are possible. Rejoice with
all our goodwill. For now, farewell."

The barge and the canoes swung about; oars and paddles
dipped into the ocean, the black flotilla receded into the east,
and disappeared.

MERMAID

There was an old belief that every land animal had its
counterpart in the sea. There's nothing to that, of course,
but we still see traces of that legend in the names given
some sea creatures. The "sea horse" is a tiny creature,
but it does have a head reminiscent of that of a small.
bony horse. Then there is the sea cow (manatee), the sea hog
(porpoise), the sea lion and sea elephant (seals), the sea robin
and sea wolf (certain fish), and so on.

It would be astonishing if, under these circumstances,
people didn't decide the sea must also harbor the equiva-
lent of human beings—sea people, in other words.

They did decide that, and legends are full of ' 'mermen''
and "mermaids." (The prefix is from an archaic English
word "mere" meaning "sea" or "lake.")

There are many circumstantial tales of mariners having
seen mermaids, but nevertheless they do not, in reality,
exist. Some people suggest that sailors are fooled by the
sight of manatees or dugongs (the "sea cows" referred to
above). These have breasts in the human position, and a
female manatee rising to the surface with one flipper
clasping her young to her breast might, at a distance, and
to a near-sighted sailor, suggest a mermaid.

Mermaids are sometimes viewed as malevolent crea-
tures who deliberately lure ships onto reefs and rocks by
exhibiting their beauty to sailors who have not seen a
woman for a long time. In this way, mermaids resemble

203

4                Hans Christian Andersen

the sirens of Greek legend, and the lorelei of Teutonic
legend. All may be personifications of wind and storm.

In more modem times, however, mermaids tend to be
portrayed as sweet and innocent, playful and alluring, and
in the following story, this is done.

THE LITTLE MERMAID

Hans Christian Andersen

Far, far from land, where the waters are as blue as the petals
of the cornflower and as clear as glass, there, where no
anchor can reach the bottom, live the mer-people. So deep in
this pan of the sea that you would have to pile many church
towers on top of each other before one of them emerged
above the surface.

Now you must not think that at the bottom of the sea there
is only white sand. No. here grow the strangest plants and
trees; their stems and leaves are so subtle that the slightest
current in the water makes them move, as if they were alive.
Big and small fishes flit in and out among their branches, just
as the birds do up on earth. At the very deepest place, the
mer-king has built his castle. Its walls are made of coral and
its long pointed windows of amber. The roof is oyster shells
that are continually opening and closing. It looks very beauti-
ful, for in each shell lies a pearl, so lustrous that it would be
fit for a queen's crown.

The mer-king had been a widower for many years; his
mother kept house for him. She was a very intelligent woman
but a little too proud of her rank; she wore twelve oysters on
her tail; the nobility were only allowed six. Otherwise, she
was a most praiseworthy woman, and she took excellent care
of her grandchildren, the little princesses. They were six
lovely mermaids; the youngest was the most beautiful. Her
complexion was as fine as the petal of a rose and her eyes as
blue as the deepest take but, just like everyone else down
there, she had no feet; her body ended in a fishtail.

205

Hans Christian Andersen

206

The mermaids were allowed to play all day in die great hall
of the castle, where flowers grew on the walls. The big amber
windows were kept open and the fishes swam in and out, just
as the swallows up on earth fly in through our windows if
they are open. But unlike the birds of the air, the fishes were
not frightened, they swam right up to the little princesses and
ate out of their hands and let themselves be petted.

Around the castle was a great park where there grew
fiery-red and deep-blue trees. Their fruits shone as though
they were the purest gold, their flowers were like flames, and
their branches and leaves were ever in motion. The earth was
tile finest sand, not white but blue, the color of burning
sulphur. There was a blue tinge to everything, down on the
bottom of the sea. You could almost believe that you were
suspended in midair and had the blue sky both above and
below you. When the sea was calm, the sun appeared like a
crimson flower, from which all light flowed.

Each little princess had her own garden, where she could
plant the flowers she liked. One of them had shaped her
flower bed so it resembled a whale; and another, as a mer-
maid. The youngest had planted red flowers in hers: she
wanted it to look like the sun; it was round and the crimson
flowers did glow as though they were so many little suns. She
was a strange little child: quiet and thoughtful. Her sisters'
gardens were filled with all sorts of things that they had
collected from shipwrecks, but she had only a marble statue
of a boy in hers. It had been cut out of stone that was almost
transparently clear and had sunk to the bottom of the sea
when the ship that had carried it was lost. Close to the statue
she had planted a pink tree; it looked like a weeping willow.
The tree was taller than the sculpture. Its long soft branches
bent toward the sand; it looked as if the top of the tree and its
root wanted to kiss each other.

The princesses liked nothing better than to listen to then-
old grandmother tell about the world above. She had to re-
count countless times all she knew about ships, towns, human
beings, and the animals that lived up on land. The youngest
of the mermaids thought it particularly wonderful that the
flowers up there had fragrance, for that they did not have on

THE LITTLE MERMAID             207

the bottom of the sea. She also liked to hear about the green
forest, where the fishes that swam among the branches could
sing most beautifully. Grandmother called the birds "fishes";

otherwise, her little grandchildren would not have understood
her, since they had never seen a bird.

"But when you are fifteen, then you will be allowed to
swim to the surface," she promised. "Then you can climb up
on a rock and sit and watch the big ships sail by. If you dare,
you can swim close enough to the shore to see the towns and
the forest."

The following year, the oldest of the princesses would be
fifteen. From one sister to the next, there was a difference in
age of about a year, which meant that the youngest would
have to wait more than five whole years before she would be
allowed to swim up from the bottom of the sea and take a
look at us. But each promised the others that she would return
after her first day above, and tell about the things she had
seen and describe what she thought was loveliest of all. For
the old grandmother could not satisfy their curiosity.

None of the sisters longed so much to see the world above
as the youngest, the one who had to wait the longest before
she could leave her home. Many a night this quiet, thoughtful
little mermaid would stand by the open window, looking up
through the dark blue waters where the fishes swam. She
could see the moon and the stars; they looked paler but larger
down here under the sea. Sometimes a great shadow passed
by like a cloud and then she knew that it was either a whale
or a ship, with its crew and passengers, mat was sailing high
above her. None on board could have imagined that a little
beautiful mermaid stood in the depths below them and stretched
her little white hands up toward the keel of their ship.

The oldest of the sisters had her fifteenth birthday and
swam up to the surface of the sea. When she returned she had
hundreds of things to tell. But of everything that had hap-
pened to her, the loveliest experience by far. she claimed,
had been to lie on a sandbank, when the sea was calm and the
moon was out, and look at a great city. The lights from the
windows and streets had shone like hundreds of stars; and she
had been able to hear the rumbling of the carriages and the

Hans Christian Andersen

208

voices of human beings and, best of all, the sound of music.
She had seen all the church towers and steeples, and heard
their bells ring. And just because she would never be able to
enter the city, she longed to be able to do that more than

anything else.

How carefully her youngest sister listened to every word
and remembered everything mat she had been told. When,
late in the evening, the little mermaid would stand dreaming
by me window and look up through the blue water, then she
imagined that she could see the city and hear the bells of the

churches ringing.

The next year the second of the sisters was allowed to
swim away from home. Her little head had emerged above
the water just at the moment when the sun was setting. This
sight had been so beautiful that she could hardly describe it.
The whole heaven had been covered in gold and the clouds
that had sailed above her had been purple and crimson. A
flight of wild swans, like a white veil Just above the water,
had flown by. She had swum toward the sun, but it had set,
taking the colors of the clouds, sea, and sky with it.

The third of the sisters, who came of age the following
year, was the most daring among them. She had swum way
up a broad river! There she had seen green hills covered with
vineyards, castles, and farms that peeped out through the
great forests. She had heard the birds sing and the sun had
been so hot that she had had to swim under the water, some
of the time, just to cool off. In a little bay, she had come
upon some naked children who were playing and splashing in
the water. She had wanted to join them, but when they saw
her they got frightened and ran away. A little black animal
had come: it was a dog. But she had never seen one before. It
had barked so loudly and fiercely that she became terrified
and swam right back to the sea. What she never would forget
as long as she lived were the beautiful forest, the green hills,
and the sweet little children who had been able to swim even
though they had no fishtails as she had.

The fourth of the sisters was timid. She stayed far away
from shore, out in me middle of the ocean. But that was the
most beautiful place of all, she asserted. You could see ever

THE UTTLE MERMAID            209

so far and the sky above was like a clear glass bell. The ships
she had seen had been so far away that they had looked no
bigger than gulls. But the little dolphins had turned somer-
saults for her and the great whales had sprayed water high up
into the air, so that it looked as though there were more than a
hundred fountains.

The fifth sister's birthday was in the winter and. therefore,
she saw something none of her sisters had seen. The ocean
had been green, and huge icebergs had been floating on it.
Each of them had been as lovely as a pearl and yet larger than
the church towers that human beings built. They had the most
fantastic shapes and their surface glittered like diamonds. She
had climbed up on the largest one of them all; the wind had
played with her long hair, and all the ships had fearfully kept
away. Toward evening a storm had begun to blow; dark clouds
had gathered and bolts of lightning had flashed while the
rounder rolled. The waves had lifted the iceberg high up on
their shoulders, and the lightning had colored the ice red. The
ships had taken down their sails; and on board, fear and terror
had reigned. But the mermaid had just sat on her iceberg and
watched the bolts of lightning zigzag across the sky.

The first time that any of the sisters had been allowed to
swim to the surface, each had been delighted with her free-
dom and all she had seen. But now that they were grownups
and could swim anywhere they wished, they lost interest in
wandering far away; after a month or two the world above
lost its attraction. When they were away, they longed for
their home, declaring it the most beautiful place of all and the
only spot where one really felt at home.

Still, many evenings the five sisters would take each oth-
er's hands and rise up through the waters. They had voices
far lovelier than any human being. When a storm began to
cage and a ship was in danger of being wrecked, then the five
sisters would swim in front of it and sing about how beautiful
h was down at the bottom of the sea. They begged the sailors
not to be frightened but to come down to them. The men
could not understand the mermaids' songs; they thought it
was the wind that was singing. Besides, they would never see
the beauty of the world below them, for if a ship sinks the

Hans Christian Andersen

210

seamen drown, and when they arrive at the mer-king's castle
they are dead.

On such evenings, while her sisters swam, hand in hand,
up through the water, the youngest princess had to stay
below. She would look sadly up after them and feel like crying;

but mermaids can't weep and that makes their suffering even
deeper and greater.

"Oh, if only I were fifteen." she would sigh. "I know that
1 shall love the world above, and the human beings who live
up there!"

At last she, too, was fifteen!

"Now you are off our hands," said the old dowager
queen. "Let me dress you, just as I dressed your sisters."
She put a wreath of white lilies around her hair; each of the
petals of every flower was half a pearl. She let eight oysters
clip themselves onto the little mermaid's tail, so that every-
one could see that she was a princess.

"It hurts." said the little mermaid.

"One has to suffer for position," said her old grand-
mother. The little mermaid would gladly have exchanged her
heavy pearl wreath for one of me red flowers from her garden
(she thought they suited her much better) but she didn't dare.

"Farewell," she said and rose, light as a bubble, up
through the water.

The sun had just set when she lifted her head above the
surface. The clouds still had the color of roses and in the
horizon was a fine line of gold; in the pale pink sky the first
star of evening sparkled, clearly and beautifully. The air was
warm and the sea was calm. She saw a three-masted ship;

only one of its sails was unfurled, and it hung motionless in
the still air. Up on the yards the sailors sat, looking down
upon me deck from which music could be heard. As the
evening grew darker, hundreds of little colored lamps were
hung from the rigging; they looked like the flags of all the
nations of the world. The little mermaid swam close to a
porthole and the swells lifted her gently so that she could look
in through it. The great cabin was filled with gaily dressed
people; the handsomest among them was a young prince with
large, dark eyes. He looked no older than sixteen, and that

THE UTTLE MERMAID            211

was, in truth, his age; that very day was his birthday. All the
festivities were for him. The sailors danced on the deck, and
as the young prince came up to watch them, a hundred
rockets flew into the sky.

The night became as bright as day and the little mermaid
got so frightened that she ducked down under the water. But
she soon stuck her head up again; and then it looked as if all
the stars of the heavens were falling down on top of her. She
had never seen fireworks before. Pinwheels turned; rockets
shot into the air, and their lights reflected in the dark mirror
of the sea. The deck of the ship was so illuminated that every
rope could clearly be seen. Oh, how handsome the young
prince was! He laughed and smiled and shook hands with
everyone, while music was played in the still night.

!t grew late, but the little mermaid could not turn her eyes
away from the ship and the handsome prince. The colored
lamps were put out. No more rockets shot into the air and no
more cannons were fired. From the depth of the ocean came a
rumbling noise. The little mermaid let the waves be her
rocking horse, and they lifted her so that she could look in
through the porthole. The ship started to sail faster and faster,
as one sail after another was unfurled. Now the waves grew
in size and black clouds could be seen on the horizon and far
away lightning flashed.

A storm was brewing. The sailors took down the sails. The
great ship tossed and rolled in the huge waves that rose as
though they were mountains that wanted to bury the ship and
break its proud mast. But the ship, like a swan, rode on top
of the waves and let them lift her high into the sky. The little
mermaid thought it was very amusing to watch the ship
sailing so fast, but the sailors didn't. The ship creaked and
groaned; the great planks seemed to bulge as the waves hit
them. Suddenly the mast snapped as if it were a reed. It
tumbled into the water. The ship heeled over, and the sea
broke over it.

Only now did the little mermaid understand that the ship
was in danger. She had to be careful herself and keep away
from the spars and broken pieces of timber that were being
flung by the waves. For a moment it grew so dark that she

212 Hans Christian Andersen

could see nothing, then a bolt of lightning illuminated the
sinking ship. She looked for the young prince among the
terrified men on board who were trying to save themselves,
but not until that very moment, when the ship finally sank,
did she see him.

At first, she thought joyfully, "Now he will come down to
me!" But then she remembered that man could not live in the
sea and the young prince would be dead when he came to her
father's castle.

"He must not die," she thought, and dived in among the
wreckage, forgetting the danger that she herself was in, for
any one of the great beams that were floating in the turbulent
sea could have crushed her.

She found him! He was too tired to swim any farther; he
had no more strength in his arms and legs to fight the
storm-whipped waves. He closed his eyes, waiting for death,
and he would have drowned, had the tittle mermaid not saved
him. She held his head above water and let the waves carry
them where they would.

By morning the storm was over. Of the wrecked ship not a
splinter was to be found. The sun rose, glowing red, and its
rays gave color to the young prince's cheeks but his eyes
remained closed. The little mermaid kissed his forehead and
stroked his wet hair. She thought that he looked like the
statue in her garden. She kissed him again and wished pas-
sionately that he would live.

In the far distance she saw land; the mountains rose blue in
the morning air. The snow on their peaks was as glittering
white as swan's feathers- At the shore there was a great
forest, and in its midst lay a cloister or a church, the little
mermaid did not know which. Lemon and orange trees grew
in the garden, and by the entrance gate stood a tall palm tree.
There was a little bay nearby, where the water was calm and
deep- The mermaid swam with her prince toward the beach-
She laid him in the fine white sand, taking care to place his
head in the warm sunshine far from the water.

In the big white buildings bells were ringing and a group of
young girls was coming out to walk in the garden. The little
mermaid swam out to some rocks and hid behind them. She

THE UTTLE MERMAID            213

covered her head with seaweed so mat she could not be seen
and then peeped toward land, to see who would find the poor
prince.

Soon one of the young girls discovered him. At first she
seemed frightened, and she called the others. A lot of people
came. The prince opened his eyes and smiled up at those who
stood around him—not out at the sea, where the little mer-
maid was hiding. But then he could not possibly have known
that she was there and that it was she who had saved him.
The little mermaid felt so terribly sad; the prince was carried
into the big white building, and the little mermaid dived
sorrowfully down into the sea and swam home to her father's
castle.

She had always been quiet and thoughtful. Now she grew
even more silent. Her sisters asked her what she had seen on
her first visit up above, but she did not answer.

Many mornings and evenings she would swim back to the
place where she had last seen the prince. She watched the
fruits in the orchard ripen and be picked, and saw the snow
on the high mountains melt, but she never saw the prince.
She would return from each of these visits a little sadder. She
would seek comfort by embracing the statue in her garden.
which looked like the prince. She no longer tended her
flowers, and they grew into a wilderness, covering the paths
and weaving their long stalks and leaves into the branches of
die trees, so mat it became quite dark down in her garden-

At last she could bear her sorrow no longer and told one of
her sisters about it; and almost at once the others knew as
well. But no one else was told; that is. except for a couple of
other mermaids, but they didn't tell it to anyone except their
nearest and dearest friends. It was one of these friends who
knew who the prince was. She, too, had seen the birthday
party on the ship, and she could tell where he came from and
where his kingdom was.

"Come, little sister," the other princesses called, and with
their arms around each other's shoulders they swam.

All in a row they rose to the surface when they came to the
shore where the prince's castle stood. It was built of glazed
yellow stones and had many flights of marble stairs leading

2!4 Hans Christian Andersen

up to it. The steps of one of them went all the way down to
the sea. Golden domes rose above the roofs, and pillars bore
an arcade that went all the way around the palace. Between
the pillars stood marble statues: they looked almost as if they
were alive. Through the clear glass of the tall windows, one
could look into the most beautiful chambers and halls, where
silken curtains and tapestries hung on the walls; and there
were large paintings that were a real pleasure to look at. In
the largest hall was a fountain. The water shot high up toward
the glass cupola in the roof, through which the sunbeams fell
on the water and the beautiful flowers that grew in the basin
of the fountain.

Now that she knew where the prince lived, the little mer-
maid spent many evenings and nights looking at the splendid
palace. She swam nearer to the land than any of her sisters
had ever dared. There was a marble balcony that cast its
shadow across a narrow canal, and beneath it she hid and
watched the young prince, who thought that he was all alone
in the moonlight

Many an evening she saw the prince sail with his musicians
in his beautiful boat. She peeped from behind the tall reeds;

and if someone noticed her silver-white veil, they probably
thought that they had only seen a swan stretching its wings.

Many a night she heard the fishermen talking to each other
and telling about how kind and good the prince was; and she
was so glad that she had saved his life when she had found
him, half dead, drifting on the waves. She remembered how
his head had rested on her chest and with what passion she
had kissed him. But he knew nothing about his rescue; he
could not even dream about her.

More and more she grew to love human beings and wished
that she could leave the sea and live among them. It seemed
to her that their world was far larger than hers; on ships, they
could sail across the oceans and they could climb the moun-
tains high up above the clouds. Their countries seemed ever
so large, covered with fields and forests; she knew that they
stretched much farther than she could see. There was so much
that she wanted to know; there were many questions that her
sisters could not answer. Therefore she asked her old grand-

THE LITTLE MERMAID            215

mother, since she knew much about the "higher world," as
she called the lands above me sea.

"If men are not so unlucky as to drown," asked the little
mermaid, "then do they live forever? Don't they die as we
do, down here in the sea?"

"Yes, they do," answered her grandmother. "Men must
also die and their life span is shorter than ours. We can live
until we are three hundred years old; but when we die, we
become me foam on the ocean. We cannot even bury our
loved ones. We do not have immortal souls. When we die,
we shall never rise again. We are like the green reeds: once
they are cut they will never be green again. But men have
souls that live eternally, even after their bodies have become
dust. They rise high up into the clear sky where the stars are.
As we rise up through the water to took at the world of man,
they rise up to the unknown, me beautiful world, that we
shall never see."

"Why do I not have an immortal soul!" sighed the little
mermaid unhappily. "I would give all my three hundred
years of life for only one day as a human being if, afterward,
I should be allowed to live in the heavenly world."

"You shouldn't think about things like that," said her old
grandmother. "We live far happier down here than man does
up there."

"I am going to die, become foam on the ocean, and never
hear the music of the waves or see the flowers and the
burning red sun. Can't I do anything to win an immortal
soul?"

"No," said the old merwoman. "Only if a man should fall
so much in love with you that you were dearer to him than his
mother and father; and he cared so much for you that alt his
thoughts were of his love for you; and he let a priest take his
right hand and put it in yours, while he promised to be
eternally true to you, then his soul would flow into your body
and you would be able to partake of human happiness. He
can give you a soul and yet keep his own. But it wilt never
happen. For that which we consider beautiful down here in
the ocean, your fishtail, they find ugly up above, on earth.

216 Hans Christian Andersen

They have no sense; up there, you have to have two clumsy
props, which they call legs, in order to be called beautiful."

The little mermaid sighed and glanced sadly down at her
fishtail.

"Let us be happy," said her old grandmother. "We can
swim and jump through the waves for three hundred years,
that is time enough. Tonight we are going to give a court ball
in the castle."

Such a splendor did not exist up above on the earth. The walls
and the ceilings of the great hall were made of clear glass;

four hundred giant green and pink oyster shells stood in rows
along the walls. Blue flames rose from them and not only
lighted the hall but also illuminated the sea outside. Number-
less fishes—both big and small—swam close to the glass
walls; some of them had purple scales, others seemed to be of
silver and gold. Through the great hall flowed a swiftly
moving current, and on that the mermen and mermaids danced,
while they sang their own beautiful songs. Such lovely voices
are never heard up on earth; and the tittle mermaid sang most
beautifully of them all. The others clapped their hands when
she had finished, and for a moment she felt happy, knowing
that she had the most beautiful voice both on earth and in the
sea.

But soon she started thinking again of the world above.
She could not forget the handsome prince, and mourned
because she did not have an immortal soul like his. She
sneaked out of her father's palace, away from the ball, from
the gaiety, down into her tittle garden.

From afar the sound of music, of homs being played, came
down to her through the water; and she thought: "Now he is
sailing up there, the prince whom I love more than I love my
father and mother: he who is ever in my thoughts and in
whose hands I would gladly place all my hope of happiness. I
would dare to do anything to win him and an immortal soul!
While my sisters are dancing in the palace, I will go to the
sea witch, though 1 have always feared her, and ask her to
help me."

The little mermaid swam toward the turbulent maelstrom;

beyond it the sea witch lived. In this part of the great ocean

THE LITTLE MERMAJD             217

die little mermaid had never been before; here no flowers or
seaweeds grew, oniy me gray naked sea bed stretched toward
the center of the maelstrom, that great whirlpool where the
water, as if it had been set in motion by gigantic mill wheels,
twisted and turned: grinding, tearing, and sucking anything
that came within its reach down into its depths. Through this
turbulence the little mermaid had to swim, for beyond it lay
the bubbling mud flats that the sea witch called her bog and
that had to be crossed to come to the place where she lived.

The sea witch's house was in the midst of the strangest
forest. The bushes and trees were gigantic polyps that were
half plant and half animal. They looked like snakes with
hundreds of heads, but they grew out of the ground. Their
branches were long slimy arms, and they had fingers as
supple as worms; every limb was in constant motion from the
root to the utmost point. Everything they could reach they
grasped, and never let go of it again. With dread the little
mermaid stood at the entrance to the forest; her heart was
beating with fear, she almost turned back. But then she
remembered her prince and the soul she wanted to gain and
her courage returned.

She braided her long hair and bound it around her head, so
the polyps could not catch her by it. She held her arms folded
tightly across her breast and then she flew through the water
as fast as the swiftest fish. The ugly polyps stretched out their
arms and their fingers tried to grasp her. She noticed that
every one of them was holding, as tightly as iron bands, onto
something it had caught. Drowned human beings peeped out
as white skeletons among the polpys' arms. There were sea
chests, rudders of ships, skeletons of land animals; and then
she saw a poor little mermaid who had been caught and
strangled; and this sight was to her the most horrible.

At last she came to a great, slimy, open place in the middle
of the forest. Big fat eels played in the mud, showing their
ugly yellow stomachs. Here the witch had built her house out
of the bones of drowned sailors, and there she sat letting a big
ugly toad eat out of her mouth, as human beings sometimes
let a canary eat sugar candy out of theirs. The ugly eels she

218 Hans Christian Andersen

called her little chickens, and held them close to her spongy
chest.

"I know what you want," she cackled. "And it. is stupid of
you. But you shall have your wish, for it will bring you
misery, little princess. You want to get rid of your fishtail,
and instead have two stumps to walk on as human beings
have, so that the prince will fall in love with you; and you
will gain both him and an immortal soul." The witch laughed
so loudly and evilly that the toad and eels she had had on her
lap jumped down into the mud.

"You came at the right time," she said. "Tomorrow I
could not have helped you; you would have had to wait a
year. I will mix you a potion. Drink it tomorrow morning
before the sun rises, while you are sitting on the beach. Your
tail will divide and shrink, until it becomes what human beings
call 'pretty legs.' It will hurt; it will feel as if a sword were
going through your body. All who see you will say that you
are the most beautiful human child they have ever seen. You
will walk more gracefully than any dancer; but every time
your foot touches the ground it will feel as though you were
walking on knives so sharp that your blood must flow. If you
are willing to suffer all this, then 1 can help you."

"I will," whispered the little mermaid, and thought of her
prince and how she would win an immortal soul.

"But remember," screeched the witch, "that once you have
a human body you can never become a mermaid again. Never
again shall you swim through the waters with your sisters to
your father's castle. If you cannot make the prince fall so
much in love with you that he forgets both his father and
mother, because his every thought concerns only you, and he
orders the priest to take his right hand and place it in yours,
so that you become man and wife; then, the first morning
after he has married another, your heart will break and you
will become foam on the ocean."

"I still want to try," said the little mermaid, and her face
was as white as a corpse.

"But you will have to pay me, too," grinned the witch.
"And I want no small payment. You have the most beautiful
voice of all those who live in the ocean. I suppose you have

THE LITTLE MERMAID            219

thought of using that to charm your prince; but that voice you
will have to give to me. I want the most precious thing you
have to pay for my potion. It contains my own blood, so that
it can be as sharp as a double-edged sword."

"But if you take my voice," said the little mermaid,
"what will I have left?"

"Your beautiful body," said the witch. "Your graceful
walk and your lovely eyes. Speak with them and you will be
able to capture a human heart. Have you lost your courage?
Stick out your little tongue, and let me cut it off in payment.
and you shall have the potion."

"Let it happen," whispered the little mermaid.

The witch took out a caldron in which to make the magic
potion. "Cleanliness is a virtue," she said. And before she
put the pot over the fire, she scrubbed it with eels, which she
had made into a whisk.

She cut her chest and let her blood drip into the vessel. The
stream that rose became strange figures that were terrifying to
see. Every minute, the witch put something different into the
caldron. When the brew reached a rolling boil, it sounded as
though a crocodile were crying. At last the potion was fin-
ished. It looked as clear and pure as water.

"Here it is," said the witch, and cut out the little mer-
maid's tongue. Now she was mute, she could neither speak
DOT sing.

"If any of the polyps should try to grab you, on your way
back through my forest," said the witch, "you need only
spill one drop of the potion on it and its arms and fingers will
splinter into a thousand pieces."

But the little mermaid didn't have to do that. Fearfully, the
polpys drew away when they saw what she was carrying in
her hands; the potion sparkled as though it were a star.
Safely, she returned through the forest, the bog, and the
maelstrom.

She could see her father's palace. The lights were extin-
guished in the great hall. Everyone was asleep; and yet she
did not dare to seek out her sisters; now that she was mute
and was going away from them forever. She felt as if her
beat would break with sorrow. She sneaked down into the

Hans Christian Andersen

220

garden and picked a flower from each of her sisters' gardens;

then she threw a thousand finger kisses toward the palace and
swam upward through the deep blue sea.

The sun had not yet risen when she reached the prince's
castle and sat down on the lowest step of the great marble
stairs. The moon was still shining clearly. The little mermaid
drank the potion and it felt as if a sword were piercing her
little body. She fainted and lay as though she were dead.

When the sun's rays touched the sea she woke and felt a
burning pain; but the young prince stood in front of her and
looked at her with his coal-black eyes. She looked downward
and saw then that she no longer had a fishtail but the most
beautiful, little, slender legs that any girl could wish for. She
was naked; and therefore she took her long hair and covered

herself with it-

The prince asked her who she was and how she had got
there. She looked gently and yet ever so sadly up at him with
her deep blue eyes, for she could not speak. He took her by
the hand and led her up to his castle. And just as the witch
had warned, every step felt as though she were walking on
sharp knives. But she suffered it gladly. Gracefully as a
bubble rising in the water, she walked beside the prince; and
everyone who saw her wondered how she could walk so

lightly.

In the castle, she was clad in royal clothes of silk and
muslin. She was the most beautiful of all, but she was mute
and could neither sing nor speak. Beautiful slave girls, clad in
silken clothes embroidered with gold, sang for the prince and
his royal parents. One sang more beautifully than the rest,
and the prince clapped his hands and smiled to her; then the
little mermaid was filled with sorrow, for she knew that she
had once sung far more beautifully. And she thought, "Oh, if
he only knew that to be with him I have given away my voice
for all eternity."

Now the slave girls danced, gracefully they moved to me
beautiful music. Suddenly the little mermaid lifted her hands
and rose on me tips of her toes. She floated more than danced
across the floor. No one had ever seen anyone dance as she

THE UTTLE MERMAID             221

did. Her every movement revealed her loveliness and her
eyes spoke far more eloquently than the slave's song.

Everyone was delighted, especially the prince. He called
her his little foundling. She danced again and again, even
though each time her little foot touched the floor she felt as if
she had stepped on a knife. The prince declared that she
should never leave him, and she was given permission to sleep
in front of his door on a velvet pillow.

The prince had men's clothes made for her, so that she
could accompany him when he went horseback riding. Through
fte sweet-smelling forest they rode, where green branches
touched their shoulders and little birds sang among the leaves.
Together they climbed the high mountains and her feet bled
so much that others noticed it; but she smiled and followed
her prince up ever higher until they could see the clouds sail
below them, like flocks of birds migrating to foreign lands.

At night in the castle, while the others slept, she would
walk down the broad marble stairs to the sea and cool her
poor burning feet in the cold water. Then she would think of
her sisters, down in the deep sea.

One night they came; arm in arm they rose above the
surface of the water, singing ever so sadly. She waved to
mem, and they recognized her, and they told her how much
sorrow she had brought them. After that they visited her
every night; and once she saw, far out to sea, her old grand-
mother. It had been years since she had stuck her head up
into the air; and there, too, was her father the mer-king with
his crown on his head. They stretched their hands toward her
but did not dare come as near to the land as her sisters.

Day by day the prince grew fonder and fonder of her; but
he loved her as he would have loved a good child, and had no
thought of making her his queen. And she had to become his
wife or she would never have an immortal soul, but on the
morning after his marriage would become foam on the great
ocean.

"Don't you love me more than you do all others?" was the
message in the little mermaid's eyes when the prince kissed
her lovely forehead.

"Yes, you are the dearest to me,** said the prince, "for

222 Hans Christian Andersen

you have the kindest heart of them all. You are devoted to me
and you look like a young girl 1 once saw, and will probably
never see again. I was in a shipwreck. The waves carried me
ashore, where a holy temple lay. Many young girls were in
service there; one of them, the youngest of them all, found
me on the beach and saved my life. I saw her only twice, but
she is the only one I can love in this world; and you look like
her. You almost make her picture disappear from my soul.
She belongs to the holy temple and, therefore, good fortune
has sent you to me instead, and we shall never part."

"Oh, he does not know that it was I who saved his life,"
thought the little mermaid. "I carried him across the sea to
the forest where the temple stood. I hid behind the rocks and
watched over him until he was found. I saw that beautiful girl
whom he loves more than me!" And the little mermaid
sighed deeply, for cry she couldn't. "He has said that the girl
belongs to the holy temple and will never come out into the
world, and they will never meet again. But I am with him and
see him every day. I will take care of him, love him, and
devote my life to him."

Everyone said that the young prince was to be married; he
was to have the neighboring king's daughter, a beautiful
princess. A magnificent ship was built and made ready. It
was announced that the prince was traveling to see the neigh-
boring kingdom, but mat no one believed. "It is not the
country but the princess he is to inspect," they all agreed.

The little mermaid shook her head and smiled; she knew
what the prince thought, and they didn't-

"1 must go,'* he had told her, "I must look at the beautiful
princess, my parents demand it. But they won't force me to
carry her home as my bride. I can't love her. She does not
look like the girl from the temple as you do. If I ever marry, I
shall most likely choose you, my little fondling with the eloquent
eyes." And he kissed her on her red lips and played with her
long hair, and let his head rest so near her heart mat it
dreamed of human happiness and an immortal soul.

"Are you afraid of the ocean, my little silent child?" asked
the prince as they stood on the deck of the splendid ship that
was to sail them to the neighboring kingdom. He told the

THE LITTLE MERMAID              223

little mermaid how the sea can be still or stormy, and about
the fishes that live in it, and what the divers had seen
underneath the water. She smiled as he talked, for who knew
better than she about the world on the bottom of the ocean?

In the moonlit night, when everyone slept but the sailor at
the rudder and the lookout in the bow, she sat on the bulwark
and looked down into the clear water. She thought she saw
her father's palace; and on the top of its tower her old
grandmother was standing with her silver crown on her head,
looking up through the currents of the sea, toward the keel of
the ship. Her sisters came; they looked at her so sorrowfully
and wrung their white hands in despair; she waved to them
and smiled. She wanted them to know that she was happy,
but just at that moment the little cabin boy came and her
sisters dived down under the water; he saw nothing but some
white foam on the ocean.

The next morning the ship sailed into the harbor of the
great town that belonged to the neighboring king. All the
church bells were ringing, and from the tall towers trumpets
blew, while the soldiers stood at attention, with banners
flying and bayonets on their rifles.

Every day another banquet was held, and balls and parties
followed one after the other. But the princess attended none
of them, for she did not live in the palace; she was being
educated in the holy temple, where she was to leam all the
royal virtues. But at last she came.

The little mermaid wanted ever so much to see her; and
when she finally did, she had to admit mat a more beautiful
girl she had never seen before. Her skin was so delicate and
fine, and beneath her long dark lashes smiled a pair of
faithful, dark blue eyes.

"It is you!" exclaimed the prince. "You arc the one who
saved me, when I lay half dead on the beach!" And he
embraced his blushing bride.

"Oh, now I am too happy," he said to the little mermaid.
"That which I never dared hope has now happened! You will
share my joy, for I know that you love me more than any of
the others do."

The tittle mermaid kissed his hand; she felt as if her heart

224 Hans Christian Andersen

were breaking. His wedding morning would bring her death
and she would be changed into foam of the ocean.

All the churchbeils rang and heralds rode through the
streets and announced the wedding to the people. On all the
altars costly silver lamps burned with fragrant oils. The priests
swung censers with burning incense in them, while the prince
and the princess gave each other their hands, and the bishop
blessed them. The little mermaid, dressed in silk and gold,
held the train of the bride's dress, but her ears did not hear the
music, nor did her eyes see the holy ceremony, for this night
would bring her death, and she was thinking of all she had
lost in this world.

The bride and bridegroom embarked upon the prince's
ship; cannons saluted and banners flew. On the main deck, a
tent of gold and scarlet cloth had been raised; there on the
softest of pillows the brida! couple would sleep.

The sails were unfurled, and they swelled in the wind and
me ship glided across the transparent sea.

When it darkened and evening came, colored lamps were
lit and the sailors danced on the deck. The little mermaid
could not help remembering the first time she had emerged
above the waves, when she had seen the almost identical
sight. She whirled in the dance, glided as the swallow does in
the air when it is pursued. Everyone cheered and applauded
her. Never had she danced so beautifully; the sharp knives cut
her feet, but she did not feel it, for the pain in her heart was
far greater. She knew that this was the last evening that she
would see him for whose sake she had given away her lovely
voice and left her home and her family; and he would never
know of her sacrifice. It was the last night mat she would
breathe the same air as he, or look out over the deep sea and
up into the star-blue heaven. A dreamless, eternal night awaited
her, for she had no soul and had not been able to win one.

Until midnight all was gaiety aboard the ship, and the
mermaid danced and laughed with the thought of death in
her heart. Then the prince kissed his bride and she fondled his
long black hair and, arm in arm, they walked into their
splendorous tent, to sleep.

The ship grew quiet. Only the sailor at the helm and the

THE LITTLE MERMAID             225

little mermaid were awake. She stood with her white arms
resting on the railing and looked toward the east. She searched
the horizon for the pink of dawn; she knew that the first
sunbeams would kill her.

Out of the sea rose her sisters, but the wind could no
longer play with their long beautiful hair, for their heads had
been shorn.

"We have given our hair to me sea witch, so that she
would help you and you would not have to die this night.
Here is a knife that the witch has given us. Look how sharp it
is! Before the sun rises, you must plunge it into the heart of
die prince; when his warm blood sprays on your feet, they will
turn into a fishtail and you will be a mermaid again. You will
be able to live your three hundred years down in the sea with
us, before you die and become foam on the ocean. Hurry! He
or you must die before the sun rises. Our grandmother moums;

she, too, has no hair; hers has fallen out from grief. Kill the
prince and come back to us! Hurry! See, there is a pink haze
on the horizon. Soon the sun will rise and you will die."

The little mermaid heard the sound of her sisters' deep and
strange sighing before they disappeared beneath the waves.

She pulled aside the crimson cloth of the tent and saw the
beautiful bride sleeping peacefully, with her head resting on
the prince's chest. The little mermaid bent down and kissed
his handsome forehead. She turned and looked at the sky;

more and more, it was turning red. She glanced at the sharp
knife; and once more she looked down at the prince. He
moved a little in his steep and whispered the name of his
bride. Only she was in his thoughts, in his dreams! The little
mermaid's hand trembled as it squeezed the handle of the
knife, then she threw the weapon out into the sea. The waves
turned red where it fell, as if drops of blood were seeping up
through the water.

Again she looked at the prince; her eyes were already
glazed in death. She threw herself into the sea and felt her
body changing into foam.

The sun rose out of the sea, its rays felt warm and soft on
me deathly cold foam. But the little mermaid did not feel
death, she saw the sun, and up above her floated hundreds of

226 Hans Christian Andersen

airy, transparent forms. She could see hght through them, see
the sails of the ship and the blood-red clouds. Their voices
were melodious, so spiritual and tender that no human ear
could hear them, just as their forms were so fragile and fine
that no human eye could see them. So light were they that
they glided through the air, though they had no wings. The
little mermaid looked down and saw that she had an ethereal
body like theirs.

"Where am I?" she asked; and her voice sounded like
theirs—so lovely and so melodious that no human music
could reproduce it.

"We are the daughters of the air," they answered. "Mer-
maids have no immortal souls and can never have one, unless
they can obtain the love of a human being. Their chance of
obtaining eternal life depends upon others. We, daughters of
the air, have not received an eternal soul either; but we can
win one by good deeds. We fly to the warm countries, where
the heavy air of the plague rests, and blow cool winds to
spread it. We carry the smell of flowers that refresh and heal
the sick. If for three hundred years we earnestly try to do       ^
what is good, we obtain an immortal soul and can take part in       ^
the eternal happiness of man. You, little mermaid, have tried
with all your heart to do the same. You have suffered and        ^,
borne your suffering bravely; and that is why you are now
among us, the spirits of the air. Do your good deeds and in       ^
three hundred years an immortal soul will be yours."              ').

The little mermaid lifted her amis up toward God's sun,      , '
and for the first time she felt a tear.

She heard noise coming from the ship. She saw the prince
and the princess searching for her. Sadly they looked at the
sea, as if they knew that she had thrown herself into the       '^
waves. Without being seen, she kissed the bride*s forehead
and smiled at the prince; then she rose together with the other
children of the air, up into a pink cloud that was sailing by.

"In three hundred years I shall rise like this into God's
kingdom," she said.

"You may be able to go there before that," whispered one
of the others to her. "Invisibly, we fly through the homes of
human beings. They can't see us, so they don't know when

THE LITTLE MERMAID             227

we are there; but if we find a good child, who makes his
parents happy and deserves their love. we smile and God
takes a year away from the time of our trial. But if there is a
naughty and mean child in the house we come to, we cry; and
for every tear we shed, God adds a day to the three hundred
years we already must serve."

MINOTAUR

A bull cult is not an uncommon thing among primitive
agricultural peoples. The bull is a strong symbol of mascu-
linity and it is through his matings with cows that genera-
tions of cattle to supply beef, milk, cream, cheese, butter,
and leather can be maintained—to say nothing of the
patient farm work performed by oxen.

The legend of the golden calf during the Exodus was an
attempt to establish a bull cult by Israelites tired of dealing
with an invisible God. When Israel broke away from the
Davidic dynasty, it established a bull cult within its own
borders to discourage its people from worshiping at Solo-
mon's temple in Jerusalem.

The best-known bull cult of ancient times is that of early
Crete, which has left us paintings of games and rituals
involving bulls. While we don't know all the details of the
Cretan cults, it would not be surprising if gods were
sometimes portrayed as humans with the heads of bulls,
and if human beings were sacrificed to the bull god.

The ancient Greeks, gathering some details of the Cretan
civilization that had preceded theirs, added to it out of
their own excellent imaginations. Minos, the king of Crete
{Minos is a general title for the Cretan kings, like Pharaoh
for the king of Egypt), was supposed to sacrifice a beauti-
ful bull to Poseidon, god of the sea. He didn't want to and
chose a less attractive bull instead. In punishment, Poseidon
caused Minos' queen, Pasiphae, to fail in love with the
bull, and, in consequence, she gave birth to a bull-headed

228

LETTERS FROM LAURA             229
mo^er, the Minotaur (from Greek words meaning • -Minos

Minos hid it in a labyrinth and. after a war with Athens
sent young Athenians into the labyrinth as food for the
Minotaur. The Athenian prince Theseus came with the
third group and killed the Minotaur. The following story is
a modern reminiscence of the myth.

LETTERS FROM LAURA

Mildred Clingerman

Monday
Dear Mom:

Stop worrying. There isn't a bit of danger. Nobody ever
dies or gels hurt like that while time-traveling. The young
man at the Agency explained it all to me in detail, but I've
forgotten most of it. His eyebrows move in the most fascinat-
ing way. So I'm going this weekend. I've already bought my
ticket. I haven't the faintest idea where I'm going, but that's
part of the fun. Grab Bag Tours, they call them. It costs $60
for one day and night, and the Agency supplies you with food
concentrates and water capsules—a whole bag full of stuff
Aey send right along with you. I certainly do not want Daddy
to go with me- I'll tell him all about it when I get back, and
then he can go himself, if he still wants to. The thing Daddy
forgets is that all the history he reads is mostly just a pack of
lies. Everybody says so nowadays, since time travel. He'd
spoil everything arguing with the natives, telling them how
they were supposed to act. I have to stop now, because the
young man from the Agency is going to take me out to dinner
and explain about insurance for the trip.

Love,
Laura

Tuesday
Dear Mom:

I can't afford to go first-class. The Grab Bag Tours are not
the leavings. They're perfectly ail right. It's just that you

230

LETTERS FROM LAURA            231

sorta have to rough it. They've been thoroughly explored. I
mean somebody has been there at least once before. I never
heard of a native attacking a girl traveler. Just because I
won't have a guide you start worrying about that. Believe
me. some of those guides, from what 1 hear, wouldn't be very
safe, either. Delbert explained it all to me- He's the boy from
the Agency. Did you know that insurance is a very interesting
subject?

Love,
Laura

Friday
Dear Mom:

Everything is set for tomorrow. I'm so excited. I spent
three hours on the couch at the Agency's office—taking the
hypno-course, you know, so I'll be able to speak the lan-
guage. Later Delbert broke a rule and told me my destination,
so I rushed over to the public library and read bits here and
there. It's ancient Crete! Dad will be so pleased. I'm going to
visit the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Delbert says he is really
off the beaten track of the tourists. I like unspoiled things,
don't you? The Agency has a regular little room all fixed up
right inside the cave. but hidden, so as not to disturb the
regular business of the place. The Agency is very particular
mat way- Time travelers, Delbert says, have to agree to make
themselves as inconspicuous as possible. Delbert says that
will be very difficult for me to do. Don't you think subtle
compliments are the nicest? I've made myself a darling
costume—I sat up late to finish it. I don't know that it's
exactly right, historically, but it doesn't really matter, since
I'm not supposed to leave the cave. I have to stay close to my
point of arrival, you understand. Delbert says I'm well cov-
ered now with insurance, so don't worry. I'll write the minute
I get back.

Love,
Laura

232 Mildred CUngerman

Friday
Dear Prue:

Tomorrow I take my first time-travel lour. I wish you
could see my costume. Very fetching! It's cut so that my
breasts are displayed in the style of ancient Crete. A friend of
mine doubts the authenticity of the dress but says the charms it
shows off are really authentic! Next time I see you I'll lend
you the pattern for the dress. But I honestly think, darling,
you ought to get one of those Lift-Up operations first. I've
been meaning to tell you- Of course, I don't need it myself.
I'll tell you all about it (the trip I mean) when I get back.

Love,
Laura

Monday
Dear Prue:

I had the stinkiest time! I'll never know why 1 let that
character at the travel agency talk me into it. The accommo-
dations were lousy. If you want to know what I think, it's all
a gyp. These Grab Bag Tours, third-class, are just the leavings.
that they can*t sell any other way. I hate salesmen. Whoever
heard of ancient Crete anyway? And the Minotaur. You
would certainly expect him to be a red-blooded he-man,
wouldn't you? He looked like one. Not cute, you know, but
built like a bull, practically. Prue, you just can't tell any-
more. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

You've heard about that funny dizziness you feel for the
first few minutes on arrival? That part is true. Everything is
supposed to look black at first, but things kept on looking
black even after the dizziness wore off. Then I remembered it
was a cave I was in, but I did expect it to be lighted. I was
tying on one of those beastly little cots that wiggle every time
your heart beats, and mine was beating plenty fast. Then I
remembered the bag the Agency packs for you, and I sat up
and felt around till I found it. I got out a perma-light and
attached it to the solid rock wall and looked around. The floor
was just plain old dirty dirt. That Agency had me stuck off in
a little alcove, furnished with that sagging cot and a few coat
hangers. The air in the place was rather stale- Let's be

LETTERS FROM LAURA            233

honest, it smelled. To console myself I expanded my wrist
mirror and put on some more makeup. '1 was wearing my
costume, but I had forgotten to bring a coat. I was freezing. I
draped the blanket from the cot around me and went explor-
ing. What a place! One huge room just outside my cubbyhole
and corridors taking off in all directions, winding away into
the dark. I had a perma-light with me, and naturally I couldn't
get lost with my earrings tuned to point of arrival, but it was
weird wandering around all by myself. I discovered that the
corridor I was in curved downward. Later I found there were
dozens of levels in the Labyrinth. Very confusing.

1 was just turning to go back when something reached out
and grabbed for me, from one of those alcoves. I was thrilled.
I flicked off the light, dropped my blanket, and ran.

From behind I heard a man's voice. "All right, sis, we'll
play games."

Well, Prue, I hadn't played hide-and-seek in years (except
once or twice at office parties), but I was still pretty good at
it. That part was fun. After a time my eyes adjusted to the
dark so that I could see well enough to keep from banging
into die walls. Sometimes I'd deliberately make a lot of noise
to keep things interesting. But do you know what? That
character would blunder right by me, and way down at the
end of the comdor he'd make noises like "Oho" or "Aha."
Frankly, I got discouraged. Finally I heard him grumbling his
way back in my direction. I knew the dope would never catch
me. so I just stepped out in front of him and said "Wellll?"
You know, in that drawly sarcastic way I have.

He reached out and grabbed me, and then he staggered
back—like you've seen actors do in those old, old movies.
He kept pounding his forehead with his fist. and then he
yelled, "Cheated! Cheated again!" I almost slapped him.
Instead I snapped on my perma-tight and let him took me
over good.

"Well, Buster," I said very coldly, "what do you mean,
cheated?"

He grinned at me and shaded his eyes from the light.
"Darling," he said, "you look luscious, indeed, but what the
hell are you doing here?"

234 Mildred Clingerman

"I'm sightseeing," I said. "Are you one of the sights?"

"Listen, baby, I am the sight. Meet the Minotaur." He
stuck out his huge paw, and 1 shook it.

"Who did you think I was?" I asked him.

"Not who, but what," he said. "Baby, you ain't no virgin."

Well, Prue, really. How can you argue a thing like that?
He was completely wrong, of course, but I simply refused to
discuss it.

"I only gobble virgins," he said.

Then he led me down into his rooms, which were really
quite comfortable. I couldn't forgive the Agency for that cot,
so when I spied his lovely, soft couch draped in pale blue
satin, I said, "I'll borrow that if you don't mind."

"It's all yours, kid," the Minotaur said. He meant it, too.
You remember how pale blue is one of my best colors? There
1 was lolling on the couch, looking like the Queen of the
Nile, flapping my eyelashes, and what does this churl want to
do?

"I'm simply starved for talk," he says. And about what?
Prue, when a working girl spends her hard-earned savings on
time travel, she has a right to expect something besides
politics. I've heard there are men, a few shy ones, who will
talk very fast to you about science and all that highbrow stuff,
hoping maybe you won't notice some of the things they're
doing in the meantime. But not the Minotaur. Who cares
about the government a room's length apart? Lying there,
twiddling my fingers and yawning, I tried to remember if
Daddy had ever mentioned anything about the Minotaur's
being so persnickety. That's the trouble with books. They
leave out all the important details.

For instance, did you know that at midnight every night the
Minotaur makes a grand tour of the Labyrinth? He wouldn't
let me go along. That's another thing. He just says "no" and
grins and means it. Now isn't that a typical male trait? I
thought so, and when he locked me in his rooms the evening
looked like turning into fun. I waited for him to come back
with bated breath. But you can't bate your breath forever, and
he was gone hours. When he did come back I'd fallen asleep
and he woke me up belching.

LETTERS FROM LAURA

235

"Please," I said. "Do you have to do that?"

"Sony, kid," he said. "It's these gaunt old maids. Awful
souring to the stomach." It seems this windy diet was one of
the things wrong with the government. He was very bitter
about it all. Tender virgins, he said, had always been in short
supply and now he was out of favor with the new regime. I
rummaged around in my wrist bag and found an antacid pill.
He was delighted. Can you imagine going into a transport
over pills?"

"Any cute males ever find their way into this place?" I
asked him. I got up and walked around. You can loll on a
couch just so long, you know.

"No boys!" The Minotaur jumped up and shook his fist at
me. I cowered behind some hangings, but I needn't have
bothered. He didn't even jerk me out from behind them.
Instead he paced up and down and raved about the lies told on
him. He swore he'd never eaten boys—hadn't cared for them
at all. That creep, Theseus, was trying to ruin him politically.
"I've worn myself thin," he yelled, "in all these years of
service—" At that point I walked over and poked him in his
big, fat stomach. Then I gathered my things together and
walked out.

He puffed along behind me wanting to know what was the
matter. "Gee, kid," he kept saying, "don't go home mad."
1 didn't say goodbye to him at all. A spider fell on him and it
threw him into a hissy. The last I saw of him he was cursing
the government because they hadn't sent him an exterminator.

Well, Prue, so much for the bogey man. Time travel in the

....i

raw'

Dear Mom:

Ancient Crete was nothing but politics,
You didn't have a single cause to worry.
Just as particular about girls as you are.

Love,*
Laura

Monday

not a bit exciting.
These people are

Love,
Laura

236 Mildred Clingerman

Tuesday
Dear Mr. Detbert Barnes:

Stop calling me or 1 will complain to your boss. You cad- I
see it all now. You and your fine talk about how your Agency
"fully protects its clients." That's a very high-sounding name
for it. Tell me, how many girls do you talk into going to
ancient Crete? And do you provide all of them with the same
kind of insurance? Mr. Barnes, I don*t want any more insur-
ance from you. But I'm going to send you a client for that
trip—the baggiest old maid I know. She has buck teeth and
whiskers. Insure her.

Laura

P.S. Just in case you're feeling smug about me, put this in
your pipe and smoke it. The Minotaur knew, I can't imagine
how, but you, Mr. Barnes, are no Minotaur.

PEGASCIS

One of the most enduring dreams of human beings is to
fly. Ail sorts of spirits and monsters were pictured with
wings, since flying seemed an obvious attribute of super-
natural beings. In addition, there were various ways of
enabling human beings toffy—flying carpets, for instance,
are common in the stories included in The Arabian Nights."

The ancient Greeks came up with the most attractive of
all flying creatures—Pegasus, the divine and immortal
winged horse. The thought of a flying horse may well have
arisen from the wonder of horseless human beings at the
speed with which a horseman could cover the ground. To a
man going no faster than an oxcart will carry him, the
racing horse might as well have been flying.

Pegasus was supposed to have been born of the blood of
the severed head of Medusa, the gorgon killed by the
Greek hero Perseus. Another Greek hero, Bellerophon,
rode Pegasus during the task of killing the chimera, and
later in wars against the Amazons. Still later, Bellerophon
tried to use Pegasus to scale Olympus, the home of the
gods, but was thrown and badly hurt as punishment for
this blasphemous attempt.

In later myths, Pegasus was associated with poetic inspi-
ration. After all, the poet's fancy lifts him to the skies (so
to speak) as though he were riding a flying horse. Pegasus
was supposed to have landed on Mount Helicon near
Thebes, and his hoof dug out a hollow from which emerged

237

i8                      F.A. Javor

a spring called the Hippocrene (''fountain of the horse").
which was a legendary source of poetic inspiration.

It's almost a shame to have to point out that muscle-
powered wings could not support the weight of a man, let
alone that of a horse. The following story, however, tack-
les that impossibility.

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS

F.A. Javor

It was working out beautifully, just beautifully, and if Colin
Hall had been a less dedicated young man he would have
been rubbing his capable hands together and perhaps even
pounding his equally young but no-so-sedate partner, Ed
West, on his ample back.

Their entry in the jumper division of the horse show, Ato's
Pride, so named from the initial letters of their fledgling
company's name. Animals to Order, a gleaming black stal-
lion with four perfectly matched white stockings and a diamond-
shaped blaze on his forehead, was just being led to the edge of
the obstacle-planted ring and the roar of the crowd's approval
was hackle-raising.

Instinctively Colin's eyes flew to the six-inch screen he*d
jerry-rigged to monitor a select few bits of the information
being sent by the dozens of micro-transmitters implanted
under the skin, adjoining the organs, the nerves, even sam-
pling the bloodstream of the animal waiting to go through its
paces below them.

Information being transmitted and recorded on me slowly
turning tapes to be fed later into the University's computer if
they, he and Ed, wanted a more complete analysis and, more
to the point, if they could scrape together the necessary
service fee.

But me complex and shifting pattern of light on the jerry-
rigged screen, small though its sampling was, was enough to
let Colin know how their animal was taking to what was by
far the largest massing of people he'd ever been exposed to.

239

240 F.A. Savor

An emotional crowd that this, perhaps the greatest of the
year's shows, never failed to attract.

A little loo much salivating . . . pain response a little high.
I told that rider he had a tender mouth. But all in all, Ato's
Pride was taking this crowd's adulation as much in stride as
he had that of the smaller shows around the country they'd
had to enter him in to garner enough first ribbons to-allow
him to qualify for this particular show.

This show that he and Ed had finally decided to aim at in a
mixture of hope and desperation. Then the grinding press of
work and doing without, in which the gingerly placing into its
embryo tank of the cell that was to grow into the magnificent
animal below them was almost an anticlimax.

An anticlimax to the arduous task of mapping its gene
pattern and to the planning and the tailoring of the solutions
that were to be so delicately, so precisely metered to it, but
only a beginning of their gamble to save Animals to Order.
their two-man partnership that gave promise but only of dying
in the womb.

He had plucked the salmon-colored bank notice from the pile
of due-chits that had just fallen from the vac-tube beside their
office door.

"A lethal gene," he said wryly to Ed, sitting at what
they'd hoped would be the desk of the receptionist they'd
never been able to afford, straightening and rebending a paper
clip. "A lethal gene. A fatal deficiency in the customer-
forming enzyme."

"I've been thinking about that," Ed said, his face deadly
serious for once. "Animals to Order is basically a sound
idea, but I think our trouble lies in the fact that nobody knows
we're alive." He clenched his fist. "If we could only
advertise."

The wryness in Colin's smile deepened. "It isn't ethical,'*

Ed flung down his paper clip. "It isn't ethical," he par-
roted. "So we sit around and wait for recognition to come to
us, and meanwhile we starve."

His voice went up a notch. "Ten seconds. Ten lousy
seconds in the middle of somebody else's vid-cast. Ten lousy
seconds."

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          241

"Relax," Colin said. "We couldn't scrape together the
cash now even if we could advertise. Our equipment . . ."

Ed waved a hand. "You don't have to tell me how much
the rental on our equipment is costing us- I signed the papers
with you, remember?"

He stopped short and rubbed the back of his neck with his
palm. "I'm sorry, Colin," he said. "I don't mean to snarl at
you but it riles me. We've got a potentially great service here
and the rules of our game make it something dirty for profes-
sional people like us to go out and holler in the crossroads
for people to come buy it."

Ed held up a finger and went on talking. "One order. One
solitary order all the while we've been in business. It'd gripe
anybody.'*

It was true. Although they'd been open for half a year, their
business had produced little more than inquiries like the
tentative one from a physician who was hoping they'd run
across an enzyme, an acid, anything that might make the cells
of an arm stump de-differentiate and then re-differentiate and
grow to restore the amputated limb.

Sorrowfully, Colin had to tell him that, although they could
grow an animal with short legs or long legs or even transplant
a developing leg, their science could not yet do what he asked
of it.

Then there was the usual scattering of requests from biology
and genetics students for the results of their most recent work
sent quickly, please, by return vac-tube because there was
only this weekend coming up in which to get the papers
completed and turned in.

And the one solid order Ed had mentioned. From a
down-country milk manufacturer. Four heifers. All identical
and matching perfectly their trademark. To be sent around to
die various slate and bureau food exhibits to promote the
name of their company and product. It was not a particularly
difficult assignment. A great deal of research and gene map-
ping had already been done by associations and others inter-
ested in food animals so that it was chiefly a case of bringing
together what he and Ed needed, and filling in the gaps to
produce me animal they wanted.

242 F.A. Savor

Matching an animal to one in the picture of a trademark
was not difficult because you had only to look at it to know
how well you'd succeeded. It was the intangible qualities that
made for a challenge.

As for identical animals, nature had been producing them
for centuries. It was simply a case of splitting the egg once,
and then splitting each of the daughter halves again. .

It was the heifer order that gave Colin his idea, and staring
at the pile of due-chits on his desk made the tussle with his
conscience a brief one. "Ed," he said, "we have to do
something to call attention to ourselves."

"That's not hard. Let's go out and blow up the Sub-Capital
building."

"I'm not joking. You remember the heifer people?"

"Of course. Our one solitary contact with that great world
of commerce out there beyond the laboratory walls. We were
going to sweep it off its collective feet with our brilliance- I
remember.''

"They paid us for four animals whose only purpose was to
promote their company name and advance the sale of their
product. Right?"

"Yes, but that money is long gone and the rent is due in
..." Ed counted on his fingers. ". . . four days. What are
you getting at?"

"Simply this," and now Colin spoke slowly, the excite-
ment in him growing. "What we did for them, we can do for
ourselves."

"Build four heifers . . . ?" Ed was patently puzzled.

"Of course not. I mean use our skills to build for ourselves
an animal to do for us what the heifers are doing for the milk
people. Call us to the attention of the public in general, and
of our potential customers in particular.

Ed was pulling his lower lip. "An animal for the express
purpose of getting publicity. ..." And then his head came
up. "Hey, TV coverage, wire services, the sport commenta-
tors ... the Sport of . . ."

Colin finished it for him. "Exactly, the Sport of Kings. A
horse."

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS

243

And now Ed's eyes were shining. "Great! We'll build the
greatest, the fastest racehorse to come down the pike since . . .*'

"No," Colin shook his head. "Not a racing horse."

"Not a racehorse?" Ed looked puzzled again.

"No. The people we want to notice us don't have racing
connections- Besides," and he smiled wryly again, "we can't
ethically afford to be that obvious. This has got to look like a
labor of love. We'll build a horse to enter in the next interna-
tional showing at the New Arena."

"Wait a minute." Ed said. "Doesn't the Dean's brother
raise horses?"

Colin shook his head. "Not Harrison Bullitt ... his wife.
But do you know who is honorary president of the horse
show association?"

It was Ed's turn to shake his head. "No."

"Commodore Joshua E. Wall."

"Commodore Joshua E. . . . Not Commodore Wall of
NavAir?"

Colin nodded, the smile on his face broad now. "That's
right. Commodore Joshua E. Wall, Chief of Procurement for
NavAir . . . and the man we've been trying to get in touch
with since we first started."

"Don't keep the club so exclusive. He's only one of a long
roster of people who haven't responded to our maidenlike
overtures."

"True, but if we can get him to give us a contract, then we
don't need to worry about many of the others."

Ed pushed back his chair and stood up. "What are we
waiting for then, let's get started. . . . When is the next show
scheduled for?" he added.

"Early November, but entries usually close in October."

"October! That's cutting it close for a full-grown animal."

"Closer than you think. We've got to get him out and
picking up a fistful of first ribbons before that, else he won't
be able to even qualify for the big show. But tell me, Ed, can
we wait until next year?''

"My head can, but my stomach knows better. I repeat,
what are we waiting for? There's only four days' rental left
on the analyzer."

244 FA. Savor

The electron analyser. The rental on the unit dug deep into
their credit fund, but it was indispensable in their work.
Offspring of the early instrument packets shot off to Earth's
neighboring planets to analyze and report back by radio on
their life forms, it had also done away with much of the time
and tedious labor cost needed to map a gene pattern when all
the researchers had to work with before its advent were bits
of absorbent paper and a photographic plate exposed to a
diffracted X-ray.

He and Ed might have used the University unit, but then its
rigid rules would have compelled them to be researchers
working for the University, and not the co-establishers of
Animals to Order, their independent and commercial enterprise.

And now the months of work, of lost sleep, of going back
to the making of tutor-tapes for the University to earn the
money to live on, to keep open the skeleton of their office, to
pay for the hauling of Ato's Pride from show to show around
the country and the professional riders required, for fees; all
of it looked now to have been worth it. From the sound of the
Arena crowd's reaction to their first glimpse of the black
stallion, it was plain that his snowballing reputation had
reached here before him, and that their gamble was at long
last about to pay off.

He fell Ed's elbow in his side, Ed's voice, over the sound
of the crowd, excited in his ear. "The Commodore! Over
there, on the other side of the ring. 1 think that's the Commo-
dore coming toward us.**

There were many figures in bright blue formal clothes
below them across the arena, but Colin had no trouble mak-
ing out the Commodore's white hair and beefy shoulders.
And it did look as though he was working his way through
the assembled officials and others in their direction. Well
beyond the Commodore, Colin noticed another man, also
white haired but built small, like a jockey, who looked to be
following the Commodore toward them.

He called him to Ed's attention. "The little man, just
coming around the left side of the judge's table. Do you
know him?"

"No ... ," Ed said after a moment, "but he seems

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          245

to be trying to give the Commodore a race. 1 hope it's a
tie."

"You hope it's a tie?"

"Right. If you've got something to sell, there's nothing
wrong with having two bargainers on the grounds at the same
time to sort of encourage each other to make you more and
more extravagant offers. After all, who is the girl in town that
everybody wants to date? Why the one who has the most
boyfriends already, that's who."

The Commodore went out of Colin's line of sight, going
underneath their overhang, and in a moment, the little man
as well. If they really were coming to them then they'd be
at the head of the ramp behind them in seconds. Colin forced
himself to keep his eyes away from the spot,

And then the Commodore was bearing down on them,
"Mr. Colin Hall?"

Colin turned his head toward the big, white-haired man.
"I'm Colin Hall," he said and did not go on to introduce Ed,
stopped by a strangeness in the the Commodore's manner.
Somehow, the big man looked oddly embarrassed.

"Mr. Hall," the Commodore said, "there's been a ques-
tion raised ..."

"Hall? West?"

The voice, not loud, but penetrating, cut in on the Commo-
dore. It was the small, white-haired man.

"Just a minute," Colin snapped, irked by the man's abrupt
manner and anxious to hear what the Commodore had been
about to say to him.

"You Hall or West?" the man said, still flatly.

Colin turned in his seat to look full at the little man. "I'm
Hall," he said and wondered why, with all the noise of the
crowd around them, he should suddenly get the feeling of
being in the midst of an apprehensive silence.

"Mrs. Bullitt wants to see you. Now."

Annoyance flared inside Colin and he didn't try to hide it.
"Friend," he said to the little man who might have once been
a jockey, "I don't know who you arc, but ..." Colin
stopped, suddenly rehearing what the man had said. "Did
you say Mrs. Bullitt wanted to see me?"

246 F.A. Savor

The man nodded. "Now."

Colin was torn. The Commodore was important to him and
Ed, and added to this was the fact that some question had
been raised important enough for him to seek them out at
what must be, for him, a busy moment. But Ed and he
frankly needed their jobs at the University and the wife of the
Dean's brother was known to be an impatient and irascible
woman.

The Commodore settled Colin's quandary for him. He spoke
to Colin, but his eyes were on the little man. "Mrs. Bullitt
has raised a question about the validity of your entry's breed-
ing qualifications. There will have to be a hearing, of course,
but for now tell me this. Was your jumper a . . ."He groped
for the expression. "... a test-tube animal all through his
gestation period?"

"No," Colin said. puzzled. "He's a replant. Why?" There
was certainly nothing new about the technique of removing a
potential egg from the dam of a desired animal, starting its
growth in an embryo tank and then replanting it in a mother
animal to complete its development. He and Ed had used the
technique with Ato's Pride for the one compelling reason of
its economy. It would have coat a great deal for the battery of
technicians and equipment needed if they'd used a full-span
series of tanks to bring their stallion to homing size. But to
feed and control one pregnant mare . . . ?

"In other words," the Commodore said, "your entry was
natural-born."

"Yes," Colin nodded.

The Commodore spoke to the little man directly, his voice
sounding to Colin unnecessarily defiant.

"Ato's Pride stays. And you can tell that to your employer."

The little man shrugged. "I'll pass the word. Commo-
dore," he said, "but you'll forgive me if I remind you that
it's the association's rules committee and not the president
who must pass on a thing like this."

Colin thought he saw the Commodore's eyes on the little
man's waver. "Wait a minute," he said, half wildly. Some-
one, and from the sound of things it was Harrison Bullitt's
intransigent wife. was trying to keep his and Ed's one hope

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          247

out of competition. "You can't pull our entry now. His event
is about to start."

The Commodore turned away from the little man. "He's
right, you know," he said to Colin. "I don't have the author-
ity for this, but I can call together the rules committee and I
will."

"But the event, it's starting."

"Not yet it isn't, and I'll have it held off for as long as the
crowd will allow. Meanwhile," he indicated the small man
with his head, "we'd better go along with him."

"Let's go," the little man said, not seeming to be the least
bit abashed by the Commodore's obvious dislike of him.

And half seething, half numb, Cotin let him lead them to
the Owner's Suite four levels below the arena floor, and eight
levels below the street.

The room he ushered them into was large and brightly lit.
Neoplast walls niched and hung with award ribbons, platters,
trophy cups. Antique photos of horses and behind the styl-
ishly narrow afra-wood desk, a fleshly-faced man in the
customary bright-blue formal jacket. Behind him a huge
vistaphoto of open fields, fences, white clustered buildings,
pasturing animals. ABBY BULLITT HORSE FARMS cut very large
into the gateside panels. The size of the establishment startled
Colin fleetingly. He had no idea that Mrs. Bullitt's interest,
and investment, in horses was so great.

And standing beside the desk, thumping its top with a
hard-sounding finger, a short woman, thick-bodied and dumpy-
looking even in the smart green-and-white-striped riding coat
and sleek boots of a Major Hunt.

Harrison Bullitt Colin knew from having seen him in the
Dean's office at the University; the woman turning pale eyes
and a querulous mouth toward them as they entered, he
assumed to be Mrs. Bullitt.

"Why didn't you knock," she began without preamble.
"Martin, you know I don't like people walking in on me
without knocking."

The little man beside Colin made no answer, but Harrison
Bullitt put a hand on his wife's pudgy arm. "We're not at

248 FA. Javor

home, dear. This is an office. It's all right for Martin to walk
io here without knocking."

Mrs. Bullitt shook off her husband's hand. **I don't like
people to walk in on me without knocking. Martin?" And
there was venom in her took, all out of proportion to the
incident that had sparked it.

"Yes ma'am," the little man said and his voice sounded
sincere.

There was a long silence while Mrs. Bullitt continued to
stare at her hireling, long enough for Colin to become con-
scious of his own heavy breathing. In a reflex of discomfort
he cleared his throat and the woman's eyes snapped to his
face.

"You," and again she spoke without preamble, "and you."
And her eyes shifted to the space behind Colin where he
knew Ed stood, and back to his with a darting motion of her
head that somehow made him think of a lizard he'd once seen
catching flies.

"You are the two young men who call yourselves Animals
to Order?"

It was a question, but to Colin it somehow sounded like an
accusation. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Speak up, speak up," she said. "I can't hear you. I like
people to speak up when they talk to me."

"Yes, Mrs- Bullitt, we are," Colin said, louder, more than
a tittle annoyed with himself at the way her sharp tone had
put him off balance. Angry also that she could bring disaster
to his and Ed's long-held hopes if her objection to their entry
in the arena above should stand.

"Good," the small woman in the striped riding jacket said.

The word of approval startled Colin. "Good? 1... I don't
understand."

"What is there to understand?" and her voice was impa-
tient sounding. "You say you can make animals to order.
Very well, 1 want you to make one for me. A horse ... a
special horse . . . and after you make it I want you to smash
the mold or whatever it is you use. I want it to be unique . . .
mine alone and no one else ever to have another like it.' *

The light that had come into Mrs. Bullitt's eyes as she

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          249

spoke made Colin think shiveringly of medieval princelings
who would have a craftsman's hands cut off after he'd pro-
vided a work of art for them so that he could not surpass it for
another, of architects blinded and put to death so that they
could not build for another prince, in another place, a palace,
a castle greater, or even the match of, the one possessed by
their executioner.

Ed's voice in his ear, low, urgent. "Hey, a contract for an
exclusive animal with Bullitt Farms. It may not be NavAir,
but from the look of that vistaphoto behind the old man, it's
no small-stake operation either. Don't haggle, man- After all,
it's quick money and we've already done a lot of the ground-
work with Ato."

Harrison Bullitt leaned forward. Even sitting he was a big
man, and, although he bore no apparent physical resemblance
to his wife, there was a certain flatness about the expression
in his eyes that made the thought skim the surface of Colin's
mind that here, Harrison Bullitt and his wife Abby, were two
of a very unpleasant kind.

"Animals to Order," Bullitt said. "What is it that you

do?"

Colin had answered that question dozens of times. He did
not need to grope for an analogy to tell of his and Ed's work
with the living germ plasm of animals; of the fascination and
the monotony of charting gene positions; of converting de-
sired qualities into intricately interacting enzyme patterns; of
eliminating genetic loads, the stores of harmful genes carried
by all sexually reproducing species.

Of their bio-solutions and the organism growing in its
succession of tanks, of the enjoyable tension of watching it
until it could emerge and survive without their direction in the
open world and be, if they were as lucky as they were
entitled to be for their chosen profession was still as much an
art as it was a science, be exactly as they had envisioned it at
the start.

But Colin's analogy was simple. "Think of a chromosome
as a microscopically tiny string of beads present in every
plant and animal cell. Now each head is a gene that deter-
mines or helps to determine some characteristic of its own

250

FA. Javor

animal or plant, like 6ie color of its eyes, the structure of its
bones, the smoothness or roughness of its coal, everything
about it.

"What we do is sort of rework the beads, repair any
damaged ones, shape the string to grow into what we want it
to be."

Harrison Bullitt shrugged his meaty shoulders. "Sounds
cut and dried to me."

"I suppose it is, in theory. But we're dealing with a living
organism. It can be killed, and quite easily . . . or just die. A
temperature can get a shade too warm or a shade too cold
... or a stray cosmic ray can strike it... and it turns out in a
way we didn't predict. Just being alive, I guess, is enough for
it to not always do what you expect it to.**

"Sounds like pretty much of a slipshod operation to me,"
Harrison Bullitt said, and from his voice Colin didn't know if
he was being talked to or if the big man was just thinking
aloud and not particularly interested or caring if he was
heard.

But Bullitt went on. "Can you switch parts around?"

Colin thought of fruit flies with misplaced wings, of exper-
imental animals with third eyes, of two-headed dogs. The
early researchers had produced all of these and more, and with
modem pressor and laser beam techniques it would be even
simpler to do. But it was one of those understandings that can
exist between two men without ever having been mentioned
or even thought of, that he and Ed would not debase their
profession by peddling sideshow freaks.

"We can." Colin said aloud, "but we won't."

Mrs. BuUitt laughed shortly. "That's one of the stupidest
expressions in the language. Young man, never say you
won't do some particular thing. You'd be surprised at me
things you'd do if the bind gets tight enough."

Colin had no answer for her except to hold his rising
temper in check. What answer did anyone ever have for
boors, particularly influential ones like these two?

Mrs. Bullitt dropped her heavy figure into the plastifonn
visitor's chair beside her husband's desk, letting her booted
heels fly out in front of her as she did so.

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS         251

Colin noticed roweled spurs and was surprised. He didn't
think anyone wore the spiked discs anymore, particularly to
ride valuable animals.

There were other chairs in the room, two long sofas along
opposite walls, but Mrs. Bullitt did not wave them to a seat.
Colin, Ed, and Martin off to one side of them now, remained
standing. The Commodore settling deep in the chair dropped
into when they came in.

"I want a horse," the sitting woman said matter-of-factly,
"with wings."

"A horse," Colin started to say and then did a mental
double-take. "A what?"

"A great idea, isn't it?" A horse that can fly. Nobody, but
nobody in the association, in me worid, will be able to top
that."

Colin could only stare at the woman. She couldn't be
serious, but from the set of her face it was plain that she was.
"It's impossible," he managed to say. "It's a physical
impossibility."

Annoyance flared in Mrs. Bullitt's pale eyes. She struck
the arm of her chair sharply with the flat of her hand. "Don't
use that word," she said- "I don't like it. Do you hear? I
don't like it."

"But it is impossible," Colin said and he didn't know if he
was pleading for her to understand or to hold on to his own
sanity. He had never before in his life met people like mis.

Beside him, Coiin heard Ed whistle through his teeth.
softly to himself. "A Pegasus she wants. A flying, neighing,
flaming Greek legend she wants."

"A flying horse is a physical impossibility." Colin said.

Harrison Bullitt seemed amused. "Everything is impossi-
ble ... until the price gets right. All right," and he sat up in
his chair, "let's stop this nonsense. How much is it going to
cost me?"

Colin fell like a man trying to keep his footing on a mound
of slippery sand. "You don't understand. It's not a question
of money. It's not money at all."

Bullitt seemed to be getting annoyed. "I don't see that you
should have any particular problem. You said that you could

252 F.A. Savor

switch pans around. What's so tough about grafting a pair of
wings onto a horse?"

The feeling of floundering on shifting sand deepened in
Colin. "A wing isn't just something added onto the outside
of an animal, and it's not an oversized shoulder blade. It's an
integral part of the skeleton, it has a full system of muscles to
support it, to move it. Look."

He held up his arm, his fingers extended, his hand bent
downward at the wrist. "It's like an arm. The finger bones
are long." He made the stretching gesture with his other
hand, slapped his arm. "These bones are there, holding,
supporting the tissues of the wing itself ..."

"I never noticed much of a skeleton in a fly wing,"
Hamson Bultitt interrupted, not bothering to hide the growing
of his annoyance.

The sand was beginning to have a sucking feel to it. "Yes,
but a fly, any insect, has but the tiniest fraction of the weight
of even a small bird. A bird," Colin said,, grasping at a fact
that would convince these two that he was not merely throwing
up phony obstacles to milk them of their money. "The largest
bird. A condor. Ten feet across the wings. Weighs how
much? Forty pounds.

"Now a horse. Even a lightly built saddle horse will weigh
a thousand pounds, and you know better than I how large his
muscles have to be just to move him around on the ground.
Even if we did . . ." he stopped himself. He was beginning
to think like these people about the fantastic.

"Even if we could," he corrected himself and went on.
"Even if we could re-form his front tegs into some semblance
of wings, the muscle structures needed to lift half a ton into
the air would be so huge that the poor beast probably couldn't
even stand under their weight. Then to support all that weight
we'd have to make the bones thicker and sturdier and that
would add to the weight and . . . don't you see?" he ended
helplessly.

"Weight," Bullilt said. "Don't prattle about weight. Only
last night on TriV we saw a ... some kind of a flying
dinosaur. Weight." He snorted.

"A reptile," Colin said, and it was quicksand he felt the

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS         253

suction of. "A pterodactyl. But even the largest of those had
only a twenty-foot wing span."

Colin hadn't been watching Mrs. Bullitt particularly, but
now she seemed to explode out of her chair. "You see," she
flung at her husband. "I told you there was no point in trying
to be nice to these people. They know only one kind of
language. All right, if that's the way they want it."

Her eyes, flat and expressionless in spite of the anger in
her voice, bored into Colin's. "Young man." she said, "I
want a flying horse. Are . . . you . . . going ... to ... give
... it ... to ... me? She spaced me words deliberately.

"I • - . I ..." Coiin floundered and then was amazed
to hear Ed's voice.

Calmly, rationally, Ed was saying, "Now let me under-
stand this clearly, Mrs. Bullitt. You want us to recreate for
you the legendary Hying horse Pegasus. Is that correct?"

Colin stared at Ed. Recreate . . . legendary . . . what had
gotten into Ed?

And then he heard Mrs. Bullitt's voice. "Legendary. You
mean someone has already had a flying horse?"

Colin's eyes snapped back to Mrs. Bullitt's face. Petulance
seemed to be always in the set of her mouth, but was there
something else there now? Did he see disappointment?

Hope flared up in Colin at the method he thought he saw in
Ed's apparent madness. If Mrs. Bullitt became convinced that
someone else had beaten her to me possession of a flying
horse, even centuries removed in time, then maybe enough of
the bloom would be rubbed off the idea of her to abandon it.

But he must have, couldn't have, but he must have misread
Ed's intent because his partner's next words were, "Not
exactly, perhaps, but 1 do believe that many legends, even the
more fantastic, may well have a basis in fact."

Mrs. Bullitt took Ed's words for ammunition. "You see."
she snapped at Colin. "Your partner admits that it can be
done."

But Colin was staring at Ed. Unbelieving.

"What are you talking about?" he half shouted at Ed.
"What legends and what facts?"

And Ed was looking him right in the eye and saying,

254 F.A. Javor

"Almost any legend ... or folk saying. Like 'dumb blonde'
for example. You know that every once in a great while
someone comes up missing one of the pigment-forming enzymes.
Naturally, they can't help but be blonde. But they are also
mentally retarded, and seriously. Somebody noticed the two
conditions, jumped to a vastly broader conclusion than the
observation warranted, and there you are. But there was.some
basis in fact."

Colin could only stare at Ed. The enzyme was phenyla-
lanmase and the mental condition phenylpyruvic oligophrenia.
But Ed couldn't be serious about a Pegasus.

Or could he? Ed was going on. "And you remember the
zoo on the continent that was back-breeding legendary animals?"

"Backbreeding legendary animals? They took modem cat-
tle and backbred them until they had a cow that looked like
an extinct ancestor. Where," he demanded, "where are you
going to get me the germ plasm of a demigod to repeat the
feat for a flying horse?"

Taking firm hold of his voice because he didn't know
whether to laugh or hit somebody or just bang his head on the
paneled and trophy-hung walls, Colin said to the room in
general, "Thank you very much for your confidence in our
ability. It is very flattering, but very much misplaced. We
cannot build a flying horse. Thank you again and goodbye."

And he put a hand under Ed's elbow and almost shoved
him out of the room, and into the passageway, the angry
voice of Mrs. Bullitt following them out.

"You'll be back, I promise you. You'll be back, and
remember, I won't be as easy to get along with next time."

Controlling himself, Colin slid the door shut gently.

He turned to Ed. "What got into you? You know as well
as I do that we can't give her what she wants. Nobody can.*'

"Of course I know it," Ed said. "But that woman isn't
rational. I was hoping to at least gain us a little time to figure
out something, anything. The way it is now. Lord knows
what she'll do."

"I ... I'm sorry, Ed," Colin started to say, but he was
interrupted by the opening of the door they'd just come
through. The Commodore emerged and slid it shut again. He

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          255

stood rubbing the back of his white hair with the flat of one
hand. "A flying horse," he said and shook his head. "A
flying horse."

He looked at Colin. "I suppose it's impossible."

Colin didn't feel like going through that one again. He
nodded.

"Are you sure?" the Commodore persisted. "I don't want
to quote an old saw, but the one about doing the difficult
right now and the impossible taking a little longer has a good
deal to it, I think. We are doing things today as a matter of
course that we used to know were impossible."

He smiled. "It used to be an obvious fact that what went
up had to come down." He paused and looked from Colin to
Ed and back to Colin again. "Have you checked any of our
satellites lately?"

It struck Colin that the Commodore was beginning to
sound like Harrison Bullitt. "I think I get your point, sir," he
said, not because he did, but because the quicksand feeling
was back and he wanted to get away from it and Abby
Bullitt's office.

"No you don't," the Commodore said, suddenly blunt. "I
thought of buying Ato's Pride, looked him over very care-
fully. Then I realized mat if you can do for food animals what
you did for him, then you've got something I can use. I could
give you an initial contract and I could defend it, I'm sure.
But with Abby throwing her weight around there's more to it
than being willing to justify your actions to an investigating
committee. She's thorough and she's fast. You'd probably
get hung up because one of your hogs dribbled on the
sidewalk."

He shook CoHn's hand and then Ed's. "You think about
it," he said. "And you look me up when you get Abby
Bullitt off your back. Hear?"

And after the older man had left them to go back up the
ramp, it was Ed who broke the gloomy silence that he'd left
behind him. "You know," he said, "he might just be right."

"About getting Mrs. Bullitt off our backs? I'm convinced."

"No, about what we know is impossible. We know that a
horse can't fly and we know why not. Maybe if we turn the

256 F.A. Java-

whole thing upside down and start by assuming that a horse
can fly. Now what can we come up with?"

But Colin's mind was numb. A horse can fly. Now the
Bullitt virus was getting to Ed. A horse can fly. "Forget it,"
he said aloud. "Let's go secure Ato and then check out."

Their stallion was already in his stall when they got to the
animal-quarters level just below the arena proper.

Slatted concrete floors, cushioned, with lagoons below to
catch the droppings. Lagoons constantly running with their
odor-controlling washes. Show feeds, specially formulated to
inhibit the action of gas-forming bacteria. Everything doing
its job of holding down, of elminating, the characteristic offal
odor. Doing it well too, but when all was said and done, a
stable still smelled like a stable.

More than once Colin had wondered why the whole prob-
lem couldn't be eliminated at the source, so to speak, by just
not feeding the animals at shows in the usual way. Penetra-
dermal units were standard items, available at any lab supply
house. The concentrates were not expensive, and they need
be used only during indoor shows and perhaps a short time
before.

A unit to feed an animal the size and weight of a horse
need use an area no larger than a man's palm. There was no
pain reaction that he'd been able to detect; in fact, some of
their lab animals even seemed to enjoy the warmed-air caress
of a penetra-dermal feeding unit.

But. Coiin supposed, a practice taken more or less for
granted in one field was too startling a break with the tradi-
tions of another to be even talked about, much less adopted.
Besides, from what he'd seen of horse fanciers in recent
months, he was beginning to think they rather liked the smell
of horses. He knew that for himself, he was beginning to find it
not altogether unpleasant.

They rubbed their animal thoroughly behind his ears, ac-
cepted the condolences of the attendants for their hard tuck at
his not being able to compete, showed their pass-out badges
at the Manager's window.

He was a balding man behind the grilled opening. He ran a

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS

257

finger down the tally-board at his elbow, ticking off their
badge numbers.

"Mr. Hall? Mr. West?" he said. And when Colin nodded,
went on.

"Message for you to call this number." He passed a small
folded slip through the bars of his grille.

"Thank you," Colin said and unfolded the paper. "It's the
Dean," he said to Ed. "I wonder what he wants?"

"I can guess," Ed said, "and i don't think I'm going to
like it."

Colin dialed the University and flipped the phone switch to
muitispeak so that Ed could hear.

The Dean sounded embarrassed and he talked a great deal
of the fine work Colin and Ed were doing. He made a passing
mention of a board of trustees. He assured Colin and Ed of the
warm personal regard in which he held both of them. But
when he was through talking and the phone was back on its
cradle his message was clear.

The University no longer needed their unique talents in the
making of its tutor-tapes. Not now, nor in the foreseeable
future.

"She moves fast," Ed said. "Fast."

"She said we'd be back. I guess we could have more or
less expected her to do something, but 1 never thought that
this was the kind of pressure she had in mind. It ... it
doesn't seem civilized somehow."

"Breaking a man's rice bowl seldom is," Ed said. "But
cheer up, we still have an office with our name on the door."

He laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. "That is if
the cleaning people haven't told the landlord we've been
sleeping in it for the past three months."

The horse show ran from Tuesday of one week through
Tuesday of the next and, surprisingly to Colin, Mrs. Bullitt
did not appear to be put out when the rules committee found
in their favor on the question of Ato's breeding raised by her.

"You know," Ed said, "I don't think she really wanted to
win this one. After all, if she'd managed to get our entry
disqualified this time around, then she couldn't very well

258 F.A. Savor

have expected any animal we might build for her to be
eligible, if she had in mind to enter it in the future."'

"I think she might expect a special class, if not for her
flying horse, then for her."

But Ed could be right. She meant only to keep their entry
out, to give them a charge, to encourage them, she might say,
to see things her way.

He and Ed had won in the committee room, but it turned
out to be an academic victory. When they got down to the
stable level they found the shield-shaped sheriffs notice taped
to an upright of Ato's stall. Some confusion among their
creditors, the bank being chiefest. Until it could be straight-
ened out, their assets, Ato's Pride included, were being
impounded.

Sudden, impotent, frustrated fury poured through Colin. It
wasn't quicksand. It was a solid bnck wall and he was
backed against it. He clenched and unclenched his fists . . .
and felt completely helpless-

Ato's Pride made a little dancing movement with his hoofs.
He tossed his head, his nostrils flaring.

"I'm upsetting our horse," Colin said. "Let's get out of
here."

"Yeah," Ed said. "Yeah." And Colin noticed that his
face was white and he too was shaking.

It was after they'd checked out and were striding up the
ramp to the street that the thought hit Colin.

He caught hold of Ed's arm and pulled him to a halt.
"Ed," he said, "how do you know a horse is a horse?"

Ed pulled his arm away roughly. "I'm in no mood for
jokes right now," he said, "so do me a favor and skip it."

"I'm not kidding. How do you know a horse is a horse?"

"All right, Mr. Interlocutor. How do I know a horse is a
horse? Because it looks like a horse. That's how." Ed stopped.
"You can't mean. . . ."

"That's exactly what I mean," Colin said. "Turn our
problem inside out. Don't try to build a horse and make it fly,
instead, take a creature that can fly already and make it took
like a horse."

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          259

Ed was laughing. Colin thought he heard a hysterical note
in the sound.

"A ... a ... thousand-pound bird."

"It wouldn't weigh a thousand pounds. Birds are built dif-
ferently from horses. Hollow bones. . . . Are you listening?"

But Ed was still laughing. "A ... a horse with feathers."

"What is a feather if not a modified hair . . . and vice
versa."

Ed was wiping his eyes. "Hollow bones. Did you ever heft
the bones of a thirty-pound turkey? You build an animal as
big as a horse, it's going to weigh like a horse. You've still
got half a ton to lift into the air, and it doesn't much matter
whether it's a horse muscle or a bird muscle that tries to do it.
It still is an impossible job."

Ed was right. To end up with what they wanted, they
would have to start with something just as special. "I'm
sorry," Colin said, "I ... I'm Just not thinking straight."

They made their way on up the ramp and walked the
not-so-great distance to their office buildings. Colin laughed
shortly when they came in sight of it. "It's a cold night. I
hope Mrs. Bullitt hasn't managed to have us locked out."

Colin thought he was making a bitter joke, but when they
reached the door of their office, a small green placard hung
on its knob. The terms of their lease clearly prohibited the use
of the premises as living quarters. Would they kindly be
ready to vacate in the required three days.

"She is a witch," Ed said, his eyes staring.

But all Colin could do was pound his clenched hand against
the wall of the passageway until the pain of it brought him to
some semblance of calm.

"We're going back," he finally said. "We're going back
and we'll sign her contract. We'll give her something. I don't
know what, but believe me, it will look like a horse . . . and
I promise you ... it will fly."

At the Arena they found Mrs. Bullitt in the Manager's
office rattling a fistful of papers under the balding man's
nose while the handful of clerks in the room made it plain
that they were too deep in their work to see ... or hear . . .

260 F.A. Javor

what was going on. Fleetingly, Colin wondered if she wore
those roweled spurs to bed.

She did not seem suprised to see them, nor did she seem
inclined to take Colin and Ed to her own office- She half-
turned away from the manager, the papers still clutched in a
fist, to face them. "You're back," she snapped. "I told you
you would be."

The waspish tone of her voice might have made Colin turn
around and walk away from her only the day before. Now, in
some perverse way, it made him stand his ground.

He was surprised at how quiet his voice sounded. "Yes,
Mrs. Bullitt. i think we're ready to accept your assignment."

The woman in the striped coat and boots made an abrupt
motion to one of the clerks and the girl came to her immedi-
ately. "There's a blue envelope on my desk. Get it," Mrs.
Bullitt snapped. The girl scurried out the door.

"I knew you'd be back," she said to Colin and Ed. "You
see, it's all a question of understanding people. It always is.
People never know what they can really do until they abso-
lutely have to do it or else."

She smiled and her face looked smug. "All I ever do is
provide the 'or else.' "                                       ^

Colin held his tongue, but beside him he could hear Ed       t
breathing heavily.                                                H

The girl clerk came back and Abby Bullitt took the long       |1
blue envelope from her hand and dropped it on the Manager's       I.
counter in front of Colin.                                       ?

"Sign it," she said, leaving it to him to take out and      ! ^
unfold the long shape of the contract for himself.                   ^

Colin ignored the slight, but at his first glimpse of the       $
printed form he looked up at Mrs. Bullitt, puzzled. "This       ^
. . . this contract is with the University. I don't understand.
Yesterday your husband ..."

"Yesterday's contract was with me. Today's is with the
University."

She smiled and now she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying
herself. "1 told you then that I wouldn't be as easy to get
along with again."

And suddenly Colin was aghast as the full implication of

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          261

what she meant to do struck him. She meant to have her
flying animal, and she meant to compel them to give it to her
for nothing. Absolutely nothing ... or else-
Under a University grant they could, of course, use its
facilities, its equipment, but at no profit to themselves, not
even a mention of their names if the University was not
disposed to lift them from anonymity.

He ran his eyes down the page- It was the standard Univer-
sity form, printed, with the usual blank spaces for additional
items left to be filled in.

But the items filled in were anything but usual.

"Sixty days," Colin gasped, his eyes, unbelieving and
dazed, moving from the smiling woman, to Ed, and back
again. "Sixty days?"

"A little added incentive to keep you from dawdling," she
said. "I know how you people like to stretch things out when
you think you have hold of someone you can take advantage
of. Surely in sixty days you ought to have something to show
me. Now sign."

Ed took the contract from Colin's nerveless fingers, it rustled
loudly in his shaking hand as he glanced down it. "Sixty
days and we guarantee results." He flung the contract on the
counter. "The way that's phrased, we could go to jail for
outright fraud if we don't deliver."

Abby Butlitt had her arms crossed in front of her, tight.
She said nothing.

Silence hung in the room.

Abruptly Ed snatched the Manager's chained-down pen
from its stand and scribbled his name across the bottom of the
stiff paper. He shoved contract and pen at Colin. "Here, sign
this and let's get out of here."

Through a haze that was red and gathering, Colin signed
and flung down the pen. "Would you like your horse to be of
any particular color?" he said bitterly, and was aghast to see
that Mrs. Builitt seemed to be taking the question seriously.

"Arnold." she said to the balding manager, "what is the
name of that liqueur we had at me Hunt dinner last Wednes-
day?"

"Chartreuse, Mrs. Bullitt. Chartreuse."

262 F.A. Savor

"That's it," she said, and then to Colin. "Make it
chartreuse."

And suddenly beside Colin, Ed was laughing and he didn't
seem able to stop. "A chartreuse horse. A flying, flaming,
chartreuse horse."

And in the open air of the street Ed was still gasping. "Oh,
a chartreuse horse."

"Why not? A chartreuse horse is just as logical as a flying
one."

Ed went off in another fit of laughter. "Logic. Oh, my
aching . . . logic. He's talking about logic-'*

But logic was what they used at first. Logic and Colin's
wild idea to start with a living animal that already flew. "It's
a cosmetic problem now. Not engineering. It doesn't have to
be a horse, it just has to look like a horse."

Weight against size. Colin thought of fish that could dis-
tend themselves with air. There was large size with small
weight. He thought of a litter of fox terrier pups he'd once
handled. Ail were solid, chunky, heavy in the hand. All but
one. The same size, but lighter than the others, so much
so that his hand had come up unexpectedly when he'd picked
it up- It died, but it had been lighter.

They slept in the University dorm, ate in the cafeteria, and
they worked. Together at first, then, as time pressed them
and there was stil! not a glimmer of success, they worked
separately to spread their investigations.

They worked with the cells of birds. Searching for size
without weight. Speeding the development of their dividing
cells as much as they dared, projecting the rest of me devel-
opment by computer when they had even a tentative pattern
to program, guessing at more than they should have.

Anything, anything at all, that was large and could lift
itself from the ground. That to start and the hope of plastic
surgery, transplants, for the rest.

Nothing. Not a thing.

Sixty days. Mrs. Bullitt. A reckoning . . . and a reprieve.
Not of their asking, but of her brother-in-law's, the Dean's,
pleading for them, for more time.

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS

263

A reprieve. A reprieve and a new contract. A contract the
Dean walked out of the room and would not watch them sign.

Sixty days- No more. And this time a cash penalty. Added.
If they fail, they must reimburse the University in full for the
loss.

They seldom saw each other now, Colin and Ed. They
slept when they could, worked when they could, ate if they
could. Ed was trying irradiated cells now. Gathering them
from wherever he could.

"Sure it's as subtle as a shotgun," he'd said, "but nothing
alive today is of any help to us. We've got to come up with
something new."

"That is a typical panic response," Colin said.

"What else have we got left but panic?" Ed wanted to
know.

And then one bleary afternoon Colin came awake in the
dorm to Ed's shaking him. "Wake up," Ed was saying,
excited. "I think I've got a lizard that's trying to make like a
bird."

Colin tried to shake the weariness out of his eyes. "A
lizard?"

"Yes, I got to thinking about how birds and reptiles are
distantly related, so I went over to the reptile house, picked
up what ceils 1 could, brought them back and set them up to
be bombarded. This one projected pretty light for its size so I
let it develop. Just now it tried to attack me."

He held up a hand, the edge of it was bleeding. "It ran on
its hind legs and took off right into the air at me, its front
ones going like crazy. So help me, Cotin, I think it was
trying to fly."

It was a lizard all right, nondescript brown, the size of a
small dog, sitting on its haunches. And Ed was right, it did
look as though it was trying to fly when it leaped for their
throats and struck its teeth at their padded arms instead.

They took what cells they might need from it and, because
it was so patently vicious, they destroyed it.

Cells died. That was expected. Others went awry and were
destroyed. But one. One cell developed well and its tapes
projected well.

264 FA. Savor

Sleek reptile head forming. Earless. No problem. Ears are
easy to form and attach later. Front legs shaping up as true
wings now, clawed toes long, well membraned. Transplant leg
buds from another developing cell to chest of prime animal
and hope musculature will develop enough to support them.
Compatability of tissue no problem. After all, aren't they
actually all from the same animal?

Coloring a bonus feature, though. They did not work for it,
did not plan it, but their animal seemed to be developing a
greenish, golden cast to its sleek skin. Ed laughed. "She
might have her chartreuse horse after all."

And the tension. The unholy tension. Out of its tank for
days now, still won't eat, but seems to be doing well on
penetra-dermal regimen. And as light, beautifully light as the
tapes had predicted.

University gym. Transmitting implants in position, tapes
set up, monitoring screen ready. Long tether. Running, on
hind legs like predecessor, wings spread. Glide, not true
flight, a glide. Too weak yet, too undeveloped. More plastic
work needed on that reptile head. Teeth also, still too
carnivorous-looking for a horse. Glad this one is docile, not
like its pappy. Tushes- Remember tushes. After all. he is
supposed to be a male horse, you know. Why won't it eat?

They were working together now, but exhilarated. Intuition
mostly, no mapping. Pointless. To map, you needed the
developed animal to see what its genes would become. And if
they did manage to develop one to suit Abby Bullitt, what
was the need for a map?

More trials. Flying now. Really flying, no tether, comes
when whistled for, obeys hand signals too. Open air, too
large for gym now, needs open air. Try it tomorrow. Call
Mrs. Bullitt.

University Field. Clear, beautiful day. They'd produced a
magnificent animal.

Golden green in color. Its natural position at rest seemed to
be sitting on its haunches, front feet resting on the ground;

the claws had fused into very acceptable-looking hoofs. Its
great wings not folded flat and down against me body, but
carried high so that their tops, the leading bony edges curving

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          265

gracefully behind its head and high arched neck, gave it a
remotely haloed look.

The tail, although Colin could not see it from this angle,
was not like a horse's, and not like a lizard's either, but flat
and used like an airfoil. A handsome beast, and, holding it by
the bridle it had learned to wear, Colin was at once proud yet
fearful of it. Made uneasy by the look in its eyes of waiting,
of a biding of time. Where is thai Bullitt woman?

She came, and riding a horse, Ed swore and reached to
help Colin hold their animal's bridle, but it did not shy. It had
never seen any animal larger than a lab dog before, but it
seemed no more than mildly interested and stayed sitting.

But not Abby Bullitt. She'd dismounted and stood in front
of their animal now, hands clasped. "He's beautiful. He's
beautiful," she repeated over and over, looking up at his
great head towering above her.

Colin looked away from the light in her eyes. She looked
hypnotized.

And now Colin felt his animal move. The biding eyes were
looking down at Abby Bullitt, and slowly, magnificently, the
great wings spread. Spread in a movement Colin had never
seen before. Spread upward and outward until they seemed to
blot out the whole of the morning's sun.

"Oh," the woman gasped. "Oh, I must ride him."

"No," Colin said. Something was going on here that he
didn't understand and his feeling of uneasiness was deep. ' 'No,
he's never been ridden before. Never even mounted."

But Abby Bullitt had her hand on the bridle. "Let go," she
said. "I must ride him."

"No," Colin said and then his hand was bloody where
she'd cut it with her riding crop and snatched away the bridle.

She flung herself onto the animal's shoulders, into the
hollow between the high-carried wings, her sharp spurs gouging.

It screamed and it ran. On its hind legs as Colin had so
often seen it do, its grafted front ones tucked in, birdtike, and
then it was in flight. Again it screamed and now Abby
Bullitt's voice was blended in the sound. Was it delight . . .
or terror? Colin could not tell.

266 F.A. Savor

The mount and ils rider climbed higher. The screams were
fainter now, but the terror in Abby Bullitt's was plain.
Toward the nver and the tall cliffs beyond it the animal flew.
And then it and the screaming were gone. But, airborne, it
had been seen and heard, and now the crowd was gathering.

On the rim of Colin's consciousness the voice of Ed was
shouting.

"Now don't worry. We know exactly where they are. The
transmitters, the police can home in on the data trans-
mitters. ..."

But Colin wasn't really hearing him. Colin was staring at
his jerry-rigged monitoring screen. The pattern of light dart-
ing and swirling across its face was a strange one for this
particular animal, but one not strange at all to Colin. He'd
seen it before, many times, constantly almost, with Ato's
Pride, and he recognized it now with a growing horror.

Somewhere, greedily, slaveringly, the Bullitt beast was at
long last feeding.

Hunched, wrapped in blankets, holding steaming mugs, Co-
lin and Ed, in the cockpit of the patrol boat that had pulled
them out of the river. Ed still shaking his head.

"It went for us. Did you see how it went for us?"

Colin didn't answer him, knowing that Ed wasn't looking
for him to. Remembering the two of them in the police
copter, with the pilot and the man with the heavy carbine.
Tracking their animal, homing in on the emitting signals of
its data transmitters until, on the rocky face of the cliffs,
halfway up, they caught the glint of the sun on its gold-green
skin.

"There!" Ed shouted, pointing, and the copter hovered
close.

Crouched it was, on the jutting shelf. The great wings half
unfurled, opening, closing, twitching,

"Do you think she's still alive?" the man with the carbine
said, then, "Forget it."

It rose to meet them. Hurling itself at them with a ferocity
that brought to Colin's mind the vivid image of its dog-sized
predecessor.

THE TRIUMPH OF PEGASUS          267

"Move!" the man with the carbine was shouting at the
copter pilot. "Swing this thing around! Give me a clear
shot!"

But the pilot had already swung his craft. Hanging on its
screw, he'd fumed it like a pendant bubble and the man was
firing.

Again and again Colin saw him jerk with the recoil of his
heavy weapon, but the great flying animal was still airborne.

Upon them now it was. Circling around them, great wings
flailing. Lips drawn back from its bloodied teeth.

Claws. It looks like it's got claws on those feet and not
hooves.

And then it struck. Like the huge beast of prey that it was.
It struck, swooping down upon them from above and behind
with a speed impossible to evade; with a whistling and a
shrieking that Colin was sure he heard even above the clatter
of their own copter blades.

And into those blades it plunged, and the impact was
tremendous.

They hung there in the clear sky for a heart-stopping
moment; the screaming animal and the maimed machine.
Then they fell. Fell the few hundred feel to the river and into
its chilling waters.

Beside Colin the copter pilot shivering in his blankets
called out to the man at the patrol boat's wheel. "See it yet?"

"No," someone called back to him, and the man who had
lost his carbine pulled his blankets closer and said. "Forget
it. He's not floating with all the lead I put into him."

They were waiting for them on the jutting dock when the
patrol boat swept close. On the dock and coming oat to meet
them in their hovering craft. The vidcasters, the reporters, the
curious.

And after them the TriV coverage of the inquest, the
investigations, the public's blatant, and their colleagues' more
discreet, inquiries into how they produced their miracle, until
at last even Ed turned to Colin in their office one morning
and said in genuine dismay, "I know I wanted publicity to
put us over the top, but enough is enough."

268 F.A. Savor

Colin smiled and waved the pale blue vac-tube message his
secretary had just handed him.

"The Commodore says thank you but he doesn't think he
ought to accept Ato's Pride from us, not as a gift anyway."

"Why not?" Ed said. "It's the least we can do to show
him our appreciation for the contracts he's wangled for us."

Colin laughed. "Those he says he doesn't need to defend,
not any more. But he doesn't want to get fouled up with any
committee investigating expensive presents to government
people."

"Tell him to take the horse and stop worrying," Ed said,
and from his expression Colin could not tell if he was kidding
or not. "If they fire him, a growing organization like ours
can always use a good man who knows his way around
Procurement."

PHOENIX

To early agricultural peoples, whose lives depended on the
regular and reliable succession of seasons, it became clear
thai these in turn depended on the motion of the sun in the
heavens. In the regions of the Middle East where agricul-
ture and civilization first developed, the midday sun was
always in the southern half of the sky. From noon to noon
it rose higher and higher in the sky, but never reached the
zenith. By the date we know as June 21, it got as high as it
could and began to sink again.

For half a year if sank, until it reached its low point on
December 21. and then began to rise again. As it sank the
summer passed and ended and it grew colder and colder.
It was clear that if the sun continued to sink indefinitely,
all would freeze and life would come to an end. The time
of the low point and the turnabout was therefore a time of
rejoicing, so many cultures had a period of unrestrained
celebration of the winter "solstice" ("sun standstill"). The
modern version of this celebration is Christmas.

Naturally, this annual resurrection of the sun, with the
promise of a coming spring and a new period of growth,
gave rise to all sorts of death-and-resurrection cults. The
Egyptians pictured a bird that died annually and was
reborn out of its funeral pyre—an obvious sun-figure. The
Greeks picked up the legend and visualized the bird as the
size of an eagle, and as being gold, red. and purple in
color. (These are the colors of the noonday sun, of the
setting sun, and of the sky at twilight.) They called it the

269

0                 Thomas N. Scortia

"phoenix" from a Greek word for "red-purple" and had
it die and be resurrected every five hundred years, rather
than every year. Since the phoenix was its own parent, it
needed no mate, and was pictured as one of a kind.

The following story gives us a very modern version of
the myth.

CAUTION! INFLAMMABLE!

Thomas N. ScorUa

When the City Editor of the Gazette received word that a
phoenix was building her nest on the very peak of the dome
of the city hall, he naturally sent his best reporter speeding to
the scene. The reporter, an intrepid young man known for his
resourcefulness, decided that little was to be gained by ob-
serving the coming immolation from the pavement below
and, after bribing a janitor, gained access to the ledge sur-
rounding the base of the dome and climbed the narrow metal
ladder to the peak where the bird was engaged in her labors.

"You realize," he said, accosting the phoenix, "that this
is a very unorthodox place in which to build a nest, especially
with the end you have in mind?"

"I do," the bird said, pausing in its work, "but there is no
higher point in this area and I don't have enough strength
remaining to make it west to some peak in the Rockies."

"Tell me," said the reporter, remembering his professional
duties, "is it true that there is only one of your kind?"

"That's quite correct," said the phoenix, selecting a long
shred of cellophane from a pile of debris balanced delicately
on the slope of the dome. She began swiftly to weave it into
the nest, following an intricately beautiful pattern.

"And when you become old, you build a nest and set fire
to it while you are in it?"

"Yes." said the bird wearily.

"And arise reborn from the ashes?"

"Quite true."

271

272 Thomas N. Scortia

"But." the reporter said, frowning, "I thought you were
indigenous to the East."

"I was originally," the bird agreed. "However, since the
phoenix is a symbol of ever-renewing youth, I decided to
migrate to a more appropriate locale."

"Here in the Mississippi Valley?"

"Don't be silly," the bird said. "I was on my way to
Hollywood, but I foresaw that I would die before I completed
the Hight."

"You can foresee your death, then?"

"Of course, as welt as other events. I have precognition,
you see."

"Precognition? That means you can predict coming events,
doesn't it?"

"Yes," the phoenix said, beginning to weave a scrap of
newspaper into the nest, which was nearly finished.

"Such as the outcome of the next election and who will
win the World Series and ..."

"Oh, thai and much more," the bird said, settling itself
into the completed nest. "But don't ask me to," she said.
"Everyone's always asking for a free prediction. Very
exasperating."

"1 had no intention," protested the reporter.

"Yes, you did," contradicted the bird. "Anyway, there's
only a few minutes left before twelve."

"Is that when . . . ?"

"Yes," said the phoenix. "Promptly at noon." The re-
porter paused and eyed the nest.

"That's not quite the nest 1 had expected," he remarked at
last. "1 thought you were supposed to use sandalwood and
various other exotic plants."

"Now, tell me," the bird said impatiently, "where would
I get sandalwood around here?"

"You do have a point," the reporter agreed. "I notice,"
he added with a small glow of pride, "thai you have used my
paper as part of your nest." He pointed to a large piece of
newsprint bearing the masthead The Gazette and a black
headline below.

"Yes. Not a very satisfactory texture, however." The

CAUTION! INFLAMMABLE!

273

phoenix squirmed uncomfortably. "Do you have the correct
time?" she said.

"It's one minute to twelve," the young man offered. **I
suppose you ignite spontaneously?"

"I'm afraid that part of the legend isn't quite true," tile
phoenix sighed. "Usually in the past I've had help."

"Oh," said the reporter, "I didn't know. Can I offer you a
match?"

The bird eyed the shred of newspaper whose black head-
lines said: "AEC to Test Nitrogen Super-Bomb Today Noon."
"That will not be necessary," she said.

SPHINX

An obvious symbol of divine strength might be a human
body with a lion's head, or, in reverse, a lion's body with
a human head. The lion. after all. was a particularly
feared predator, a.'id the ' 'king of beasts.''

The Greek griffins, as f explained earlier, were crea-
tures with the torso of a lion and the head and wings of an
eagle. An only slightly different composite was one with
the torso of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head
and breasts of a woman.

Such a creature was pictured as a fearsome monster
from whose grasp no human being could escape. It was
called a ' 'sphinx'' from a Greek word meaning ' 'to hold
tightly."

The most famous sphinx in the Greek myths was one that
existed just outside the city of Thebes and that stopped
travelers going to that city. It posed a problem to them:

"What goes on four legs in the morning, on two at won,
and on three in the evening?" Failure to answer correctly
meant death. The Greek hero Oedipus, however, guessed
correctly that the answer was the human being, who crawled
on all fours in the morning of life, stood upright on two
legs in maturity, and needed a cane in old age. The sphinx
then killed itself in frustration.

The Egyptians would occasionally build lions with the
heads of reigning monarchs, simply to show the strength of
the monarch and, through him, of the nation. This was
sympathetic magic. Showing the nation to be strong would

274

THE PYRAMID PROJECT

275

keep it strong in actuality. (We're familiar with that sort of
thing today, too.) The most famous Egyptian sphinx is the
very large Great Sphinx built in connection with the Great
Pyramid-

This Egyptian sphinx is featured in the following story.

THE PYRAMID PROJECT

Robert F. Young

THE SPHINX

Daniel Hall met the enemy in the blue skies of NRGC 984-D
but it cannot be said that the enemy was his. Neither can it be
said that he was me enemy's. In point of fact, about all that
can be said about the encounter is that it never quite came
off. One minute there were two trim scout ships, one Terran
and the other Uvelian, arrowing toward each other, and the
next minute there were two trim scout ships veering off at
right angles to each other and dropping rapidly planetward.
What happened to the Uvelian pilot will be touched upon
later. Right now, the camera is focused on Daniel Hall.

He came down near the edge of a wide tableland and
plowed a long furrow in a stretch of snow-white sand. The
impact tore one of the viewscope brackets loose and sent it
ricocheting from wall to wall. On the third ricochet it side-
swiped Hall, ripping through both layers of his spacesuit and
tearing open his left ann from elbow to shoulder- Still not
satisfied, it struck the radio panel and smashed the transmit-
ter. Then it gave up the ghost and dropped to the deck.

Hall hadn't meant to make such a hard landing. He hadn't
meant to make any kind of landing. An invisible force had
seized the controls and lorn the ship out of the sky, and he
hadn't been able to do a thing about it.

He tried the controls now. He tried them singly and in
pairs. No matter how he tried them, they did not respond.

276

THE PYRAMID PROJECT            277

Next, he had a go at the radio. He knew even while he was
beaming his S.O.S that it would never get beyond the strato-
sphere and that all he would receive for his pains would be
static. He was right. He turned the radio off

Well anyway, NRGC 984-D had a reasonably amiable
climate and a reasonably amiable atmosphere—his instru-
ments told him that much. So he could stay alive for a little
while at least.

Hall grinned. "A little while'* was right. The Ten-an fleet's
imminent engagement with the Uvelian wouldn't be post-
poned merely because an unimportant space scout, who had
been sent on ahead to determine whether or not the planet in
whose vicinity the engagement was to take place had intelli-
gent inhabitants, failed to report back. The assignment had
been no more than a token gesture in the first place—a
gesture that would sound good on the flagship's tog-tape when
the war was over. Whether NRGC 984-D had intelligent
inhabitants or not, the commander of the Terran fleet would
carry out his original orders, and if a planet-wide tectonic
upheaval resulted from the side effects of the battle— and
only a miracle could avert such an eventuality—Terrankind
would hold themselves no more responsible for it than they
held themselves responsible for Carthage, Dresden, and Deimos.

According to Terran intelligence reports, the resemblance
between Terrans and Uvelians was cultural as well as physi-
cal; hence, the odds had it that the Uvelian pilot had been on
a similar token assignment and that if he, too, had been
rendered helpless and incommunicado it would have a similar
lack of effect on the commander of the Uvelian fleet. Any-
way you looked at the situation NRGC 984-D was going to
have to pay dearly for being in the wrong place at the wrong
time—i.e., at a point in space equidistant from Earth and
Uvel at the precise moment when the crucial battle of the
Earth-Uvel war was going to take place.

Hall's arm was beginning to throb, and waves of weakness
were washing over him. Breaking out a first-aid pac, he
sterilized the wound and dressed it. The bleeding stopped, but
he still felt weak and he knew that he should rest. However,
he couldn't bring himself to do so. For one thing, he knew

278

Robert F. Young

that regardless of what he did, he was doomed anyway, and
for another, during his descent he had glimpsed a number of
vaguely familiar structures in the distance. He hadn't been
able to make them out clearly, but structures usually spelled
intelligent beings, and he was eager to find out whether or not
these structures were in keeping with the rule. It was silly of
him, he supposed, to want to know what kind of beings, if
any, he was going to share extinction with; but he wanted to

know just the same.

So, after removing the cumbersome outer section of his
spacesuit and taking off his helmet, he opened the scout
ship's locks and stepped outside. NRGC 984 was well past
meridian. Using it as a reference point, he oriented himself.
To the north and to the east, the tableland dropped away into
hazy foothills; far to the west, stalwart snow-crowned moun-
tains rose sheeriy into the sky. The structures which he had
glimpsed lay to the south. There were four of them al-
together, and three of them were pyramidal in shape. The
fourth stood a little to the east of me others and was radically
different from them. It looked like—it looked like—

Hall squinted his eyes against the glare of the sunlight. If
he hadn't known that such a thing was impossible, he would
have sworn that the fourth structure was a sphinx.

NRGC 984 was a KO star. However, if the rays which
were raining down upon me tableland were a dependable
criterion, it wasn't very far from attaining GO-hood. Hall felt
dehydrated before he had gone half a mile. By the time a mile
lay behind him, he was ready to drop.

He wet his mourn repeatedly from the vacuum container of
ship's water which he had brought along, each time swallow-
ing as much of the icy contents as he dared. He could see the
pyramidal structures quite clearly now—clearly enough to
know that in mentally referring to them as "pyramidal struc-
tures" instead of as "pyramids" he was only kidding him-
self. He could see the fourth structure quite clearly, too—clearly
enough to know that in the strict sense of the word it wasn't a        ;

structure, but a huge statue, and to know that whether such a       V
thing were possible or not, the statue was a statue of a
sphinx.                                                           ;

THE PYRAMID PROJECT            279

As he progressed, reeling now and then from the heat and
from his increasing weakness, he began to wonder whether he
had somehow been catapulted back through space to Egypt—to
the plateau ofGizeh, upon which the Great Sphinx Hannachis
guarded the Great Pyramids of Cheops, Chephren, and
Mykerinos, and at whose base the Terran capital of Kafr el
Haram stood. And as he progressed still farther he began to
wonder whether he had somehow been catapulted back through
space and time to the Egypt of over five thousand years ago
when the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx were new; for
these pyramids and this sphinx were new—make no mistake
about it. The pyramids looked as though they had been built
yesterday, and as for the sphinx, its excellent condition lent it
a realism so remarkable that Hall momentarily expected to
see it rise up on its columnar legs and come thundering over
the tableland to welcome him.

Or to annihilate him.

There was a third possibility, of course, and on the surface
it made more sense than the other two: maybe his growing
weakness and the merciless rays of the sun had combined
forces and were causing him to hallucinate.

But if he was hallucinating, why hadn't he chosen a subject
more in keeping with his character? Specifically, why hadn't
he projected an image of a garish street lined with nepenthe
nooks and fun bars, or an image of a blue mountain lake with
a shack on its wooded shore and a canoe drawn up on its
beach ready to take him gliding over the cool and limpid
waters? Like many adventurers. Hall pursued both solitude
and sin and found peace in neither, but they were at least a
part of his makeup, and Egyptology was not. He had visited
the plateau of Gizeh and seen the Great Pyramids and me
Great Sphinx, and he had read about Cheops, Chephren, and
Mykerinos in Herodotus* History: but the pharaohs and their
sepulchers and their monuments were relatively unimportant
items in the synthesis of real and vicarious experiences that
constituted his character, and it was highly unlikely that he
would be "seeing" a sphinx and three pyramids now.

He decided that the best way to find out whether or not he
was imagining them would be try to walk right through them,

280 Robert F. Young

and with this in mind, he forced himself to go on, even though
he knew that he would do better to return to his ship and
forget about the whole thing.

Gradually, the pyramids took on greater detail, particularly
the largest of the trio. It stood in the foreground, and several
hundred yards to the east of it stood the Sphinx, The Gizeh
sphinx measured in the neighborhood of 189 feet in length,
70 in height, and 30 from forehead to chin. If anything, this
one exceeded those dimensions- Lord, suppose it were to stand
up. Hall thought. Why, it would tower almost a hundred feet
above the ground!

Had the Sphinx read his mind? It would seem so. At any
rate, the huge head had turned and the great golden eyes were
fixed upon his face. As he watched in disbeliving fascination,
it stood erect on its four legs and regarded him contempla-
tively across the half a hundred yards of tableland that sepa-
rated them.

Everything caught up to Hall then—his weakness, the rays
of NRGC 984, the heat rising from the white sand, the doubts
that had been multiplying in his mind ever since he had
participated in the destruction of the Deimos Dissenters—and
he sagged to the ground. The ground, he discovered pres-
ently, was trembling. Well it might. The creature walking
over it probably weighed several thousand tons.

He felt the coolness of shade. Looking up, he saw the
massive humanoid face looming above him, the great golden
eyes gazing down into his own. Slowly, the huge head began
to lower, relentlessly, the gigantic jaws began to open. Belat-
edly, Hall tried to draw his laser pistol, only to discover that
he no longer had charge of his right arm. He retreated way
back into his mind then. found a deep dark cave, crawled into
it, and closed his eyes-

THE PYRAMID PROJECT           281

CHEOPS' DAUGHTER

Wherever else he might be, Hall decided some time later, he
was no longer in the cave. Nor was he, apparently, in the
belly of the Sphinx. There was the softness of eiderdown
beneath his back and a pleasant perfume upon his nostrils. He
was completely relaxed, and the throbbing in his arm had
died away. Feeling fingers lightly touch his forehead, he
opened his eyes.

There was a girl standing over him. Her face was narrow,
the forehead high and rounded, the nose high-bridged and
slender, me chin somewhat pointed. She had night-black hair,
and her head was fitted with a ridiculous headdress that flared
up into a flat crown. She was stim, but startlingly well-
developed, and she was wearing a tight-fitting hatter and a
tight-fitting knee-length skirt. The headdress, the hatter, and
the skirt were golden in color, and, peering over the edge of
the padded platform on which he lay. Hall saw that webbed
sandals of similar hue encased her small feet. Her skin was
the color of olives.

Despite her unusual attire and her equally unusual develop-
ment, plus a queenly hauteur that somehow went well with
both, her eyes still managed to be the most remarkable items
in her feminine inventory. They were almond-shaped, slightly
slanted, golden brown, and pretematurally large. In addition,
there was a liquid quality about them that came close to
devastating the defenses which Hall made haste to throw up
around himself.

Well anyway, she made as much sense as the pyramids and
the Sphinx did, he thought resignedly. As a matter of fact,
she seemed to belong in such a setting. "I suppose you're
going to tell me your name is Cleopatra," he said, even
though he knew that the all-purpose English words were
bound to be Greek to her.

She had withdrawn her hand from his forehead and had

282 Robert F. Young

stepped back from the platform the minute he opened his
eyes. But she hadn't been in the least disconcerted, nor was
she in the least disconcerted now. "Behold, I have dressed
thy wound," she said. "Is it not enough that a pharaoh's
daughter should have thus demeaned herself without her having
to demean herself still further by giving thee her name?"
Suddenly puzzlement crinkled her forehead, and she looked
intently at his smartly tailored inner spacesuit. Actually, in
combination with his snappy black spaceboots it constituted
as sharp an outfit as the Terran Space Navy had ever come up
with, but she certainly didn't seem to think so. "Where didst
thou learn to speak the language of Egypt, slave from a far
land?" she asked.

Clearly, NRGC 984-D was a planet of surprises, and by
this time Hall should have been sufficiently acclimated to
have been able to take each new development in his stride. He
was not, though—not quite—and for a while he just lay there
gaping at the girl. Then he propped himself up on one elbow,
noting as he did so that she had indeed dressed his wound and
noting simultaneously that in the process she had somehow
eliminated its soreness and brought about at least a partial
return of his strength. She had also, he reminded himself
quickly, called him a slave. He said snidely, "I guess you
might say mat I learned to speak Egyptian in the same place
you learned to speak APE."

She blinked, and it was obvious from the blank look she
gave him that she had missed the point completely. He had
the feeling that she was just dying to put him in his place with
a few well-chosen epithets but that she wasn't quite sure enough
of herself to risk doing so. "Great indeed must be my disfa-
vor in the eyes of Amen-Ra," she said presently, "for me to
have been afflicted by such circumstances and by such
company."

Hall sat up on the platform, which, he saw now, was a bed
of some kind. The room in which it stood was on the small
side, and surprisingly pleasant. The ceilings and the walls had
been carved out of pink granite, and the illumination was
provided by candles burning in niches that looked a lot like
light fixtures. Besides the bed, there were two marble benches.

THE PYRAMID PROJECT           283

a marble table, and a slender diorite pedestal supporting a
shallow diorite bowl that looked like a bird bath but which
was probably a stone brazier. In the wail opposite the one
against which the bed stood, a tapestry-hung doorway gave
access to another room. The tapestry was heavily decorated
with tiny humanoid figures with cowlike heads.

Hall had a hunch that he was inside the largest of the three
pyramids—an upsetting enough possibility in itself without
having a pharaoh's daughter to contend with too. "Which
pharaoh are you the daughter of?" he asked.

She drew herself up as straight as could be and looked at
him as though he were a chunk of mud mat had just dropped
from a chariot wheel. Nevertheless, the hauteur in her voice
did not ring true, and he was certain that he detected a note of
shame. "His Majesty King Khufu the blessed, slave! Dost
thou dare profess ignorance of his reign?"

Khufu. he thought. That would be old Cheops himself.
Which meant that the giri standing before him was in the
neighborhood of fifty-two hundred years old. He sighed.
"Well anyway, you dress a mean dressing," he said.

She just looked at him.

He regarded her shrewdly. "I take it we're in the neighbor-
hood of Memphis," he said presently, "and that this pyramid
we're in is the one your father took twenty years to build."

For the first time the underlying uncertainty which he had
sensed in her from the start rose to the surface, instead of
bringing to mind a princess, she now brought to mind a little
girl who had strayed out of her own back yard and become
hopelessly lost in the next. "I—I know that what thou sayest
must be true," she said, "but I know also that it cannot be
true. Only the first mastaba of my father's sepulcher has been
built, and it is to be the first sepulcher of its kind, yet here
there are three of them, and each has been completed. I—I
do not understand wherefore 1 am in this place, nor wherefore I
am alone."

"But surely you must know how you got here."

She shook her head. "Behold, two nights ago I was sitting
in the—" She paused, took a deep breath, and began all over
again. "Behold, two nights ago 1 lay me to steep, and when

284 Robert F. Young

Amen-Ra climbed upon his throne the morning after, here I
lay in this strange place in this strange land. I do not know
what to do."

She looked as though she were going to cry. Hall would
have felt sorry for her if the memory of her arrogance hadn't
still been fresh in his mind. He didn't think much of people
who went around calling other people slaves. Another reason
he didn't feel sorry for her was that he couldn't bring himself
to believe that she was on the level. How could she possibly
be Cheops' daughter?

All right, who could she be then? A Uvelian Mata Hari?
Nonsense! A Uvelian Mata Hari might try to pass herself off
as a lot of things, but unless she was hopelessly out of her
mind, she would never try to pass herself off as an Egyptian
princess who had been dead for more than five millennia.
Besides, what would a Uvelian spy be doing on a planet
which, other than on an abstract level, neither the Terran nor
the Uvelian empires had ever heard about until a few days
ago and which they wouldn't have heard about even then if it
hadn't been for the fact that NRGC 984-D was going to be
occupying almost the same point in space that the major
Uvelian and Terran forces, which were ineluctabty drawing
closer and closer together, would be occupying when they
met in the cruciai battle of the hundred-year galactic war—in
the ultimate Armageddon that would decide whether me Uvelian
demosocialistic ideology or the Terran sociocratic ideology
was to endure?

"Tell me." Hall said presently, "is there really a monster
the size of a young mountain hanging around these parts, or
did I just imagine there was?"

He expected the question to disconcert her. It didn't in the
least. "Oh yes," she said, as calmly as though a sphinx were
no more awe-inspiring than a common alley cat, "She-who-
builds-sepulchers is still with me. I feared at first that she.
too, had deserted me, but she had not. But as she will not
communicate with me, I have been unable to leam wherefore
she interrupted her labors in my father's behalf to build these
sepulchers in this strange land, or for whom she built them."

A pyramid-building sphinx was all Hall needed. Lord knew,

THE PYRAMID PROJECT            285

the girl's story had been incredible enough before, but now it
was fantastic. Sliding down from the platform-bed to the
floor and noting to his satisfaction that his laser pistol was
still in its holster at his hip, he said, "I can see that if I'm
going to find out anything around here, I'm going to have to
find it out for myself. So if you'll climb down off that high
horse of yours long enough to tell me how to get out of this
rock pile. Miss Whoever-you-are, I won't bother you any
more!"

The girl gasped. She stamped her right foot. She stamped
her left. She clenched her hands. "Hast thou the effrontery to
imply that the noble daughter of His Majesty King Khufu the
blessed is guilty of a falsehood, slave?"

Hall put his hands on his hips. "A falsehood! Why, you've
been lying your head off."

He would have said more if tears hadn't come into her
golden brown eyes. Turning, she pointed toward the door-
way. "Beyond that portal thou wilt find another, slave," she
said, "and beyond the second portal, yet another. Then thou
wilt find thyself in the passage that leads to the portico. Go!"

Hall went.

THE PYRAMID PROJECT

As he left the room, it occurred to him that he had forgotten
to ask her how he happened to be inside the pyramid in the
first place. It was just as well. She would only have told him
another fib.

How did he happen to be inside it then?

Probably, after his sphinx hallucination, he had crawled the
rest of the distance to his objective and me girl had found him
and taken him in tow. For all he knew, she could very well
have saved his life. He wished now that he hadn't been quite
so rude to her.

286 Robert F. Young

As nearly as he could ascertain, the room that adjoined the
one he had just left was a living room. It contained elabo-
rately upholstered settees and chairs, and there were cushions
scattered over the thickly carpeted floor. The next room was
unquestionably a cooking room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were
lined with earthenware pots, and there was a brick oven large
enough to roast an elephant in. in addition to the oven, there
was a brazierlike affair on which less pachydermatous dishes
could be prepared.

Passing through the third doorway, he found himself, not
in the passage which the girl had mentioned, but in a spacious
court. Stone columns gave the illusion of supporting the
ceiling, and at the lop of each, just beneath the capital, was
the bas-relief of a cowlike face. Elaborate horns rising from
the stone foreheads blended with the capitals and supplied
their motifs. It finally dawned on Hall who this cowlike being
was. It was Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of love.

He crossed the court without further delay and stepped
through a wide doorway into a long corridor. At the end of
the corridor, a dark, star-spangled rectangle showed. He made
track for it, rejoicing in the cool night air that presently
reached his nostrils. Obviously he had been unconscious
longer than he had thought.

He could hardly wait to see the stars. He knew perfectly
well that he couldn't possibly be in ancient Egypt, that there
was another, far more practical, explanation for the presence
of the Sphinx and the pyramids and the olive-skinned girl. but
just the same it would be good to know for sure. The stars
would tell him. Stars did not lie.

Stepping out of the passage, he looked up at them. The
structure behind him and the roof of the portico had half of
the heavens, but the half that was visible contained not a
single familiar constellation. He gave a sigh of relief. A
moment later, he wondered why. Wouldn't he be better off if
he were in ancient Egypt? There, at least, he would have a
chance to live out the rest of his natural life. Here, he would
be dead before morning.

The portico was wide and lofty. Four columns, larger but
similar in all other respects to the columns he had seen in the

THE PYRAMID PROJECT            287

court, stood in a row along the marble apron, supporting the
roof. Between the two center ones a short flight of wide
marble steps descended to the ground. He crossed the apron
and went down them.

All was silence. Above his head, a constellation suggestive
of a huge crocodile sprawled across the heavens. The white
sands of the tableland caught the starlight and shattered it into
infinitesimal particles, and the particles glistened softly for
miles around, seeming to emit a radiance of their own.
Behind him, the Great Pyramid—he still thought of it as the
"Great Pyramid" even though he knew that it wasn't—rose
geometrically up into an apex that was nearly 500 feet above
me ground. To his left, the lesser pyramids stood, and to his
right crouched the Sphinx.

Despite himself, he was struck by her beauty—awed, al-
most. She had a silvery cast in the starlight. Her flanks rose
up like smooth escarpments to the magnificent ridge of her
back. Her noble head hid half a hundred stars. The cliff of
her classic profile was a splendid silhouette against the sky.

Hall walked toward her in the starlight. He had been
impressed by the Great Sphinx of the Gizeh Necropolis. Even
in its state of disrepair there was a mysterious quality about it
that he had found appealing, a massive grace that had in-
trigued him. But compared to his sphinx the one of the Gizeh
Necropolis was nothing more than a crudely sculptured rocky
promontory reinforced with masonry. Stone was all it had
ever been and stone was all it could ever be. This sphinx was
art apotheosized. No wonder in his dazed and weakened state
of a few hours ago he had invested her with life. Even now,
thinking clearly again, he felt that at any moment she would
rise and walk beneath the stars.

What had happened to the race of people who had sculp-
tured her? Hall wondered. To the race of people who had
built the three pyramids over which she was standing guard?
Did that same race of people have something to do with the
building of the Egyptian pyramids? Did—

Nothing happened to the race of people who built the
pyramids, Daniel Hall. And nothing is going to happen to
them if they can help it.

288 Robert F. Young

As the words formed themselves in his mind, he saw that
the Brobdingnagian head was turning toward him. Simulta-
neously he realized that, far from being inanimate, the mas-
sive leonine body was rampant with life. At length, me
mysterious eyes met his and regarded him like a pair of
intelligent golden suns. He stood stark stil] in the starlight, a
statue now himself.

In the final analysis there was no reason why a sphinx
couldn't be alive. Statues were sculptured of men, too, but
this did not mean that men were made of stone.

Even the poor Egyptian child who dressed your wound in
the Temple of Hathor is less anthropocentric than you are,
Daniel Hall. She realized I was alive the moment she saw me.
And yet you allowed yourself to know resentment simply
because her thought world ruled out the possibility of your
being her equal, thereby forcing her to think of you as a
slave. For shame, Daniel Hall.'

"And now what happens?" Hall asked, half in cynicism,
half in fear. "Are you going to devour me?"

There, your anthropocentric nature is influencing you again!
You think that merely because a being is larger than you are,
it must be evil. And the larger it is, the more evil it becomes in
your mind, and the more partial to human flesh. No, I'm not
going to devour you, Daniel Hall—it is you and your kind
who are going to devour me and my sisters. That is. you
would be going to devour us if we hadn't taken the necessary
steps to prevent you from doing so, although the possibility
exists that you may still succeed. You are on the verge of
devouring us, not because you want to at the moment, but
because you haven't bothered to find out whether or not we
exist.

"That's not true!" Hall objected. "I was sent here myself
to find out!"

And so was one of the members of the Uvelian forces. But
even if either or both of you were able to report your respec-
tive findings to your respective headquarters the battle would
still take place, and you know it. Incidentally, it's unneces-
sary for you to speak, to say nothing of shout. I can receive
thoughts as well as send them.

THE PYRAMID PROJECT            289

It was you who seized our controls then—who—who caused
us to crash.

It was I who seized your controls and caused you to crash,
Daniel Hall. My sister in the neighboring demesne took care
of your opponent. If our project is successful, we will need
both of you. However, although I caused you to crash,
Daniel Hail, I had no intention of causing you bodily injury.
Small details are beyond the scope of our telekinesis. But I
see that thanks to the skillful ministrations of Ahura, you've
fully recovered.

Ahura?

The little Egyptian princess whom you were so rude to a
few minutes ago in the Temple of Hathor.

She's no more of an Egyptian princess than you are! Hall
"said." Egypt was consolidated with the Union of Terran
States over a hundred years ago when the capital was built at
Kafr el Haram, and couldn't recognize a princess even if she
wanted to. Egyptian princesses were out of style long before
that time anyway.

But millennia ago. they were not. Ahura wasn't lying to
you—she realty is Cheops' daughter.

But don't you see?—that's more incredible yet.' Cheops'
daughter has been dead for over five thousand years!

No, said the Sphinx, Cheops' daughter is very much alive.
However, until yesterday she had been unaware of the fact
for quite some time. Not long after I arrived on your planet
some fifty-two hundred of your years ago and instituted the
project my sisters and I had agreed upon, it came to my
attention that in his zeal to see his sepulcher erected Cheops
had placed her in the stews. Since I had told him that if he
would put all of the resources of his kingdom at my disposal
the first pyramid would be his. f felt responsible for his
action; and, as I had intended to take back someone like
Ahura anyway, I stole her from the stews, placed her in
suspended animation, built a special capsule for her. and had
one of my sisters come and get her. She was then entombed in
a special vault on Pomos—NRGC 984-D to you, Daniel
Hall—until such time as I should have need of her. Two days
ago I brought her here, dressed her in clothing similar to

290 Robert F. Young

what she was accustomed to, placed her in the Temple of
Hathor. and revived her. Ahura is not her real name.
incidentally. She thinks of her ordeal in the stews as having
happened only a few days ago and has unconsciously taken
the first step toward creating a new identity. 1 interceded in
time, but the experience left its mark just the same.

Drowning, Hall grabbed for the first straw he saw. But
according to Herodotus, she stayed in the stews for a long
lime, and also according to Herodotus, she made each of the
patrons pay off with a building block for a small pyramid
which she later built in front of her father's.

Come now, Daniel Hall, you aren't even convinced of that
yourself. You simultaneously think of Herodotus as the ' 'Fa-
ther of History" and as the "Father of Lies." However, as
his Egyptian history can't possibly be anything more than
recorded hearsay, he can't have been deliberately lying in
this case. Probably he merely repeated the myths which the
generations that followed the fourth dynasty dreamed up to
supplement their knowledge of Cheops, Chephren, and
Mykerinos. In any event, what he wrote about Ahura is
untrue.

Hall had already forgotten Ahura- You said you arrived on
Earth fifty-two hundred years ago. That means you're over
five thousand years old!

Right, said the Sphinx. Even older if you count my incuba-
tion period, which you really should in view of the fact that
members of my race mature before they even see the light of
day. Altogether, we have a longevity of some fifteen thousand
years—your years, that is. So you see. I've still got quite a
few to go—or will have if the preventive measures my sisters
and I have taken succeed in averting the Armageddon which
the Terran and Uvelian space navies are so determined to
bring off in our skies. Her golden eyes traversed the heavens,
returned to Hall. No Pleiades yet, I see. Well, there will be
soon. Incidentally. I stole the expression from your mind,
Daniel Hall.

"Pleiades'* was the term used by ground observers to
describe a space fleet in planetary orbit. But at the moment
Hall was concerned with more important matters than Terran

THE PYRAMID PROJECT            291

war terminology. You and your sisters—you' re parthenogenetic,
aren't you? he said.

Righl again, Daniel Hall.

And does each of your sisters have a set of pyramids like
these?

Not all of them. no—only those who have need for them at
the moment.

Who built them for you?

We built them ourselves—not as a team, but as individuals.
1 myself built the set of Gizeh.

Come off it! Hail said. How could you build a pyramid?

1 have spread my left forefoot. Look at it. Daniel Hall. and
tell me what you see.

Hall looked. /-—/ see, he said a long time later, a set of five
powerful appendages. Two of them—the ones which corre-
spond to my thumb and forefinger-—appear to be some man-
ner of gripping tools. The next one appears to be a stone-cutting
tool, and the last two appear to be tools thai can be adapted
for almost any kind of work.

Good. Basically, my sisters and 1 are equipped/or quarry-
ing and building, but through the ages our race extended its
abilities to encompass innumerable other fields. The stone
used in the set of pyramids behind you, 1 quarried in the
mountains that form the western boundary of my dhen—or
demesne: hence, transporation was no problem. Owing to the
distribution of our dhens, it rarely is on our planet. However,
the stone used in the Gizeh pyramids in many instances had
to be quarried in neighboring countries: hence, transporation
was a problem, and I had to enlist the aid of the reigning
pharaohs. It's doubtful whether I could have succeeded with-
out their cooperation in any case. The job took almost one
hundred and fifty of their years—practically the whole of the
fourth dynasty, ft needn't have taken that long, but the liming
had to be perfect, and besides, I wanted it to look as though
mankind alone were responsible for it. The first pyramid became
Cheops', the next. Chephren's. and the last, Mykerinos'.

But why did you build them on Earth?

My sisters and I have the ability to look into the future. It's
a limited ability and functions only when we're enjoying

292 Robert F. Young

complete freedom from fear and worry, but when we do
foresee, we foresee quite well. Some fifty-two hundred of your
years ago, Daniel Hall, one of my sisters foresaw the con-
verging of the Terran and Uvelian fleets on Pornos and
realized that our planet couldn't possibly survive the side
effects of the battle that was bound to take place. She also
foresaw the appearance of your scout ship and the almost
simultaneous appearance of (he Uvelian's. In keeping with
our custom she convened an emergency council, and the
situation was examined in detail. Finally the only possible
solution was arrived at, and two of us were chosen, one to go
to Earth and one to go to Uvet. there to take the necessary
steps to save our civilization. 1 was the one who was chosen
to go to Earth, and my sister in the neighboring dhen was
the one who was chosen to go to Uvel. The strategic location
of our dhens with respect to the predicted appearance of you
and the Uvelian scout was partially responsible for the decision.

Well, you certainly put a stop to our hostilities in a hurry.
How about the battle between the two fleets? Won't that come
off either?

We hope it won't. In any case, all that could have been
done to avert it has been done—short of stooping to genocide
and short of prematurely interfering with the natural evolu-
tion of two civilizations.

But surety if this sister of yours could look fifty-two hun-
dred years ahead one of the rest of you ought to have been
able to look a little beyond that point and have found out
whether or not you're going to succeed!

I told you, Daniel Hall, that we're capable of prescience
only when we're enjoying complete freedom from fear and
worry. We haven't been free from either for those same
fifty-two hundred years.

Hall was "silent" for some time. Then, I'll overlook for
the moment how a being of your size without any apparent
means of space travel could have journeyed from here to
Earth, he said, and I'll also overlook for the moment how
your presence on our planet escaped being recorded in our
history other than in legend form. But will you please explain
to me how you expected to avert a battle in the vicinity of

THE PYRAMID PROJECT            293

your own planet by building pyramids on another planet
thousands of years before the battle was to begin?

Two other planets, Daniel Hall. While I was building the
set on Earth, my sister in the neighboring dhen was building
a corresponding set on Uvel.

All right, two other planets then. But that still doesn't
answer my question. Does the shape and the size and the
location of the Gizeh pyramids have anything to do with it? I
mean, could they possibly be a focal point for some kind of
fourth-dimensional weapon?

The Sphinx laughed thunderously. The shape and the size
and the location of the pyramids have a great deal to do with
it, Daniel Hall—but not in the way you suggest. The riddle
will become clear to you before the night is over, I'm sure.
The other two items that puzzle you may not, however, so I
will clear them up for you now.

My sisters and f navigate space by teleporting ourselves
through it. We do this by utilizing a paraspatial energy
source which can be employed only when interstellar dis-
tances are involved. However, we can't teleport ourselves
from point A to point B unless the cosmic variables pertinent
to the two points are in appropriate relationship, and this
severely limits our activities. And when the need arises, as it
did in the case in question, for one of us to teleport herself
from point A to point B and another of us to teleport herself
from point A to point C within a single teleportative period,
the cosmic variables are doubly limiting. Fifty-two hundred
of your years ago, the cosmic variables with respect to
Pornos-Earth and Pornos-Uvel limited us to a period of three
hundred years. Following this three-hundred-year teleportative
period was a twelve-hundred-year non-teleportative period,
which in turn was followed by another three'hundred-year
teleportative period, and so on. Ideally, one of the three-
hundred-year teleportative periods should have partially co-
incided with the three centuries immediately preceding the
battle we wished to avert: practically, however, none of
them did, and as a result we had to pursue an indirect course
in averting our planet's accidental annihilation. Fortunately,
the first three-hundred-year teleportative period proved feasi-
ble for the plan which we presently devised.

294 Robert F. Young

With respect to the second point that puzzles you. Daniel
Hail, the reason my presence on your planet failed to find an
authentic place/or itself in your history books was that I took
the necessary action to make sure that it didn't. My sisters
and I simply couldn't allow you to know enough about us to
take us seriously because if you had, you might have guessed
our secret, and that would have meant the end of our plan—
not to mention the end of us. So before I left your planet, I
wiped alt memory of my activities from the minds of men. This
automatically gave Cheops, Chephren, and Mykerinos exclu-
sive credit for the building of the three pyramids at Gizeh.
However, memory eradication is only ninety-five percent ef-
fective, and while the pharaohs and the priests and the slaves
and everybody else forgot about my activities, they didn't
quite forget about me. I suspected as much but I wasn't sure
until this afternoon when I read your mind while I was
carrying you to Ahura. Fortunately, their memory of me was
ambiguous at best, and although they associated me with the
Gizeh pyramids, it simply didn't occur to them that I might
have built them. So they adapted me to their religious needs of
the moment and sculptured a statue of me in the Gizeh
Necropolis, identifying me with the Harmachis version of
their sun-god, Amen-Ra. Their other "sphinxes," as you call
them, can undoubtedly be traced to me also, and the non-
Gizeh pyramids with which Egypt abounds were undoubtedly
modeled after mine, although before the reign of Cheops an
architect named Imholep had devised a ' 'step pyramid'' that
may very well have resulted in simitar structures. As for the
non-Egyptian pyramids and "sphinxes" which are scattered
over your planet, some of them can be traced to me also. but
I daresay that in most cases they have religio-socio back-
grounds of their own. In any event, the only pyramids I built
on Earth are the ones on the Gizeh plateau. My sister, you
see. foresaw not only the Terran-Uvelian Armageddon but
also the future sites of the Terran and Uvelian capitals.

And your other sister, Halt said. The one who went to Uvel
when you went to Earth. You say she built a set of pyramids too?

Exactly like my Gizeh set. In addition to looking and acting

THE PYRAMID PROJECT

295

alike, Terrans and Uvelians have almost parallel pasts. In a
general sense, of course.

The Sphinx had turned her head and was looking at a
region of the heavens just above the eastern horizon. Follow-
ing her gaze, Hall saw the first group of Pleiades rising into
the sky. The distance was such that only the dreadnoughts
attained the status of "stars." The thousands of smaller craft
were invisible.

He counted six bright points of tight, but the number told
him nothing. Both the Terran and Uvelian fleets had six
major vessels. Facing west, he was not surprised to see the
second six climbing slowly above the mountains- Looks like
we're going to get a good view of the proceedings anyway, he
said. Just the same, I wish they were meeting above the
dayside. That way, we might stand a chance.

Not enough of a one to worry about. . . . You don't even
know which fleet is yours, do you, Daniel Hall?

I'm better off not knowing.

Yes, I suppose you are. The Sphinx was "silent" for a
moment. Then, Don't you think it would be a good idea if
you went to Ahura and lent her one of your broad shoulders
to lean on? she asked. She's going to need it. There's no
terror that can compare to the fear of the unknown.

Hall was annoyed. Surely you could have briefed her on
what's coming off!

Again, the Sphinx laughed. Tell me. Daniel Hall, how do
you explain a battle between two huge space navies to a child
who visualizes the creation of the universe as a trio of
anthropomorphic deities in the midst of a fantastic hand-
balancing act? As Shu the air supporting his sister. Nut the
sky, with their brother. Keb the Earth, lying beneath them. I
did well in the little lime I had since reviving her to supplant
her native tongue with yours.

I see your point. Hall said. Nevertheless, it can be done.

And it will be done. But not in hours, Daniel Hall, nor in
days nor weeks nor months, and not by me, but by you. Ahura
has an excellent mind, and given time she can learn all you
can teach her, and then some. And with the aid of the special
textbooks and other teaching aids contained in the first step

296 Robert F. Young

of the smallest pyramid there's no limit to what you can
teach her—nor to what you can leach yourself.

Wait a minute. Hall objected. Even assuming I decide to
cooperate in this project of yours, how am I going to make
use of textbooks I can't read ana that are probably too big for
me to open?

The textbooks are printed in APE and are no larger than
those you are accustomed to. My sisters and I have had
thousands of years to prepare for this crucial point in our
history. Daniel Hall. and we've prepared for it well. How-
ever. at this juncture it's futile to discuss what you are or
aren't going to do. The battle hasn't been averted yet, and
there's a good chance that it may not be. If it is averted,
come to me afterward. In the meantime, go to Ahura. You
can take shelter in the Temple of Hathor if you wish, but I
guess you know as well as I do that without a system of
deflectors to protect you, the death rays of either fleet can
reach you regardless of where you are.

Hall looked up into the mysterious golden eyes. Was there
sadness there? Concern? He could not tell. And if the battle
isn't averted?

Then this is goodbye. I have enjoyed knowing you, Daniel
Hall. Basically, your race and mine are very much alike.
Certainly, we share the same major character trait, and
moreover we share it in common with the Uvelians. It's only in
the matter of terminology that we differ. My sisters and I call
the trait "selfishness," and your race and the Uvelian call it
"patriotism." It's right for a man to love his country, but he
should never forget that his country is only an extension of
himself and that the intensity of his love for if is an infallible
index of the intensity of his love for himself. We can't change
the way we are, but it helps the cause of reason if we face the
truth. Go now, Daniel Hall—Ahura awaits you.

THE PYRAMID PROJECT

297

AHURA'S TALE

Ahura was sitting on the bottom portico step. Hall sat down
beside her. "Behold, I am here," he said.

She said, "Behold, ! am aware of it."

Her almond eyes were fixed on the eastern Pleiades, which
by now were quite high above the horizon. In the starlight,
her classic face had a statuesque quality about it. At length,
she lowered her gaze to his face. "I will prepare thee food if
thou wish."

"Later on—I'm not hungry right now."

"I did not make thee the offer out of my heart. I made it
because She-who-builds-sepulchers desired me to do this for
you."

"That's all right," Hall said easily. "You probably can't
even boil water anyway."

She looked at him. "Thou speakest in riddles, slave."

"The name is Daniel," Hall said, "and you'll do well to
call me by it. A cog in one of the wheels of the Terran war
machine I may be, but a slave I am not."

"Dan'el?"

"That's pretty close."

"I am Ahura—as no doubt She-who-builds-sepulchers hath
told thee."

"Among other things. Incidentally, I've got a hunch she's
tuned in on us now."

"She-who-builds-seputchers is all-knowing," Ahura said.
And then, "With thy strange garments and thy uncouth ways,
from what far land dost thou come, Dan'el?"

"From a land you've never heard of, so the less said about
it, the better." Noting that she had returned her gaze to the
eastern Pleiades, he pointed to the sky above the mountains-
"There's another swarm of them over there," he said.

She nodded. "I know. But the sky hath donned a strange
dress. It is even stranger than the dress she wore last night."

298 Robert F. Young

Ahura raised her eyes to the crocodile constellation within
whose confines, if the present trajectories of the two fleets
remained unchanged, the encounter would take place- "Be-
hold. Sebek hath left the river bottom and now rules the
world. All is not well, Dan'el."

Hall remembered then that the ancient Egyptians had num-
bered a crocodile god among their many deities. Lowering his
eyes, he saw that the girl's hands were tightly clasped to-
gether on her lap, and he realized that despite her deceptively
calm demeanor she was terrified. Apparently in her primitive
way she knew as well as he did that the hand of death was in
the sky.

He tried to reassure her. "Sebek will be gone before
morning, and Amen-Ra wilt rise in his glory. Relax, Ahura."

She shook her head. "All is not well, Dan'el," she re-
peated. "It is not the presence of Sebek alone from which I
know this. AH day, a tale about a prince which was told to
me as a child hath been on my mind, and I cannot drive it
away, and from this, too, I know that all is not well."

"The best way to get something off your mind is to tell it
to someone, so why not tell the tale to me?"

She looked at him solemnly, as though trying to make up
her mind. It dawned on him all of a sudden that in a way he
had never quite figured on. she was the most beautiful girl he
had ever seen. "Very well," she said presently, "I will tell
thee. There was once a king to whom no son was bom; and
his heart was grieved, and he prayed for himself unto the
gods around him for a child. They decreed that one should be
bom to him. And his wife, after her time was fulfilled,
brought forth a son. Then came the Hathors to decree for him
a desinty; they said, 'His death is to be by the crocodile, or
by the serpent, or by the dog.' Then his Majesty's heart
sickened very greatly. And his Majesty caused a house to be
built upon the desert; it was furnished with people and with
all good things of the royal house, that the child should not
go abroad. And when the child was grown, he went up upon
the roof, and he saw a dog; it was following a man who was
walking on the road. He spoke to his page, who was with
him, 'What is this that walks behind the man?' The page

THE PYRAMID PROJECT           299

answered him, *This is a dog.' The child said to him, 'Let
there be brought to me one like it.' The page went to repeat it
to his Majesty. And his Majesty said, 'Let there be brought to
him a little pet dog, lest his heart be sad.' And behold they
brought him a dog."

"You see the significance there, don't you?" Hall inter-
rupted. "By being indulgent in the seemingly most harmless
aspect of his son's destiny, the father made him all the more
vulnerable to the other two."

There was wonderment in Ahura's golden brown eyes as
they touched his. "Thou art wise, Dan'el," she said. "I am
sorry I called thee a slave. When the child became grown in
all his limbs," she went on, "he sent a message to his father
saying, 'Come, wherefore am I kept here? Inasmuch as I am
fated to three evil fates, let me follow my desire.' They
agreed to all he said, and gave him all sorts of arms, and also
his dog to follow him, 'Behold, go thou whither thou wilt.'
His dog was with him, and he went northward, following his
heart in the desert, while he lived on alt the best of me game
of the desert. He went to the chief of Naharaina.

"And behold there had not been any born to the chief of
Naharaina, except one daughter. Behold, there had been built
for her a house; its seventy windows were seventy cubits
from the ground. And me chief had caused to be brought all
me sons of the chiefs of the land, and had said to them, 'He
who reaches the window of my daughter, she shall be to him
for a wife.'

"Seeing the youths climbing for the window, the young
prince asked, 'What is it that ye do here?' They told him.
and another day the sons of the chief came to climb, and the
youth came to climb with them. He climbed, and he reached
me window of the daughter of the chief of Naharaina. She
kissed him, she embraced him in all his limbs. . . ."

Ahura's eyes had strayed to the sky again—to me western
Pleiades this time. Their "rise" was slightly slower than that
of the eastern Pleiades, owing perhaps to the fact that the
former's course coincided with NRGC 984-D's rotational di-
rection, or perhaps to their commander's disinclination to
tush matters. Nevertheless, it was evident that the forthcom-

300 Robert F. Young

ing battle would take place in the center of the NRGC 984-D's
heavens—"in" the constellation of the crocodile.

Which were the good guys and which were the bad? Hall
wondered. Certainly, their ideological differences weren't ap-
parent at this distance. Would the differences be apparent to
an objective observer such as the Sphinx from any distance?

Hall grinned wryly. Ahura was twining and untwining her
fingers on her tap, and a barely perceptible quivering was
going on in her lower lip. He moved a little closer to her,
wanting to put his arm around her but not quite daring to.
"Get on with your story," he said. "You left me hanging on
a cliff seventy cubits high."

Her bewilderment would have been comical under less
Hying conditions. "Thou speakest in riddles, Dan'el. In many
ways thou art like She-who-builds-sepulchers. But I will tell
thee the rest of the tale.

"When the chief of Naharaina saw that the young prince
had indeed reached the window of his daughter, he gave to
him his daughter to wife; he gave also to him a house, and
serfs, and fields, also cattle and all manner of good things.
And after the days of these things were passed, the youth said
to his wife, 1! am doomed to three fates—a crocodile, a
serpent, and a dog.' She said to him, 'Let one kill the dog
which belongs to thee.' He replied to her, 'I am not going to
kill my dog, which I have brought up from when it was
small.' And she feared greatly for her husband, and would
not let him go alone abroad.

"And one went with the youth toward the land of Egypt, to
travel in that country, and with him also went his dog-
Behold the crocodile of the river, he came out by the town in
which the youth was. And in that town was a mighty man.
And the mighty man would not suffer the crocodile to escape.
And when the crocodile was bound, the mighty man went out
and walked abroad. And when the sun rose the mighty man
went back to the house; and he did so every day, during two
months of days.

"Now when the days passed after this, the youth sat
making a good day in his house. And when the evening
came, he lay down on his bed, sleep seized upon his limbs;

THE PYRAMID PROJECT           301

and his wife filled a bowl of milk, and placed it by his side.
Behold the dog, it entereth into the house, and behind it came
a serpent to bite the youth; behold his wife sitting by him, she
lay not down. Thereupon the servants gave milk to the ser-
pent, and he drank, and was drunk, and lay upside down.
Then his wife made it to perish with the blows of her dagger.
And they woke her husband, who was astonished; and she
said unto him: 'Behold thy God has given one of thy dooms
into thy hand; he will also give thee me others.' And he
sacrificed to God, adoring him, and praising his spirits from
day to day.

"And when the days were passed after these things, the
youth went to walk in the fields of his domain. He went not
alone, behold his dog was following him. And his dog ran
aside after the wild game, and he followed the dog. He came
to the river, and entered the river behind his dog. Then—"

Abruptly Ahura paused as a beam of blinding light leaped
from the eastern to the western Pleiades, glanced from a
deflector screen and lanced through NRGC 984-D's atmo-
sphere, narrowly missing the mountains that formed the west-
ern boundary of the Sphinx's demesne. The Sphinx, silhouetted
darkly against the eastern heavens, did not move.

Trembling, the girl raised her hands and pressed mem
tightly against her mouth. "It's all right." Hall said. "scream
if you want to. No one ever had a better right to."

Another blinding beam—this one from the western Pleiades—
speared the heavens, ricocheted from an enemy deflector, and
arrowed off into deep space. The law of averages made it an
even bet that the next one would strike NRGC 984-D dead
center, gouge a crater two thousand miles deep, and precipi-
tate a tectonic revolution. It was also an even bet that me
tectonic revolution would give birth to a series of others and
that the accompanying seismic and volcanic activity would
alter every facet of NRGC 984-D's surface features and in the
process destroy every living being on the planet.

"The object of the game," Hall went on, momentarily
forgetting that his audience hailed from the twenty-ninth cen-
*     tury B.C., "is for one fleet to penetrate the deflector sceens
of the other. This isn't as impossible as it sounds. Deflector

302 Robert F, Young

screens utilize a rhythmic frequency, and the trick is to hit
them on the offbeat. Vulnerable as they are, though, they
provide considerable protection, and I'd give my eyeteeth to
have one over us right now. Well no, I'll qualify that: I'd
give my eyeteeth to have one over us right now if it weren't
for the fact that they won't function except in a vacuum."

Ahura's hands were still pressed tightly against her mouth,
and she was rocking gently back and forth. "I do not under-
stand thee. Dan'el," she moaned. "I understand only that
Sebek is greatly displeased and that Keb the Earth is in
danger."

"You understand far more than that, Ahura. As a matter of
fact, in your own way you know as much about what is
happening as I do. You know that mankind is about to
destroy himself because of his dog—his selfishness. That's
why you can't get the story of the doomed prince out of your
mind. The doomed prince is mankind, Ahura. only he isn't
quite doomed. There's still hope for him. There's still hope
for you and me—and She-who-builds-sepulchers. Tell me the
rest of it, Ahura."

She had stopped rocking back and forth, and now she
returned her hands to her lap. "There is but little left to tell
thee, Dan'el. After the prince entered the river behind his dog
there came out the crocodile, and took him to the place where
the mighty man was. And the crocodile said to the prince, 'I
am thy doom, following after thee.'* And there endeth the
tale."

"So actually," Hall said, "we don't know for certain
whether the crocodile got him or not. He may very well have
escaped it in the end."

"Yes, but there is still the dog, Dan'el."

"There will always be me dog. But maybe by recognizing
it for what it really is we can curtail its activities." He looked
at the sky, gasped. "Ahura, look! they're going away!"

She, too, was staring at the Pleiades. They were rapidly
fading from sight, one set of them into the eastern reaches of
me heavens, the other set into the western reaches. Abruptly.

•Ahura's tale is an adaption of the Egyptian story "The Doomed Prince."

THE PYRAMID PROJECT           303

one set winked out as its hyperdrives went into effect. A
moment later, the other followed suit. "Did—did we escape
me crocodile, Dan'el?"

Hall hugged her. "We sure did, and all of a sudden I'm as
hungry as a horse. Does that offer you made a tittle while ago
still stand?"

She slipped free from his arms, not haughtily, but hesi*
tantly, as though she weren't quite sure whether she wanted
to be free or not. "I will prepare thee a feast fit for a king,"
she said. "Come."

THE AMBASSADORS

Well, said the Sphinx, it looks as though you two are going to
live happily together ever after, after all, as they say in your
planet's folklore. Where's Ahura now? I broke contact with
you after you went into the Temple of Love.

She's tidying up the kitchen. Hall answered, gazing up into
me starlit Brobdingnagian face. Incidentally, I was right when
I told her thai she probably could not even boil water. Would
you believe it?—/ had to show her how!

But she learned readily enough, did she not? You'll find
her equally receptive when you begain teaching her full-time.

Who said I was going to teach her at all? And while we're
on the subject, just what am I supposed to teach her, and
why?

Everything you can. As to why, it would be rather imprac-
tical for you not to, don't you think, in view of the fact that
you and she are going to be representing my sisters and
myself on Earth in the negotiating of a million-year peace
treaty between Pomos, Earth, and Uvel? Meanwhile, the
Uvellian scout whom my sister in the neighboring dhen cap-
tured will be similarly engaged on Uvel.

Hall was thunderstruck. So that's what you've got up your

304 Robert F. Young

sleeve! But whatever gave you the idea that I'd make a good
ambassador?

It was a gamble, Daniel Halt, hut it paid off. You haven't a
great deal of diplomacy, but I can teach you diplomacy. The
really important attributes you already have. You have intelli-
gence, and you are brave. Underneath your flippant exterior
you are kind and gentle, but you can be firm when the
occasion demands. Most important of all, you have motiva-
tion. Ever since you played a part in the destruction of the
Deimos Dissenters you've hated war and everything it stands
for. With someone like Ahura working at your side, there's
no limit to what you can accomplish in the cause of peace,
Daniel Hall. As man and wife, the two of you will—

Wait a minute! Ha!l interrupted. You're carrying this thing
too far!

Come now, Daniel Hall, you're half in love with her
already, and you know it. And you might as well know, too,
that she's already half in love with you. I not only "heard"
everything both of you said, I also experienced everything
both of you felt. My sister in the next demesne ' 'tells'' me that
her scout and her princess hit it off well, too.

Her princess?

She brought a princess back from Uvel just as I brought
one back from Earth. We're going to arrange a double wed-
ding ceremony that will comply with the customs of the four
different religions which will be represented. I myself have
been chosen to do the officiating. This will in no way conflict
with the religions of the two princesses, and I'm sure that
both you and the Uvelian scout are sufficiently sophisticated
in such matters not to raise any objections. I've already built
you and Ahura a love nest in my largest pyramid—not al-
together authentic as regards her background, but authentic
enough to satisfy her—and modern enough to satisfy you. as
you will see presently when Ahura's education permits her to
take such ' 'miracles'' as electricity and hot and cold running
water in her stride.

Hall threw up his hands. All right, we'II let all that pass for
the moment. Right now, suppose you drop that deep and
mysterious mien of yours and break down and tell me how

THE PYRAMID PROJECT           305

you managed to put a slop to the greatest space battle ever
contemplated and to put two of the mightiest space armadas
ever assembled to rout.

The Sphinx laughed, softly this time. You already know
part of the answer. Daniel Hall. You know that we're
parthenogenetic. You know that we build pyramids—or what
you think of as pyramids. And you know that some of your
legends depict us with wings. How do you account for that,
Daniel Hall? Why should we be depicted with wings when we
don't have any and never did?

The truth dawned on Hall then. "You lay eggs'" he
gasped.

We do indeed. And we incubate them in inviolable capsules
that lend the illusion of invisibility. These capsules are placed
just beneath the apexes of the structures that you call ' "pyra-
mids" but which we call "nests." Originally, we did this out
of instinct alone; now, we do it out of knowledge as well.
Owing to the length of the incubation period—some fifty-two
hundred of your years—nests of this kind are ideal for the
survival of our species. They provide protection, they provide
warmth, they—

But no egg could possibly contain enough nutrients to
nourish an embryo for fifty-two hundred years! Hall objected.

Of course it couldn't. My race obtains ninety-five percent
of its nutrition from the sun, Daniel Hall, and your sun is an
even better provider than ours is. I may seem to consist of flesh
and blood, but I don't—at least not in the sense that you do.

And do you always build three nests of three different
sizes?

Always. Our eggs are three in number and our offspring
vary in size. Not very much, but enough to necessitate larger
or smaller incubation areas. Now that the eggs which /
incubated on the Gizeh ptateau have hatched. I'm due to
procreate again; consequently, I've built three new nests.
When the time arrives, I'll remove the as-yet'unsealed apexes,
place the eggs in the capsules, which are already in position,
and seal the apexes over them.

I can anticipate your next question, Daniel Hall. so there's
no need for you to ask it. Incubation time never varies, and

306 Robert F. Young

can be computed to the second, and the main reason I and my
sister in the neighboring dhen were- chosen for the job was
that our procreation times were compatible with the Terran
and Uvelian time periods that had to be used. At the end of
the incubation period an adult rather than a child emerges
from the nest. Physically, she's only partially grown, but
mentally, she's completely mature, having inherited the par-
ent's knowledge and abilities, plus a sizable quantity of the
parent's judgment. As a result, she's perfectly capable of
carrying out whatever commands the parent may have im-
planted in her embryo-mind at the beginning of incubation. In
the case of my Gizeh offspring, the commands which I im-
planted were three in number: Take over the Terran capital of
Kafr el Haran, establish immediate contact with the Terran
Space Navy and order all of its units to return to base at once;

then retain control of the Terran government until otherwise
advised. The commands which my sister implanted in her
offspring were basically the same, and her three offspring
carried out the Uvel end of the operation at roughly the same
time mine were carrying out the Terran end of it. Conse-
quently, both governments are now under the dominion of
Pornos, and moreover they will remain under the dominion of
Pomos until such time as the million-year peace treaty is
signed. Since my sister just notified me that her scout has
already agreed to cooperate, the fate of the long-range aspect
^,vf our plan is now in your hands, Daniel Halt.

Hall sighed. Oh, I'll go along with you, I suppose—I'd be
pretty much of a heel iff didn't. But before we get down to
brass tacks, how about relieving my mind on a certain little
matter? Granted, I'm half in love with Ahura, and maybe
she's half in love with me as you say, but there has to be
more to it than that for marriage to work. Now that the crisis
is past, how about taking a peek a little ways into the future
and finding out whether Ahura and I are going to hit it off the
way a married couple should?

I'll try, Daniel Hall, said the Sphinx. She looked straight
ahead, and Hall could tell from the serious expression on her
face that she was concentrating with all her might. A few
minutes passed. Then the Sphinx turned to him and winked.

UNICORN

The unicorn is a legendary one-horned creature. Almost
all horned animals have two horns, one on each side of the
head. An exception is the rhinoceros, which has a single
horn on the nose, and there is some thought that the
legend of the unicorn in the Middle East and in Europe
originated with vague tales of rhinoceroses in India.

Much more likely is thai it originated with Assyrian
representations of wild bulls in profile. In profile, natu-
rally, the two horns overlapped and only one was visible.
Somehow this gave rise to the thought of one-horned bulls.

In the Bible, mention is made of a creature named re-em
in Hebrew. The reference was to the wild bull (called an
aurochs in Europe) which is the primitive ancestor of
domestic cattle, and which is now extinct. It was described
as immensely powerful.

In the Greek translation of the Bible, re-em was trans-
lated as monokeros ("one-horn"), the reference being to
the Assyrian representations in profile. This became
unicomis (also "one-horn") in Latin, and the legend was
fixed.

Somehow, the unicorn tale became preltied up. Instead
of a one-horned bull remarkable for its strength, it became
a one-horned horse, or horselike antelope, remarkable for
its beauty and swiftness. It began to symbolize purity and
virginity; it could be caught only by a virgin woman.

Its horn is now pictured as a tight spiral, extending
forward and slowly tapering. This is actually the "horn"

307

8                  Theodore Sturgeon

(really, the tooth) of the narwhal, a species of whale. The
narwhal tooth was brought back by sailors and sold as a
unicorn horn for large sums, since such a horn was con-
sidered a powerful aphrodisiac.
The following story deals with the unicorn at its prettiest.

THE SILKEN SWIFT

Theodore Sturgeon

There's a village by the Bogs. and in the village is a Great
House. In the Great House lived a squire who had land and
treasures and, for a daughter, Rita.

In the village lived Del, whose voice was a thunder in the
inn when he drank there; whose corded, cabled body was
golden-skinned, and whose hair flung challenges back to the
sun.

Deep in the Bogs, which were brackish, there was a pool
of purest water, shaded by willows and wide-wondering as-
pen, cupped by banks of a moss most marvelously blue. Here
grew mandrake, and there were strange pipings in midsummer.
No one ever heard them but a quiet girl whose beauty was so
very contained that none of it showed. Her name was Barbara

There was a green evening, breathless with growth, when
Del took his usua! way down the lane beside the manor and
saw a white shadow adrift inside the tall iron pickets. He
stopped, and the shadow approached, and became Rita. "Slip
around to the gate," she said, "and I'll open it for you.*'

She wore a gown like a cloud and a silver circlet round her
head. Night was caught in her hair, moonlight in her face,
and in her great eyes, secrets swam.

Del said, "I have no business with the squire."

"He's gone," she said. "I've sent the servants away.
Come to the gate."

"I need no gate." He leaped and caught the top bar of the
fence, and in a continuous fluid motion went high and across
and down beside her. She looked at his arms, one, the other;

309

310 Theodore Sturgeon

then up at his hair- She pressed her small hands tight together
and made a little laugh, and then she was gone through the
tailored trees, lightly, swiftly, not looking back. He followed,
one step for three of hers, keeping pace with a new pounding
in the sides of his neck. They crossed a flower bed and a
wide marble terrace. There was an open door, and when he
passed through it he stopped, for she was nowhere in sight.
Then the door clicked shut behind him and he whirled. She
was there, her back to the panel, laughing up at him in the
dimness. He thought she would come to him then, but instead
she twisted by, close, her eyes on his. She smelt of violets
and sandalwood. He followed her into the great hal!. quite
dark but full of the subdued lights of polished wood, cloisonne,
tooled leather and gold-threaded tapestry. She flung open
another door, and they were in a small room with a carpet
made of rosy silences, and a candle-lit table. Two places
were set, each with five different crystal glasses and old
silver as prodigally used as the iron pickets outside. Six
teakwood steps rose to a great oval window. "The moon,"
she said, "will rise for us there."

She motioned him to a chair and crossed to a sideboard,
where there was a rack of decanters—ruby wine and white;

one with a strange brown bead; pink, and amber. She took
down the first and poured. Then she lifted the silver domes
from the salvers on the table, and a magic of fragrance filled
the air. There were smoking sweets and savories, rare sea-
food and slivers of fowl, and morsels of strange meat wrapped
in flower petals, spitted with foreign fruits and tiny soft
seashells. All about were spices, each like a separate voice in
the distant murmur of a crowd: saffron and sesame, cumin
and marjoram and mace.

And all the while Del watched her in wonder, seeing how
me candles left me moonlight in her face, and how com-
pletely she trusted her hands, which did such deftness without
supervision—so composed she was, for all the silent secret
laughter that tugged at her lips, for all the bright dark myster-
ies that swirled and swam within her.

They ate, and the oval window yellowed and darkened
while the candlelight grew bright. She poured another wine.

FHE SILKEN SWIFT              311

and another, and with the courses of the meal they were as
May to the crocus and as frost to the apple.

Del knew it was alchemy and he yielded to it without
questions. That which was purposely oversweet would be
piquantly cut; this induced thirst would, with exquisite tim-
ing, be quenched. He knew she was watching him; he knew
she was aware of the heat in his cheeks and the tingle at his
fingertips. His wonder grew, but he was not afraid.

In all this time she spoke hardly a word; but at last the feast
was over and they rose. She touched a silken rope on the
wall, and paneling slid aside. The table rolled Silently into
some ingenious recess and the panel returned. She waved him
to an L-shaped couch in one comer, and as he sat close to
her, she turned and took down the lute which hung on the
wait behind her. He had his moment of confusion; his arms
were ready for her, but not for the instrument as well. Her
eyes sparkled, but her composure was unshaken.

Now she spoke, while her fingers strolled and danced on
the lute, and her words marched and wandered in and about
the music- She had a thousand voices, so that he wondered
which of them was truly hers. Sometimes she sang; some-
times it was a wordless crooning. She seemed at times remote
from him, puzzled at the turn the music was taking, and at
other times she seemed to hear the pulsing roar in his ear-
drums, and she played laughing syncopations to it- She sang
words which he almost understood:

"Bee to blossom, honey dew.
Claw to mouse, and rain to tree,
Moon to midnight. I to you;

Sun to starlight, you to me . . ."

and she sang something wordless:

"Ake ya rundefle, rundefle fye,
Orel ya rundefle kown,
En yea. en yea. ya bunderbee bye
En sor, en see, en sown."

312 Theodore Sturgeon

which he also almost understood.

In still another voice she told him the story of a great hairy
spider and a little pink girl who found it between the leaves of
a half-open book; and at first he was all fright and pity for the
girl, but then she went on to tell of what the spider suffered,
with his home disrupted by this yawping giant, and so vividly
did she tell of it that at the end he was laughing at himself
and all but crying for the poor spider.

So the hours slipped by, and suddenly, between songs, she
was in his arms; and in the instant she had twisted up and
away from him. leaving him gasping. She said, in still a new
voice, sober and low. "No. Del. We must wait for the

moon."

His thighs ached and he realized that he had half-risen.
arms out, hands clutching and feeling the extraordinary fabric
of her gown though it was gone from them; and he sank back
to the couch with an odd, faint sound that was wrong for the
room. He flexed his fingers and, reluctantly, the sensation of
white gossamer left them. At last he looked across at her and
she laughed and leapt high lightly, and it was as if she
stopped in midair to stretch for a moment before she alighted
beside him, bent and kissed his mouth, and leapt away.

The roaring in his ears was greater, and at this it seemed to
acquire a tangible weight. His head bowed; he tucked his
knuckles into the upper curve of his eye sockets and rested
his elbows on his knees. He could hear the sweet susurrus of
Rita's gown as she moved about the room; he could sense the
violets and sandalwood. She was dancing, immersed in the
joy of movement and of his nearness. She made her own
music, humming, sometimes whispering to the melodies in
her mind.

And at length he became aware that she had stopped; he
could hear nothing, though he knew she was still near. Heav-
ily he raised his head. She was in the center of the room,
balanced like a huge white moth, her eyes quite dark now
with their secrets quiet. She was staring at the window,
poised, waiting.

He followed her gaze. The big oval was black no longer,
but dusted over with silver light. Del rose slowly. The dust

THE SILKEN SWIFT              313

was a mist, a loom, and then, at one edge, there was a shard
of the moon itself creeping and growing.

Because Del stopped breathing, he could hear her breathe;

it was rapid and so deep it faintly strummed her versatile
vocal cords.

"Rita . . ."

Without answering she ran to the sideboard and filled two
small glasses. She gave him one, then, "Wait," she breathed,
"oh, wait!"

Spellbound, he waited while the white stain crept across
the window. He understood suddenly that he must be still
until the great oval was completely filled with direct moon-
light, and this helped him, because it set a foreseeable limit to
his waiting; and it hurt him, because nothing in life, he
thought, had ever moved so slowly. He had a moment of
rebellion, in which he damned himself for falling in with her
complex pacing; but with it he realized that now the darker
silver was wasting away, now it was a finger's breadth, and
now a thread, and now, and now—.

She made a brittle feline cry and sprang up the dark steps
to the window. So bright was the light that her body was a jet
cameo against it. So delicately wrought was her gown that he
could see the epaulettes of silver light the moon gave her.
She was so beautiful his eyes stung.

"Drink," she whispered. "Drink with me, darling, dar-
ling . . ."

For an instant he did not understand her at alt, and only
gradually did he become aware of the little glass he held. He
raised it toward her and drank. And of all the twists and
titillations of taste he had had this night, this was the most
startling; for it had no taste at all, almost no substance, and a
temperature almost exactly that of blood. He looked stupidly
down at the glass and back up at the girl. He thought that she
had turned about and was watching him, though he could not
be sure, since her silhouette was the same.

And then he had his second of unbearable shock, for the
light went out.

The moon was gone, the window, the room. Rita was
gone.

314 Theodore Sturgeon

For a stunned instant he stood tautly. stretching hi? eyes
wide. He made a sound that was not a word. He dropped the
glass and pressed his palms to his eyes, feeling them blink,
feeling the stiff silk of his lashes against them. Then he
snatched the hands away, and it was still dark, and more than
dark; this was not a blackness. This was like trying to see
with an elbow or with a tongue; it was not black; it was
Nothingness.

He fell to his kness.

Rita laughed.

An odd, alert part of his mind seized on the laugh and
understood it, and horror and fury spread through his whole
being; for this was the laugh which had been tugging at her
lips all evening, and it was a hard. cruel, self-assured laugh.
And at the same time, because of the anger or in spite of it,
desire exploded whitely within him. He moved toward the
sound, groping, mouthing. There was a quick, faint series of
rustling sounds from the steps, and then a light, strong web
fell around him. He struck out at it, and recognized it for the
unforgettable thing it was—her robe. He caught at it, ripped
it, stamped upon it. He heard her bare feet run lightly down
and past him, and lunged, and caught nothing. He stood,
gasping painfully.
She laughed again.

"I'm blind," he said hoarsely. "Rita, I'm blind!"

"I know," she said coolly, close beside him. And again
she laughed.

"What have you done to me?"

"I've watched you be a dirty animal of a man," she said.

He grunted and lunged again. His knees struck something—a
chair, a cabinet—and he fell heavily. He thought he touched
her foot.

"Here, lover, here!" she taunted.

He fumbled about for the thing which had tripped him,
found it, used it to help him upright again. He peered use-
lessly about.

"Here, lover!"

He leaped, and crashed into the doorjamb: cheekbone,

THE SILKEN SWIFT

315

collarbone, hipbone, ankle were one straight blaze of pain.
He clung to the polished wood,

After a time he said, in agony, "Why?"

"No man has ever touched me and none ever will," she
sang. Her breath was on his cheek. He reached and touched
nothing, and then he heard her leap from her perch on a
statue's pedestal by the door, where she had stood high and
leaned over to speak.

No pain, no blindness, not even the understanding that it
was her witch's brew working in him could quell the wild
desire he felt at her nearness. Nothing could tame the fury
that shook him as she laughed. He staggered after her,
bellowing.

She danced around him, laughing. Once she pushed him
into a clattering rack of fire-irons. Once she caught his elbow
from behind and spun him. And once, incredibly, she sprang
past him and, in midair, kissed him again on me mouth.

He descended into Hell, surrounded by the small, sure
patter of bare feet and sweet cool laughter. He rushed and
crashed, he crouched and bled and whimpered like a hound.
His roaring and blundering took an echo, and that must have
been the great hall. Then mere were walls that seemed more
than unyielding; they struck back. And there were panels to
lean against, gasping, which became opening doors as he
leaned. And always the black nothingness, the writhing temp-
tation of the pat-pat of firm flesh on smooth stones, and the
ravening fury.

It was cooler, and there was no echo. He became aware of
the whisper of the wind through trees. The balcony, he
thought; and then, right in his ear, so that he felt her warm
breath, "Come, lover . . ." and he sprang. He sprang and
missed, and instead of sprawling on the terrace, there was
nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and then, when he least
expected it, a shower of cruel thumps as he rolled down the
marble steps.

He must have had a shred of consciousness left, for he was
vaguely aware of the approach of her bare feet, and of the
small, cautious hand that touched his shoulder and moved to

316 Theodore Sturgeon

his mouth, and then his chest. Then it was withdrawn, and
either she laughed or the sound was still in his mind.

Deep in the Bogs, which were brackish, there was a pool
of purest water, shaded by willows and wide-wondering as-
pens, cupped by banks of a moss most marvelously blue.
Here grew mandrake, and mere were strange pipings in mid-
summer. No one ever heard them but a quiet girl whose
beauty was so very contained that none of it showed- Her
name was Barbara.

No one noticed Barbara, no one lived with her, no one
cared. And Barbara's life was very full, for she was born to
receive. Others are born wishing to receive, so they wear
bright masks and make attractive sounds tike cicadas and
operettas, so others will be forced, one way or another, to
give to them. But Barbara's receptors were wide open, and
always had been, so that she needed no substitute for sunlight
through a tulip petal, or the sound of morning glories climb-
ing, or the tangy sweet smell of formic acid which is the only
death cry possible to an ant, or any other of the thousand
things overlooked by folk who can only wish to receive.
Barbara had a garden and an orchard, and took things in
to market when she cared to, and the rest of the time she spent
in taking what was given. Weeds grew in her garden, but
since they were welcomed, they grew only where they could
keep the watermelons from being sunburned. The rabbits
were welcome, so they kept to the two rows of carrots, me
one of lettuce, and the one of tomato vines which were planted
for them, and they left the rest alone. Goldenrod shot up
beside the bean hills to lend a hand upward, and the birds ate
only the figs and peaches from the waviest top branches, and
in return patrolled the lower ones for caterpillars and egg-
laying flies. And if a fruit stayed green for two weeks longer
until Barbara had time to go to market, or if a mole could
channel moisture to the roots of the corn, why it was the least
they could do.

For a brace of years Barbara had wandered more and more,
impelled by a thing she could not name—if indeed she was
aware of it at all. She knew only that over-the-rise was a
strange and friendly place, and that it was a fine thing on

THE SILKEN SWIFT

317

arriving there to find another rise to go over. It may very well
be that she now needed someone to love, for loving is a most
receiving thing, as anyone can attest who has been loved
without returning it. It is the one who is loved who must give
and give. And she found her love, not in her wandering, but
at the market. The shape of her love, his colors and sounds,
were so much with her that when she saw him first it was
without surprise; and thereafter, for a very long while, it was
quite enough that he lived. He gave to her by being alive, by
setting the air athrum with his mighty voice, by his stride,
which was, for a man afoot, the exact analog of what the
horseman calls a "perfect seat."

After seeing him, of course, she received twice and twice
again as much as ever before. A tree was straight and tall for
the magnificent sake of being straight and tall, but wasn't
straighlness a part of him, and being tall? The oriole gave
more now than song, and the hawk more than walking the
wind, for had they not hearts like his, warm blood and his
same striving to keep it so for tomorrow? And more and
more, over-the-rise was the place for her, for only there could
there be more and still more things like him.

But when she found the pure pool in the brackish Bogs,
there was no more over-the-rise for her. It was a place without
hardness or hate, where the aspens trembled only for wonder,
and where all contentment was rewarded. Every single rabbit
there was the champion nose-twinkler, and every waterbird
could stand on one leg the longest, and proud of it. Shelf-
fungi hung to the willow-trunks, making that certain, single
purple of which the sunset is incapable, and a tanager and a
cardinal gravely granted one another his definition of "red."

Here Barbara brought a heart light with happiness, large
with love, and set it down on the blue moss. And since the
loving heart can receive more than anything else, so it is most
needed, and Barbara took the best bird songs, and the richest
colors, and the deepest peace, and all the other things which
are most worth giving. The chipmunks brought her nuts when
she was hungry and the prettiest stones when she was not. A
green snake explained to her, in pantomime, how a river of
jewels may flow uphill, and three mad otters described how a

318 Theodore Sturgeon

bundle of joy may slip and slide down and down and be all
the more joyful for it. And there was the magic moment when
a midge hovered, and then a honeybee, and then a bumble-
bee, and at last a hummingbird; and there they hung, playing
a chord in A sharp minor.

Then one day the pool fell silent, and Barbara learned why
the water was pure.

The aspens stopped trembling.

The rabbits all came out of the thicket and clustered on the
blue bank, backs straight, ears up, and all their noses as still
as coral.

The waterbirds stepped backwards, like courtiers, and stopped
on the brink with their heads turned sidewise, one eye closed
the better to see with the other.

The chipmunks respectfully emptied their cheek pouches,
scrubbed their paws together and tucked them out of sight;

then stood still as tent pegs.

The pressure of growth around the pool ceased: the very
grass waited.

The last sound of all to be heard—and by then it was very
quiet—was the soft whick! of an owl's eyelids as it awoke to
watch.

He came like a cloud, the earth cupping itself to take each
of his golden hooves. He stopped on the bank and lowered
his head, and for a brief moment his eyes met Barbara's, and
she looked into a second universe of wisdom and compas-
sion. Then there was the arch of the magnificent neck, the
blinding flash of his golden horn.

And he drank, and he was gone. Everyone knows the water
is pure, where the unicorn drinks.

How long had he been there? How long gone? Did time
wait too, like the grass?

"And couldn't he stay?'* she wept. "Couldn't he stay?"

To have seen the unicom is a sad thing; one might never
see him more. But men—to have seen the unicom!

She began to make a song.

It was late when Barbara came in from the Bogs, so late
the moon was bleached with cold and fleeing to the horizon.

THE SILKEN SWIFT              319

She struck the highroad just below the Great House and
turned to pass it and go out to her garden house.

Near the locked main gate an animal was barking. A sick
animal, a big animal . . .

Barbara could see in the dark better than most, and soon
saw the creature clinging to the gate, climbing, uttering that
coughing moan as it went. At the top it slipped, fell outward,
dangled; then there was a ripping sound, and it fell heavily to
me ground and lay still and quiet.

She ran to it, and it began to make the sound again. It was
a man, and he was weeping.

It was her love, her love, who was tall and straight and so
very alive—her love, battered and bleeding, puffy, broken,
his clothes torn, crying.

Now of all times was the time for a lover to receive, to
take from the loved one his pain, his trouble, his fear. "Oh,
hush, hush," she whispered, her hands touching his bruised
face like swift feathers. "It's all over now. It's all over."

She turned him over on his back and knelt to bring him up
sitting. She lifted one of his thick arms around her shoulder.
He was very heavy, but she was very strong. When he was
upright, gasping weakly, she looked up and down the road in
the waning moonlight. Nothing, no one. The Great House
was dark. Across the road, though, was a meadow with high
hedgerows which might break the wind a little.

"Come, my love, my dear love." she whispered. He
trembled violently.

All but carrying him, she got him across the road, over the
shallow ditch, and through a gap in the hedge. She almost fell
with him there. She gritted her teeth and set him down
gently. She let him lean against the hedge, and then ran and
swept up great armfulls of sweet broom. She made a tight
springy bundle of it and set it on the ground beside him, and
put a corner of her cloak over it, and gently lowered his head
until it was pillowed. She folded the rest of the cloak about
him. He was very cold.

There was no water near, and she dared not leave him. With
her kerchief she cleaned some of the blood from his face. He
was slill very cold. He said, "You devil. You rotten little devil."

320 Theodore Sturgeon

"Shh." She crept in beside him and cradled his. head.
"You'll be warm in a minute "

"Stand stilt," he growled. "Keep running away."
"I won't run away," she whispered. "Oh, my darling,
you've been hurt, so hurt. I won't leave you. I promise 1
won't leave you."

He lay very still. He made the growling sound again.
"I'll tell you a iovely thing," she said softly. "Listen to
me, think about the lovely thing," she crooned.

"There's a place in the bog, a pool of pure water, where the
trees live beautifully, willow and aspen and birch, where every-
thing is peaceful, my darling, and the flowers grow without tear-
ing their petals. The moss is blue and the water is like diamonds."
"You tell me stories in a thousand voices," he muttered.
"Shh. Listen, my darting. This isn't a story, it's a real
place. Four miles north and a little west, and you can see the
trees from the ridge with the two dwarf oaks. And I know
why the water is pure!" she cried gladly. "I know why!"

He said nothing. He took a deep breath and it hurt him, for
he shuddered painfully.

"The unicom drinks there," she whispered. "I saw him!"
Still he said nothing. She said, "I made a song about it.
Listen, this is me song I made:

' 'And He—suddenly gleamed! My dazzled eyes

Coming from outer sunshine to this green

And secret gloaming, met without surprise

The vision. Only after, when the sheen

And Splendor of his going fled away,

I knew amazement, wonder and despair,

That he should come—and pass—and would not stay,

The Silken-swift—the gloriously Fair!

That he should come—and pass—and would not stay,

So that, forever after. I must go,

Take the long road that mounts against the day,

Traveling in the hope that 1 shall know

Again that lifted moment, high and sweet,

Somewhere—on purple moor or windy hill—

Remembering still his wild and delicate feet,

The magic and the dream—remembering still!''

THE SILKEN SWIFT              321

His breathing was more regular. She said, "I truly saw
him!"

"I'm blind," he said. "Blind, I'm blind."

"Oh, my dear . . ."

He fumbled for her hand, found it. For a long moment he
held it. Then, slowly, he brought up his other hand and with
-them both he felt her hand, turned it about, squeezed it.
Suddenly he grunted, half sitting. "You're here."

"Of course, darling. Of course I'm here "

"Why?" he shouted. "Why? Why? Why all of this? Why
blind me?" He sat up, mouthing, and put his great hand on
her throat. "Why do all that if . . ." The words ran together
into an animal noise. Wine and witchery, anger and agony
boiled in his veins.

Once she cried out.

Once she sobbed.

"Now," he said, "you'll catch no unicorns. Get away
from me." He cuffed her.

"You're mad. You're sick," she cried.

"Get away," he said ominously.

Terrified, she rose. He took the cloak and hurled it after
her. It almost toppled her as she ran away, crying silently.

After a long time, from behind the hedge, the sick, cough-
ing sobs began again.

Three weeks later Rita was in the market when a hard hand
took her upper arm and pressed her into the angle of a cottage
wall. She did not start. She flashed her eyes upward and
recognized him, and then said composedly, "Don't touch
roe."

"1 need you to tell me something," he said- "And tell me
you will!" His voice was as hard as his hand.

"I'll tell you anything you like," she said. "But don't
touch me."

He hesitated, then released her. She turned to him casualty.
"What is it?" Her gaze darted across his face and its almost-
healed scars. The small smile tugged at one comer of her
mouth.

His eyes were slits. "I have to know this: why did you

322 Theodore Sturgeon

make up all that . . . prettiness, that food, that poison . . .
just for me? You could have had me for less."

She smiled. "Just for you? It was your turn, that's all."

He was genuinely surprised. "It's happened before?"

She nodded. "Whenever it's the full of the moon—and the
squire's away."

"You're lying!"

"You forget yourself!" she said sharply. Then, smiling,
"It is the truth, though."

"I'd've heard talk—"

"Would you now? And tetl me—how many of your friends
know about your humiliating adventure?"

He hung his head.

She nodded. "You see? They go away until they're healed,
and they come back and say nothing. And they always will."

"You're a devil . . . why do you do it? Why?"

"I told you," she said openly- "I'm a woman and I act
like a woman in my own way. No man will ever touch me,
though. I am virgin and shall remain so."

"You're what?" he roared.

She held up a restraining, ladylike glove. "Please," she
said, pained.

"Listen," he said, quietly now, but with such intensity
that for once she stepped back a pace. He closed his eyes,
thinking hard: "You told me—the pool, the pool of the
unicorn, and a song, wait- 'The Silken-swift, the gloriously
Fair . . .* Remember? And then I—I saw to it that you'd
never catch a unicorn!"

She shook her head. complete candor in her face. "I like
that, 'the Silken-swift.' Pretty. But believe me—no! That
isn't mine."

He put his face close to hers, and though it was barely a
whisper, it came out like bullets. "Liar! Liar! I couldn't
forget. I was sick, I was hurt, I was poisoned, but I know
what I did!" He turned on his heel and strode away.

She put the thumb of her glove against her upper teeth for a
second, then ran after him. "Del!"

He stopped but, rudely, would not turn. She rounded him,

THE SILKEN SWIFT

323

faced him. "I'll not have you believing that of me—it's the
one thing I have left," she said tremulously.

He made no attempt to conceal his surprise. She controlled
her expression with a visible effort, and said, "Please. Tell
me a little more—just about the pool, the song, whatever it
was."

"You don't remember?"

"I don't know!" she flashed. She was deeply agitated.

He said with mock patience. "You told me of a unicorn
pool out on the Bogs. You said you had seen him drink there.
You made a song about it. And then I—"

"Where? Where was this?"

"You forget so soon?"

"Where? Where did it happen?"

"In the meadow, across the road from your gate, where
you followed me," he said. "Where my sight came back to
me, when the sun came up."

She looked at him blankly, and slowly her face changed.
First the imprisoned smile struggling to be free, and then—
she was herself again, and she laughed. She laughed a great
ringing peal of the laughter that had plagued him so, and she
did not stop until he put one hand behind his back, then the
other, and she saw his shoulders swell with the effort to keep
from striking her dead-

"You animal!" she said, good-humoredly. "Do you know
what you've done? Oh, you . . . you animal!" She glanced
around to see that there were no ears to hear her. "I left you
at the foot of the terrace steps," she told him. Her eyes
sparkled. "Inside the gates, you understand? And you . . ."

"Don't laugh," he said quietly.

She did not laugh. "That was someone else out there.
Who, I can't imagine. But it wasn't I."

He paled. "You followed me out."

"On my soul I did not," she said soberly. Then she quelled
another laugh.

"That can't be," he said. "I couldn't have . . ."

"But you were blind, blind and crazy, Dei-my-lover!"

"Squire's daughter, take care," he hissed. Then he pulled

324 Theodore Sturgeon

his big hand through his hair. "It can't be. It's three weeks;

I'd have been accused ..."

"There are those who wouldn't." She smiled "Or—perhaps
she will, in time."

"There has never been a woman so foul," he said evenly,
looking her straight in the eye. "You're lying—you know
you're lying."

"What must I do to prove it—aside from that which I'll
have no man do?"

His lip curled. "Catch the unicom," he said.

"If I did, you'd believe I was a virgin?"

"I must," he admitted. He turned away, then said, over
his shoulder- "But—you?"

She watched him thoughtfully until he left the marketplace.
Her eyes sparkled; then she walked briskly to the goldsmith's,
where she ordered a bridle of woven gold.

if the unicorn pool lay in the Bogs nearby, Rita reasoned,
someone who was familiar with that brackish wasteland must
know of it. And when she made a list in her mind of those
few who traveled the Bogs, she knew whom to ask. With
that, the other deduction came readily. Her laughter drew
stares as she moved through the marketplace.

By the vegetable stall she stopped. The girl looked up
patiently.

Rita stood swinging one expensive glove against the other
wrist, half-smiling. "So you're the one." She studied the
plain, inward-turning, peaceful face until Barbara had to turn
her eyes away. Rita said, without further preamble, "I want
you to show me the unicorn pool in two weeks."

Barbara looked up again, and now it was Rita who dropped
her eyes. Rita said, "I can have someone else find it, of
course. If you'd rather not." She spoke very clearly, and
people turned to listen. They looked from Barbara to Rita and
back again, and they waited.

"1 don't mind." said Barbara faintly. As soon as Rita had
left, smiling, she packed up her things and went silently back
to her house.

THE SILKEN SWIFT              325

The goldsmith, of course, made no secret of such an
extraordinary commission; and that, plus the gossips who had
overheard Rita talking to Barbara, made the expedition into a
cavalcade. The whole village turned out to see; the boys kept
firmly in check so that Rita might lead the way; the young
bloods ranged behind her (some a little less carefree than they
might be) and others snickering behind their hands. Behind
them the girls, one or two a little pale, others eager as cats to
see the squire's daughter fail, and perhaps even ... but then,
only she had the golden bridle.

She carried it casually, but casualness could not hide it, for
it was not wrapped, and it swung and blazed in the sun. She
wore a flowing white robe, trimmed a little short so that she
might negotiate the rough bogland; she had on a golden girdle
and little gold sandals, and a gold chain bound her head and
hair like a coronet.

Barbara walked quietly a little behind Rita, closed in with
her own thoughts. Not once did she look at Del, who strode
somberly by himself.

Rita halted a moment and let Barbara catch up, then walked
beside her. "Tell me," she said quietly, "why did you
come? It needn't have been you."

"I'm his friend," Barbara said. She quickly touched the
bridle with her finger. "The unicom."

"Oh," said Rita. "The unicom." She looked archly at the
other girl. "You wouldn't betray all your friends, would
you?"

Barbara looked at her thoughtfully, without anger. "If—
when you catch the unicom," she said carefully, "what will
do you with him?"

"What an amazing question! I shall keep him, of course!"

"I thought I might persuade you to let him go."

Rita smiled, and hung the bridle on the other arm. "You
could never do that."

"I know," said Barbara. "But I thought I might, so that's
why I came." And before Rita could answer, she dropped
behind again.

326 Theodore Sturgeon

The last ridge, the one which overlooked the unicorn pool.
saw a series of gasps as the ranks of villagers topped it, one
after the other, and saw what lay below; and it was indeed
beautiful.

Surprisingly, it was Del who took it upon himself to call
out, in his great voice, "Everyone wait here!" And everyone
did; the top of the ridge filled slowly, from one side to the
other, with craning, murmuring people. And then Del bounded
after Rita and Barbara.

Barbara said, "I'll stop here."

"Wait," said Rita, imperiously. Of Del she demanded,
"What are you coming for?"

"To see fair play," he growled. "The little 1 know of
witchcraft makes me like none of it."

"Very well," she said calmly. Then she smiled her very
own smile- "Since you insist, I'd rather enjoy Barbara's
company too."

Barbara hesitated. "Come, he won't hurt you, girl," said
Rita. "He doesn't know you exist."

"Oh," said Barbara, wonderingiy.

Del said gruffly, "I do so. She has the vegetable
stall."

Rita smiled at Barbara, the secrets bright in her eyes.
Barbara said nothing, but came with them.

"You should go back, you know," Rita said silkily to
Del, when she could. "Haven't you been humiliated enough
yet?"

He did not answer.

She said, "Stubborn animal! Do you think I'd have come
this far if I weren't sure?"

"Yes," said Del, "I think perhaps you would."

They reached the blue moss. Rita shuffled it about with her
feet and then sank gracefully down to it. Barbara stood alone
in the shadows of the willow grove. Del mumped gently at an
aspen with his fist. Rita, smiling, arranged the bridle to cast,
and laid it across her lap.

The rabbits stayed hid. There was an uneasiness about the
grove. Barbara sank to her knees, and put out her hand. A
chipmunk ran to nestle in it.

THE SILKEN SWIFT              327

This time there was a difference. This time it was not the
slow silencing of living things that warned of his approach,
but a sudden babble from the people on the ridge.

Rita gathered her legs under her like a sprinter, and held
the bridle poised. Her eyes were round and bright, and the tip
of her tongue showed between her white teeth. Barbara was a
statue. Del put his back against his tree, and became as still
as Barbara.

Then from the ridge came a single, simultaneous intake of
breath, and silence. One knew without looking that some
stared speechless, that some buried their faces or threw an
arm over their eyes.

He came.

He came slowly this time, his golden hooves choosing his
paces like so many embroidery needles. He held his splendid
head high. He regarded the three on the bank gravely, and
then turned to look at the ridge for a moment- At last he
turned, and came round the pond by the willow grove. Just
on the blue moss, he stopped to look down into the pond. It
seemed that he drew one deep clear breath. He bent his head
then, and drank, and lifted his head to shake away the shining
drops.

He turned toward the three spellbound humans and looked
at them each in turn. And it was not Rita he went to, at last,
nor Barbara. He came to Del, and he drank of Del's eyes
with his own just as he had partaken of the pool—deeply and
at leisure. The beauty and wisdom were there, and the com-
passion, and what looked like a bright white point of anger.
Del knew that the creature had read everything then, and that
he knew all three of them in ways unknown to human beings-
There was a majestic sadness in the way he turned then,
and dropped his shining head, and stepped daintily to Rita.
She sighed, and rose up a little, lifting the bridle. The unicom
lowered his hom to receive it—

—and tossed his head, tore the bridle out of her grasp, sent
the golden thing high in the air. It turned there in the sun, and
fell into the pond.

And the instant it touched the water, the pond was a bog
and the birds rose mourning from the trees. The unicorn

328 Theodore Sturgeon

looked up at them, and shook himself. Then he trotted to
Barbara and knelt, and put his smooth, stainless head in her
lap.

Barbara's hands stayed on the ground by her sides. Her
gaze moved over the warm white beauty, up to the tip of the
golden horn and back.

The scream was frightening. Rita's hands were up like
claws, and she had bitten her tongue; there was blood on her
mouth. She screamed again. She threw herself off the now
withered moss toward the unicorn and Barbara. "She can't
be!" Rita shrieked. She collided with Del's broad right hand.
"It's wrong, I teli you, she, you, I ..."

"I'm satisfied," said Del, low in his throat. "Keep away,
squire's daughter."

She recoiled from him, made as if to try to circle him. He
stepped forward. She ground her chin into one shoulder, then
the other, in a gesture of sheer frustration, turned suddenly
and ran toward the ridge. "It's mine, it's mine," she screamed.
"I tell you it can't be hers, don't you understand? I never
once, I never did, but she, but she—"

She slowed and stopped, then, and fell silent at the sound
that rose from the ridge. It began like the first patter of rain
on oak leaves, and it gathered voice until it was a rumble and
then a roar. She stood looking up, her face working, the
sound washing over her. She shrank from it.

It was laughter.

She turned once, a pleading just beginning to form on her
face. Del regarded her stonily. She faced the ridge then, and
squared her shoulders, and walked up the hill, to go into
the laughter, to go through it, to have it follow her all the
way home and all the days of her life.

Del turned to Barbara just as she bent over the beautiful
head. She said, "Silken-swift ... go free."

The unicorn raised its head and looked up at Del. Del's
mouth opened. He took a clumsy step forward, stopped again.
"You'"

Barbara's face was set. "You weren't to know," she
choked. "You weren't ever to know ... I was so glad you
were blind, because I thought you'd never know."

THE SILKEN SWIFT

329

He fell on his knees beside her. And when he did, the
unicorn touched her face with his satin nose, and all the girl's
pent-up beauty flooded outward. The unicom rose from his
kneeling, and whickered softly. Del looked at her, and only
the unicom was more beautiful. He put out his hand to the
shining neck, and for a moment felt the incredible silk of the
mane flowing across his fingers. The unicorn reared then, and
wheeled, and in a great leap was across the bog, and in two
more was on the crest of the farther ridge. He paused there
briefly, with the sun on him, and then was gone.

Barbara said, "For us, he lost his pool, his beautiful
pool."

And Del said, "He will get another. He must." With
difficulty he added, "He couldn't be ... punished ... for
being so gloriously Fair-**

WENDIGO

There are many legends of human beings who. for one
reason or another, become animallike in appearance and
nature. This may have arisen perhaps because the quiet,
settled farmers of agricultural areas may have been horri-
fied (and justly so) at the wild barbarian nomads who
occasionally struck at them from the surrounding wilder-
ness. (Even today we hear expressions such as "They're
animals" when people describe the criminal denizens of
our urban environment.)

ft may also be that in the primeval forests, especially at
night, human beings, armed with only primitive weapons,
ran peculiar dangers, so that exaggerated tales of fear-
some and intelligent predators would naturally arise.

Of course, transformations of human beings into ani-
mals might be the result of charms or spells. The case of
the handsome prince turned into a frog until he is kissed
by a princess, or into a fearsome Beast until Beauty falls
in love with him. are well known.

Much more frightening are transformations that take
place spontaneously and even involuntarily. The best-known
case in our own culture is that of the werewolf (actually
' 'man-way,'' since ' 'were'' is an Old English term for
"man"). The werewolf is only one variety of this sort of
thing, and weretigers etc. are also spoken of. However,
thanks to Hollywood, the werewolf ranks above them all.

Among the northeastern Indian tribes, it was thought
that any hunter lost in the forest would gradually be forced

330

MOOD WEND/GO               331

by hunger to waylay some unwary human being and eat
him. The hunter would then develop animal form and be-\
come an inveterate man-eater. He was then known as a
wendigo, or, more correctly, windigo. It is a pity the,
following story was not named "Mood Windigo." for that
would have been even better wordplay.

MOOD WENDIGO

Thomas A Easton

When did this story begin? It's hard for anyone here in town
to say. It looped back on itself and tied its bit of time in a
knot. No one is really sure just what happened, though we do
know we lost a good boy.

Did it start when Lydia Seltzer told her high school biology
class about the wendigo? She was talking about the world's
mystery beasts, the Abominable Snowman, the Sasquatch,
the Loch Ness Monster and its cousins in other lakes around
the world- She told them about all the expeditions, the lack of
results, the questions—are the searchers simply crackpots? Or
do elusive things still exist in the hidden comers of the
world? And then she mentioned the wendigo, a thing that had
never been more than a story, a superstition, something no
one had ever believed in enough to check it out. Its name was
Indian, and it was known across the Northeast, from Maine to
Ontario. It screamed in the night, and anyone who sought
the screamer disappeared without a trace. If they ever returned,
they were mad, too blown of mind even to say what had
happened to them. There were no descriptions of the wendigo.

Or did it start the day our town acquired a second Lydia?
Mad she was, and raving, but she was the same Lydia we had
all known for a decade. The same wide mouth, the nose a
little larger than she liked, the black hair worn short and
curled over her collar. Neither was any beauty, but neither
were they ugly, and it seemed surprising that she had never
married. Or perhaps it was no surprise after all. She was
tough-minded as only a woman can be, and she showed it at

332

MOOD WENDIGO                333

an unusually young age. Most women wait till their forties
and later to show their steel. But not Lydia. She brooked no
nonsense, in class or out, and for as long as we had known
her she had been given to severely tailored pantsuits, wool for
work, denim for evenings and weekends.

When did it start? Who can say? The best I can do is tell
you where I came into it. That was some time after the
wendigo class I was at home, sitting at the kitchen table,
going over the town budget for the fourth time. Sarah, my
wife, was in the living room, watching something inane on
TV. We didn't talk much anymore, not about her job at the
bank, not about mine. We had no kids.

When the buzzer sounded, I heard her chair creak as she
rose to answer the door. There was a murmur of voices, steps
in the hall, and "Harry? Miss Seltzer wants to see you."
There was a glare with the words. I ignored it, raised my
head from the papers and said, "Duty calls, then. Have a
seat, Lydia. Coffee, a drink?"

"Do you have any tea?" As Lydia pulled the other chair
out from the table, Sarah disappeared. A moment later, the
sound of the TV rose, as if to drown out anything that might
give my wife's fantasies the lie. But my attention was for
Lydia. She seemed more serious than usual, if possible, and
there was a folded paper jutting from her bag. I wondered
what was on her mind as 1 filled the kettle. I found out soon
enough.

She sat still, watching me as I moved about the room,
saying nothing until our tea was before us and I had sat down
again. Then she said, "Mayor, 1 need a leave of absence. A
short one."

She stirred her cup, squeezed the bag. and dumped it in the
ashtray half full of my pipe ashes. "Of course," I said. "But
shouldn't you be asking the superintendent about this?" I was
puzzled. It wasn't my chore to handle the teachers, thank
goodness. I was the town's unpaid mayor, and there were
professionals, paid ones, to handle day-to-day affairs.

"I will," she replied. She looked at me, her brown eyes
unblinking. I remember thinking that for all her mannishness
she would be worth shielding from all grief. Perhaps it was

334 Thomas A. Easton

the eyes. Maybe it was just Sarah. "But you can help," she
said- "You know people, and ..."

"But what do you need help with?"

She shrugged and look the paper from her bag. She un-
folded it and handed it to me. "Look at this," she said. "It's
French-Canadian, a rhyme, collected back in the thirties by
the WPA people. I found it in the university library, buried in
the folklore files."

The paper was covered with a pencilled scrawl, a copy of a
poem that must have been set down by someone who wished
to capture the flavor of a speech pattern;

Ze Wendigo,
Zat crazy beast,
'E never eats,
But loves t'go.

In darkest night,
'E runs and screams
And stirs ze dreams
Of second sight.

But when you go
To join ze run,
'E stays unknown,
Ze Wendigo.

I packed and lit my pipe, studying the rhyme, before I
spoke. "Interesting," I said. I sent a cloud of smoke toward
the ceiling- "But what does it have to do with a leave of
absence?"

Her fingers tensed around her teacup. She had come to me,
but she seemed unwilling to reveal her problem- Could it be
so rare or odd or shameful? Suppose it was, I told myself,
and then I guessed me answer.

"You want to go wendigo hunting." I laughed.

Her lips tightened, and I was immediately sorry for the
laughter. That was just the reaction she had feared. Of course.
No one wants to be thought a nut, a crackpot, even if their

MOOD WENDIGO             335

ideas are a bit off the beaten track. "But go on," I said,
trying to save the situation. "Maybe I can help. At least, I'm
game to try."

She relaxed as if that was all she had wanted. I caught a
faint whiff of perfume or cologne. And she began to talk. She
told me of the wendigo class, of her own interest in the
strange, of her sense of fairness that led her to the library, of
her conviction that all the legends must reflect some grain of
truth, of her wish to seek that truth. She had come to me for
suggestions on where to seek, a guess at the chances of
success, perhaps even a partner in the strange quest.

Why me? Well, I do have a reputation for imagination.
Last year's ad program for my oil business certainly stirred
folks up enough. And men there were the gimmicks I had
come up with to get more tourists into the area. And men,
too, there had been a few incidents now and again to connect
me with the strange. Really, 1 should have been more sur-
prised if Lydia had not come to me.

But what could I do? I wouldn't know a wendigo if I saw
one- Or heard one, rather. She was silent while I relit my
pipe and thought. She didn't fidget much, only turning her
empty cup back and forth between her hands. Finally, 1 said,
"There's at least one fellow in this town who could help. If
you'll come to the town hall tomorrow after school, I'll ask
him to meet us there."

She nodded and sighed. Her breath whistled as if she had
been holding it. So I would help, after all. Her voice was
softer when she spoke. "Do you really mink we can . . . ?"

"How can we know?" 1 grimaced, sympathetically, I hoped.
"We've no idea what it looks like or where to look. But we
can try."

The fellow I wanted to talk to was Howie Wyman. Griz-
zled, always overalled and booted, he had been doing odd
jobs as long as anyone cared to recall. He knew all the stories,
too, though he didn't talk much. He seemed to prefer the
woods and streams to human company, even his wife, but he
was in town at the time. painting a house over on Water Street.
I sent a secretary to ask him to come by a little after three.

336 Thomas A. Easton

I was still alone when he showed up, a motley collection of
paint spatters, whiskers, and faded cloth completely alien to
any civilized conception of a government office. My secre-
tary showed him in, though, as if he were clad in a three-
piece suit and fresh from the barber, which tells you something
about our town. It's informal. Partly because it's small and
partly because its people waste little energy on nonessemial
appearances. They dress up mostly for church and they try to
keep their drinking private.

I said, "Thank you. Bonny," and waved Howie to a seat.
He took it, looked for my wastebasket, and got rid of his wad
of chewing tobacco. "You wanted me. Mayor."

"Ayuh," I said. "Lydia Seltzer dragged me in on a project
of hers. I thought you might be able to tell us something
helpful."

"Like what?" He looked doubtful. He knew Lydia was the
science teacher, and he knew nothing about science. I doubted
he'd ever gotten past the sixth grade. I was starting to tell him
about the problem when Lydia walked in. Bonny holding the
door until 1 waved at her. Her wool was pink today, and her
face was flushed with eagerness. The combination wasn't
attractive, but I didn't imagine it was anything but temporary.
1 hoped she wouldn't be disappointed.

I introduced Howie to Lydia. "This is the fellow I was
talking about. I was just going to tell him the problem."

She took the other chair. "Shall I go on, then?" When I
nodded, she produced that paper again and then handed it to
Howie. While he read, she said what she wanted, flatly and
directly. The nervousness 1 had seen last night was gone.

When she finished, Howie set the paper on the corner of
my desk and said simply, "Pork Hill." I raised my eye-
brows, and he went on. "My dad was up there once. Ayuh,
huntin' deer in the dark of the moon. He heard that scream-
Didn't see nothin', though."

"Where's Pork Hill?"

"North by west, 'bout ten miles."

And that was all he had for us.

We now had a place to look, and the next dark of the moon
was just two weeks away, in case that mattered. Lydia could

MOOD WENDIGO

337

hardly wait. She insited on borrowing a tent, sleeping bags, a
Coleman stove, all the gear anyone could want for a night
camping on a lonely hilltop. She got most of it from two
members of the school board. She got their sons, too. Keith
Hutchison and Ronny Jackson were two of her best students,
and she thought they deserved a field trip, a little hands-on
research. They thought so too, especially since it meant a
Friday away from school- I didn't argue, since I was sure we
could meet no danger from a superstition.

I wish I had been right. Keith was a lanky boy, tall, a
forward on the school basketball team. Ronny was shorter,
sturdier, a soccer player. Both had family, friends, girlfriends,
good prospects. Keith, in fact, already had a scholarship for
college. They had a tot to lose, but they were eager. Danger
was just a myth, and they wouldn't miss this trip for worlds.

They didn't, of course. I didn't believe in any danger
myself, so I didn't try to talk them out of it, and Lydia made
it sound like a lark. All the way up there, the four of us and
the gear crowded into my old station wagon, she waved her
camera and ran on about the splash a picture of a real, live
wendigo would make.

We loaded the car on Thursday night and left town shortly
after noon on Friday. When we met in the town hall lot, 1
was surprised to see Lydia in dungarees and a red-checked
wool shirt. It was so unlike her that, even though the rest of
us were dressed similarly, she seemed to stand out. But the
clothes were suitable for the trip, and I soon stopped noticing
them.

It took us half an hour to reach the foot of Pork Hill, and
another two hours to hump the gear to the top. The hill
wasn't big, no more than eight hundred feet high, but it was
steep and wooded and there was no path. The going was slow
until we reached the top, where the trees disappeared. Pork
Hill was one of those rocky knobs scattered over the state of
Maine, its top scraped clean by glaciers and still inhabited
only by lichen, moss, blueben-y bushes, and a few stunted
birches.

We pitched the tent in a mossy hollow between boulders,
and the boys went back down the hill to gather firewood.




338 Thomas A. Easton

There were plenty of fallen branches there, and though we
had the stove, a fire was a comforting thing to have at night.
Even small mountains can get chilly after dark.

By suppertime, the woodpile was large enough to last a
week. We had all taken time to explore the hilttop, too,
following Lydia as she sought some clue to what a wendigo
might be, some trace of something strange. We found nothing
but glacial scours and animal droppings and a few weathered
shotgun shells, though Lydia was hardly discouraged. As she
said when the boys were finally kindling their fire, "It is a
traveler, they say. Maybe it never stops here.*'

I said something which I now wish I hadn't. Though it
probably didn't change a thing. "Then you'll have to move
quickly to get a picture of it. It won't be waiting for you."

"I suppose I will," she said, fingering the camera on its
strap around her neck. She bent, men, to the totebag she had
brought and extracted a flash, one of those electronic ones
that don*t need bulbs. "I'd better be ready."

We ate—hamburgers and potato salad and coffee and bak-
ery pie—and sat around the fire staring, satisfied for the
moment by the mystery of its flames. Only Lydia turned her
head now and again to the darkness, straining to see what she
waited for. But there was nothing but the odor of earth and
growing things, the sight of stars like raindrops on a wind-
shield. The air turned chill enough for sweaters, and we
listened to the chirps and buzzes of insects, the lazy notes of
sleepy birds, the small croaks of tree frogs, and the rare
crackling of brush as some animal—deer, coon, rabbit, coy-
ote, even a wild house cat—passed within hearing.

We talked, of what it meant to be a mayor or a teacher or a
student, of sports and fishing and hunting, of politics and
taxes. We told no ghost stories, though. 1 suppose that must
have been because our mission was too much like such a tale.
It would have been tempting fate to describe horrors and
frights, and fate never needed tempting.

Eventually, we talked ourselves out and let the fire die. We
were readying ourselves for the sleeping bags, washing up,
brushing teem, when it happened. We heard a moan at first,
low as if far distant, swelling loud and clear and close. At its

MOOD WENDIGO             339

peak it sounded like a baby must when it is being dipped in
boiling oil.

It was a little after midnight and as black as the inside of a
closet. We had been using the light of an electric lantern as
well as the glow of the coals. We had been contained in a
smalt and cozy room, but that sound broke down the walls. I
shuddered, and Lydia ran, the soap and water spilled on the
moss, her camera ready in her hand, Keith hot on her heels.
Ronny would have gone too, but I held him still with a hand
on his shoulder- "Let go!" he cried. "I want to see it too!"

"Remember the stories," I said as softly as I could over
the dying scream. "Someone should mind the camp." He
subsided as I'd hoped he would. When the scream was gone
and the night was again silent, I added, "Now. Now we can
look for them."

We took our flashlights and tried to follow the marks Lydia
and Keith had crushed into the moss as they ran. But the
tracks soon disappeared in the tangled skein of prints we had
made earlier that afternoon. We called and shouted. We
covered every inch of that hilltop, again and again, shining
our lights down cracks in the rock and under bushes, check-
ing the bottom of every drop we came across, large or small.
We searched until our batteries were exhausted, and then we
huddled around a rebuilt fire, worrying, starting at every
crackle of brush.

With the dawn. we searched and called again, but we had
no better luck. Lydia and Keith had vanished without a trace,
just as in the legends. I was closer than ever before to
believing in the wendigo, and thus in ghosts, banshees, and
all the rest of what I had once dismissed as so much claptrap.

Our second search soon ended in futility. We made a hasty
breakfast, doused the fire, and broke camp. Then we lugged
the gear back to the car. It took longer, since there were
fewer of us now. I had plenty of time to berate myself, to
think I should never have helped Lydia with her obsession,
never have let the boys come along, never have come myself.
But who could have expected a myth to be real? Who could j
have guessed it would cost us half our party? And what was
the wendigo? What was it that made a sound that swelled and

340 Thomas A. Boston

faded like a freight train's whistle, that screamed like a soul
in torment? Like a god on a cosmic treadmill? If only 1 had
known, I might have left the boys in town, but I would still
have come with Lydia, hoping to protect her, shield her. I felt
as I might for the child I didn't have, and i mourned.

Ronny was less thoughtful. He shivered when he thought
of the night, and once he dropped his load with a clatter of
pans. He had lost a teacher and a friend. He might have been
lost himself. The horror of that scream had almost touched
him, and he could barely control his thoughts. He stayed
close to me, keeping a wary eye on the woods around us.
talking endlessly, trying to imagine what had happened to the
others. He failed to disrupt my thoughts only because I was
as obsessed myself. There was no conversation. He talked
on, while I muttered responsive noises, and we both scurried
around our separate skulls, like rats seeking the way out of a
trap.

By midmoming, we were back in town. I stopped the car
in front of the town hall. The police station was across the
street. We would have to go there first, of course. Missing
persons, runaways, lost in the woods, carried off by a mythi-
cal beast, had to be reported, search parties organized, mo-
tions gone through even if they could do no good. Ronny was
still talking, muttering, his skin a cold and clammy white, his
eyes glazed. I helped him out of the car and steered him
across the road. I remember being glad he hadn't collapsed
while we had work to do. It would have been a shame to
leave all that gear on top of Pork Hill.

Our town's Chief of Police was a heavy-bellied man whose
moon face wore a thin mustache. He was young, about thirty,
and as competent as we needed. Most of his energies were
spent on rounding up drunks and vandals, occasional bur-
glars, and the odd con man. He could do the work because
the town was small and the crime rate low, but he could never
hope to improve his lot. He would grow old in the job, the
gut would sag, the cheeks jowl and the eyes go piggish. The
tattoos on his forearms would fade, and somewhere along the
line we would have to get rid of him. I wouldn't miss him; no
one would. His sense of social class was far too keen.

MOOD WENDIGO                341

When we entered his office, he rose and said. "G'moming,
Mayor! I thought you were going wendigo hunting yesterday?"

"We did," I said shortly.

"Ah!" He grinned jovially, as if we shared some secret.
"Stealing a march on your great white huntress, hey?"

"Whatever do you mean?" 1 asked. I was irritated by his
tone, impatient with what had to be nothing but nonsense.
But his next words sent me back.

"Lydia Seltzer. She didn't go with you."

It didn't sound like a question, but what else could it be?
"Of course she did. That's why I'm here now. She disap-
peared last night. She and Keith Hutchison."

The Chief plopped his bulk back into his swivel chair. He
looked startled. "But, . . ." Then he paused, looking at
Ronny as if for the first time. "What's the matter with him?"

"Shock and exhaustion," I said. "We were up all night,
searching for them. Maybe one of your men would get him
over to the hospital and tell his parents where he is."

"Of course. Mayor." He pushed a button on his desk
intercom- Then he said, "Maybe you'll tell me what happened
when ..." A patrolman entered, was given his instructions,
and left with Ronny. The Chief turned back to me. "Now,"
he said.

I gave him the story. He nodded when I was done. "The
shock I can understand," he said. "But why didn't you get
here hours ago?"

"1 didn't think it wise to go stumbling through the woods
in the dark. Besides, I hoped we might find something in the
morning."

"Not that it really makes a difference. A search party
wouldn't do any good."

"Why not? They could still be there someplace! Maybe
they fell in a hole we didn't see, or got lost in the woods."

"No." He shook his head and rose again. "C'mon, I'll
show you."

He led me back to the small cell block. When we entered
the narrow corridor, lined with steel bars, 1 could hear ai
noise, a jabbering sound, wordless, random. Or almost ran-
dom. As he steered me toward the noise, I began to pick our

342 Thomas A. Easton

shreds that might hold meaning: "fetal train," "stars and
stars," "hopper freight," "take yon train," and more, though
those were clearest. I wondered what madman he was holding
here. And then we faced the last cell in the row. Through the
bars, I made out a form strapped onto the narrow bunk, head
tossing, face bruised and scratched, denim and wool clothes
torn and soiled. It was Lydia.

The Chief spoke. "We picked her up like that yesterday
afternoon. She walked into town, went straight to the school,
and tried to get into her classroom, raving all the time, just
like this. The substitute called the principal, and he called us.
I'm waiting for the judge to sign the papers now, and then
one of the men'll drive her to Augusta."

AMHI. The Augusta Mental Health Institute. Where they
would try to bring her back, perhaps with drugs and electric
shocks. But what else could anyone do? I turned away.

Back in the Chiefs office, I remembered Lydia's camera.
Did he have it? He did, along with everything that had been
in her pockets. "Then perhaps," I said, "it might be a good
idea to have the film developed. She could have got her
pictures after all, and they could help the doctors understand
what's wrong with her now."

"Of course," he said, and I left. I wanted sleep, but 1
should return the gear Lydia had borrowed first and tell
Keith's family what had happened. Then, maybe, I could
begin to puzzle over how Lydia had disappeared last night
and reappeared yesterday. Time travel was impossible, wasn't
it?

The Hutchisons and Jacksons were enraged. With me, with
Lydia, with the town, with the school. One boy tost, another
ill, but the lost one most on their minds. Jack Hutchison
swore he would run against me come the next election, sue
me for every penny I had, have Lydia fired if she ever
regained her wits. But the prospect of no longer being mayor
didn't bother me—after all, it didn't pay—and the trip had
officially been a school field trip, and the school had insurance
to cover lawsuits.

And then that fuss died down. The pictures came out.

MOOD WENDIGO              343

Lydia had her wendigo. twice. One shot showed a line of
shiny boxes stretched down a gleaming tunnel. The other
showed Keith walking away from the camera, hand in hand
with a figure that wasn't human, through a vast cavern of a
room. The shiny boxes covered the floor of that room, and
they were surrounded by machines that bore vague resem-
blances to freight dollies and forklift trucks.

I could guess what the wendigo really was. An interstellar
freight train, its tracks looping close to Earth at certain times
and places, a freight that could be hopped by anyone who got
too close to its passing field. "Fetal"? Maybe "ftl," faster
than light. By "take yon" had she meant "tachyon"? I read
enough to know what that was, how it might fit, and Keith
was alive and well. Earth's envoy to other worlds. Lydia, on
the other hand, had been sent back on the next train, going
faster than light, backward in time just enough to get her
home a day before she left.

By the time Lydia stopped raving and returned to her job,
Pork Hill could no longer be visited, either by deer poachers or
by would-be interstellar hobos. The army had taken it over,
and it was now ringed by wire fence and armed guards while
the experts tried to find a way to flag some passing train
down.

I don't know if they'll succeed. Lydia can't tell us any-
thing, since she now seems to have no memory of her jour-
ney, and if it weren't for that last picture of Keith I'd be
tempted to compare us to the moose. For years, the rutting
bulls would answer train whistles by charging down the
tracks into the engine. To the bull moose, it seems, the
whistles sounded like the cry of a cow in heat, and they never
learned the difference. The slaughter only stopped when the
companies changed the note of the whistles.

But we can't be the equivalent of animals running head-on
against an oblivious technology. After all, who among us
would walk out of a railway station hand in hand—or hoof in
hand—with a moose?

ABOUT THE EDITORS

ISAAC ASIMOV has been called "one of America's trea-
sures." Born in the Soviet Union, he was brought to the
United States at the age of three (along with his family) by
agents of the American government in a successful attempt to
prevent him from working for the wrong side. He quickly
established himself as one of this country's foremost science
fiction writers and writes about everything, and although now
approaching middle age, he is going stronger than ever. He
long ago passed his age and weight in books, and with some
310 to his credit, threatens to close in on his I.Q. His
novel The Robots of Dawn was one of the best-selling books
of 1983 and 1984.

MARTIN H- GREENBERG has been called (in The Science
Fiction and Fantasy Book Review) ' 'the King of the Antholo-
gists"; to which he replied, "It's good to he. the King!" He
has produced more than one hundred of them, usually in
collaboration with a multitude of co-conspirators, most fre-
quently the two who have given you Mythical Beasties. A
professor of regional analysis and political science at the
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, he is still trying to
publish his weight.

CHARLES G. WAUGH is a professor of psychology and
communications at the University of Maine at Augusta who is
still trying to figure out how he got himself into all this. He
has also worked with many collaborators, since he is basi-
cally a very friendly fellow. He has done some sixty-five
anthologies and single-author collections, and especially en-
joys locating unjustly ignored stories. He also claims that he
met his wife via computer dating—her choice was an entire
fraternity or him, and she has only minor regrets.