NewC elebrations

Star WellandThe Thurb Revolution Original Copyright © 1968 by Alexei Panshin.Masque World Original Copyright © 1969 by Alexei Panshin. All rights reserved. ISBN: 1-930815-32-8

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RWTOC-1”>

New Celebrations

The Adventures of Anthony Villiers

By Alexei Panshin

ElectricStory.com, Inc.

Book I: Star Well

For George Price

and Bob Troester

RWNAV-1”> by Samuel R. Delany

Star Well is a wise, delightful, and well-turned book; and it is something I have never seen in science fiction before. It is the first of a series of novels that examines the proposition that the world is composed of small communities of mutual interest. When the pith of that statement is bared as astutely as it is in this novel, it does not matter which “small community” you belong to:Star Well hits.

I write this as the second volume of the adventures of Anthony Villiers nears completion. Looking for an analogue to thisroman fleuve in the mainstream, I come up withA Dance to the Music of Time , perhapsMen of Good Will , definitely NOTJalna. Twenty-eight-year-old Mr. Panshin’s credentials for the undertaking are impressive. He is the author of one fine and solidly classical sf novel,Rite of Passage ; he was the recipient of a “Hugo” award from the World Science Fiction Convention in 1967 for his critical writing over the previous year; he recently published the first full-length study of Robert Heinlein,Heinlein in Dimension ; his short stories have appeared inAnalog ,If ,Fantasy & Science Fiction , andGalaxy .

What follows is a gallery of gamblers, duels and double-crosses, a minuet of manners and manners mangled; the machinery of the universe is speculated upon; inspector generals arrive to inspect it. And Anthony Villiers, gentleman par excellence, dashes through it all, buckling a swash or two, bungling a couple of others.

Mr. Villiers?

If you consider it impolite to strike up an acquaintance with someone you have not been formally introduced to, well—consider the introduction made.

New York, April 1968

To history buffs, the year was 4171 A.U.C. To Christians, it was 3418. To Moslems, it was late in the year 2882. But by common reckoning, the year was 1461.

The only features of the rift are a few pieces of random sky junk. No one knows where they came from. No one has ever determined their number or charted their courses. However, there are rumors that a few are inhabited by men who prefer a cold and irregular existence to the certainties of warmer climates.

One exception: one rock is a regular port of call for ships that venture into the rift. This planetoid, Star Well, provides a rest in passage, warehouses, entertainment, comfort, games—everything, in short, but a sun, atmosphere, and close neighbors.

Anthony Villiers entered the casino in Star Well and looked about him with an elegant air of assurance that some might have taken for arrogance. There was no day or night within the planetoid. Ships arrived at irregular hours with passengers on every sort of sleeping and waking schedule. The casino was open round the clock and the play remained constant hour to hour.

Villiers moved among the tables, pausing occasionally, watching the play and moving on. He placed no bets himself. He was dressed ahead of the first fashion. His shoulder ribbons were green, his drapeau a darker green. His heels were a half inch, moderate considering that his natural height was not great. His hair—brown—was free.

He had been at Star Well through the arrival and departure of three ships and was beginning to be able to find his way through the maze with a certain degree of confidence, and to recognize schedules. He raised his eyebrows slightly to see that the floor man was Derek Godwin and not Hisan Bashir Shirabi, the obsequious owner of Star Well, usually himself in charge at this hour.

Godwin was dressed stylishly, too, but where Villiers’ clothes were a moderately voiced statement, Godwin’s were a strident claim, the choice of a man with an uncertain background or uncertain taste. Nonetheless, he stood out in this company for other reasons: not only was he second in authority in Star Well, but he had a certain reputation as a dangerous man.

“Good evening, Mr. Villiers.”

Villiers turned to find that the voice belonged to Norman Adams, a young gentleman he had had occasion to share a dinner table with. Though Adams was only a few years younger, he had a helter-skelter eagerness that made Villiers feel a sober dog.

“Mr. Adams,” he said.

Adams nodded in the direction Villiers had been looking. “In truth,” he said, “Godwin dresses well. I like the cut of his coat.”

“Yes,” said Villiers. “For parts as lonely as these, he manages to present an appearance that would pass inspection in grander company than he is likely to find here.”

“Do you think so?”

Adams himself was dressed well, but conservatively, as though he had been much influenced by the taste of older men, or perhaps had but recently arrived from some comparative backwater. Nonetheless, Villiers had seen one recent ex-priest and any number of off-duty Naval officers on Nashua itself in whose company Adams could comfortably have fitted.

“Yes,” Villiers said. “If you like his tastes, you might ask him for the name of his tailor while you have the opportunity to take advantage of it.”

Adams nodded. “A good idea, sir,” he said. “But Godwin is not precisely anapproachable man. At least I don’t find him so. He makes me feel like a puppy who doesn’t know enough to sit quietly in the corner, and the more he retreats, the more I feel myself to press.”

“Well, perhaps an opportunity will present itself,” Villiers said.

Adams rattled the stack of tokens in his hand. “Do you gamble?”

Villiers said, “I seek to ape affluence by compounding my bills, but I have yet to find a game to my liking.”

Adams laughed.

“Would you care to join me in a small game between ourselves?” Villiers asked. “Raffles, perhaps?”

Adams made a face. “I used to play that with my sisters.”

“Simple games can still be interesting.”

“No disrespect, sir, but I think I’d prefer a more active pleasure.” Adams pointed at the colored fountain of the Flambeau. The red ball danced on the cone of flame and then fell as the fire died. “I feel my luck tonight.”

“In that case, allow me to accompany you.”

They walked arm-in-arm to the Flambeau table. Adams was much the larger, round-faced, not yet used to his size and strength, something of the puppy he had likened himself to. Villiers was small, slight and quick, and rather more reserved. Adams, enjoying himself hugely, placed emphatic bets, smiled widely when he won and drew pained breaths when he lost. He lost more than he won. Villiers stood at his elbow as the game followed its steady cycle. The game, like all its ancestors before it, allocated bets at varying odds, and Villiers played conservatively, small bets on odd or even, white or black. If he lost more than he won, he did not lose much. He offered Adams no advice on his play.

At last, Adams rattled three final tokens in his fist and then held them out on the tips of his fingers as he considered.

“Poor things,” he said. “Well, one last bet. Let me see—fifteen is a round number and today’s date.”

“Today is the sixteenth,” said the operator of the table. “The date changed thirty minutes ago.”

“Ah,” said Adams, “then the ship from Morian arrives tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well. Nonetheless, I like fifteen.” He dropped the tokens on the number and touched the brown and friendly figure in the background of the square. “And I had a pet gorf when I was a boy.”

“A good reason for making a choice on a final bet,” Villiers said. Instead of following his usual practice, he dropped his token on the picture of the little animal too. “I believe I’ll join you.”

“The betting is closing. The betting is closing. The betting is closed.”

The fire slowly rose, showing first scarlet, then luminous sulphur yellow. The fire swirled and flames of blue and green and purple played their own private games. On top of all the red ball bobbed, King of the Mountain. Then suddenly the flame was gone and the king was without his mountain, The ball floated slowly down, a ball no longer. It touched the bowl, bounced, touched again, and collapsed in a puddle.

“Sixteen, animal, black,” announced the table man. He and his assistant began raking in tokens and paying the few winners around the wide table.

“Damnation!” said Adams. “I should have followed the date! I knew it. I’ve been so close this evening. I hate to quit now.” He checked his pockets, pulled out a purse and began counting his money. “Yes. If you will wait, Mr. Villiers, I will be back directly.”

Villiers said, “Luck doesn’t seem to be running our way tonight.”

“But it is!”

Villiers measured the few tokens he held between finger and thumb. “Do you say so? Perhaps it would be best to let a final bet be a final bet and end the evening. Come, sir, I’ll buy you a drink or a smoke, whichever you prefer.”

Adams said, “No, thank you, Mr. Villiers.”

A voice bid them good evening and they turned to discover Godwin. He, also, was a taller, more robust man than Villiers. His face was narrow and his nose large and pointed, which gave him a vulpine air. His long black hair was caught at the sides in matching ornamental pins with silver figures. He wore a thin mustache that he constantly sleeked with a thumbnail, lending the impression that it might be its narrow self from attrition rather than design.

“Good evening, Mr. Godwin,” said Villiers.

“Enjoying yourselves, I trust?”

Villiers shrugged. “Indifferently. I must confess that I would prefer more individual sport. Would the house, in your person, favor me with a game of raffles?” He turned to Adams. “It is your intention, is it not, to continue to play Flambeau?”

“It is.”

“Then, Mr. Godwin?”

Godwin regarded him with his usual cold glance. “You play raffles, do you? I might have supposed. But up until now you have been content with the tables.”

“Up until now it has not mattered to me whether I won or lost.”

“I might oblige you, then, if you need to lose to a man rather than to a machine.” Godwin raised a beringed hand and made two rapid hand signals.

“Mr. Shirabi allows you this much latitude?”

Godwin flared. “I don’t need Shirabi’s permission! He has no con—” Then he checked himself and lowered his voice. “Say, if you will, that I am trusted to the extent of a game of raffles.”

“Ah, you play well, then?” Villiers turned to Adams. “If you will excuse us? Perhaps we may share an evening again before your ship leaves.”

Adams salaamed with a regimental exactness. “Mr. Villiers. Mr. Godwin, sir.”

Godwin grunted and turned away. Villiers joined him. Adams looked after them for a moment as they walked together between the widely spaced tables, his face tightening like a child’s who has accidentally chosen the smaller slice of cake. Then he turned to go for his tokens.

As they walked, Villiers said to Godwin, “I confess I was surprised to find you on the floor at this hour.”

“Oh?”

“It seems to me that on other occasions Mr. Shirabi has overseen operations at this time.”

“You are very observant. Shirabi had some … warehouse work he wanted to supervise personally.”

“There are things, then, that you aren’t … permitted … to handle?”

Godwin gave Villiers a sharp glance, then smiled thinly. They had reached the side of the casino where a table and two chairs were being placed by two floor workers. One of them handed Godwin several packs of cards.

He motioned Villiers to take a seat. Seating himself, he said, “If Shirabi were here, would you have challenged him to play?”

“Perhaps.”

“That coarse a man? I know you better than that. You would never sit to play with a man who is that obviously not a gentleman.”

Villiers smiled faintly, but made no comment.

Godwin opened a pack of cards. “What stakes will you have?”

“You name them.”

“Ten royals a game, five on crevasses, a royal for odd points.”

“In that case, you must accept my vowel. I haven’t enough to cover those stakes on my person. Or, if you would prefer, I’ll go to my quarters and return.”

“It won’t be necessary,” Godwin said. “Your losses can be added to your bill.”

“Most kind.”

“Shall we match cards for deal?”

“Not necessary,” said Villiers. “Deal, Mr. Godwin.”

Godwin dealt their hands, then placed the stack at the right. As he was dealing, Villiers said, “I am reminded. I meant to ask the name of your tailor.”

Godwin regarded his cards briefly after completing the deal, then looked at Villiers. “Your clothes seem well enough, if a bit dull. Still, if you would like …”

Villiers laughed. “I’ve misled you, I’m afraid. This is not for my benefit, but for Mr. Adams. He seems to prefer your taste and my company.”

“That puppy!” Godwin said explosively, and played.

“As you say. You both see him in the same way.”

“We both?”

“You and himself. I think he feels his lack of polish and finds you the most shining gentleman in sight. It’s a compliment, sir, I should think. You discard well.”

“If you find the boy such good company, you might introduce him to your own tailor.”

“My tailor, unfortunately, is not near at hand. And, again as you say, my clothes are dull.”

Godwin looked at him across the narrow table. “And my tailor is at hand?”

Villiers shrugged and played a card. “I merely agreed to ask for his name. I have no ambitions for such a striking appearance as yours. As you see, I have neither your size nor your dash.”

“You say he prefers my taste and your company. Do you think he would prefer my company if I encouraged him?”

“Very likely,” said Villiers.

The hand ended then with Villiers technically the winner. In money, he was slightly the poorer since Godwin had scored two crevasses, but the deal passed to his hands, giving him a slight advantage. He dealt methodically, with none of the slickness that Godwin had displayed.

“However,” Villiers said, “I suppose that I would prefer that you reserved your favor.”

Godwin raised his eyebrows.

“I suspect you might become irritated with Mr. Adams and find it necessary to kill him.”

Godwin laughed. “You needn’t worry, Villiers. I’ve made a resolution to avoid trouble this year. As Shirabi said, five men last year was excessive and one led to complications. A Naval ship put in to investigate. Quite naturally I was vindicated, but the answering of questions was a bore. And I agree—I would soon become irritated with Adams.Mr. Adams.”

Godwin leaned forward and picked up a discard. “Thank you. You know, there are several things about you that puzzle me.” He played a card. “You are an enigmatic man, sir.”

“Not at all,” said Villiers. “If anything, I have a reputation for being altogether too open.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.” Godwin looked at him directly. “But you do dress well. No, no—you do. Your manners are—shall we say—better than my own. Your baggage is both expensive and of considerable size. Yet you travel with no servant. Do you not admit that this seems strange?”

Godwin played his last card and Villiers laid his hand down.

“You play well, Mr. Godwin. Shall we have a third hand?”

“If you like. But I’m afraid that it must be the last.”

As Godwin dealt, Villiers said, “There is no puzzle, I’m afraid. My man and I have temporarily been separated by circumstance. I expect him to arrive on the next ship from Morian.”

“Quite simple indeed,” Godwin said. “Then tell me if you will why you insisted so genteelly on this game?”

“Again there is no puzzle. I have no objection to losing money at the gaming table. It is a normal living expense. However, I prefer the random games that I play to actually have a random element. If it is lacking then, in your words, I prefer to lose to a man rather than a machine.”

Godwin paused abruptly in his play. Then, after a moment, he laughed coldly and laid down a card. “You are observant.”

“If you mean your occasional lapses as we have been playing, they haven’t been greatly expensive. If you mean the Flambeau table, being observant wasn’t necessary. Your table man is an antic. He was chasing Mr. Adams’ bets around and around the table, playing tag.”

Godwin’s eyebrows lifted and his thumb ran thoughtfully over his mustache. He raised his hand and made another signal. Almost immediately a hulk wearing the casino uniform was standing by the table. He was closer to seven feet in height than to six. His right hand was a broad scoop and his thumb was the size of two of Villiers’ fingers. His left hand was in a pocket, toying with something. His nose was low-bridged and turned up on the end. In effect, the nostrils were set directly in the face. The face itself was round and piggish in appearance.

“Levi,” said Godwin, “do you see Josiah?”

The hulk looked vacantly around until he saw the operator of the Flambeau table. Then he nodded, stretched a massive arm and pointed. “Uh-huh. He’s there.”

“Levi, escort him to my office and keep him there until I come. He needs to be talked to.”

Levi made somehurr-hurr-hurr noises like a cold engine. Villiers assumed that it was a form of laughter.

Levi said, “Can I have some fun with him?”

“A little, Levi, but don’t exhaust him.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t tire him.”

“Oh,” said Levi, and made his noise again. As he lumbered away, Godwin played a card. Villiers, however, watched the moron over Godwin’s shoulder.

“In many ways he is a perfect instrument,” Godwin said without turning to watch. “What do you think of him?”

“I must admit that I admire neither his style nor his wit.”

Godwin smiled. “Games of chance don’t tempt him. They’re too complicated. He enjoys a simpler line of pleasure. And, Mr. Villiers, he is personally devoted to me.”

“He does seem to be displaying a childish sort of delight in his work,” said Villiers, playing a card, but keeping an eye on the commotion at the tables.

“Oh, that, too. His lack of general understanding is at times an asset, and at other times not. But he does fathom the principles of pain and reward.”

There was a loud crash, all the more noticeable because the other sounds in the casino had ceased.

“I believe he does. He seems to be earning an extra portion of raw meat.”

Godwin played a card and then turned to look. “I’m afraid not. Poor Josiah is more bruised than I intended. However, it may do Josiah good. He seems to need to learn a sense of restraint.”

Villiers laid down a crevasse.

Godwin said, “You make your own points rather strongly.”

Adams appeared then and said, “Good heavens, Mr. Godwin, what is going on?”

“Internal readjustments,” said Villiers. “Were you winning, Mr. Adams?”

“Not hardly. I should have taken your advice. My luck continued off by a hair. It was damned frustrating.”

Villiers laid down his last two cards. “Well, our game is over here. Permit me now to stand your host.”

“Why, thank you.”

Godwin slapped his hand down. “It seems that I owe you money, sir.”

“You may deduct it from my bill,” Villiers said. “Mr. Godwin, will you join us?”

“Too kind,” Godwin said, “but I’m afraid that business will keep me here.” He salaamed to Villiers. “You are a dangerous man to play against.”

Villiers laughed. “As Adams said earlier, he used to play the game with his sisters.”

“Mr. Villiers, if you are not a dangerous man, you had best learn to be one. Call that well meant advice.”

Of all the known objects in the Flammarion Rift, Star Well is the largest. Its position has been adjusted. Where once it followed its own whims, now its location is relatively central and it can be reached with reasonable ease from all the populated stars on the borders of the rift.

From time to time, Star Well’s position must necessarily be readjusted, since a cosmic anchor has yet to be invented and the peripatetic stars relieve unknown urges by moving in nine directions at the same time. (It may be ten: the theories of V. H. Rainbird [1293-1447] concerning the movement of the metagalaxy through the universal amnion, unfortunately left incomplete at the time of his death at the hands of Nominalist critics who objected to his experiments on the grounds that the universe might not survive them, are presently being reconstructed by a study group. Word is awaited.)

On any objective scale, Star Well is a speck of dust and if it didn’t constantly scream, the rest of the universe might one day wake to find itself isolated and alone. Nonetheless, it is large enough to fill its function.

From the outside, Star Well is unprepossessing. It is an irregularly shaped piece of rock some thirty miles long and, at its widest point, some ten miles across. The only exterior signs of man are the skeletal beacons and the metal lace landing webs. When a ship is docked, a few men emerge on the surface and there is a brief froth of activity, and then the beacons and webs are left to their own company again. Once in a while, when the lag between ships is great and the guests are bored, a party is taken hiking on the surface, but the last time this happened there was a quarrel and a death and a Navy ship came to investigate the circumstances. Ever since, the extra space suits have been locked in a basement room and used even more rarely than before.

Inside Star Well are, of course, the well-lit and comfortably furnished public sections where persons in passage eat, drink, smoke, sleep, gamble, and are entertained. There are the quarters of those who serve them. There are any number of corridors and tunnels, warehouses, attics and basements. There are two landing ports. Nonetheless, inside a hunk of junk the size of Star Well, there are nearly two thousand cubic miles, and most of this dead rock remains dead rock, though there are rumors that after the advent of Shirabi there were changes. The story goes that if you are absolutely silent and touch a bare wall at exactly the right time, you can feel the secret work being done down in the bowels of the rock. Secret tunnels. Secret rooms. Shirabi has long been gone from Star Well, but the stories continue—which goes to show the impression that Shirabi made on people. A certain sort of man simplylooks as though he would dig secret holes, have leg irons in his basement, and leave greasy moisture on your palm when you shook his hand. (But go ahead anyway—touch the rock, barely breathe, listen… .There .)

There may actually be something to the secrecy story. In Shirabi’s own time, a passenger somehow introduced himself into the tunnels and became lost. It was some time before his absence was noted and then a search was mounted. He was found at last, dead, apparently from exhaustion, shock and starvation, and possibly frustration, as well. Now that sounds unlikely, but again the Navy investigated and that one passed inspection, too.

In any case, there is no doubt that if you took all those sitting rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, salons, dining rooms, casinos, kitchens, halls, reception rooms, offices, living quarters, hydroponics rooms, tunnels, corridors, warehouses, landing ports, (secret rooms) and (secret tunnels), and laid them in a row, end to end … well, as I say, they’d stretch out for quite a distance.

There were two ships on their way to Star Well. One was theOrion , the ship from Morian whose adherence to schedule had been confirmed by poor Josiah. (Don’t think too hardly of Josiah, by the way. Running a Flambeau table can be deadly dull. Adding a touch of wit and imagination to the mechanical bore of randomness, doing more with the possibilities of control than merely taking an occasional well-funded idiot for one or two big bets—both of these should have been applauded as creative gestures. I don’t blame Levi. He was merely an instrument. But Godwin—sometimes it’s hard to sympathize with someone so lacking in the appreciation of artistic invention.) The ship from Morian was scheduled to lay over for eight hours, to exchange passengers and cargo, to leave mail, and then to continue on to Luvashe, the planet from which Villiers had just come. TheOrion was on course and in firm hands, except for a third officer who sat like a lump in a corner of the chart room, befuddledly chewing on a cud of Fibrin. But this was his usual condition, overlooked because his uncle was Baron of Bolaire. It was said that as long as he could be stacked in a corner and forgotten, he would continue to be paid and promoted, and in fact he did become senior captain of the line, still sitting in the corner and chewing to the end.

The Bolaire Line emphasized economy in all things at the cost of comfort. The main passenger cabin, included as a grudging afterthought by old Bolaire, measured twelve feet by fifteen. This was the largest passenger area on the ship. A double cabin offered a choice to its occupants: either both could lie in bed, one above the other, or the beds could be folded away and both could sit if they minded where they put their feet. There were seventeen passengers aboard ship, among them a covey of young girls being shepherded to Miss McBurney’s Justly Famous Seminary and Finishing School on Nashua (sic) to learn to be fashionable ladies, but only two passengers enjoyed the comforts of the main cabin. The bear-leader and her five charges stayed in their own quarters, the fifth girl thoroughly unhappy with the situation and her roommate. The reason for the removal was that Mrs. Bogue, the escort, found the conversation in the main cabin not to her taste, and if she wasn’t interested, she was sure that the girls would not be.

The topic of conversation was theology, and the girls, for their own private and inscrutable reasons, chiefest of which was Mrs. Bogue’s non-interest—therefore, absence—professed themselves only too eager to stay and learn of these strange and interesting matters.

This was no use, however. Mrs. Bogue knew what she was being paid for—to deliver five girls to a school on Nashua. This she meant to do as efficiently and at as little trouble to herself as was possible. Consequently, she accused the girls of Massive Indiscipline, proof of which was their slowness to jump when she said “Frog,” and decided the most effective method of instilling discipline was general confinement to quarters. The old ploys are the best ones.

The girls probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the theology anyway. None of the other passengers did. Men stayed in their bunks reading factsheets for the third time about the shortage of body parts currently causing tremors in hospital stock issues on Morian. I mean … dull. But still preferable.

The captain even said to his first officer, “It’s lucky old Bolaire isn’t going to have a look at the cabin this trip. ‘Under-utilized,’ and next trip there would be half the space.”

“Don’t anticipate, sir. He may be waiting at Star Well.”

“There’s no need to worry, son. He never inspects a ship that his relative there is crewing on. It may be trust, but I think he hasn’t got the stomach for it.”

“Iheard that,” said the third officer.

And he did, but he forgot it before morning, and things you don’t remember never happened. The third officer heard lots of things, all of which he noted down carefully and promptly forgot. Everybody and everything was always new to him. He was introduced to the captain for the first time every morning. When he finally retired, he was carted off his last ship and placed by his family fireside where his old, old mother read Mrs. Waldo Wintergood’s animal stories to him every night.

The two theologians were an interesting pair.

One was a Trog named Torve, a light brown, woolly, six foot tall toad. He had a white belly and the faintest of black stripes on his back. His personality was lumpish. His motives were inscrutable.

And mark this: the Trogs, since their defeat by men some two hundred years before, had been confined by law to two solar systems. To travel anywhere outside these two solar systems, special papers were necessary. They were requested at every planet, at every way station, registered and returned. Fifty-three Trogs had such papers. Torve was not one of them. Keep your eye on him and watch what happens.

The other was a fraudulent old fart named Augustus Srb. Short, fat, intelligent, even magnificent, he wore his mantle as a priest of the Revived Church of Mithra with a verve, a flair, that was not matched by his defense of churchly doctrine.

Mithra was worshiped six centuries before the founding of Rome, and has had his ups and downs ever since. He was Son of the Sun, and born of a virgin on the 25th of December. But then, so was everybody else. He died for the sins of all mankind and was reborn at the spring equinox. That’s standard, too, as are the rest of the clutch: baptism, communion, and the promise of eternal life. Perhaps the one best point of the religion is this: the violet is sacred to Mithra, and consequently the cultivation of flowerbeds is encouraged.

Mithraism spent more than fifteen hundred years underground or as a minor element in other religions before its modern revival in the schisms of schisms and the loss of belief that ruined Christianity for a thousand years.

Mithraism is a good religion, if not a great religion. It certainly deserved better than Augustus Srb saw fit to give it in the face of Torve’s earnestly presented case for some primitive brand of mumbo jumbo:

“See you, then, thewholeness so far?”

“Wholeness? Oh, yes, yes. I am attending you with interest. Continue, if you will.”

“Wholeness is everything that exists. Outside is nothingness. But nothingness is ripe, ready to nourishmentalize fruit, and existence is reborn. See you?” Torve asked earnestly.

“Oh, yes.” Srb nodded.

“Wholeness is born and grows, moving through nothingness and feeding on nothingness.”

“Yes.”

“Eventualistically, nothingness can no longer feed wholeness. Movement slows, then stops. Is like great heaviness in stomach after large meal. When movement stops, all collapses. In eye blink, wholeness shrinks to size of seed and all is stasis. Only in great by-and-by is nothingness ready to nourishmentalize again. Has happened seventeen times since wholeness invented itself. Do you see?”

“No. I must confess that I don’t. Perhaps we had better work onnothingness for a while.”

“Oh, nothingness is simple. Is nothing.”

Why did Srb continue to sit quietly listening to this? I suppose because he was given an equal chance to explicate Mithraism—but then he didn’t take proper advantage of that. Perhaps because it was a way of passing the time. And then, how would it have looked for him to step out on a round of shoptalk? Appearances.

The other ship bound for Star Well was not publicly scheduled to stop there, and only a few people knew of its imminent arrival. It was a blackness against the blackness. It announced its presence in no way. It moved swiftly and certainly, and nobody aboard was fuzzed on Fibrin.

When Villiers rose that morning, he dressed himself and cursed happily at the difficulties of inducing a drapeau to hang correctly behind him without other hands to help. In addition to being decorative, and impressing people, servants had a certain usefulness in delicate and chancy matters like these. Villiers owned an odd and secret gaiety and he enjoyed this exercise of his capacity for wishing bad cess that he might the better spend the rest of the day being his normal good-humored, but reserved, self.

He put unfortunate wrinkles in three drapeaus and discarded them all. On the fourth try he finally achieved the drape he had been aiming for, and might have had sooner if he hadn’t been enjoying himself so much.

His toilet completed, he considered himself in the mirror. He nodded at last and then went forth from his quarters in search of breakfast.

He chose to be served in the Grand Hall. Villiers followed the old dictum,Live as you dress . He dressed well. A plump, homely, good-natured girl served him an excellent breakfast. She had left the preserve behind and went to fetch it. It was a living green jelly that grew on rotting vegetation on New Frenchman’s Bend, and after an initial unfavorable reaction to it on first encounter, Villiers had decided that he liked the gloppy stuff and ordered it whenever he could.

He complimented the girl on the meal when she returned.

“Why, bless you, sir,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Tell me,” he said, “do you live here in Star Well permanently?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“You don’t mean you travel here from somewhere else every day?”

She laughed happily. “It’s a five year contract between m’lord, the Marquis, and Mr. Shirabi. I’ll be going home to Herrendam next year with the others. I’ll be getting married.”

“Congratulations. I hope you will be very happy. Are Mr. Godwin and Levi also from Herrendam?”

“Levi Gonigle is, but Mr. Godwin was here before I came. Even before Mr. Shirabi, some say. Levi’s ready to bust the way they’ve taken to him here. Nobody wanted to give him work before and the Contract Master picked him out in particular. He wants to stay on after the contract. He doesn’t want to go home.”

She excused herself as a new couple entered the room. They sat at a nearby table and the girl hurried to serve them. Villiers turned his attention back to his meal, placing some of the jelly on his meat. It spread itself thin and put feelers down. He gave it time to settle, time to feel comfortable before he began to eat it.

While he waited, he amused himself by falling in love with the beautiful girl who had just sat down. Gorgeous, indeed. He craned his head a little to see her better. Yes. A delightful girl.

The girl was expensively dressed. She was a blonde whom pink flattered. Her hair was short and worn in tight little curls that played tweaky-fingers with each other over her forehead and around her delicate ears. Her nose was unpresuming. Altogether a sweet and lovely thing.

Her companion, a man somewhat older than Villiers, was also well-dressed—but more by good sense than by good taste. His figure was mediocre and he had contented himself with a cut of cloth that concealed. In short, he looked well enough if anyone ever bothered to look his way.

As Villiers finished his meal, and as the two were themselves served, the man spoke animatedly and with good humor. The girl, however, sat solemn throughout. For the most part, she kept her eyes on her food. She did look up at Villiers once, which pleased him.

However, when his meal was done, Villiers went his own way with only the briefest sense of regret, quite prepared to indulge himself in appreciation of the next attractive young lady he should meet, and equally ready to admire this one if he should see her again.

Now he considered various inexpensive entertainments and decided that a look at Star Well’s shops might be in order. He found the appropriate level with no great difficulty, stepped off the lift, and began to walk the Promenade. He gestured politely to the people he met and passed the shops one by one, until at last he came to a shop that purported to sell the curious and ancient. He stopped there, and went inside.

Shops that purport to sell the curious and ancient ought of rights to be themselves curious and ancient, with dust and clutter and secret treasure. This shop had no dust and only a little clutter, so that Villiers almost turned and went out again. Neat tables and cases and shelves, all well-lit, held little promise of the sort of discovery he had in mind.

The approach of an elderly man from the rear of the store stayed his departure. The old man’s hair was thin, his posture was stooped, and there were liver spots on the backs of his hands.

“May I help you, sir?” The voice was thin, but firm.

“Mr. Eyre?” Villiers had the name from the sign discretely attached to the door.

“No, sir. Mr. Spottiswoode, at your service. Mr. Eyre is on a purchasing excursion now, and won’t be back for several months. Did you especially want to see him?”

“No. In truth, I wondered if you had any books.”

“Oh, books may be had just down the Promenade.”

“I’m looking for a curious and ancient book.”

“We do have a few. If you’ll just let me consult our records.” Mr. Spottiswoode slipped behind a counter and found an index number and pulled forth a small drawer.

“The book isCompanions of Vinland , by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I misunderstood. I thought you simply meant an ancient book. I didn’t know you meant a specific title. I never heard of this one. And that name.”

Villiers spelled the name for the old man. Spottiswoode picked his way through his file, peering quite carefully at the cards. Then he stopped.

“Why, good heavens. We once had a book by Otillie A. Liljencrantz here. Something calledRandvar the Songsmith . But we sold it long ago. And, oh, my—for a substantial sum. Fourteen royals.”

Villiers nodded. “I know that one. It’s relatively common.”

“Common!”

“Relatively.”

“Do you insist on an ancient edition? I should think that you could have a facsimile made for a few thalers.”

“Unfortunately, there are no facsimiles. There is no way to make a copy without an original, and in my experience there are no originals to be had. I’ve searched widely. It was published in the days when paper was still used in books, and you know the rapidness with which paper deteriorates. As nearly as I can tell, the book was never reproduced in more permanent form.”

“How do you know that it exists at all?”

“I discovered a reference to it in an ancient catalog in my school days. I don’t know that it exists now, but I do know that it once existed.”

“Most interesting,” Mr. Spottiswoode said. “If I might make a suggestion, sir?’

“Yes.”

“Mr. Eyre makes frequent trips of purchase for this and his other shops. He’s the proprietor of seven such shops as this one on Yuten, Morian, and Trefflewood. If you would like to make us your agents and Mr. Eyre should happen to discover a copy of this book in the course of his travels, we would purchase it in your name.”

“Or copy it if purchase was impossible,” said Villiers.

“Or copy it. At a fee, of course.”

“Of course.” Villiers produced a purse. “You will wish a deposit, I’m sure.”

Mr. Spottiswoode accepted the deposit. They settled on a royal as a fee for searching that would cover the more than immediate future. He took the various particulars Villiers had to offer and then asked for an address.

“Hmm. That is a problem. I travel, and the best address that I could give you has been somewhat uncertain of late.” He smiled quizzically.

“Well, give me the best address, sir, and we’ll trust that it arrives.”

“I suppose we’ll have to. Address it to Mr. Anthony Villiers, in the charge of the Duke of Tremont-Michaud on Charteris.”

Mr. Spottiswoode raised his thin old eyebrows at that. That man’s reputation had apparently traveled even this distance. But he set the address down, and carefully copied the personal mail symbol that Villiers showed him.

With his mind on books, Villiers continued down the Promenade to the shop that Mr. Spottiswoode had first indicated. There, after some judicious thought, he invested seven thalers thirty in a fascinating and profusely illustrated work entitledComparative Biologies of Seven Sentient Races and made no comment on the high price of the reproduction.

Instead of returning the way he had come, Villiers decided that corner cutting might prove to be quicker, as well as considerably more interesting. He didn’t properly reckon just how interesting it would prove to be.

He continued to the end of the Promenade to the point where the walls drew together into a much narrower corridor. If he were to follow this hall for a distance of perhaps a quarter of a mile, paralleling a hall he had followed any number of times on the third level above, he should find either a lift or perhaps a staircase that would bring him home again.

As he walked, he thumbed the book, relishing the work. The book was solid and well-made, the layout attractive, the illustrations excellent three-dimensional likenesses. Although any number of supplements had been developed through the centuries, nothing had ever been invented to take the place of books. Taped records and films both required equipment to translate them into intelligible form. A book was portable and intelligible on the spot, and nothing could beat the smell of a freshly-made book, direct from the fac machine.

He found the chapter for which he had bought the book, the fourth, the chapter on that strange race known as Trogs. As he walked, he read. It told him a number of things he hadn’t known before. Apparently different castes could be told apart by separate fur patterns. Scholars were a solid brown. Peasants were gray, often shading to olive on the head. Soldiers were black striped on a base of white. That didn’t quite fit with the knowledge of Trogs that he had and he lifted his head to think and to check his direction.

As he looked up, he got the barest glimpse of a strangely appareled figure as it disappeared around a corner some distance ahead in the hall. It was dressed neither in clothes of fashion nor servant’s livery nor even ordinary day wear such as any common man might wear. What it most resembled was the clothing that might be worn for taking part in active field sport, a suit cut close to the body without frills, flaps, flounces, or furbelows. The color was solid black. Odd garb, admit it, for a place such as this that did not lay claim to as much as a gymnasium.

Private gymnasium, perhaps? Did Shirabi work out in his basement to keep his figure trim? If it were a matter of figure trimming, Godwin might be a likelier candidate.

On impulse, Villiers decided to follow. He snapped the book closed in his left hand and set out at a brisk pace for the cross-corridor into which the figure had disappeared. He reached it and turned. No one was in sight, but after the slightest of hesitations, he moved after.

The corridor was narrow and not well-lit. Its ceiling and walls and floor were cut as smoothly as any in Star Well, but here no one had bothered to polish the rock after the cutting was done. This was some sort of minor connecting link between more major lanes. The next large corridor was not far distant and the man in black tights must have turned there.

At the next corner, Villiers looked left, then right, and saw his man again. He was definitely familiar. He was young Norman Adams and what he was doing would definitely have to be described as sneaking. And lurking. And tippy-toeing.

Adams passed the door to a stair and started to look behind him. Villiers pulled his head back, and almost automatically looked behind himself to see if he were being observed. He saw nothing. After a second, he looked again and saw the stair door closing.

When he got to the door, he opened it carefully and listened. Yes, sneaky footfalls down the stairs.

When he was a small boy, Villiers had played this very same game in a dozen variations, and played it again at school. It was a damned shame that in growing up you had to leave such pure, pristine pleasures in exchange for more serious pursuits. There is something elemental about trying to follow tippy-toeing figures in black without being observed. So down the stairs Villiers went, doing his best to match step for step, stopping when Adams did, then starting again. It wasn’t easy, but it was fun.

He passed several doors going down, but still the footsteps continued. Then he heard a door swing and abandoning caution he took the stairs in threes and fours.

He reached the door he thought Adams had passed through and opened it. No one was visible and Villiers slipped through and eased it closed behind him.

He was in a large corridor much like the one he had entered the stair from. He cast around for sign of Adams and found none. He ranged up the corridor, then down, and finally settled on the nearest side-passage. He almost found himself wishing he had a hunting gorf, or a pack of dogs, the bases of the mature man’s version of this game, but then discarded the thought as unworthy. Self-reliance was the thing. Sniffers and pointers took away the essential nature of the pursuit.

So, book still in hand, Villiers poked around. After a time, however, it became clear that he had mislaid Adams. Perhaps he hadn’t, after all, passed through this particular door. Or perhaps he had hidden and doubled back through while Villiers was in another corridor. Or perhaps he knew his way well enough to have gone so surely to his destination that Villiers had simply gotten left behind. In any case, Adams wasn’t to be flushed again. The quarry had won free.

It was then that Villiers discovered that not only had he lost Adams, but that he had also lost himself. In the twists and turns, in this maze that looked altogether too much the same, he had contrived to misplace the staircase.

He felt not at all fazed by this. He was lost, but not totally lost. He could not find a specific point again, but he knew in general where he was in relation to where he wanted to be. He needed to find another staircase and follow it up to one of the public levels with which he was familiar and he would have no problem.

He decided to continue in his present corridor, but that proved to be no proper solution. The corridor shortly debauched into a great hall. In the hall was standing a great red machine like a mechanical grasshopper, and Villiers recognized it for an automatic unloader. This must be one of the ports of Star Well.

The hall came to an abrupt end beyond the grasshopper. Just outside, a ship would nestle in a web cradle. An extensor would reach to the ship and then doors in both ship and extensor would open. The grasshopper would move on rails to the mouth of the ship and then on rails back to the warehouses along the hall.

In a parallel hall another extensor would reach to the ship and passengers would debark. It was through such a mechanism that Villiers had entered Star Well. But not this port, he thought. His attention had been on other things and he didn’t remember the fine details of his entry, but though one port has much the look of another, he was certain of that much.

It seemed to Villiers that he might find the parallel corridor and from there find his way home, but on second thought he decided to stick with the method that he was positive would bring him right. So he probed on in search of a stair.

Some minutes later, he was striding along a corridor briskly when a voice halted him.

“Mr. Villiers?” The voice was tentative.

He turned. It was Hisan Bashir Shirabi himself, standing at an open door. Shirabi could never be mistaken for a gentleman no matter what his clothing. He hadn’t the poise, the bearing, the look, the accent, the manners, the totality that Godwin, for instance, was able to present. It was unlikely that Shirabi had ever made the attempt.

He was moderately tall, and thin enough that he looked taller. He was dark and the edge of his hooked nose was sharp enough that one felt he might use it as an offensive weapon. His mustache was black and thick, but not at all ragged: it had the lush surface of a tight-piled carpet. His manner was furtive in a way that Adams, try as he might, could never match. Adams temporarily assumed his furtiveness; Shirabi’s was an ingrained part of his nature.

His clothes were common, and in this case, more than common. They were one-wear disposables and were marred by a number of darkening spots and stains. Shirabi was wearing gloves. He stripped them off, threw them behind him, and closed the door.

“May I help you, Mr. Villiers?” He could have been asking what Villiers was doing here, but he wouldn’t ask that directly. Not him.

Villiers gestured politely. “Perhaps you might, Mr. Shirabi. I was seeking to take the stairs from the Promenade to the level of my quarters. I made the error of looking through this book as I walked, and quite frankly I haven’t the least idea where I am. I would be honored if you would guide me, sir.”

“Oh, glad to, glad to,” said Shirabi. He pointed ahead and they set out. “You ought to be more careful. It’s possible to become seriously lost down here. Has it been long, sir?”

There was a difference between a “sir” in his mouth and a “sir” in Villiers’.

“By the clock, only a short time. Subjectively, somewhat longer. I shall have to take a lesson from this and do less reading in unfamiliar surroundings.”

Shirabi looked at him. “You don’t seem shaken by the experience. I’ll say that.”

“Mr. Shirabi, it is my misfortune to very seldom show my characteristically violent emotions publicly. I assure you I’ve been disturbed beyond belief.”

Shirabi found this young man discomforting to deal with. Consistently formal, consistently polite, and all too correct about not showing his emotions. It was impossible to tell whether or not he meant anything he said. And sometimes it was impossible to tell what he meant by what he said.

“By the way, sir,” Shirabi said. “Just how long is it that you’re planning to stay with us? Somehow that didn’t get noted down. We like to have that for our records. I mean, it wouldn’t do to let people run up their bills indefinitely, so to speak. Not that it’s any real worry where you’re concerned, sir.”

“I should think not,” said Villiers, “considering that I reduced my bill by half last night.”

“You did?”

“In a game of raffles with Mr. Godwin. As it happens, though, I expect to leave on the ship for Luvashe tomorrow.”

“Didn’t mean to press, sir. Just like to keep things regular.”

Shirabi waved the way into a lift and they traveled upwards rapidly.

“One thing I don’t understand,” said Shirabi. “You’re staying three levels above the Promenade. How did you manage to traveldown ?”

Villiers laughed. “It’s plain to see that you are not a walking reader, sir.”

“No,” said Shirabi. “I’m not.”

Of all the irrelevant qualities that men have chosen to cherish, immensity is perhaps the least worthy. The Nashuite Empire is easily the largest political entity of all the many misbegotten accidents under which men have lived.

On the face of it, the Empire is ungovernable. Communication and travel are of equal speed; both are slow, and the Empire is vast. Common law and common language are strained by distance. How long either will survive is a question. Moulton’s classic,The Dynamic Equilibrium of Unstable Systems , which describes the happenstance by which such a precarious proposition manages to reel along and hold together by its reeling, is worth the attention of every serious student.

And those bureaucratic boobs on Nashua actually spend the bulk of their time planning how the Empire may be extended! Every single one of them pictures himself as a spider sitting at the center of an immense web, every muscle movement having its effects at the ends of the universe. In actual fact, they tend to cancel each other out, though the idiotic little wars the Empire fights from time to time with the little confederacies, free planets, and shadows that line its borders may be laid at their door. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But they don’t know any better. How could they? They never even heard of Moulton, any of them.

The farther one travels from Nashua, the more of a chimera the Empire becomes. There are planets where it has no place in waking thought—the word, like a phrase of song forgotten for twenty years, floats elusively at the edges of dreams and disappears altogether in the face of solid morning realities.

In theOrion , bound for Star Well, two of the girls on their way to Miss McBurney’s Justly Famous Seminary were making secret plans in their cramped little cabin. The one in the lower bunk lay on her back looking upward. The one above was flopped on her elbows, thumbing a book.

The one below was named Alice Tutuila. Young she was, and darkly pretty. Her parents had carefully explained to her the point in going to Miss McBurney’s. With schooling in being a lady, the cachet of an education on Nashua, her own attractions and her parents’ able help, she would make a good marriage and live happily ever after. She was not so very romantic a girl that she failed to see the desirability of living happily ever after. Therefore she was willing to endure Mrs. Bogue, discomfort, homesickness, and the traveler’s disease with the thought that minor tribulation is always the lot of heroines.

The girl in the upper bunk was of far less certain origin, though the documents submitted in her behalf had been sound enough to satisfy the eye of Miss McBurney, who was unfailing in the requirements she demanded of prospective pupils. These were a sound enough pedigree for the school to maintain its social standing, and money. If faced with sufficient quantities of the second requirement, she would compromise just a teensy little bit on the first—but this time she was fooled.

But that was all right, because the girl in the upper bunk didn’t want to go to Miss McBurney’s Justly Famous Seminary and Finishing School on Nashua. She wanted all the good things that her parents wished her to postpone in favor of an education. She wanted to cheat, and con, and double-cross, and swindle, and defraud, and bamboozle, with just a bit of flimflamming on the side, after the manner of her fathers.

She was not overly pretty, not the sort of girl whose looks would hold your eye, not the sort of girl you would pick out in a room to fall in love with. She had sparkle and a lived-in face, both qualities that beautiful women can lack. Basically, however, she was just a girl—and that was perfect for someone with her ambitions.

She was planning to skip at first opportunity, and Alice Tutuila was romantically willing to help her, at least to the extent of making plans. For aid in settling on a jumping-off point, reference works—guidebooks borrowed from behind the theology discussion in the main cabin—were the thing.

“So what do you have there?” Alice asked.

“ ‘Star Well: 2 lndg prts, rms 315 (9th-1r), dng var. (Grand Hall 4A), gmg, th & a, a*, d*, p-(A), sh-(A), no ta, sked 3 wk + unsked. Circumstances make this one. Star Well is a tiny rock, but because of location, hub of the Flammarion Rift. Primarily an entrepôt, and secondarily known for its gaming tables. Extremely dull, we’re afraid, unless you gamble.’ Then there’s an owner-operator list. But that’s all it says.”

“What does the first part mean? All the abbreviations?”

“Let me find the table. Oh, yes. There are two landing ports, and 315 rooms, ranging from nine thalers up to one royal a day.”

“They charge that much for a room? Wow.”

“That is an awful lot. There’s a variety of dining accommodations and a special note for the Grand Hall. It’s—let me see—excellent and extremely expensive. Gaming, but they said that afterwards. Theater and amusements. Alcohol. Drugs. Perversions—limited and expensive. Shopping—also limited and expensive. No tourist attractions. Three ships a week plus unscheduled.”

“That doesn’t sound very good, Louisa. It sounds kind of small. There’s nowhere toflee to. You can’t run away if you can’tflee anywhere. Hey. Say, how about this: You hide in the closet of a royal-a-day room until the ship departs without you. A gorgeous gentleman discovers you there and is smitten with your charms. He offers on the spot to make you his mistress and carries you away to a life of sin and mad, mad passion. Oh, I love it.” Alice hugged her pillow and closed her eyes.

“I’m not sure that would work. He might not like me that much. Or maybe he wouldn’t be gorgeous. Anyway, I’ll have to see the place.” She thumbed ahead in the book. “Let me see what the next stop is like. Oh, this is much better.”

“What’s this about losing money to young Villiers?” Shirabi asked. He was wearing his gloves and disposable suit, and he was up to his elbows in chemical glop designed to make the plants he worked among grow up big, and straight, and strong, and healthy. After all too many years of nervousness and ill-health, the result of living under constant pressure in small rooms and dealing only with symbols and symbols of symbols, he had adopted a hobby designed to put him back in touch.

“Plant a seed, watch it grow, baby it along—it’s a real satisfaction,” he liked to say.

He didn’t care particularly what he grew, though he knew each plant as a friend. But flowers and food were irrelevancies. He just liked to see plants and know he had a hand in raising them. He liked to discover what food a plant liked best and supply it. He liked the feeling of fatherhood.

“I’ve won money, Shirabi,” said Godwin.

“I expect that. I don’t expect the other. I don’t pay you to lose money.”

“You don’t pay me at all!” Godwin said sharply. “Let’s not forget that.”

“No. But as long as you’re here, you might as well do something for your keep. And I don’t include losing my money. You know I’m saving every minim. You know ways to avoid losing.”

“My money, too,” Godwin said. He was sitting gingerly on a stool he had covered first, and was regarding his surroundings with distaste.

There was an essential difference between Shirabi and Godwin: If they were both drinking cider and eating summer sausage, which I hope you will agree they both might do, and each dropped his piece of sausage between the cushions of his chair, both would fish for it among the trash. But they would assume different attitudes for their search, and they would search for different reasons.

Shirabi turned around, straightening. “How did you lose?”

“Why don’t you get rid of these weeds? I hate them.”

“How did you lose?”

“Or hold these meetings of yours elsewhere.”

“How did you lose?”

“He knew what I was doing and called me on it. No challenge. Just let me know he knew what I was doing. He knows Josiah’s Flambeau table is rigged, too. I had to stop, and he won after that.”

Shirabi laughed. “No challenge? His type isn’t like that. No, you must have ducked, my fine gentleman.”

“Don’tsay that! I tell you that he didn’t press the point.”

“Oh, didn’t he? Your reputation overwhelm him, did it?”

“I can handle him if I need to. I told him so, in a roundabout fashion.”

“I’m sure he was impressed.”

Shirabi was startled as Godwin came abruptly off the stool and across the room. Before he could drop the formula mixing bottle he was holding and bring his hands up, Godwin had him by the throat and was bending him painfully back over the hard edge of the tank. A green frond batted him lightly across the nose.

Tightly, exactly, word by word, Godwin said, “He did not challenge me.”

With equal tightness, the result not of emotion but of a constricted throat, Shirabi said, “Look at your suit.”

With sudden apprehension, Godwin loosed the darker man and stepped back, looking down at himself. He could feel the wetness even before he saw it. His entire front was darkening rapidly with the formula poured on it by Shirabi. His lip began to tremble and his face to darken with anger.

The instant he was released, Shirabi ducked down, went under the tank and came up on the other side. With one clean motion be dipped his mixing bucket into the chemical sludge and brought it up at the ready.

“You ruined my suit!”

“That I did. I’m not one of your six a year, or whatever the count is. If I killed you, I wouldn’t even bother to remember it.Gentleman! ”

Godwin made a movement toward the front of his suit.

“Don’t bother,” Shirabi said. “You might kill me, but you’d get a bucket of chemicals in the face, and I guarantee you’d swallow half of it if I had to sit on your head and pour it down your throat.”

After the briefest of hesitations, Godwin looked down at his suit again and the moment was over. That sort of fight needs momentum to turn deadly, and the momentum was gone.

“If I ever got into a fight with you, I’d kill you,” Godwin said.

However, Godwin was not certain of this. Though Shirabi might not share his pretensions and might even resent them, he was no less dangerous for his common clothes.

Shirabi simply said, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Godwin had gone to considerable trouble to leave all commonness behind him, and it had never seemed fair that Shirabi should have more power here than a man of greater polish. Their dislike was mutual. Being the men they were, one day one might decide to kill the other. This time, however, Godwin simply nodded sharply and took his soiled suit away to be changed before it fell apart.

After Godwin had gone, Shirabi puttered around his plants thoughtfully. Once he took off his left glove and scratched his ear. Finally, he went to the service in the corner. The signal showed contact when the call was completed, but Godwin left his end of the conversation dark. An inconvenient moment, perhaps.

“Gentleman, I’ve been thinking and I’m starting to wonder about this Mr. Villiers of ours. If he didn’t challenge you, he isn’t the man I was taking him for. And I found him wandering down here this morning. Accidentally lost, he said.”

“In the basements?”

“Yes. He’s altogether too sharp for my taste. And he told me he was leaving tomorrow for Luvashe. That’s where he came from. Why would he just travel out here and then turn around? Makes it sound like he was coming herefor something. I only know one thing that could be.”

“That’s your problem, not mine,” Godwin said. “From now on, I’m just keeping track of the split and my own job.”

“What good will the split or your job be if we’re caught with a basement full of thumbs, and pick-up a day away?”

“It’s still your problem. You boor of a peasant! I should do you favors?”

“Zvegintzov.”

Godwin thought that over for a few moments, and then said, “All right. You said he was leaving for Luvashe tomorrow. If Villiers did suspect something, he wouldn’t be able to do much about it on his way to Luvashe, now would he?”

“If he leaves tomorrow, he’s clear, and it was all an accident. I’ll stop worrying. But have him watched every minute. And search his baggage.”

The object of this speculation set out for dinner in the Grand Hall that evening. Just outside the plush purple entrance, he encountered Norman Adams. Adams was no longer in his sneaking clothes. He had apparently found his way home again and there changed into equally somber, but rather more socially acceptable apparel. This was just as well. It was unlikely that he could have entered the Grand Hall in his black skintights and not drawn rather more attention to himself than a gentleman of taste could like.

“Hello, Mr. Adams,” Villiers said.

“Servant, sir.”

“Will you join me for dinner?”

“I’m sorry, no. I dropped a royal last night, and the Grand Hall is rather above my touch now.” There was an attempt on Adams’ part to ape his usual buoyancy, but beneath it there was a tone of sullenness. It was much like a small boy who has been taught that good manners should mask unpleasant emotions, but who still wants you to know that his unpleasant emotions are being masked by good manners. The result, if the boy isn’t so small that his natural feelings overwhelm him (”Well, Itried to be nice.”), is a peculiar sort of well-bred sulkiness. It’s a tense and difficult effect to achieve properly, and mark it to Adams’ credit that he was successful.

“Well, stand as my guest, then.”

“No, sir. I think I’ve accepted too much hospitality from you already.”

“But I insist.”

“I have already eaten. If you will excuse me?” Adams turned and abruptly moved away.

Villiers raised his eyebrows and looked after Adams, and then instead of lowering his eyebrows and turning in to dinner, he raised them even higher. Yes, it was definitely the sound of crying behind him.

He turned and saw no one immediately, and then realized that it was in a purple alcove set in the purple wall that the tears were being shed. He investigated and found that it was the delightful young miss of his breakfast love affair. Her crying swelled in volume as he came into sight, at the same time the young lady apparently was redoubling her efforts to staunch the flow. There was an odd sort of relationship there that Villiers was not prepared to attempt to explain. Tonight the girl’s hair was red and shoulder-length. It clashed horribly with her setting, but Villiers felt that it might distress the girl to tell her so.

Instead, he said, “Excuse me, young lady, but I could not help overhearing. Is there any way I may be of service to you?”

“Oh, sir,” she said, “no one can help me now. I am beyond all help.” She languished delicately and with so much grace that any objective observer must needs approve, applaud and appreciate.

“Well, perhaps not beyond all help,” Villiers said. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“Oh, no,” she said and dabbed at her eyes. “I do not feel up to partaking of food. I am far too upset.”

“Ah, well,” said Villiers. “I had thought you might join me for dinner here in the Grand Hall. Quiet, good food, pleasant surroundings, and a sympathetic ear—in sum they might improve the look of the world no end.”

She looked shyly up at him through beautiful lashes that might have been her own, and probably were not, but that in any case suited her admirably. “Perhaps they might,” she said. “I think I might take a light dinner after all.”

Villiers escorted her within. When they were taken to their table, he saw her seated on the outside. It is difficult to say it, but the time has come to admit of a deficiency in Villiers. Taken separately, the shade of her hair, the shade of her lips, her choice of dress color, and the surroundings were all unexceptionable. In concert, they made a constant series of minor and major discords that bruised his ear. The only word for a man like that is inconstant. Though he still found her extremely beautiful, his deliberate seating of her on the outside rather than against an immediate background indicates that his devotion was less than total. One cannot like that.

His presence must have been a calming influence, however. When the meal was brought, ordered while she was still occupied in rounding off her bout of tears with neatness, she found her appetite returned and fell to heartily. In sum, she ate rather more than Villiers did. It is possible that she was blessed with a metabolism that required vast amounts of fuel and easily burned all that she provided. There are such systems, and we who eat two light meals in a day and watch every bit of it turn to unsightly fat can only envy her.

Her story, presented between and during mouthfuls, was enough to shake the steadiest heart. At times, it so affected her that against her inclinations she was brought to tears again, a helpless slave of the poignancy of her own sad experience.

Her name was Maybelle Lafferty, and she was an heiress. That was the crux: being beautiful, innocent, and an heiress. It had made her the target of fortune-hunters since she was little more than the veriest child.

Her father was Ragnar Jacob Horatio Lafferty, primary manufacturer of fardels in the Empire, and the wealthiest of the wealthy on Livermore. She was the child of his old age.

“Daddy—dear, sweet, kind, lovable Daddy. He protected me and I never knew it. A man would come to call and I would receive him and find him altogether wonderful. Daddy would run him off and I thought Daddy didn’t really love me, that he just wanted to make me unhappy, that he never wanted me to be married. I didn’t understand.” (This was one of the points where tears presented themselves and required coaxing to go away again.)

Resenting her father’s interference, she saw in him an enemy to be thwarted. Then Henry Maurice had been introduced to her at a social evening at the home of a dear schoolmate. He was a mature man, a gentleman, a man of culture and taste unlike anyone she had ever known. Fearing her father’s displeasure, they had met each other secretly, caught in the overwhelming swell of their mutual passion. Her father, discovering the meetings, had forbidden her ever again to see her Henry. At that point, Henry had proposed that they elope. She had packed her bags with the aid of her maid and set out with Henry into the unknown.

“Is he the gentleman with whom you breakfasted this morning?”

“Yes, that’s him. Doesn’t he look evil and repulsive?”

Villiers reserved comment.

Henry Maurice, it seemed, had presumed upon her innocence, and only now had she learned the truth. He was every bit as bad as her father had said. He was using her, coldly and calculatedly, as a steppingstone to her father’s fortune.

She elaborately produced a delicately pink handkerchief and blew her nose. It seemed to be a method of forestalling tears.

Plaintively, she said, “But Henry doesn’t know Daddy. Daddy will never give him a minim, no matter what. Daddy loves me and he would pay to have me back, but Henry will never persuade Daddy to givehim anything.”

“That is unfortunate.”

“Oh, but it’s much worse. Henry is a cruel, brutal man. When he discovers his evil plotting is of no use, what will become of me? I’m afraid that Henry will abandon me, friendless and without a penny, in some gutter a hundred light-years from home and anyone I know. From my daddy. Or worse. If only I had someone to depend upon.”

Villiers opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say a word, the girl gave a startled “Oh.” At the corner of their table was the man who had enjoyed Miss Lafferty’s breakfast company. He was dark and saturnine, at close range much more like the monster she claimed him to be than the god who had first laid claim to her affections. But then, not really so much like a monster, either. Dark, pudgy, glum, conservative, and angry.

“Servant, sir,” he said shortly to Villiers and immediately ignored him in favor of the girl.

Villiers half-rose. “Equally yours,” he said.

“Miss Lafferty, I desire a word with you in private,” Henry Maurice said, and seized her firmly by the wrist.

“Oh, no, Henry.”

“If you could postpone the conversation for a few moments, we could finish our sweet,” Villiers said. “It would be a shame to leave half of it untouched.”

Henry Maurice shot the least of looks at him, and then said, “Come. Come now. I insist. Excuse us, please.” The beautiful Miss Lafferty’s resistance failed her and she left her chair murmuring, “Yes, Henry,” her eyes downcast. But behind Henry’s back she lifted her lashes and gave Villiers a penetrating glance that set a capstone in place.

“Servant,” said Henry Maurice, and the two took their leave. He still held her by the wrist. They went then from the room, she hanging back the least bit, but not so obviously as to create open scandal or provide cause for talk. It was apparent that the young lady was well-schooled.

Villiers looked after them until their egression was complete and then turned his full attention back to his dessert.

The door to Villiers’ room slid silently open in its usual well-bred fashion. The doors to less expensive rooms were altogether a coarser lot, not nearly so prettily behaved or confidently quiet. This was not altogether the accident of chance it might appear to be, nor yet the acknowledgment of that generally recognized more sensitive hearing for which the rich are noted. It was, in fact, token of the larger number of people who had need to enter here without being observed.

Derek Godwin stepped confidently into the empty quarters. His confidence first was due to the black glasses that enabled him to see in the dark. He was not likely to accidentally bark his shins. His confidence was also due to his firm knowledge of his own abilities. He would be able to locate anything hidden, open anything closed, and replace anything taken without leaving a trace of himself. His confidence, finally, was due to the advance signals he would receive if Villiers were to approach. Another man would have been whistling, but this Godwin did not do, since it did not fit the image he had of himself.

Neither his first name nor his last name were his own. Or, rather, they were his own, but by adoption.

Taken together, they epitomized to him all that he most wanted to be. There were times when he would go through a day bemused by the two words. Sounded in a multitude of accents, hummed in a myriad voices, they played merry maytag through the meadows of his mind. He was glad that hewas Derek Godwin.

Oh, the ways we pick to misguide ourselves! Instead of knowing the gentry for the implacable enemies they were and applying his considerable abilities to their overthrow, he did his best to become one of them and rejoiced in his ability to pass in their company. Even the desire of a puppy for the name of his tailor secretly pleased him. Such self-confusions are the chief reason that our world is not a far more golden place than it presently is.

So he set to work in Villiers’ rooms, applying skills practiced by men since the first rabbit-skin valise. It is, after all, in the nature of openable objects that they be opened. It would violate the essence of their beings if they were not.Wholeness (remember wholeness?), in the fullness of time producing valises, satchels, and pokes, must also inevitably produce Godwins to open them on the sly. Everything is implicit in anything: a cell implies a body, a grain of sand implies sand castles and picnic lunches, and a satchel implies Godwin, practicing his industry.

Villiers received a note. He left the theater where he had spent two hours watching mediocre provincial entertainment. He himself had been watched by two different men representing separate interests. One had been bored by the show and watched him well. The other, simpler soul, had enjoyed himself and forgotten for entire minutes at a time to observe Villiers. It didn’t matter, however. He was still in plain view at the end of the performance.

A boy in Star Well livery came hurrying up to him as he stood outside, and handed him a note.

“For you, sir.”

He accepted the coin that Villiers gave him and went off, where he was immediately intercepted by the second of the two men. When informed what the note contained, the man said, “Well, what do you know,” and let the boy continue about his business.

The note said this:

You must see now the depth of my despair. Oh, please say you will aid me in this, my time of trouble. Come secretly to my room and do not let Henry see you. He is already jealous. From one who reckons you her only friend: Maybelle Lafferty (Miss).

Hisan Bashir Shirabi entered his hobby room. In company with him was his most recent mistress, one of the contract laborers from Herrendam. By most standards, she was not attractive, though Shirabi professed to find her so.

His name was not his own, either, but neither yet so far from what it once had been that the relationship would not be apparent. Euphony and ambition were not his reasons for change. A temporary misunderstanding had led him to take the step in the days of his youth, and though the need had long passed, he yet retained his more recent name lest people be confused by further change.

By many standards, he was a deeply inadequate man. He chose unattractive women because be did not dare aspire to their more beautiful sisters. A simple lack of self-confidence.

He was totally incapable under most circumstances of asserting himself in the face of the wellborn, a legacy of his upbringing that he was well aware of, fiercely resented, and was powerless to amend. Exceptions to this had occurred twice under conditions both bizarre and deeply humiliating to certain well-bred personages. Shirabi cherished the memories, though with certain reservations.

If Godwin was unhappy being less than equal to such a boorish, left-handed man, Shirabi was equally unhappy in the face of Godwin’s pretensions. If Godwin were to make of himself what he wished to, then Shirabi could no longer effectively be his superior. The result was a continuing struggle.

This was not an accident. Though by many standards Shirabi was inadequate, nonetheless he was more than able and more than a little ruthless in dealing with people and things on his own level.

It was with all deliberate consideration that Zvegintsov had assigned Shirabi to head operations in the same place where Godwin had previously been stationed.

“Tension is the secret,” Zvegintsov used to say. “Put two able and incompatible men together and you can be sure you will see every penny that is rightfully yours.”

The system does have its merits, but the two men must be chosen carefully. If the incompatibility is too great, unpleasant things occur. The two set their primary attention to fighting between themselves instead of watching for the Navy and making illegal gravy, like sensible men.

Shirabi had brought the girl here to his hobby room for a reason of the greatest sensitivity. He was totally unable to make love anywhere else. Consequently, placed discretely in the midst of his tanks and flowering friends, he had a bed. It was a nice bed.

The girl entered the room first. She gasped and said, “What happened here?”

Shirabi pushed past her and then stopped. His eyes widened. Abruptly, he seized the front of his purple robe (the decor of the Grand Hall had been his choice) and tore it savagely. This was not an expression of sexual passion overwhelming him in these safe and familiar surroundings. It was an outlet for sudden stress and sorrow. He rent his garments, he slammed one fist in another, his eyes filled with tears.

“But what happened?” the girl asked.

He turned, seized her by the arm and thrust her from the room. She protested crudely at this unwarranted treatment, but he was not listening. He closed the door behind her. In his mind, she had permanently been dismissed from his favor. Anyone who reacted so abominably in the face of crisis was clearly unworthy.

Through imperfect vision he looked at the empty tanks, at the greenery strewn about the floor, at the purple flower that had been laid with care on a pillow that was no longer nestled in the heart of a leafy glade. Coldly executed murder must be answered in its own terms, and as he sobbed, resolution formed in his heart.

The door of Maybelle Lafferty’s room was flung wide and Henry Maurice entered with a look on his face that bespoke anger and frustration. Startled, Maybelle sat upright in bed and clutched at the bedclothes.

“All right,” said Maurice. “Where is he?”

The Navy is the chief executive instrument of the Empire. The Navy fights wars, suppresses insurrections, patrols shipping lanes, enforces law, and investigates the unusual, as well as providing an added touch of color at celebrations of the Emperor’s birthday.

On the planet of Nashua, a Naval officer is a self-conscious member of an incredible power structure. He may be a drone, a time-server. He may be both ignorant and arrogant. He may be ready to pick a quarrel. He may be conscious of his prerogatives and care nothing for his duty.

However, the farther that you travel from Nashua, the more responsible an officer is likely to be. The power of the Navy, while great, is more often a threat than an actuality. It has to be used with restraint, with an intelligent care that looks to results, that aims for stability, that knows the real world to be something other than the fantasies of men who have spent forty years in an office on Nashua. An officer may still be arrogant and unpleasant, but his company is mainly that of his fellows and they will see to it that he walks a careful line in public.

And if you are looking for a substantial friend, a man to rely upon in all sorts of weather, a man who incorporates all the traditional virtues of the ancients: who is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent—in short, a total swell fellow—take up with a Navy man on detached duty. The farther out you are, the better a friend you will have.

The Bolaire Line shipOrion , bound for Luvashe, was scheduled to arrive at Star Well within the hour. Departing travelers would not be allowed to take possession of their new and narrow quarters until shortly before the ship was to leave, but still guests at Star Well assembled in number in the waiting room at Landing Port Two. The reasons were varied: some were meeting arrivals, some were interested in the news the ship would bring from Morian and its octant of the Empire, and still others enjoyed the displays of landing that could be seen on screens in the waiting room.

Villiers, who had reason to meet the ship, as well as to leave on it, started with time to spare. It was well that he did, because he took note of his surroundings as he came near the waiting room and found them unfamiliar. It was not the unfamiliarity in itself that gave him pause—he managed to find his way well enough—but that this was not the port through which he had come on landing, nor yet the port he had chanced upon in the course of his adventure the morning previous. He stopped, intrigued by a daisychain of thought. He consulted the time and then retraced his steps. Some minutes later, he arrived on the Promenade. He went to the shop at which he had bought his book comparing the various sentient races. The woman he had previously dealt with was there and she recognized him.

“Oh, hello, sir,” she said. “And what is it today?”

“Have you any guides to Star Well?”

She reached beneath the counter and produced a map. These were on display throughout most of Star Well, and showed the newcomer how to find his way about. They were extremely limited and only showed the most public of public places.

“No, thank you,” said Villiers. “I had in mind something with facts, figures, and history.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s a matter of consulting our friend here. If we do, he’ll know.” She patted the book machine fondly.

She consulted an index and then tapped out a code order to the machine. It whirred very briefly, and then beeped in empty tones.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “We just don’t seem to have anything.”

Villiers said, “I cannot swear to it, but I seem to remember that Wu and Fabricant had an entry on Star Well.”

“Oh, we don’t carry Wu and Fabricant. I know that. They said we were extremely dull.”

“How nearsighted of them,” said Villiers.

He was still being watched, by the way. Within moments after he left, the woman received a call of inquiry.

When Villiers arrived in the waiting room, among the other persons present was Norman Adams. Adams very clearly saw him enter, and just as clearly pretended not to notice. He turned his back and lacking anything else under which to hide himself, he covered himself in thought. He looked up only after Villiers had been standing in front of him for a full minute and seemed prepared to stand there forever.

“Mr. Adams.”

“Mr. Villiers.”

Villiers seated himself next to Adams and stretched his legs out comfortably.

“A fine day to meet a ship, is it not?”

“Oh, to be sure.”

“Fine weather.”

“I suppose.”

“Mr. Adams, I flatter myself—may I flatter myself?—that I have some knowledge of the standard passes of social dealing. When you wish to insult a man—the Cut Direct. When you wish to snub a man—the Cut Indirect. The Studied Insult, the Pertinent Reflection—to be overheard, of course—even the smiles available for twelve separate effects. It seems to me that they taught me that. I must admit, however, that yesterday and today you have shown me a mode I never realized existed before.”

“Sir!”

“Yes?” said Villiers, but Adams was unable to continue, being caught up in a conflict of speech, so Villiers proceeded: “I thought perhaps you might be so good as to help me expand my repertoire. How do you call this thing that you do?”

“This is intolerable!” Adams burst out.

“I agree.”

Adams mustered himself. “If you will name a place of meeting …”

“A duel?” Villiers laughed freely. “You mistake me, and I trust that I mistake you. I have no desire to do you harm—perhaps I have a more bloodthirsty manner of speech than I realize. I shall have to amend that.

“I meant to say merely that until yesterday we had been on good terms, and since then apparently not. I try to add my enemies by design rather than accident. Were we not on good terms?”

“I thought so,” Adams said reluctantly.

“Well?”

Adams sat silent under the question. Finally, nervously, he asked, “Did you follow me here today?”

“No. I’m meeting someone.”

“Did you follow me yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why did you follow me?” The question was a passionate one.

“It was curiosity,” Villiers said. “Why do you object so strongly to being followed?”

Adams’ reaction was most amazing. He said nothing for a long moment, slowly turning red, particularly about the ears. It was as though he had expected anything from Villiers except a calm admission and an equally calm question. He never answered it. Instead, he rose and hastily left the room. And he did not return.

The quarters of Miss Maybelle Lafferty were good, though hardly approaching the scale of Villiers’. Still, they were extensive enough to provide more than one ready hiding place. An agile man such as Villiers might have found as many as six.

The sound of a hand at the door caught them unready. Expectation had withered and left them in such a state that they merely waited. Waiting had become their focus and they were not prepared for expectation fulfilled. Consequently they were flustered.

“Hide,” hissed Maybelle. She cleared her throat and said, “Just a moment, please.”

Henry Maurice, not nearly so agile as Villiers, and possibly lacking Villiers’ self-possession, took advantage of the nearest hiding place. He went to his knees and rolled under the bed, thereby doing irreparable damage to the delicate shaping of his costume. Genteel dress was designed, if anything, to show that its wearer was not required to do gross, uncultivated things such as rolling under beds. Maurice took no time to think of the tactical disadvantages in emerging from underneath a bed to display his outrage. Doing his best to recapture the proper spirit for the occasion, he honed his lines and whetted his temper. By the time Maybelle reached the door, he was barely containing himself.

“Yes?” she said, opening it.

It was one of the uniformed, red-cheeked girls. “Oh, I’m sorry. I meant to clean. I can come later.”

“That will be fine.”

“By the way, I thought I heard something fall.”

“It was nothing,” Maybelle said, and smiled. She closed the door and sat primly as Henry extricated himself.

“Let’s face it. He just isn’t going to come. Maybe he didn’t get the message,” she said.

Henry wasn’t about to waste that lovely anger. “He did get the message. I saw him open it. I saw him read it. It must be your fault! How did you botch it?”

“Maybe he doesn’t like girls. Maybe you should have sent him the note.”

“That’s funny, but it’s not constructive. He liked you well enough. He was looking you over at breakfast. He invited you to dinner. He was perfect: rich, well-mannered, young enough to be fooled, mild enough not to be interested in a duel. Just the sort who would pay. Just the sort who wouldn’t enjoy scandal. Now what did you do wrong?”

“Henry, I swear I did just as you said. I told him the story. I told it the way we practiced. He just didn’t come.”

Henry sighed and sat down on the bed. “No, he didn’t. You’re right about that. Goodness knows, you can’t act, but I thought we’d catch that pigeon, at least.”

“Henry,” she said.

“Oh, sorry. I know you did your best.”

“There’s always the boy. The big clumsy one.”

“Adams? I misdoubt he has much money to spare.”

“He must have some. He gambles. And Iknow I could fool him. Oh, say I can!”

Henry looked down at his askew clothing. “Well, if we’re ever to pay our bills here and leave, we have to catch some coney. Sooner or later, God willing, there’ll be somebody you can fool.”

Within the landedOrion , the passengers assembled outside a closed bulkhead. Torve the Trog and Augustus Srb were at the head of the line. Mrs. Bogue and her five charges were in the middle of the line.

Alice Tutuila, who was not finding space travel as romantic as she had anticipated, craned to seesomething . She was more than a little tired of corridors, bulkheads, and tiny rooms. Since she had been traveling, she had yet to see stars, ships moving against the universal night, pirates, gallant gentlemen of title who managed rescues without soil, stain, or tying their hair in place, or any of the other staples of space she had reason to expect. And Mrs. Bogue, like a dog who knows the mind of a sheep, had kept her neatly herded away from the veriest hint of any of these delightful things.

Ships? “No gawking, girls.” Gentlemen? “Come along. We haven’t any time to spare.” Even fat priests and odd foreign creatures: “Thatisn’t the sort of thing young ladies are interested in.”

It was romantic of her to wish for pirates. There have been times when such a wish would have been not only romantic, but beyond the bounds of possibility. But there are seasons of the year, and seasons … Which is to say that pirates would not have been completely out of the question. In 1460, the year previous, a group of disgruntled womanless miners, tired of their own company, had stopped a load of Holy Prostitutes on their way to the Temples of Gosh on Braunfels. After subsequent negotiation, the situation was regularized by the establishment of a local Temple of Gosh—and, in fact, this was the beginning of the rapid expansion of that formerly limited religion as the Priests of Gosh realized their strength of appeal—but the original action was clearly piracy.

And all that Alice could see now by straining was the line of people in front of her and a closed metal door painted a sickly yellow-cream. It was a far cry from pirates.

“Behave yourself, Alice,” Mrs. Bogue said sharply, and accompanied the command with an equally sharp swat.

Then the door swung open. The line moved forward. On the other side of the door was a square corridor temporarily bonded to theOrion . They passed quickly through that and found themselves in a large, well-lit chamber. Seated here, behind a counter, was the Empire’s representative in Star Well.

Empire’s Representative was an old man named Phibbs. His face was smooth except for saggy pouches under each eye, but his hair was white at the roots. He lacked energy, ambition, and intelligence, and he didn’t know his rule book very well. What he did know, or thought he knew, however, he applied with gleeful zeal. He knew nothing of exception or tolerance and if he had, it would have made no difference—he found too much pleasure in the trouble he could cause people by the even-handed application of rules he had no part in formulating and hence could not be held responsible for.

Alice’s friend Louisa, standing next to her, gave her a surreptitious poke. “Be careful now,” she whispered. “If you get Mrs. Bogue mad, we’ll never see anything here.”

Alice nodded. Ahead she could see the fat priest and the Trog talking to the old man in uniform behind the counter. Beyond them was a waiting room where a number of people were standing. Their own line progressed not at all, the priest and the Trog continuing to talk to the old man. Then, at last, the priest was waved through and the Trog stepped back out of the line and just stood there waiting.

They moved forward, then. When they reached the counter, Mrs. Bogue placed the six sets of papers in front of Phibbs and spread them out.

“There you are,” she said. She did not enjoy suffering nonsense and prided herself on always having her affairs under proper control, even down to something like having papers ready for inspection.

She pointed at the papers and tapped the girls on the head, one by one. “Jane, Fiona, Alice, Louisa, and Orithyia.”

Phibbs was not feeling cooperative, however. The grim old lady was far too ready to direct his job for his liking. So he took his time over the papers, looking at them one at a time, looking up at the girls they supposedly matched, and then back down again. One set, in actual fact, was a forgery, but he would never have been able to determine which—it had passed the inspection of sharper, abler men, and would again. But he took his simple, even time about looking them over.

“These girls seem to be in order,” he said at last. “But what about you?”

Angrily she stabbed at the top paper. “That. That is mine.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. Picture doesn’t look much like you.”

While they were talking, the girls enjoying their keeper’s discomfiture, a gentleman separated himself from the others in the waiting room. He walked to where the Trog was standing apart and spoke with him for several minutes. The Trog had his back to the counter and Alice had a clear view of the gentleman. He was young and well-dressed, short and slightly built. His hair was brown and hung free. His features were not so regular and perfectly fashioned that he could be called handsome, but he had definite presence.

Alice attracted Louisa’s attention with a bare nudge. Without turning her head, she whispered, “How about that one?”

The gentleman apparently took note of their gaze. He glanced at them, glanced again, and then returned his attention to the Trog towering over him. He finished speaking and the Trog turned and walked flatfootedly away. Phibbs made no comment on his departure.

Alice suddenly found her arm tightly clutched by Louisa, the other girl making the lightest of excited gasps.

The young gentleman walked directly up to them. He salaamed and said, “Miss Parini, how delightful to see you. I must confess it’s something of a surprise.”

Alice could hardly contain herself. “Miss Parini” was no one but Louisa. And Louisa was inclining gracefully.

“Mr. Villiers,” she said.

Mrs. Bogue, stacking her papers together again, turned and said, “What is it that you think you are doing?”

In a barely audible whisper, Louisa said, “She’s taking us to school.”

Villiers, who may have heard Louisa, had already turned to Mrs. Bogue and salaamed beautifully.

“My good madam,” he said. “Your servant. I am a friend of some standing with Miss Parini’s family. May I join your company? I have been here in Star Well some few days, and I think I may know my way here well enough to save you time and extra steps.”

“Well,” she said, “I must say that it is pleasant to meet a young man for once who has sense.”

“Anthony Villiers,” he said, and smiled.

Make no mistake about it, he could be charming when he cared to be. I confess I don’t understand the ins and outs of charm. Godwin introducing himself in this manner would have seemed sinister, oily and dangerous, never winning. Villiers, ordinarily reserved, won Mrs. Bogue immediately and with no apparent effort. There is no question: life is not fair. I hope you didn’t think it was.

Phibbs said, “Sorry, these papers aren’t sufficient. I know my book and none can say I don’t. Any Restricted Sentient that comes through, I got to register … ah, register his … ah, Red Card, Permit to Travel, and … ah, record his destination and length of stay.”

“He’s a fellow clergyman, sir,” said Srb. “Do you mean to doubt his integrity?”

“I don’t know what I mean. Where was I? Yes, look, regulations aren’t my business. I just do my job. I pay—I mean I get paid for doing what I’m supposed to do and I know what I’m supposed to do and he can’t go through, and that’s all.”

Torve said nothing. He just stood there on his great flat feet like a lump.

Srb said, “He can’t leave on a ship unless he checks out through you. Am I right?”

“Yes. No! Yes! Look, go away. Your papers are all right and you’re holding up my line.” Phibbs motioned for Srb to move on. “And, uh, you stand over there out of the way for a minute.”

Srb said, “I’ll see if I can’t get you released.”

“Thank you, but is not necessary, I think,” Torve said. He removed himself from the line and stood where Phibbs had indicated.

Srb picked up the bag he was carrying by hand, gathered his skirts about him and like a great red water animal out of his element betook his fatness into the waiting room. He paused, looked at the people about him one by one, and then moved on.

Normal practice for a newly-arrived passenger who intended to spend any time in Star Well would be to go immediately to the Accommodations Desk in the waiting room. The only exceptions would be people leaving within hours and the very few who could not afford to pay nine thalers a day for an inferior room and who chose to wander as inconspicuously as they could manage from one public area to the next. Srb, of course, did not fall into either of these exceptional categories, but nonetheless he did not go to the Accommodations Desk.

He was looking over the people in the waiting room with some exasperation for the third time. He was standing near the exit, and was about to abandon the room altogether when an urgent “Hsst” brought his attention about. Behind him, just outside the waiting room, was a tall, awkward-appearing, soberly dressed young man.

The boy made a recognition signal in his palm. Left little finger, right palm, cross drawn bottom to top, right to left, and quadrants dotted in proper order. Srb responded with the countersign.

“You, I take it, are Junior Lieutenant Adams.”

“Yes, sir, General Srb.”

Srb was not a general in any military organization nor even in any of several religious or charitable hierarchies. He was an Inspector General of the Empire, in rank equal to a Commodore in the Navy, and merited the appellation of general as a title of courtesy. He was himself a Mithraist with some private interest in the subject of comparative religion, but he was not a priest. He often dressed as one, however, the better to pass without undue attention in strange and suspicious sectors. A fat layman is one thing; a fat priest something else altogether. One can be questioned without embarrassment and the other cannot. Embarrassment is perhaps not the grandest and noblest way of putting others off-stride, but Srb cared little for niceties, rather more for results, and a great deal for his own safety and comfort. And he was not altogether unaware of the little privileges, portions, and propitiations that a priest automatically attracts—what might be called the benefits of clergy.

“Why didn’t you meet me in the waiting room in a normal fashion?”

“Him,” Adams said, pointing to Villiers, who was now engaged in conversation with the Trog. “I didn’t want him to see us together.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Anthony Villiers. I think heknows something.”

“Just what does he know?”

“That’s the trouble, sir. I’m not sure.”

“Perhaps we had best meet in your rooms, then. Give me your number and we’ll be certain that he doesn’t see us together.”

Only when Srb had the number and location of Adams’ room and Adams himself had departed did Srb finally present himself at the Accommodations Desk. By then there were several people ahead of him. He took his place in line and set his bag down. As he did, Torve the Trog, having left his place by the line, came up.

“Is all right now, “ he said.

“Is it?” said Srb. “Very good, my friend. Shall we meet for dinner as we planned?”

The man just ahead of him in line turned at the sound of his voice. “Oh, Padre,” he said, “I hadn’t realized you were there. Please go ahead of me.”

“Why, thank you, son. Bless you.”

“I will see you later for dinner,” Torve said, and left the waiting room. Before Srb reached the head of the line, the man who had been pointed out to him by young Adams also left in company with Mrs. Bogue and her five young female charges.

Now, Villiers was there to meet Torve the Trog. When Torve stepped to the side, Villiers crossed the invisible line that kept those in the waiting room separated from the arriving passengers. He took no notice of the other arrivals but went directly up to Torve.

“Same old thing?” he asked, although that was not the primary question in his mind.

“Is as usual,” Torve said.

“The day we find some proper papers to copy, things will be much simpler.”

“Oh, I do not mind.”

“What are the conditions?”

“Wait here one minute.”

“Hmm. That’s not so bad. Now the important thing. The remittance was not on Luvashe. Did you find it on Morian?”

“No,” said Torve the Trog.

“God help us. I’ve halved my bills here, but I spent my last royal yesterday. I’m down to pocket change.”

“I found news,” Torve said. “Remittance was on Morian but we had left, so was urgented forward to Yuten.”

“Well, that’s some relief. No doubt they’ll be surprised to see us turn up again so soon. In any case, this will take some thinking about.”

“Minute is up.”

“Good.” Villiers told Torve how to reach their quarters and how the door might be convinced to let him enter. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. I see someone I think I know.”

“I have composition to think on. I will meditate until you arrive,” said Torve. “Thurb.”

Villiers approached the covey of females, and Torve, his minute of waiting at an end, turned and walked away. Phibbs said nothing. He took no notice of the departure. When the line had passed him and he was closing up his counter, he may have had the feeling that he had mislaid something, but if he did, he didn’t mention it.

Man once thought fire to be the wrath of the gods unleashed. Man learned to unleash a little wrath, too. Man once thought that flying was a sport reserved for the pleasure of birds, bats, and horses, but man learned how to share their pleasure. A thousand things, dimly understood, feared, thought beyond control, have been added when their time has come around to the grab-bag list of the possible. Still, some few things elude understanding, and of these one of the chiefest is the kid business.

For a time, control was thought to be within reach. Parents could order their children to specification as they might order a home, clothing, or any items of style. Happiness? Not by a damn sight. Ignorant parents found themselves saddled with children far more intelligent than themselves. Society found itself with a preponderance of females or males as the winds of fashion blew. And there simply is no way to turn a child in on a new model when the old one is found to be not quite as advertised or when one’s tastes change.

Over five or six hundred years, all sorts of experiments were undertaken, but somehow in these modern times most babies continue to be born by the traditional method—catchas-catch-can. The experiments never fulfilled expectations. No parent who can afford it will willingly settle for a malformed or idiot child, but neither will he order a child from a checklist.

But ordinary kids are unsatisfactory, too. One might wish that every parent could have a child who was consistently agreeable, never disputed authority, never disobeyed a sensible dictate, and in time grew up to be something he could understand and approve of. But children, even ones ordered from checklists, simply don’t come that way.

In a family of conformists, at least one child will turn to cropping his head bald and performing contortionist exercises in the name of sport. In a family of the bizarre, at least one child will long for the security of a billion people who will dress, think, eat, work, and play as he does, and comfort him. There is no way to prevent it. If you will remember, Socrates was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. He never did. The parents simply didn’t know what time it was and needed someone to blame things on. And by private report, the Nashuite Emperor finds his second son’s interest in Morovian Agrostology both perplexing and disturbing and has had any number of royal rows with him, during which he has tried to convince the boy to drop his study of grass in favor of more fitting pursuits. And, as might be expected, he has had no luck.

The results of a twenty-two year study of parent-child relations begun in 914 by the Petenji Institute indicated that in those days there was an eighteen percent chance that a parent would consider that his grown child had turned out badly, and a thirty-seven percent chance that he wouldn’t understand him even if he were willing to accept him. And this says nothing about the ordinary conflicts involved in raising a child. I don’t suppose that six hundred years have changed matters appreciably.

Poor incompatible families have a greater problem than rich ones. At best, a poor father can send his boor of a son off to work in a field six miles in an opposite direction, ignore him at meal times, and spend his evenings in a different corner. A rich father has a more effective traditional ploy known as the remittance. In essence, a young man is requested to travel—anywhere—and is provided with a reasonable amount of money as long as he stays away from home.

This may be a happy solution—if the money arrives in the proper place at the proper time.

When Villiers returned to his rooms, Torve the Trog was sitting on the floor makingthurb, thurb, thurb noises. His anatomy and fashion of sitting were such that his knees overlapped and his brown furry feet stuck out to the side. They were broad, spatulate things, not at all his most attractive feature. In actual fact, he had little to offer in the way of attractive features. He was large and lumpy and fur-covered, and his head seemed not to be in proper proportion to his body. What he most resembled, in fact, was a six foot tall mammalian toad that by some freak of nature walked upright. The one thing that kept him from being repulsive was his bulgy blue eyes. They were not merely little circles of blue—they were glowing aqua orbs that a medieval king would have been proud to trade a minor daughter for. A minor king might well have made that his major daughter. Even in these more enlightened times, Trog’s Eye Blue has a connotation of appealing warmth.

Thethurb, thurb, thurb noises were High Art. Villiers was not sure of the principles of the art, however, and Torve was unable or unwilling to explain them, but which of the two Villiers was also uncertain. At times he thought it was a matter of rhythm, at times modulation, at times subtle changes in amplitude. In any case, though he might not understand the art form in its own terms, nonetheless he did not find it objectionable. Think of it as the random chirping of a cricket or the wurble of the Fidelian ironworm.

“…Thurb … ”

Villiers let the door slide shut behind him and began stripping off his clothes.

“Catch the boot, will you, Torve,” he said.

The Trog helped him to remove the tightly fit high-heeled boots and Villiers sighed in relief.

“There are times when I think my feet are spreading. Or perhaps they’re still growing.”

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Torve returned to his composition. Even if Villiers had not been informed that Torve was inventing rather than practicing something he had put in final form, he would have known, or thought he would. It lacked a certain necessaryje ne sais quoi of a polished work. Villiers lay listening for some minutes, putting his thoughts in order. Then abruptly he rose and crossed to the service corner. He left the picture off, feeling no need to honor a minor functionary with the sight of him in his underclothing. But for you who might be interested, their color was beige, his stocks were calf-length and well-filled, his body-piece cut with some looseness, and his curdler a Grene & McKenna worn in a reverse holster on his left hip. Villiers asked to be connected with Accommodations.

“Thurb. Thurb… .”

“This is Mr. Villiers in the Palatine Suite.”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“It seems that my plans have altered somewhat. I’m not leaving tonight as I told Mr. Shirabi. I’ve decided to remain here at Star Well for some few days more. Will I be able to retain my present rooms, or will it be necessary for me to change them?”

“Pardon me, sir. I’ll check.” The clerk turned in the service screen and checked quickly. “No problem at all, sir. You can stay just where you are.”

“Very good,” said Villiers, and prepared to sign off.

“A moment, sir. I can’t see you and I keep hearing an odd throbbing noise. Is the service in order?”

“Perfectly in order. Thank you.”

Villiers turned. “Well, the least of our problems is settled.” He sat again on the bed. Idly he tugged at the fringes on the canopy. “What we are going to do for enough money to leave here and reach Yuten, I don’t know.”

Without looking up, Torve said, “Is no need to worry. All will come to evenment.”

“Hmm?”

“No need to worry. I do not worry.Thurb. Thurb . I have confidence.Thurb . In time fullness, many lines of occurrence come together—they make …” Words failed him and with paws he made a rounded motion and then planed it smooth. “We go then to Yuten, have money, all is well. See you?”

“I understand that you are confident.”

Torve brightened. “Ah, you see.”

“No.”

“Oh, well, you are still good fellow, Tony. You understand little, but you are still good fellow.”

“Thank you. For lack of any choice, I’ll accept that as a compliment.” Villiers pulled the holster free of the body-piece, the grip-tite backing making its usual skritchy protest at being parted from what it had seized so tenderly. He set the holster down and began to strip off his stocks.

“Who was young female girl creature?”

“She’s the daughter of a man I met several years ago—more than a bit of a rogue. One of the Parini-Blinoff-Branko Clan.”

“These names?”

“They’re all related to each other. If you meet a man with one of those names, it’s a sign to be wary.”

“But you call the father rogue? You?”

Villiers laughed. “Am I a rogue, Torve?”

Quite seriously, Torve said, “In some times.”

Villiers laughed again. “Mr. Parini is a rogue in all times. In any case, Louisa Parini is being taken by that engagingly horrid woman to school on Nashua. I know the school. A school I was expelled from—for roguery—used to have us practice our hardly learned manners on their girls. I don’t envy Louisa. I think Miss McBurney invented stuffiness.”

“You are dressing to go out?”

“Yes. I have Mrs. Bogue’s permission to escort Louisa to dinner in the Grand Hall. A few thalers isn’t going to affect our bill particularly, and I think she will enjoy herself. Would you like to join us?”

“No. Is thought, but I have seeing with Mithra Priest Srb. We will eat dinner. He understands little, too, but is needful for lines of occurrence that we …” He again made his rounding and planing motions.

“And our traveling together—is the key to that lines of occurrence, too?”

“Ah, you do understand.”

“No,” Villiers said. “But pleased as I am that our lines of occurrence coincide, little as I understand the principle, from my side I would say the cohesive force was friendship.”

“How could friendship be so important? I do not understand.”

Villiers was delighted. “I knew it. The day would come, at long, long last, and at last it has.You don’t understand.”

“Thurb. Is my new composition. No, you have very strange mind. I do not understand. But is no mattering: favorable line of occurrence and friendship travel together. I like you—means nothing to me. Line of occurrence grabs you by neck and will not refree you—means nothing to you. We still go to Yuten together and both of us are happy.”

“I’ll be happier when the bills are paid and we are on our way.”

“No need to worry. All will come …”

“I know. I know. All will come to evenment.”

“Please tell me when is time to go to Yuten.”

“I will.”

Alice Tutuila bounced on the bed and said, “Oh, wow! Dinner in the Grand Hall, and Mrs. Bogue is letting you go. How did youdo it?”

Louisa was looking through her clothes. “I don’t know what I should wear. Help me decide, Alice. I’m so excited!”

“But who is he—Mr. Villiers, I mean? You never told me. How do you know him?”

Alice aimed the questions in Louisa’s general direction without anything so time consuming as a check to see which, if any, reached their intended target. Louisa, for her part, was insulated by her concern for her appearance, her mingled excitement and apprehension, and her own stream of comment. The result was a mild sort of bedlam, thoroughly enjoyed by both girls, but enjoyed rather less by Alice when she realized how little she was receiving in the way of cold, hard, specific information. She rose from the bed and crossed the room.

“What have you got there?” she asked. “Oh, no, that won’t do. Here, let me help you.”

Shehmm ed her way through Louisa’s dresses. “How do you expect to have him make you his mistress and carry you away in any ofthese ? You’d better wear something of mine.”

They crossed to inspect Alice’s wardrobe. “Isn’t it nice to have someroom ? I feel like just standing and breathing.”

“It is better, isn’t it? At least you’re not going to sit up and bang your head tonight.”

“Here. Try this on. I didn’t let Mother see I took it, but I figured it might come in handy. It’s very stylish.”

Louisa held it up. “I can see. There isn’t a lot to it, is there?”

“That’s the point, silly. Now go on.”

Louisa crossed to the dressing room. In a moment she said, “I can’t reach all the fastenings.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get them. Let’s see what you look like.”

Louisa posed in the door. “It’s not that it’s skimpy. I just don’t think I’m quite ready for it yet.”

She was right. It hung where it should have clung, partly because she lacked something of Alice’s height, partly because she lacked something of Alice’s development.

“I suppose you’re right. We may have to make do with your blue. It’s nice enough, but it’s soyoung. ”

“Well, I’m young. I am young.”

“But how can you get him to carry you away to a life of passion? Not in your blue.”

“That wasyour idea, Alice. I just want somebody to help me.”

“Do you think he will?”

Louisa took the blue dress to the dressing room and tunneled into the fabric. Her muffled voice said, “I don’t know. I’m going to ask him.”

“Who is Mr. Villiers and how do you know him?”

“I don’t know exactly who he is. He and Daddy know each other from sometime, and he stayed with us once. I thought he was older then, but he’s not really very old, is he?”

“Less than thirty, I think,” Alice said. “He does seem nice, but maybe a bit stiff.”

Louisa came out. This dress indisputably fit better, and actually became her more. The dress had a wholesome look, and she, like it or not, as she might not now, but certainly would later when she had time to appreciate the advantages, did also.

“Fasten me, please,” Louisa said.

Alice came to her assistance. It is a perplexing question why women’s garments should invariably be made in such a fashion that either contortion or assistance is required to close them. It is certainly not an insoluble problem to design closures that do not interfere with the lines of the clothes and are still within ready reach. The easiest answer might be that there are advantages in being able to ask to be done or undone.

Louisa said, “He really isn’t that stiff. At least I don’t remember him that way. I remember him as being very funny.” She began to look through her extra trappings and hangings.

“Oh, hey, I’ve got an idea,” Alice said. She went to the service, and after studying it for a minute, mastered the controls well enough to place a call. “Oh, hello,” she said. “I have a friend staying here in Star Well—a Mr. Villiers. Can you tell me which room he is in?”

“Mr. Villiers is not in a room. Mr. Villiers is in the Palatine Suite.”

“How much does that cost?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The suite—how much is it per day?”

“Oh, come away!” Louisa said, but was ignored.

“The Palatine Suite is our best,” said the deskman. “One royal a day.”

“Oh, thank you,” Alice said and rang off.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Louisa said. “You don’t ask somebody straight off like that. You ask one man where Mr. Villiers is staying, and then you ask somebody else how much the Palatine Suite costs.”

“I don’t see why,” Alice said. “I wanted to know.”

“But this way he knows what you’re interested in. Not just Mr. Villiers, but money. You shouldn’t let him know that much.”

“I don’t see why. And, oh, my—he is in the royal-a-day room! It’s just like we said. Oh, you’ll have to hide in the closet.”

The door was tried, and then someone rapped. As Alice crossed to open the door, Louisa said, “I don’t think I need to hide in the closet. After all, he is taking me to dinner.”

“No, I mean afterwards, when our ship—” Alice stopped abruptly as she saw who was at the door. “Good evening, Mrs. Bogue.”

Mrs. Bogue swept in. “Good evening, Alice. What’s this about the ship?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just saying it’s nice to have a large room after the ship.”

“You’re not dressed, Alice.” She consulted a piece of paper. “We have a table scheduled in the Buff Room in forty minutes. I want you ready to leave in twenty. And no nonsense. Good evening, Louisa. You’re looking very well.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bogue.”

“Turn around. Let me look you over.” Louisa turned obediently.

“Alice, stop larking and get moving. I think you’ll do, Louisa. Now I want you to mind your manners particularly carefully tonight. Sit straight, mind what you say, don’t eat and talk at the same time, be back by ten hundred, and be sure to thank Mr. Villiers for the evening.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bogue.”

“And, Louisa, I do want you to look your best tonight. I brought you this to wear.” She held out a silver brooch.

“Oh, Mrs. Bogue, how lovely. Thank you.”

“Here, let me pin it on. I thought silver would go with anything you chose.”

Alice, coming to look, said, “Oh, it does.”

Mrs. Bogue turned precisely and said, “Alice, you have just fifteen minutes. You had better use them to good advantage.” And she left.

When the door had closed behind her, Alice said, “It does look nice, doesn’t it?”

Louisa said, “And just when I was ready to totally hate her.”

Alice said, “Oh, I still do. Just concentrate on remembering the way we had to stay in our room on the ship.”

“Still, I didn’t expect her to do a thing like this.”

Adams let Phibbs out of the room, closed the door and locked it. Phibbs had his duties to perform. The ship that had arrived from Morian was due to leave for Luvashe and Phibbs had to check those departing at the landing port. Adams turned to face Augustus Srb, who was sitting calmly in a great chair smoking a pipe.

“I didn’t think he’d know anything, sir. He doesn’t seem to be a very bright man.”

“No.”

“I don’t think we’d even have to investigate if we had a more intelligent man representing the Empire here in Star Well.”

Srb puffed reflectively. “Is this your first investigation? This is, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.” Adams suddenly choked and began to wave the smoke away.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it bothering you?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t want to say anything before. I thought you were trying to bother Phibbs. But it makes my eyebrows feel as though they were crawling up my forehead, and my ears tingle.”

“I’ll put it out,” Srb said. “I sometimes forget that not everybody shares my vices.” He covered the mouth of the pipe with the palm of his hand. “The air will be clear in a few minutes. You must realize, Lieutenant, that we would have very few investigations indeed if we had more intelligent men representing the Empire. We have to make do with Phibbses because common jobs in unattractive places are ill-paid and consequently no one but old fools will take them. Then, when things go wrong, it’s up to people like you and me to straighten them out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did they tell you why you were being sent here?”

“They said I was to be your legs, sir.”

“I suppose you might say that. And my eyes, and my ears. And whatever else I need you for. I will sit, and you will run. But do you know why we are here?” Srb took his palm away from the mouth of the pipe and looked to see that it was out. He puffed on it to be sure, carefully separated the burnt ash from the unsmoked residue with a pipe tool, then knocked the residue into his smoking pouch. “I hate to see waste,” he said, looking up.

Adams said, “They told me that there had been a number of investigations here in the past few years.”

“Yes. Accidents, duels, one mysterious disappearance. However, the stories given have been good enough to pass investigation. The trouble is that there have been too many things here that required checking by the Navy. Besides this, around the borders of the Rift there has been an increase in several illegal traffics during the past few years, thumb running in particular. On general principles, Star Well is going to be given a close look by you and me, and since we are going to do it quietly we are the more likely to find anything there is to be found.”

“If there is anything.”

“If there is anything.”

“While I was waiting for you, sir, I poked around a bit. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for.”

“Did you find anything?”

“No, sir. And Mr. Villiers followed me. He’s the one I pointed out this afternoon.”

“You know for a fact that he followed you?”

“Oh, yes, sir. He even said that he did. I think I like him—he’s very polite—but I don’t know what to make of him. He confuses me.”

“I think I can understand that,” Srb said dryly. “We may have to take our investigations elsewhere if it is clear that they know we are looking them over. For now, let’s avoid being seen together and I’ll find out what I can about your Mr. Villiers.”

TheOrion , with her new complement of passengers stuffed in their tiny cabins, with a fuddled third officer who was not even aware that there had been a layover, with a passenger lounge in which three were discussing Systematic Anarchy and another four were talking yachts (one maintaining that the day of two-man yacht racing was dead because the costs of owning and keeping small spaceships were prohibitive), but without Anthony Villiers aboard, left Star Well bound for Luvashe some eight hours and twenty-two minutes after she had arrived. Between the time that the extensors were withdrawn and the ship actually left, Godwin called Hisan Bashir Shirabi.

“Villiers didn’t leave on theOrion ,” Godwin said.

Shirabi said, “I know. I already received a call that he extended his room. Indefinitely—he didn’t say how long he intended to stay.”

Shirabi was the essence of quiet agreeability, and Godwin couldn’t help smiling wolfishly. There are some people who need an occasional kick in the head to remind them of who they are. That was something that Godwin had learned long ago and applied any number of times to good effect. Calculated ruthlessness is an unnerving thing to face.

Godwin ran a thumbnail down the line of his mustache. “Do you want him eliminated? His baggage was clean.”

“I don’t think that’s the main point. He’s been asking questions and he didn’t leave. We simply cannot afford to let him live. It’s too big a chance. And there’s only one way to do it, too. With the sort of money that he has, someone is bound to take exception unless he is killed in a duel.”

“You mean you’re dropping another one on my shoulders.”

“Look at me,” said Shirabi. He was a common, greasy, furtive man dressed in common purple robes. “He would never fight a duel with a man like me.”

“And if he did, he would kill you.”

“Probably, yes. But I don’t want you to take chances. If you don’t think that you can kill him in a duel, we’ll find some other way. But the ship comes tonight.”

As much as he wanted to be one of them, I think it would be fair to say that Godwin hated the wellborn, and probably as greatly as Shirabi. The two of them had a beautiful thing in common, and neither of them appreciated the fact. Ah, the blindness that keeps us from knowing our true friends and clasping them to us with bonds of steel. It has been ever so. Common interests are overlooked and the trivial divides.

Godwin said, “Don’t fash yourself. I’ll kill this one.”

“Good,” said Shirabi in the same mild tones. “Take him in the casino tonight.”

Godwin nodded and the service blinked to black. Shirabi turned from the screen and looked at the table to his left. Laid out on it was an assortment of weapons: swords, tinglers, curdlers, vibro-blades. He smiled a secret smile that grew by stages into a thoroughly unpleasant laugh. Some people anticipate their pleasures.

Ifind it hard to believe in Inspector Generals. Look: men of utter probity who roam the Empire, commanding great personal power, but applying it only with restraint, secretly keeping their eyes on things, righting wrongs, checking on the practices of local rulers, calling in the Navy when necessary. I am certain, moreover, that they wait for no thanks, but simply do their duty and disappear into the night leaving bewildered but thankful people behind. And I don’t believe it. People like that don’t exist. Power does corrupt. Total personal honesty is a myth. Secret wrong righting is a make-believe game for children to toy with.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that the Empire desperately needs balance wheels—call them Inspector Generals if you like. The Empire is inherently unstable. The Navy is saddled with all the disadvantages of size, of bureaucracy, of endless confining regulations. Corners are cut, laws are openly broken, little men are victimized, bribes are taken, and those whose idea of art is fragmentation, destruction and death everywhere flourish. Who stands for stability? Phibbses? Something better is needed.

Grant that you need Inspector Generals. Where are they to be found?

You cannot cultivate a garden and produce Inspector Generals. You cannot educate an Inspector General. You cannot train an Inspector General. You cannot turn a handle and let a machine crank out an Inspector General

The job requires intelligence, honesty, individuality, creativity, judgment, and a wide variety of subtle talents not commonly considered to be part of the ordinary human battery, and subsumed under the inaccurate catchall title of “luck.” “Luck” is a noise made by those who lack these talents and wish to dismiss them with a sniff.

You can take it as an axiom: celebrities who travel meet only fools, creeps, panhandlers, and climbers. People they would truly like to meet never have the bad taste to present themselves. The quality that makes them worth meeting automatically determines they will never be met.

The same applies to Inspector Generals. The only possible candidates are those unsuited for the office.

It may just be that Inspector Generals don’t really exist at all. They may be no more than a rumor invented to keep children good and men honest. In fact, I rather think that may be so.

Villiers escorted Louisa Parini into the Grand Hall. She was obviously minding her best manners and he made a point of matching them. Mrs. Bogue’s admonitions had nothing to do with it, and neither, for that matter, did whatever plans or hopes she had in mind. It is simply in the nature of things that young girls being taken out to dinner by old friends of the family should play the game of being grown up, and that the friends, being friends, should indulge them. When both know what is going on, it can be great fun. The only question is how long the game is to be maintained before it is dropped in favor of more comfortable conversation.

Villiers saw Louisa seated. The previous night, Miss Maybelle Lafferty had been seated across from him with the room as background, and at this very same table. We already know why she was seated against the room instead of against the wall. But mark that she had been seated across the table. Villiers took the same seat as before but seated Louisa next to him.

She was dressed becomingly in a style appropriate to her age. Her dress was blue, her brown hair was pulled back and caught in a silver circlet, and she wore a silver brooch. The two pieces were her only jewelry, and her dress had white trimming, but no ribbons or lace. She looked like everybody’s idea of a daughter: warm, bright, reasonably cute, demure, friendly, and well-behaved. She wasn’t like that at all, but that is the way she looked.

Villiers ordered for them. The girl was the same homely, red-cheeked thing who had served him before. She seemed disturbed to see him.

“Oh, Mr. Villiers,” she said. “I thought you left tonight.”

“No,” he said. “I decided to stay on just a little longer. The food here is too good to leave.”

That was one of the things that Louisa remembered liking about him. While he lied little, he was excellent at being oblique. Adults tend not to count this among the endorsable virtues, but anyone who has had occasion to avoid answering a direct question directly and found that they could not will share Louisa’s admiration. She herself was only moderately skillful at being oblique, but rather able nonetheless at keeping private what she wished not to be known. Alice was a wheedler and thought she had all that was to be wheedled. Mrs. Bogue was a pumper and didn’t even realize that there was oil to be pumped. If they only knew. If they only knew. Ha.

The girl said, “Yes, sir,” and left.

Louisa said, “How long has the tip of your left little finger been missing, Tony? You didn’t have that before, did you?”

He looked at his hand. Not the whole joint, but the tip, down to below the nail, was missing. It has not suddenly been misplaced. It has been missing all along. Its simply that no one has noticed it up until now. Don’t wonder about it—just tell me the color of your next door neighbor’s eyes.

“No, that’s reasonably new. I had an accident. Something like two years ago; I was on Livermore.”

“Oh, Fiona is from Livermore.”

“Who is Fiona?”

“One of the other girls going to Nashua. But go on.”

“I was temporarily without funds, so out of necessity I took a job rather than throw myself on the charity of the Fathers of Livermore, a council with notoriously limited and unpleasant notions of charity. I once read that practices not too different were considered proper punishment for religious unbelief in pre-Common Era times.”

“But you didn’t really get a job and work?”

“Perhaps not, but for the sake of the story let’s say that I did work. This was when they were having the last great run of the white-horned rinderbeasts. The black-horned ones are smaller and faster and live in too rugged country to make it worth the trouble of digging them out, though I prefer them. They’re far more affectionate and more hardy, too. Anyway, the word came that they were beginning to swarm and they were hiring every free able-bodied man they could find. I signed on as a flanker. Beaters work behind and run the sound machines: whistles, booms, sirens, gongs. Flankers work the sides and supervise the stringmen, net boomers, and dirt wallahs.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear this,” Louisa said. “You didn’t really work a straight job, Tony?”

“Does that bother you?”

“Yes.”

“I was supervising.”

“I still don’t like to hear about it. You wouldn’t really do anything like that.”

“Don’t you want to hear the part where the rendering machine lost its king cog and the tripwire took off the end of my finger? The rinderbeast never got rendered. In fact, it ate the end of my finger and died.”

“Oh, that never happened,” Louisa said.

“Well, I admit that the story needs polishing. But you would like the moral. I haven’t had the finger repaired as a reminder to myself never to take another straight job.”

“I like that,” she said.

“And here is our dinner,” he said. “It’s just as well that the story had to be shortened.”

So you see just how long the formal manners lasted. And you have a look at Villiers showing to better advantage than he does across a gaming table or making a cubitiflection in front of a bad-tempered woman of middle years.

The waitress rolled her cart to the side of the table and opened it to show the steaming platters under the hood.

“Here you are, sir,” she said, and completely contrary to custom lifted a dish to the table. As she did, she bent close to Villiers and said, “I have to tell you. Be careful. They’re watching you and they’re asking questions.”

“Who?” Villiers asked quietly.

“Mr. Shirabi and Mr. Godwin.” Then in normal tones, she said, “There you are.”

“Thank you,” Villiers said.

Srb and Torve were eating together in another and lesser dining room. Prices were lower, food was simpler, the decor was plainer, and the service was distinctly better. It is a minor paradox that over-prompt service can cost an otherwise superb eating place its Wu and Fabricant 4A rating. Wu and Fabricant respect a proper sense of self-importance.

Torve the Trog was eating from a heaping plate of kumquats, Morovian sugar-grass, and ruvelo, a red root-paste common in this octant as a staple starch. These kumquats were of a variety developed in modern times and Torve was eating only the sweet golden rinds and setting the little fruits aside. He would carefully strip the entire peel, set the naked fruit on a plate at his right, break the peel into little pieces, and then dip a piece into the rubelo, bring it out heavy with the red paste, and pop it neatly into his mouth. Often he would chew it at much greater length than anyone would ever think necessary.

“May I have one of your kumquats?” Srb asked, motioning at the side plate.

Torve passed the plate across the table. “Do, please. I only eat rinds. Fruit does not agree with my digestion.”

He was a vegetarian, eating no meat whatsoever except for jellied whiteworms, a delicacy with little general appeal, but one he relished. Trogs in general were not vegetarians. Quite the opposite, in fact—they ordinarily relished their meat. Torve was a vegetarian by philosophy, however, for reasons obscure. The worms were a lapse that he apparently could not keep himself from making, but stolidly denied and attempted to hide as best he could. He apparently felt it a matter of shame, as well he might. Whiteworms.

Srb’s meal was more usual. He began with chowder, proceeded to braised atman haunch sided with rubelo, sugar-grass, thet eyes, and Lima beans, and ended with a large slice of cheesecake. This is not to mention the kumquats. His beverage was beer.

Srb subscribed to a theory of great antiquity concerning the foundation of civilization, a theory beyond proof, but sufficiently within the bounds of possibility to merit endorsement. Civilization depends on stable living conditions for populations of some size that will allow them to build, invent, coin, keep records, and stock supplies for making war. Civilization in this sense is not possible for migrant populations, that is, populations whose staff of life is roots, berries, and wild animal carcasses, the search for which keeps them eternally on the move. Civilization is the offspring of the invention of agriculture. But why did man take up agriculture? Not to allow himself to build, invent, coin, keep records, and stock rocks. That could not be foreseen. No, the invention of agriculture was to save men trouble in collecting the wherewithal for making beer. And when he drank beer, which he liked to do, Srb relished the thought that he was secretly preserving civilization without its knowledge, as was his duty.

Srb ate a kumquat and followed it with beer. “I noticed you talking to a gentleman this afternoon. Did he meet you?”

“Yes, is Mr. Anthony Villiers. He is copacetic fellow.”

“He did seem of pleasant appearance.”

“He is touring Empire, seeing everything. I travel with him sometimes.”

“Hmm. Perhaps you might introduce me to him later.”

“Is possible. Have another kumquat.”

You may well wonder why Villiers should have been warned of the attentions being paid him. The waitress was neither sexually attractive nor notably intelligent, and she and Villiers were from completely different strata of society. Why should she warn him? It may be question-begging to say it, but Villierswas copacetic. In any case, accept that she did.

“What was that about?” Louisa asked.

“Nothing in particular,” Villiers said, calmly serving them. “I’m being watched, and followed, and my baggage has been searched.”

“Who’s following you?’

“Don’t be obvious about looking. At an angle to my left, not the table against the wall, but the next row, the gentleman in gray who looks out of place here in the Grand Hall.”

“Oh, I see him. Alice would be thrilled to death. She loves things like this.”

“Another of the flock?”

“Yes. She’s the girl I share a room with. She’s really very romantic. Why are they following you?”

“I’m not completely sure. There’s some sort of illegal operation going on here, I think, and they’re worried that I might have come too close to it.” He closed the hood of the hot cart. “I had a notion as to what it might be, but then I wasn’t able to check it out. But let’s talk about more important things. How did your father prevail upon Miss McBurney to accept you?”

“Oh, you know Daddy. He bought one recommendation and encouraged several others. And he had Jack the Hand put together a proper set of papers.”

“What are you supposed to be?”

“It’s easy,” she said. “I’m fifteen. My name is Louisa Parini. I have an older brother named Roger who is a senior lieutenant in the Navy, and I have a two-year-old sister named Anne. I have one mother. Daddy is a second son who had to go into trade. He imports rugs. Ornamental rugs for walls, not floors. His brother is old and has no children, and Daddy is his heir, and someday he’ll be a margrave.”

“Isn’t that last gilding the lily just a bit?”

She set down her fork and looked at him. “What do you mean? Daddy proved every word.”

“You do seem to know your lines.”

“I’ve got a perfect memory,” she said. “I can tell you anything you want to know down to the name of our gorf. I could bore you with stories.”

That may seem unnecessarily boastful, but Louisa was not without her pride. She did know her story. It was her business to, and she did. The brother of her story was imaginary, but not the two-year-old sister, and even at two Anne knew what to say some of the time and what to do if she didn’t know what to say: cry.

“Is your daddy still wearing his beard?” Villiers asked.

“Oh, sure.”

“I always envied him that,” Villiers said. “It wouldn’t suit me, but he has the size to wear it. Why did he decide to send you to school?”

“Oh, that was terrible,” she said. “He just got the idea from somewhere and he wouldn’t let it go. You know the way he gets when he makes his mind up. He wants me to learn to be a lady. But I can do it well enough already. I don’t have to go to school. But he made me go and I couldn’t change his mind.”

“That’s too bad,” Villiers said. “I know your school. It’s pretty strict.”

“And fouryears ,” she said. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Please, Tony, won’t you help me? I don’t want to go. I can already see what it’s like. It’s all rules. I don’t want to live life by rules and schedules. I want to make it up as I go along the way you do, and Daddy, and everybody else.”

“Maybe you ought to find out what living life by rules and schedules is like. Most people prefer it.”

“I know I won’t like it, Tony. And you never lived that way.”

Villiers moved his chair back and relaxed. “You’re wrong, Louisa. It’s only in the last several years that I’ve made my life up as I went along. Since just before I met your father. Oh, I did break the rules, which you won’t be able to do, but I lived under them.”

Louisa said, “Why could you break the rules?”

“Well, because my background could stand investigation. If they threw me out of one place—which they did—there was always another. You’re going to have to be more careful. But there are things they can teach you.”

“I’m always careful. Sometimes I get sick of being careful. You’re not going to help me, are you? You’re just like Daddy.” A sudden thought struck her. “Did Daddy hire you?”

“What?”

“Did Daddy hire you to see that I don’t skip out here?”

Villiers laughed. “No, your father didn’t hire me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past him to have me watched.”

“As a matter of fact,” Villiers said, “I would appreciate your telling me where to contact your father. I have a job for Jack the Hand.”

“You aren’t going to help me, though.”

“I need help rather worse than you do right now,” Villiers said. “I’m not in a position to help anyone. I have no money at all. I have debts here that I can’t pay. What I have to do now is discover some way to settle my bills and get passage to Yuten.”

She brightened visibly. “Oh,well. ”

Villiers said, “No, my own way. I’m not on the con.”

“I know,” she said. “But I could teach you. We could be partners. I know everything Daddy knows.”

“Everything?”

“Well, everything basic. You make most of it up to fit the circumstances.”

“You’d better finish your dessert.”

“Oh, please.”

“I’m thinking about it. I am thinking about it.”

Villiers stared off into the distance, and Louisa, cheered by this evidence of the consideration he was giving her proposition, pitched into her dessert. The idea of aiding Villiers in swindling their way from planet to planet tickled her fancy; it was a far more appealing picture than any that Alice Tutuila had ever painted in romantic transport, and it had the advantage of down-to-earth reality without being drab, dismal, and dull. In short, it was as close to being the life she wished for as anybody could have designed, and not only was it possible, Villiers was actuallyconsidering it. The joys of fifteen-year-old girls in alt are notorious, and Louisa Parini was no ordinary fifteen-year-old girl. But she concealed her emotion behind her custard.

Villiers sat up abruptly. Louisa’s eyes swiveled to him immediately, though she continued to eat.

“All right,” he said.

“All right?” Her voice rose.

“No, all right, look at the far side of the room. Do you see the large young fellow in the brown coat? Sitting with him is an attractive girl in green with a black coronet braid.”

“I do see them,” Louisa said.

“If I’m not mistaken, within the next few minutes a man will come to their table and drag the girl away. Eat slowly and watch.”

Louisa nodded and returned to her food, but kept an eye on the table. While they waited, Villiers told of his encounter with Maybelle Lafferty and Henry Maurice.

“And you got the note, but you didn’t go?”

“No. Oh, here’s Henry now. Watch.”

They watched, and as they watched there was a reprise of the previous night’s good work. Henry was rude. Maybelle fought tears. Adams (it was Adams, of course) rose and spoke. Henry seized Maybelle by the wrist and led her from the room to a privy conversation, she shooting a last glance of entreaty to Adams. Adams, after a long moment of contemplation, reseated himself. He, however, unlike Villiers, had sufficient sensibility not to return immediately to the conclusion of his meal, but sat silently in company with his thoughts.

“She has him,” Louisa said. “But she’s not very good. Even I could do better than that and I’m only fifteen. He must be very stupid.”

“He is less than the brightest young man I ever met. Tell me, if you wanted to do some surreptitious looking around, would you wear tight black sweat clothes and tiptoe?”

Louisa giggled. “No. Did he?”

“Yes. What would you wear?”

“Ordinary clothes. And I’d be lost.”

Villiers laughed. “That is better, I think. That’s what I was, but I think it’s also what earned the inspection of my baggage and the company of our friend in gray.”

“He looks bored,” Louisa said

“I imagine he is bored. I tell you, let’s invite him to share our company.”

On the instant, Villiers rose and eased out into the aisle. He walked to the table of the man in gray and made his presentations.

“Sir,” he said in his usual sober manner. “I could not help noting that you dine alone. My lady and I are strangers here ourselves and know how unlively it is to be without company in the midst of a substantial journey. I trust I’m not presuming overly. My name is Villiers. We wondered if you would care to honor us by joining us for the evening.”

To this well-turned invitation the man made no reply in kind. In fact, at Villiers’ approach he had been obviously disconcerted. When Villiers spoke, the man blanched. When Villiers finished, the man rose and broke, unable to cope with the situation. It is a pity that the game of hare and hounds should suffer from savage rabbits and hen-hearted hounds, but if the world was as it ought to be we would all be playing wooden whistles and eating bananas in Eden, as my mother used to say.

When Villiers turned it was to see Louisa having the utmost difficulty in controlling herself, thereby betraying her lack of schooling in genteel conduct. If she had been at Miss McBurney’s for even so long as a fortnight, most assuredly she would not have so much as quivered. He returned to the table and raised a mild eyebrow.

“What did yousay to him?” Louisa demanded.

“I told you. I asked him to join us.”

“Oh, Tony. You’re funny.”

Villiers offered his arm and Louisa rose to take it. “Would you prefer the casino or the theater?”

“The theater,” she said, but not in tones that convinced him of her sincerity.

“There’s no need to disney me. Do you really prefer the theater?”

“Oh, no! But you said that you haven’t any money.”

“I haven’t. It’s little matter, though. My bills are substantial enough to warrant my being extended credit and we won’t abuse it. We’ll lose just enough that we can count ourselves entertained.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. I’ve never been in a casino.”

“In that case, we can count it part of your professional education. They cheat here.”

Louisa laughed and stopped minding her careful steps.

As a girl unused to being escorted by gentlemen, she had been concentrating on holding tight to Villiers’ arm and matching his pace. She looked up from their feet to Villiers’ face.

“Did you see them do it?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ll point out what to look for. I know gaming somewhat better than confidence swindles. Oh, by the way, I was about to ask you what game Henry and Maybelle are playing.”

“You mean you didn’t know? I thought you didn’t go because you knew.”

Villiers shook his head. “It’s deficient of me, I admit, but I simply knew that they weren’t genuine.”

“Well, it’s one of the very crude ones. I mean, Mommy and Daddy would never do it. Henry would have burst into the room and found you and Maybelle in bed. It would have turned out that she was fibbing and that she and Henry were married. Henry would have been very very mad, and you would have wound up paying them money. I mean, if you had any, that is.”

“Would I, now?” Villiers smiled. “I’m almost sorry I didn’t go, after all. It might have been very amusing.”

Could anything be more arbitrary than the proper cut and hang of a drapeau? Present styles in drapeaus are shortly passé, and what once appeared nothing short of bizarre becomes commonplace. The article of clothing is as close to being totally without utility as any ever devised. And yet anyone who is anyone will wear a drapeau, comment at length on color, pattern, and dash, and righteously reject the man who lacks one from all polite company.

Hold it no compliment to Villiers to say that he dressed well. He did, but I should hope that you have better sense than to admire him for it. If you insist on admiration, at least let it be for his superb sense for the moderate and not for his conformation to the accepted.

Proper forks, orders of precedence, ceremonies of confirmation, all pageantry, any of the formal games we play are by any objective standard ludicrous. And since their normal application is to separate those who know and those who are from those who don’t know and those who could never be, they are all the more foolish.

And yet there is a point to custom, even given that any set of customs is as foolish as any other set. Custom frees us from having to turn every minuscule act into a matter for decision.

Villiers’ mind was fixed on the problem of a successful rendezvous with his money. If all the routines of food, lodging, clothing, and relations with others were not routines but required consideration, decision, and action, then Villiers would have been in the unhappy position of our pre-societal ancestors who spent twenty hours in a day curled in a foetal position under a tumble of rocks, paralyzed by fear, exhausted, aching in every bone, trying to summon enough nerve to venture forth into an altogether too real world. Custom freed him. It restricted the number of things that could possibly happen to him to a few that he was automatically able to deal with, and thereby allowed his mind to wander away on a pecuniary pilgrimage.

The point is this: shortly there will be a duel. Duels are silly, though, of course, no more silly than anything else. Simply remember that dueling is one of that peculiar set of customs to which Villiers subscribed, and with which he was prepared to deal. If you find it bothersome to see Villiers occupied so uselessly, bear in mind that throughout he was thinking of more important things.

The casino was a Mass for the faceless. There is an air to the gambling of most people that lends any casino a brightness, a brittle edge, a tension missing elsewhere. The noise cuts, but these are the bloodless. The clink and rattle play counterpoint to a rising and falling hum of voices. Palms moisten. The controls shut down on certain motor nerves and jaws hang. Noise, money, and emotion become a pinwheel and minds slip into self-hypnosis. If you are not a devotee of this sort of pleasure, there are only two ways to enter the casino, with innocence or as a wolf among sheep. Villiers entered the casino with his own particular innocent arrogance. Louisa entered as a wolf among sheep.

She looked over the room and thensotto voce said, “I see how they cheat people like these. It must be a dull way to earn money.”

“It is a bit insensitive, isn’t it?”

“We should be on our way in no time. Oh, that guidebook was wrong. It said that Star Well was a bore if you don’t gamble. I think this is going to be fun.”

“You read a guidebook entry on Star Well?”

“Yes, in theOrion .”

Villiers nodded. “You said that your memory was good. What did the entry say? Not the commentary—the description of facilities.”

“Oh, let me see,” Louisa said, drawing in her breath and stopping to think. “Rooms were from nine thalers up to one royal, and there were over three hundred. Alice suggested that I hide in the closet of the royal-a-day room until the ship leaves, and then spring out and fell the gentleman with my beauty.”

“I don’t think you need to do that.”

“She was very pleased to learn that you were living in the Palatine Suite.”

“You may tell her that since I’m already thoroughly smitten, it won’t be necessary for you to hide in my closet.”

“That was the word she used!” Louisa said in delight.

“Closet? If I’m not mistaken it’s the normal word for the facility.”

“No. ‘Smitten.’ She said the gentleman would be smitten with my obvious charms.”

“Well, I should hope so. Or should I? Listen—this Alice—do you tell her everything?”

“Tony!I don’t tell her anything. Not anything real.”

They had stopped by a dice table. They were not at the rail themselves, but stood behind the immediate players observing the course of the action.

Villiers said, “What else did the guidebook say? More specifically, how many landing ports is Star Well supposed to have?”

“Two. I do remember that.”

“Hmm. That’s what I thought I remembered. But I don’t know how old the book is. Look, I want you to do something. I don’t want to ask the question myself. Approach one of the employees and ask him how many landing ports there are. Innocently, casually.”

“But I’m only fifteen,” Louisa said. “If I’m alone, they’ll put me out.”

Villiers raised his eyebrows. “It’s a shame to speak in terms of tests, but I do believe that you suggested a partnership. How good are you?”

Louisa was not the type to point out the implicit unfairness in the challenge. Villiers too easily assumed all rights including washroom privileges for himself, and applicant status for Louisa, while, in fact, it would be Louisa who would be leading Villiers into new byways, and Villiers the neophyte. But she didn’t object. She didn’t even actually feel grounds for objection.

“All right,” she said. She turned away and fumbled in her privy kit. She made some adjustments to herself and then turned back again. The change was startling. This girl who hadn’t been able to wear Alice’s “stylish” clothes because they were too old for her now appeared slightly out of key in her own dress. She was trying too hard to hold on to a freshness of youth that was no longer hers.

“Better?”

“I’m extremely impressed.”

Villiers wandered while Louisa went in search of a Star Well uniform. In a few minutes she was standing beside him again.

“Two,” she said quietly.

“Well, that’s it, then. They must be smuggling. And it’s reasonable here. There are at least three ports in Star Well. I’ve seen a third.”

Villiers sketched the previous morning’s escapade in an undertone. “It seems that there must be an opportunity there for …” He paused.

“For us?”

“For something. I thought that Adams might be an investigator, but I’m not so sure now.”

“Because he isn’t bright?’

“At least because he isn’t competent and experienced enough to handle a job like this by himself. If he’s an investigator, then he must be assisting someone else. But I haven’t seen anyone here I thought he could be working for. I’ll have to think where the advantage lies, too.”

Louisa asked, “Isn’t this the same man you pointed out with Maybelle and Henry?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve seen him with somebody who could be his boss. Just before you came over and spoke this afternoon, he was talking to the Mithraist priest who was on our ship.”

“Was he?” Villiers’ eyes lit.

“Yes, and I never believed he was really a priest anyway. I thought he was just pretending to be one to get a reduction in fare.”

“You’re sure he isn’t a priest?”

“No, but I don’tthink he is.”

“I respect your judgment. I barely remember seeing the man, but I know who he’s with tonight. I’ll see what can be found out.”

“I know who he’s with, too,” Louisa said positively.

“You do?”

“He just walked in with the alien he was always talking with on theOrion .”

Villiers turned to see Torve the Trog in company with a short, fat priest in crimson. They were obviously wending their way between the tables toward Villiers and Louisa. A favorable line of occurrence, indeed, but that was Torve for you: a nexus.

“I believe they intend to join us,” Villiers said quietly.

Torve stopped in front of them. “Is Villiers,” he said.

Villiers gestured. “Your servant, sir. Anthony Villiers. This is Miss Louisa Parini. Louisa, my friend Torve.” He looked inquiringly at Srb, who introduced himself.

“We traveled in the same ship,” Louisa said as she allowed her hand to be taken.

“You did seem familiar,” Srb said. “One of the young ladies on their way to school, I collect. You seem somewhat older tonight, however.”

“It may be the hour,” Villiers said. “Or the harshness of the light.”

“Most probably. I saw so little of my fellow passengers, however, that I would be ill put to describe any of them. The passenger cabin was surprisingly empty. I was puzzled enough to ask the captain if there were sickness aboard, but he said the passengers simply seemed reclusive.”

Torve had been growing increasingly restive through the polite round, in contrast to his patience in the waiting room.

“I think I go to read now,” he said flatly. “Most interesting book you have, Tony,Seven Sentient Races Biology . I think I will read that.”

Villiers said, “Have you finished Rainbird?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Most interesting, too, but unconvincing.” He turned abruptly and walked away.

Srb cleared his throat. “I’ve enjoyed talking with him, and I think I like him, but I must say that I do not understand him. Does he often act in this manner?”

“Oh, yes,” said Villiers. “In truth, he is very punctilious, sir, but he is ruled by other conventions than ours and I don’t understand them myself.”

“Pardon me,” said Srb, “but you did say that your name was Villiers, did you not? The name is familiar to me.”

Villiers smiled. “It’s a familiar name. We are a widespread family.”

“No, sir, I have the acquaintance of Mr. Walter Villiers on Controlled Berkshire.”

“In that case, I’m delighted to know you, Seigneur Srb. A great pleasure. I can own Mr. Walter Villiers no more than the most distant of cousins, but by reputation he is an undeserved credit to the rest of us. Will you do Miss Parini and me the signal honor of granting us your company for the evening?”

Louisa was following the conversation with great interest, at the same time remaining an inconspicuous presence. Until Alice had raised the point, she had not been aware of the contrast between Villiers in private and Villiers in public, and since she was rather more familiar with the private Villiers, she was finding his public person fascinating. She was interested, too, in Srb, who, as she observed him more closely, seemed less and less the priest he was supposed to be and more and more the gross master of a corps of secret investigators. Her imagination invested him with greater intelligence, cunning, energy, and malevolence than strict evidence allowed, but then her natural sympathies were not inclined toward investigators, even Inspector Generals.

Srb made a courtly salaam and said, “My dear young sir, the pleasure is mine.”

Villiers said, “We were engaged in looking over the various games. Miss Parini is a stranger to the casino and I had it in mind to explain some of the principles before she ventured to wager.”

“Most delightful,” said Srb. “I’m unfamiliar with gaming myself. Shall we say, then, that you have two students?”

“I would have thought you a gaming man.”

Srb coughed. “An occasional game of raffles with my housekeeper. Five minims a game, a minim for odd points. It can run into several thalers in an evening.”

“You’re not unblooded then,” Villiers said and ushered them forward.

Srb said, “A most interesting creature, Torve. On the journey from Morian we discussed theology at some length.”

Villiers blinked. “Theology? I’m sure Torve knows nothing about theology.”

“But they did,” Louisa said. “I heard them.”

“He explained to me several times a traditional myth of recreation. Bizarre, but most interesting.”

“This is most interesting. Ah, could you summarize this myth?”

“Well, let me see.” Srb did his best to reconstruct Torve’s explanation of wholeness and nothingness and their interrelation. After a moment, Villiers stopped him.

“Excuse me, sir, but that’s not theology.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Do you recollect the book that I asked him if he had finished? That was a popular presentation of the cosmological theories of V. H. Rainbird—The Seventeenth Universe. What you have just described is Rainbird’s account of the movement through the universal amnion of the metagalaxy.”

“Good heavens. Are you serious?”

Villiers nodded.

“You mean to say that while I was talking theology, he was talking physics?”

“Yes. Apparently so.”

“Hmmm. It seemed to make sense at the time. You’ve given me considerable food for thought, I’m afraid.”

Louisa said, “Oh, these are pretty machines. What do they do?”

There were several high tables containing banks of the machines. A one, two, or five thaler token activated the machine, which then smiled invitingly. There were twenty-five keys and twenty-five lights, and random connections between them. For your token, you were allowed to depress five keys. The machine paid off in varying amounts for color and pattern combinations. No intelligence was required to play; only the ability to put a coin in a slot and drop a hand blindly onto a keyboard.

Villiers said, “In theory, these are gambling games. In practice, they’re money-eating machines. Would you care to try one?”

“All right,” said Louisa.

Villiers handed her a two thaler token and waved to a machine. She stepped forward and was about to insert the coin in the two thaler slot when a kindly-looking old lady elbowed her aside.

“My machine, if you please.” She automatically inserted a coin, slammed the keyboard, and without waiting for the results moved back to the machine at her right. Three green lights showed, and two coins dropped into the cup. By that time, however, she was two machines away. When she worked her way back again, she mechanically scooped the coins from the cup without looking to see the number and dropped one back into the slot.

“It doesn’t seem much like fun,” Louisa said.

“Let’s ask,” Villiers said. “Excuse me, madam. Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Be quiet, boy,” she said without turning her head. “I’m busy. Find your own machine.”

Villiers waved Louisa to another machine. Her initial attraction to the machine had evaporated, but she went to it anyway.

While she deliberated over the keys, punching them one by one to get the maximum for her money, Srb said, “Do I take it that you are not particularly fond of gaming yourself?”

“Not of machine gambling, whatever the machine. These machines return thirty per cent of the money bet in them. I rather prefer games where my relative ability to judge odds and make a proper play decides the issue.”

Srb looked carefully at him. “It seems that you are an elitist, sir.”

“An interesting observation. If I follow your meaning, an egalitarian might prefer to trust the even-handed justice of the machines?”

Srb brought out a pipe. “Do you have any objections if I smoke?”

“None,” said Villiers. “Louisa?”

She looked up from the keyboard. Her last key yet remained to be punched. “Please go ahead. You know, I see why they punch it all at once. It’s a terrible decision to make.”

Srb tamped his pipe. “I think most pleasantly in metaphors,” he said, “and smoking brings metaphors to mind.”

Louisa punched the final key. The machine blinked and then made its own internal decision. Frozen randomly were two cold green lights, and one each of blue, red and amber. No money fell.

Louisa turned. “Is that all?”

“That’s all,” Villiers said.

The persistent strain of a simple melody that he could not identify ran over and over through Derek Godwin’s mind.

He was floating slightly, knowing, numbering and naming all the mysteries of existence, feeling in control, feeling dangerous. It was time to move down to the floor but he didn’t go. He looked down through the one-way glass to the gambling tables below and savored the heightened feeling that comes before God-time. The power was within him.

He turned and inspected himself in his office mirror, the tune an obligato over his thoughts. He put a hand to his throat, played with the order of his cuffs, sniffed to clear his nasal passages, and turned to see that his drapeau (Farid Elegante) was exactly as it should be. As he patted his curdler beneath his coat, he smiled at himself and turned his head to increase the resemblance he saw in his right profile to Ian Steele. He smoothed two errant hairs in his mustache. Yes, definitely Ian Steele.

Some people are compulsively late, some compulsively early. Godwin, by his toilet training, was compelled to be early, but he never let himself arrive until precisely the proper moment. The anxiety he felt as a result added to the electric power inside him waiting to be discharged. The feeling was good. The feeling was pure. He was a self-wielded instrument of destruction, holding his power back.

He turned to the door and as he went through he hummed the tune his mind had trapped. The name of it was still lost, so he put it back inside his head to play silently.

He came down the stairs from his office, the noise from the gambling floor swelling. He paused at the bottom of the stairs. His eye found Shirabi, found Levi Gonigle, found Anthony Villiers. And then Godwin stepped out onto the floor.

A formal excuse for the discharge of power was all that was lacking. Godwin saw it as no problem, however. The excuses were roadways and he knew every access route—he’d traveled them all. Given any A, Godwin knew the B that led inevitably where he wanted to go.

He worked his way around the floor. Eventually he was standing fifteen feet behind an unsuspecting Villiers, who stood speaking to a Mithraist priest and a nondescript girl. He almost felt sorry for Villiers.

Then Godwin stepped forward. Villiers was saying in a voice that was low, but scarcely inaudible: “No, the override controls aren’t worked by the croupier. I think it’s the man in buff at the end of the table.”

Godwin was close enough to hear this. He smiled the briefest of smiles, and then he said loudly, “Is it your contention, sir, that the gambling here is less than honest?”

Villiers turned. He looked Godwin up and he looked Godwin down, as though somehow to fathom his intentions. Then, in even, calm tones, he said, “You know that it is, sir. You know that the gambling here is less than honest, and you know that it is my contention.”

The duel took place in the Star Well dueling gallery, a long narrow room overlooked by comfortable seating on both sides. Louisa saw neither the room nor the duel, however.

News of the coming duel spread quickly. Some people left the casino immediately to get choice seats, and through them word passed out to a little world that Wu and Fabricant, good judges of these matters, had rightly found lacking in diversions. Godwin walked confidently through the hall in his patrician Sunday best. Villiers quietly asked Srb if he would act for him. Between and around were gamblers from the casino. Louisa recognized the old lady from the machines.

Louisa was quietly and genuinely frightened. She had no idea whether Villiers was. He was being quiet and formal, and certainly betrayed no fear of this large, gaudy, and insistently murderous man. But she was frightened for him. The best thing she could think to do was not inflict her fear upon him. To be there but not obtrusively. If he were to look at her, she would smile as best she could.

As they passed from the casino, however, they were intercepted by Mrs. Bogue. She hurried up, and then used her elbows neatly and knowledgeably to clear her way.

“Mr. Villiers, I thought better of you. You let Louisa go into the gambling casino.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I did.”

“Do you care to try to justify yourself?”

“At this juncture, madam, I doubt my ability.” Villiers spoke evenly, perhaps tautly. “I hope you will pardon me if I say my thoughts are not in order and my immediate presence is commanded elsewhere.”

He turned away, and Louisa said, “Oh, Tony. Be careful!”

He swung around. “I’ll try my best,” he said, and smiled.

She smiled, too, a smile that broke when it was no longer seen.

“Come, Louisa,” Mrs. Bogue said, seizing her firmly by the arm. “If Miss McBurney knew where you had been!”

“He may be killed.”

“If Mr. Villiers is killed, so much the worse for him. I’ve no objections if these men want to duel, but if they die they shouldn’t complain about it afterwards. They made the choice, after all. Now come along. This is no place for you. And what is that you have all over your face? Take it off this instant. Louisa Parini, I don’t know you! I thought you were more sensible than the rest of the lot.”

Louisa, reduced from being jaded to being a young girl again, let her face be scrubbed, but her head turned as soon as it was freed to look soberly at the people still trailing out of the casino.

When they reached Louisa’s room, Mrs. Bogue opened the door. At the sound, Alice popped out of the dressing room. She was ready for bed and had been busy cleaning her teeth.

“Oh, hey …” she began, and then stopped as she saw Mrs. Bogue with Louisa.

Mrs. Bogue pointed back at the dressing room. “Finish, Alice, and then straight to bed.”

Alice disappeared.

Mrs. Bogue looked at Louisa. “I’ll thank you to return my sister’s pin, which I made the mistake of lending you.”

She turned while Louisa was reaching up to unpin the silver brooch. She crossed to the service and rang.

A freckled young man in uniform appeared. “Do you know who I am?” Mrs. Bogue asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“My name is Selma Bogue and I am in charge of the girls in this room and the rooms adjoining. You may check this in your records of accommodations. I want no calls going either in or out of this room.”

Alice reentered the room and crossed to her bed, studiously minding her own business all the while. Only when she was safely covered could you see her ears prick.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the Accommodations Clerk.

“Please note that this is to continue in effect until I notify you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Would you like to have some leather sent up?”

“I beg your pardon, young man?”

“It’s just one of the services of Star Well, ma’am. We have a wide variety of instruments available for the use of people of discrimination such as yourself.”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t need them. And no calls in or out.”

She rang off and turned. She took the brooch from Louisa and said, “This is not the end of the matter, Miss Parini. I’ll think of appropriate action.” She crossed to the door. “I’ll be in to check on you in ten minutes. Be in bed.”

She left and locked the door behind her. There was a moment of silence, Alice lying as before, back to the door, Louisa standing exactly where she had been since she entered.

Then Alice turned over, put her chin on her hands and rested on her elbows.

“Tell,” she said.

Imagine yourself in a duel:

You are going about your business—eating with friends, shall we say—talking, drinking, joking, a bit loud, perhaps, but doing no more than enjoying familiar pleasures in a familiar manner. The only thing that modifies your enjoyment is that you have to join another party at ten—your presence is expected, and this means a certain amount of travel, an interruption in the continuity of the evening. But it’s a minor point.

But then matters start to go awry. Henderson arrives with his boorish companion, Wold. Wold is red-faced, a bully, a man who enjoys picking at weakness, and he perceives weakness in you. Is it there? You are not sure yourself, but you resent his automatic assumption that it is, his joy using you as a ball to be kicked and bounced as he pleases. You resist. He drinks heavily. You counterattack as best you can, worrying all the time that you are making a fool of yourself. Then he takes exception and will not be mollified. He wants satisfaction.

Caught up in events you want no part of, you find yourself clearing an area. You cannot beg off. That would reveal you not as a man of senses, of mild temper, and of friendly mien; it would reveal you as a man of small sensibility, a coward, a man by self-admission no man. You appoint Kahane to act for you. You do your best to seem in control of the situation. Through it all, however, your most urgent feeling is one of being in the wrong place. You look at the clock and see that if the world were working as it ought now you would be leaving, should be leaving, for your other party. Could you say so? No.

You look at Wold. His face is glistening and he is smiling. He has killed before. You know he is enjoying himself as he drinks. Squat, hard-muscled, a man who affords the time and money to keep himself adept in his weapons.

The weapons are matched and found to be comparable enough to suit Kahane and Henderson. All must be fair, you know. Fair?

It all seems so slow. People swim incomprehensibly through the edges of your vision, bound on errands that make no sense. Do you see money change hands? You are not sure. You are offered a drink, and because your throat is dry, and because it is something to do, you take a glass of water.

But then, though time passes slowly, all is ready far too soon. Weapon in your hand—which of the many possible you are hardly certain—you face Wold across the room. The curdler—it is a curdler—is desperately heavy and solid in your hand. This isn’t where you ought to be. This isn’t what you ought to be doing. You want to tell somebody so, but you tighten your lips instead and concentrate.

When the words are spoken, you lift the curdler, seeing Wold doing the same, but faster, more surely. You point and pull. There is a damp, black explosion in your chest and your mind wobbles. You try to concentrate, try to concentrate, try to concentrate. Even on one thing: standing. But you find that you cannot. As the blackness becomes an expanding cloud and your knees give way, you wonder if your party will miss you. Will anybody care at all?

Duels fair? They’re a carte blanche for a man with a talent who enjoys indulging it.

Or are they? Is there not even a possibility that sweat would blind Wold, that your hastily aimed shot would throw Wold’s curdler aside, that you might be the instrument of a higher justice than you know? A possibility? Grant it.

“No lights,” said Louisa. She slipped out of bed and went across the warm fuzz of the floor on hands and knees.

“But what are you going todo ?” Alice whispered.

It had been a slow half-hour since Mrs. Bogue had checked the girls. The time had been passed in a darkness punctuated by exchanged whispers.

“I’ve got to know what happened,” Louisa said. “And we left thingsunsettled between us.” She was sitting tailor-fashion in the closet opening off the left in the dressing room, and she leaned back to speak. She was fumbling in her bags.

“Oh,” said Alice, “you mean he was interested.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Well!” Then she said, “What do I tell Mrs. Bogue if she comes to check?”

“You don’t know anything. You were asleep.”

Alice leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. Nobody said anything for a moment and there were only a variety of rustlings and the sound of a bag being closed.

“How are you going to open the door?” she asked at last.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Louisa said, her voice submerged in the dress she was climbing into. “My brother, the one in the Navy, showed me how to open doors.”

This was less than total candidness. The door, in fact, was a complicated one to breach, but Louisa was able to open it quickly enough that the ordinary observer would not have thought it locked at all. If you are able to pass that sort of thing off as a common skill learned on a rainy afternoon from an older brother, you are either very good or have considerable acting talent. Louisa was good.

“She wouldn’t believe me, anyway,” Alice said.

“Who?”

Alice bounced out of bed and crossed to the dressing room. “Mrs. Bogue. She wouldn’t believe me, anyway. I might as well have the fun, too. I’m coming with you.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Louisa said. “Please do come.”

They cracked the door on an open hall, were through it and had it locked again behind them in an instant and were around the corner. As soon as they found the time and the place to do it, they looked to their appearances, and soon were two young ladies enjoying a stroll of an evening, nicely-behaved, well-appointed, and all they ought to be.

Louisa led as best she could. Keeping a sharp eye out, she got them as far as the casino, but after that she hardly knew the way. She hadn’t gotten that far before and she had to make a blind stab.

It was odd. Perhaps because things had been out of her hands, she had felt only moderately anxious while in the company of Mrs. Bogue and in her room. Now, however, she felt a cold apprehension.

She had lost Villiers somehow. Her fear was peculiar. It was not so much that he was dead as it was that she would never find him again.

The halls began to take on a nightmarish quality. They led nowhere final, but simply led on. She and Alice were playing hide-and-go-seek in a labyrinth. Somewhere were warmth and color and people, but not here. She was cold—there were goosepimples on her arm. Everything seemed faded around her. The few people she saw were distant and their voices muted.

“Where are we going?” Alice asked.

“I’m going to ask this man,” Louisa said.

She stopped the old gentleman. “Excuse me, sir. We’re looking for the dueling gallery. Could you direct us?”

He stood only feet away, but he was distant and his voice was muted in her ears by more than his Imperial moustache.

“Certainly,” he said. “It’s not far. But aren’t you girls a little young for dueling galleries?”

“Please, sir. There was a duel tonight. A friend was challenged and I have to know if he is all right.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go in if I were you. I’d wait outside. Too rough. Walk back with me and I’ll direct you.”

They followed his directions and shortly arrived at the dueling gallery. To no real surprise of Louisa’s, there was no one outside and no noise within.

“Is this the right place?” Alice asked, looking about. “Where is everybody?”

“I don’t know,” Louisa said. “It’s probably all over.”

She was certain that it was, that it was beyond her power to hurt or help. There were stairs at either hand that led up to the galleries, and directly in front of them the brown doors to the main floor half rolled back. It was dark within. Louisa stepped forward between the doors and raised her hand to bring on the lights. They came up slowly. The narrow floor was bare and gleaming marble. There were more stairs from the floor to the galleries.

Louisa didn’t know what she expected to see. There was no public announcement posted. There was no telltale pool of blood. There was only a long, bare cold room.

“We could go back to the casino,” Alice said. “People there ought to know.”

“No,” Louisa said.

“Why not? It’s reasonable.”

“I don’t want to find out that way. Let’s go to his rooms.”

“Oh, great!” Alice said.

Louisa’s feeling of strange anxiety continued as they made their way through the halls again. As though to accentuate it, they encountered no one. She almost wanted to call to everyone to come out of hiding, but then she was afraid of what would happen if she did. She wanted to run, or cry, or claw at the wall. Above all, she wished desperately she knew that key word that spoken would make the world run right again. And in the meantime, she continued to walk as steadily as she could.

To Alice, this excursion was so far no more than an excuse for vicarious pleasure. She was stepping along happily beside Louisa, her mind filled with romantic thoughts.

If Villiers was alive, it was up to them to find him. If he were in public, public reunions are dramatic. If he were in private, private reunions are poignant. The idea of a sexual liaison between Villiers and Louisa still held her, uncertain though she was in her heart of hearts that Louisa was made of the stuff of successful mistresses. And reunions, either poignant or dramatic, along with self-concealment in appropriate closets, are the stuff on which successful fantastic passions are founded.

On the other hand, if Villiers were not alive, it was still in order to find him as efficiently as possible. Once found, his dead (or even better, dying) body was the perfect platform from which any young lady of proper sensibility could express her grief in terms and tones to inform the most unfeeling and insensate listener with an appreciation of her emotion. And once dead, well, beautiful things could be done in a school like Miss McBurney’s with an aptly handled unhappy past. She was realist enough to know that.

Alice only hoped that Louisa would make the most of her absolutely terrific chances. If she failed now, in this hour of perfect possibility, a strain would be put on the friendship for Alice, and she wouldn’t like that.

The results of what we do are hidden to us. We act as best we can and hope that what will happen is for the better rather than the worse. But we can never know beforehand.

The apparently simple—say, the ingestion of acetylsalicylic acid (C9H8O4) that was common between the vogues for phrenology and manarveling—may have unforeseen consequences: several centuries of cumulated genetic damage that requires several further centuries to repair.

The apparently complex series of interconnections when flipped and viewed from a new angle may in fact have a single key linkage. Touch it and the Chinese puzzle falls apart.

The apparently frightening and hopeless situation may turn out to have a candy-cream interior. That has been the main premise of the happy ending since the return of Ulysses.

But all you do see in fact is the simple end of a headache, the myriad interlocked pieces of a puzzle whose key cannot be found, or the frightening and hopeless.

Perhaps, if our minds were trained to accept the idea and our language permitted, it would be altogether better not to believe in causality. Perhaps lines of occurrence in which events are not caused but occur of their own volition would be more satisfactory. This might salve the hurt presently resulting either from failure or success in perceiving the results of our actions.

If Louisa had not believed in causality, she would not have been blaming herself. First, was there anything to be blamed for? Louisa couldn’t know, but nonetheless, such was her feeling of anxiety, it seemed to her that there ought to be. Otherwise, why should she feel blameworthy? Second, where was her fault? Dig deep enough and you’ll find one. Villiers wouldn’t have been in the casino if not to please her, and he would not have been saying things that could be taken so personally by Godwin. Both of these, of course, were untrue, but both were good enough for Louisa. She blamed herself.

She stood in front of the entryway to the Palatine Suite, Alice hanging a little behind her. Then she stepped forward and sounded the door, taking a pace back when she heard the ring inside.

After a moment there was a heavy trudge toward the door, there was a click while she was surveyed, and then the door slid open. Torve the Trog stood there, fur brushed and looking ruggish, eyes a luminous blue in the light, holding a book in his splayed fingers. If you had asked him and he could have put it neatly and intelligibly, Torve’s view of what had transpired was this: the bell had a life-line stretching from coincidental creation to the moment its component atoms separated themselves at the name of an anonymous urge, and stretched along this line were a number of random rings. One of these had existed at a point slightly prior to one of a number of occasions that his life-line had taken him over to open the door. No involvement at all—merely the close approach of two lines of occurrence.

“Hello. Is girl from casino, Miss Parini, and female friend from the shipOrion .”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Torve.” Now that she was here, Louisa didn’t feel able to rip away into the subject. Tentatively, she asked, “Um, is Mr. Villiers here?”

Behind her, Alice felt ashamed. Not half what it ought to be. Louisa was just too young, she supposed.

“I have not seen him since we were together in casino.”

“But he was in a duel. He was in a duel and I wasn’t there. He may he dead.” Abruptly, Louisa burst into shocked tears.

Alice thought more highly of her then, though a faint would have been better.

Torve folded her against his fur. “He is not dead. I am sure of that. I would know instmently.”

Louisa was soothed by his warmth of manner and warmth of fur. Imagine yourself being cuddled by a giant softly furry brown toad—appealing, isn’t it? It turned her tears into occasional racking sobs, and the sobs into a quiet sniff.

“We must act,” Torve said. “We are to go separate ways in determination. They may have taken him to cellars. Secret places.”

“Oh, I know about that,” she said. “He told me.”

“Is good. You go there. Look for him as best you can. In meantime, I will rouse help and search in higher places.”

Silently, Louisa nodded.

“Go,” said Torve. “Go well.”

Louisa took Alice by the arm and turned. The door slid shut behind them. Torve opened his book, fingered through the pages, and then stopped when he had found his place. Reading, he crossed the room, found a warm spot on the floor that he particularly favored, and lowered himself in stages into his folded sitting position. He established himself comfortably inside his book.

“Thurb,” he went. “Thurb, thurb.”

Some distance away, on their course to the basements, the girls remained in an uncertain world in which Villiers might be either alive or dead. Their lines of occurrence and his had momentarily neared and then separated again, but never touched.

Soberly, Alice said, “I thought he was ugly. I mean I thought that when we were on the ship. But he’s not.”

“Oh, no,” said Louisa. “He’s understanding. He made me feel comfortable.”

In fact, the edge of her anxiety was gone, and she no longer felt either blamed or blameable. She was still worried, but she also had the feeling that abler hands than hers had things in charge.

After a few minutes of walking, Alice said, “What are we looking for?”

“I’m not certain exactly,” Louisa said.

She began to tell Alice a suitably edited version of the thriller that Villiers had told her. Alice was caught by every word. This was so much better than the little romance and duel that had previously occupied the stage. But she was also frightened for the first time.

“It should be somewhere below us. Mr. Villiers was going to his rooms when he became lost.”

They were in a stairwell, proceeding downward. “How are you going to tell when you reach the right floor?” Alice asked.

Louisa was opening the door on each floor as she reached it.

“I don’t know. When it feels right,” she said. “Then if I’m wrong, we’ll try again.”

“Maybe you should have let the creature explore down here whilewe went for help,” Alice said slowly.

Louisa let the door close and went down the next flight. She tried the door.

“This is promising,” she said.

“What?”

“Well, it’s locked.”

Louisa set to work on the door. In a moment she had it open.

“You said your brother is in the Navy?” Alice asked. “He must he all right. I’ve always liked uniforms.”

“Come on,” Louisa said.

They were in a corridor like other corridors. Its color was a functional light blue. The lights that came up in recognition of their presence were dim, and revealed the blue only as gray. They walked tentatively, the lights behind fading as they passed, the lights ahead springing to pale life like well-trained clusters of fireflies painstakingly taught the pleasures of unity.

“I don’t think there’s anything down here,” Alice said. “I don’t see anything.”

“Hush a moment.”

“I don’t hear anything, either.”

“Hush.”

They made themselves soft and absorbent and lurked to catch any sound unwary enough to present itself.

“Nothing,” reported Alice at last, not sure whether it was preferable that there be something or that there be nothing. Nothing, she decided firmly and finally.

“Well, I thought I did hear something,” Louisa said. “It was just for a moment there at the beginning.”

“Well, what sort of noise was it?”

Louisa looked at the larger girl and tried to decide. “Maybe footfalls,” she said, at last.

“Well, that might have been …”

Alice stopped, trying to think what it could have been or what it could have been instead of that, and couldn’t think of anything better or anything worse. Louisa looked at her, waiting, and then shook her head slightly and set out again. Alice followed after.

Shirabi was well aware of this. He did not own Star Well. He managed it for other men, who were themselves rather large managers of illicit traffic.

But did he have proper help? No.

He had employees enough. Two hundred and thirty-six of them. But first, over two hundred of those were contract labor and contract labor cannot be trusted. It either isn’t bright enough or it isn’t stupid enough. If it is stupid enough, it can’t be used for very much—and crime can be demanding. If it is bright enough, it knows Rule J, that contract labor is legally responsible for the effect of the orders it obeys.

Part of the trouble was that the wages of sin are poor. The big men, the Zvegintsovs, quite rightly want to keep as much of what they make as they can. They don’t share it readily.

Then, too, many young men are personally ambitious. The long, slow road uphill has no attraction. They go into small business for themselves.

Finally, Star Well was simply not an attractive duty station unless you were at least a submanager. People were bored here. Shirabi had, in fact, been assigned four extra hands, but they somehow hadn’t gotten around to turning up. Deliberately ducking, he was sure.

So that left him how many active henchmen? Fourteen. That’s all. Twelve of them were scheduled in the casino in three shifts. If there was anything else, a ship to load with thumbs, for instance, help at extra pay had to come from the off-duty shifts. He hated to think of how much sleep he’d lost, how many evenings he’d had to postpone pruning, how much of the actualwork he’d done.

This point is included for clarity. It wouldn’t be fair to have you imagine a band surrounding Louisa and Alice, a horde to be met by the sturdy minions of Empire, an army ranked behind Hisan Bashir Shirabi. This is a small story. Outside is a vast Empire set in a vaster universe. Billions delve and spin, fight and love. Storms and wars shake whole planets and are never noticed. Nonetheless, here money, love and life hang in the balance; important enough things, I think you will agree, without the necessity for overstatement.

Derek Godwin looked at the filled seats on either side of the marble dueling floor. The number of witnesses pleased him. They would see him doing what he did best. The tune was still running through his mind and he concentrated on that while he waited. He was ready. Only the weapons and Villiers were not.

The choice of weapons had been up to Villiers, and he had made an infelicitous choice for himself—tinglers and knives.

Of all his weapons, Godwin loved his tingler best. If he resembled Ian Steele at all, it was when he held a tingler.

Tinglers are tapering wands, brown or black. A brown practice tingler delivers a flowering shock. A good stroke leaves a welt that persists for a week. Well-used, a practice tingler can knock an opponent unconscious. A black dueling tingler destroys nerves with its touch. A shrewd stroke demands surgical repair. A dueling tingler, well-used, can kill.

And Godwin had no objections to using a knife. He was a left-handed man at heart, and knives are left-handed weapons. They distract, if distractions are needed. They parry, if parries are called for. And they cut, if a throat should be misguided enough to present itself.

Godwin’s second, a fat young man named Harvey Chapeldaine, had helped him out of his coat and drapeau. These had been laid aside along with Godwin’s curdler.

Villiers had also taken his coat off, but he was not ready. He was asking for a ribbon to tie his hair back out of his eyes. Godwin sniffed. His hair was held back at all times by ornamental pins.

No one presented a ribbon immediately. Then a lady in the gallery bent, tore a strip of blue cloth free and threw it down. There was applause and Villiers bowed before tying his hair.

Chapeldaine and Srb met with Shirabi. Shirabi offered a box of knives. These were matched, tested for balance, tested for edge, and two were chosen. Then Shirabi held out two black tinglers. They were a fair match. He switched them both on to show they operated satisfactorily and then switched them off and handed them to the seconds. They returned with them to the principals.

“Here, Mr. Godwin,” Chapeldaine said.

Godwin took the knife first. He tested it in his left hand, feeling the heft, and then with Villiers at the end of his eye, he made a slice through the air.

Then he accepted the tingler, did an arm exercise with it and found it satisfactory. He turned it on, brought it a millimeter too close to Chapeldaine and then turned it off.

The dueling master was not Shirabi. He would have doubted his ability to bring it off, and in his doubting insured his own failure. Perhaps in a leafy glade, but not here. The master was named Bledsoe. He had been the first to present credentials. Shirabi liked the air of the professional, and took him on. Godwin, too, liked having a professional dueling master overseeing things. It improved the occasion.

Bledsoe stepped forward. He was middle-aged, grave, sure, a trace too thin-lipped to be likable. He waved for the principals. He had no flash, but rather the air of a Talmudic scholar.

Chapeldaine said, “Good luck, Mr. Godwin.”

Godwin didn’t answer, but stepped forward feeling the bounce in his stride and appreciating the electric thrill of anticipation. The weight of his weapons was good. The footing was good. The crowd was good. The dueling master was good. And the opponent was just fine. Villiers didn’t look altogether inept: he showed no nervousness, he didn’t drop his weapons, and he was fit. But he was small and his reach was short. He could be held at arm’s length and picked to pieces. Best was that he was due to have his balloon pricked and Godwin relished the idea of doing the pricking.

Bledsoe said, “Is there any possibility of resolving your differences amicably?”

Villiers raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Godwin said, “Let’s get on.”

“All right, gentlemen.” Was there a faint ironic tinge? “The field is yours.”

In this contest there was no canvas border, no stopping for a step out of bounds, no prettiness. In effect, after a fair beginning, nothing would interfere with the satisfaction of the quarrel.

Villiers stepped forward lightly and cautiously and their wands rapped. Godwin had thought to overbear him at the beginning but on impulse decided to be more cautious. There was no cost to himself. His mind hummed his tune as he and Villiers felt each other out.

There was a brief tentative passage, a minor challenge, the beginning of a well-trained response, a block and disengagement. To the observers it was a disappointing tap, tap, tap. To Godwin and Villiers it was important and revealing.

Godwin checked with another obscure opening statement. Villiers replied promptly and properly. Godwin knew then. Villiers was sound. Caution had properly been in order, damn it.

Godwin used his weight and reach to back Villiers down the length of the floor. Step by step they moved. Toy mechanicals, they rapped and clashed their way along the room under the eyes of the hungry spectators.

Then, with a suddenness that astonished Godwin, Villiers counterattacked. He had more strength than one would have guessed, and first by means of fury of attack and then by momentum he forced Godwin to retreat all the way back to the center of the room. It was nice work, but Godwin had himself well-covered, and at the center of the room they broke off and stepped back to consider each other.

“Very nice, Mr. Villiers,” Godwin said, and brought his tingler up again.

Villiers merely nodded.

Godwin was certain of himself, however. In work at close range, Villiers was good enough that Godwin might be hurt, but as long as Villiers was held away he could be played with, picked at, and disposed of.

The spectators were caught by the duel. It was turning out to be no simple slaughter, no easily decided victory. Where Godwin had had their immediate backing, if not their sympathy, now many were starting to change their allegiance to Villiers. Godwin heard some calls of support and hated those who called for their fickleness, their lack of confidence in him.

Godwin moved again to the attack. He feinted with the knife, little used to this point, brought his wand into play and then tried a serious slash with his knife that missed. The miss was only by an inch and Villiers showed greater respect for the knife thereafter.

Then came the turning point. Passages are composed of questions asked and answered, improvisations on themes, the matching of common knowledge to build a bizarre duet. In the pure world of art, accidents, miscalculations, and desperate wildness are mars. In the painful world of reality, they may decide clearly what art cannot.

Godwin went in too low, came up a hair too fast, and was parried. But Villiers did not parry as sharply as he might have. He was the merest bit off-balance. Godwin turned his disengagement into a sideswipe at a hand out of place. It was nothing that could have been counted upon. The opening was an accident. The ploy was a harmless essay: nothing lost, the slightest of chances for gain.

But his wand tipped Villiers’ left hand. Villiers’ hand opened and he dropped the knife. The knife bounced on the floor and struck Villiers on the boot. Without looking he kicked it aside.

But his hand had been touched and he was missing an important weapon. His defense was that much less complete, and his offense was like a flying squirrel in stunt flying competition with a bird, good as far as it went, but lacking versatility. Godwin knew then that Villiers’ life was his—the only question was when he was to touch the balloon. He made no decision. Enjoying himself was the paramount requirement.

The crowd, too, knew that Villiers was in trouble. As the knife fell, they sat the straighter and breathed the harder.

Godwin took Villiers step by step back down the hall again. All the way this time. All the way to the end. Threat, threat answered. Threat, threat answered. Threat, threat answered. But every time Villiers responded, he was forced to give ground. His hand was apparently giving him trouble, too. He was shaking it.

The end of the hall marked the end of the possible. Godwin would not be forced back from it again. Villiers would stay here until he failed to answer a threat or left an opening, and that would be it. Between here and the end of the hall.

The fight, except for Godwin’s single comment, had been empty of conversation. Only a Cyrano fights and talks at the same time; most men lack both the lungs and the wit to compose as they fight, and as they conclude, thrust home.

Constant background rising and falling in volume. Slap and squeak of feet on floor. Clack and ring of weapons. Breaths, light and heavy. Above all, the one smell that Godwin loved and hated most, the smell of sweat.

He held Villiers at the end of his tingler, used his knife discretely, and then there was that final opening. Villiers was moving in with an attack, an act of desperation, and it was caught, of course. And there he was, open for themot juste as he stepped back. Godwin delivered the perfect wand stroke, the ultimate criticism of Villiers. And in that instant he knew the title of the song in his mind.

The stroke did not connect. In a frisson-filled flash Godwin saw that he had made a mistake. Villiers was not moving back. He was moving forward, inside the stroke and past Godwin, and as he passed, with supreme delicacy he brought his tingler down across Godwin’s chest. Duels aren’t fair if the wrong people win them.

It was as though his chest were no longer part of him. It was a wooden block being chopped by an axman. Chips and splinters. And pain, too, but detached. He knew there was pain, but he didn’t feel it. He couldn’t think clearly. He thought about thinking, and felt afraid.

He wasn’t sure where he was. Hewas , and he was somewhere, but he couldn’t have said whether he was standing, sitting, or lying. He existed in a limbo where voices were, but where there was no sense in sound. There were colors moving in random kaleidoscopic patterns, but there was no coherence to them. Light hurt his eyes, and he wanted to ask for it to be turned down, but he couldn’t manage that.

Then there was a face in front of him, so close that against his will he had to recognize it. It was Shirabi.

He summoned himself and managed to say, “Wrong man.”

Shirabi said something in return, but the sound was fuzzy in his ears and he could make no sense of it. It seemed too much effort to try. But in that last moment of clear thought, he had known something he could no longer quite grasp. It seemed important that he should recapture it, however. Desperately, he tried. Words formed themselves in his mind and he struggled to articulate them.

“I’m a little teapot,” he said at last, smiled, filled his pants, and died.

Flights of white-winged angels, their faces radiant, settled down about him and gently lifted him. He was not at all the least of God’s creatures, and they loved and respected him. They accepted him. And they carried him away in company to an altogether better world than any he had ever known. This last, of course, was unwitnessed by those others in the dueling hall who had the misfortune to still exist on a less exalted plane.

Murder. It was murder of the foulest sort. That Shirabi got away with it was extreme luck.

He opened the box of knives for the inspection of Srb and Chapeldaine. There was no danger in the knives. They were their own sharply discreet selves. However, for practice, just to see if he could do it, he forced single knives from an entire rack on the seconds.

Any practitioner of card tricks knows how to make someone take a particular card from the whole of fifty-two. It is nothing so crude as sticking one card a half-inch out from the others in a fan. In effect, forcing means that you hand over a card and convince the subject that he has made a choice, much like a one-party election. The trick, actually, is not so much to hand the card over as it is to keep the person from wondering about it afterwards.

They both reached into the box at the same time and their hands brushed. They immediately withdrew their hands. There was the briefest of pauses, what might be called a questioning silence.

Then Chapeldaine said, “After you, Padre.”

Srb dipped into the box and took knife the first. He stepped back and Chapeldaine took Shirabi’s second choice. It was done that neatly, and all that you saw was two men selecting knives. That was all they themselves saw. But they were explicitly given the knives they took. When and how did it happen? It can’t be explained; that would spoil one of the last bits of magic in the world. It happened, and it is very simple if you know what to do.

Shirabi turned then, closing the box, and set it in its place in the bottom of the weapons rack. With his back to the seconds, he looked over the racks of weapons.

“Tinglers were the other weapon?” he asked. He knew quite well that they were, of course.

“Yes,” Chapeldaine said.

Shirabi turned with tinglers in his hand. This was the important moment, the important test of his skill. One of the tinglers he held was a genuine weapon. The other, just as black, just as deadly looking, was only a practice wand. The worst it could deliver was an electric jolt. He had to put the first of these in the hands of Srb and the second in the hands of Chapeldaine at that moment in the proceedings when they both decided that the weapons they were holding were those they wished to keep.

He did it. He put them in their hands and took them away again. This demonstrated his impartial right to do such things. He switched them on and off. He moved them around. Each man got a touch apiece at both weapons, and then the tinglers were in their hands and they were on their way back to their principals.

Ask either Srb or Chapeldaine. Both would have declared themselves satisfied that they had examined both weapons in detail and made perfect free choice of the tinglers they held. Now Srb was whatever Srb was, and Chapeldaine was no fool. It is indeed unhappy that someone as able as Shirabi could be was also so limited in his ability to meet people. He wasgood .

Shirabi moved back and seated himself on the bench edge of the weapons rack. Bledsoe, the sober, saturnine man he had agreed to let run things, stepped forward and called for Godwin and Villiers.

Shirabi followed the course of the duel with heartfelt interest. The movement down the length of the hall found him wondering if he had made a mistake in what he had done. If Godwin was so good that Villiers was immediately overwhelmed, and Godwin attempted a finishing stroke and found he had none, then matters would become embarrassing.

But there had been the entry for Anthony Villiers deep in the volume of Martin and Morrison that he had taken from Godwin’s quarters, so deeply buried that it could have been easily overlooked. The description, as much as there was, could be this Anthony Villiers. But was it the same at this distance? And if it was, all it proved was that the manmight have the training to deal with Godwin. And on that slim a chance, he had acted.

He didn’t want Godwin to live. He couldn’t work with him, he couldn’t work over him. Godwin was an offense in his eye. Godwin had ruined what he loved most and then acted as though nothing had happened. He wanted Godwin dead.

Shirabi smiled when the fight returned from the end of the hall. Ha!

He gasped and feared when Villiers’ hand was nicked. The knife dropped and that was as should be, but would anyone notice the difference? Could Godwin win? He did have a knife to kill with.

Back Villiers went toward the end of the hall. It seemed that he would be trapped there, and unable to retreat, would be systematically stripped to pieces. The crowd hushed, watching, waiting for the right moment to fill the hall with a roar of heat. If only Villiers knew that he had nothing to fear from Godwin’s tingler, could allow himself to receive a blow for the chance to deal one!

And then the crowd did roar. Villiers came in and past Godwin and Godwin was dropping both tingler and knife, was going to his knees. The stroke itself was hidden from Shirabi and most of the onlookers, but there was no doubt. Godwin was finished. The duel was ended.

But then suddenly Levi Gonigle charged over the rail and down on the floor. He gave an inarticulate, bull-throated call. He seized Villiers from behind and crudely tried to break his neck. Villiers desperately tried to switch his tingler back on so he could remove the horrifying black presence that was bending and breaking him.

Shirabi had been moving toward the duelists. With Levi’s arrival, he broke into a run. He couldn’t allow Villiers to be killed here. If he was the entry in Martin and Morrison, he wasn’t an investigator and Star Well was in excellent shape. If Levi killed him, all that would be ruined.

He swept the tingler from the hands that were still struggling to turn it on. He put his hands on Levi’s shoulder and pulled with all his weight. It was not an attempt to dissuade Levi. He was not that strong. It was a bid for attention.

He yelled to Levi as he was shaken loose and fell in a purple heap. He rose from the floor and pounded Levi in the ribs, yelling all the while.

“Let him go! This is Shirabi. Let him go, Levi!”

Eventually the noise and swatting penetrated Levi’s consciousness. He let Villiers fall to the floor. Villiers crawled away, gasping for breath, and was helped to his feet by Srb.

Levi said, “But he hurt Mr. Godwin.”

“I know,” said Shirabi. “But it was a fair fight.”

Levi slowly shook his head, his eyes filling with tears. “Mr. Shirabi, don’t youcare ?”

“Of course I care,” Shirabi said. “I’ll find a way to settle things. Now, Levi, this isn’t good for you to see. Go along you know where and I’ll have something important for you to do later.”

Reluctantly, Levi departed. A few in the crowd had spoken, but most were uninvolved with the remnants of their entertainment now that it was over, and the galleries were being emptied. Villiers was coughing, sitting by the wall, but seemed to be recovering himself. Now what was it that Shirabi had to do? Oh, yes, the weapons.

Bledsoe had Villiers’ tingler in his hand and was idly looking at it. Shirabi had to get it back, needed them both. He began collecting weapons, starting with Godwin’s knife. At the least sign from Bledsoe, he meant to be a walking weapons rack and have it from his hand.

There was a yap behind him and he turned to see that yattering fool, Ellis Phibbs. He barely knew enough to stagger out when the ships arrived and that was fine with Shirabi. But he also wanted to put his finger in every other public pie. He, like most, wanted to be wanted, and affairs like this gave him the opportunity regardless of the feelings of anyone else present.

“I heard there was a duel. I want to know about this. I have my duty to do. If the Navy wants to know about this one, somebody has to be able to tell them.”

Then, abruptly, he caught sight of Srb, and just as abruptly he broke off. Shirabi saw that in a shocked moment. Others were busy, though Bledsoe did look up at Phibbs’ arrival. Chapeldaine and the doctor were trying to prop Godwin up. Most of the crowd had already left or were jockeying for the doors. Villiers’ attention was distracted. But Shirabi saw.

Phibbs said in a lowered voice to Srb, “If you’re here, Mr. Srb, I suppose I’m not needed.”

Srb said, in even tones, “I’m one of the seconds in the affair. If you have a duty to do, you had better do it.”

Phibbs turned with the sense of the occasion just beginning to break in his mind. It was three stages of “Oh?, Oh,Oh. ” Then, officiousness recovered, but transparently, he said, “Who was in charge here?”

Bledsoe was caught, but not by the meaning of things as Shirabi was. He was caught by the grating quality of Phibbs’ manner.

“Yes?” he said, and Shirabi snagged the tingler from his hands. “I was dueling master.”

The two began to talk. Shirabi quietly picked the weapons off the floor, the calm regular order of a day, and took them over to the racks. When he turned away again, there were two tinglers lying on the bench in front, one of them Villiers’, the other an exchange. Two tinglers, in perfect condition to destroy. He walked from there over to Godwin, an imminent fear within him.

The doctor said, “I can’t do anything for him. The best you can do is freeze him within the first minute of death. He can probably be brought back with proper facilities.”

Shirabi nodded and bent close to Godwin. Godwin recognized him.

With effort, he said, “Wrong man.”

Shirabi shot a look at Srb. “Yes. The wrong man.”

Godwin suddenly had a desperate look on his face. His heels kicked with the effort he made to speak. At last, he said, as though it had great significance, “I’m a little teapot.” And he died relieved.

“What was that?” the doctor asked.

“It’s a mystery to me,” Shirabi said. “Very strange.” Then he turned and waved. The cold cart was rolled onto the floor by two men in white and wheeled rapidly toward them.

“The last time we didn’t have a cold cart,” Shirabi said, “and the Navy investigated.”

The cart was opened with professional skill. There was a fluttering, a snowy flapping, and Godwin was totally covered. Then the two men bent, raised Godwin with tender care, and placed him within the cold haven of the cart. They closed the gates behind him, and bore him to his rest.

to cut and run. I was once told where it came from, but I don’t remember now. I do know that it makes sense to a man with a knife. It makes sense to a wallet-and-purse man. It makes sense to a cardplayer after a bad evening, and it makes sense to a sailor caught by an enemy forty-gunner with his anchor down. To all, it means prudence. Shirabi, being a sensible man, proposed to cut and run.

He sat in the secret basements of Star Well on a white cold cart. There was a large brown book open on his knees. He was thinking.

All around him were rows of white cold boxes identical to the cart he was sitting on but without the wheels. All were awaiting the arrival of the black freighter.

Star Well was the hub of the thumb-running traffic in the Rift. It was extremely profitable, both in money and in leverage. Politics were affected, and stock gaming, as well as the obvious market for arms, livers, and hair pieces.

But Star Well was only the center of traffic for this comparative moment. The owners knew that eventually it would be discovered and Star Well would have to be run straight for a time.

Shirabi had his orders for the first sign of trouble, his private orders. Cut and run.

After Godwin’s jealousy of Villiers had become apparent, after Martin and Morrison had served him another explanation for Villiers, Shirabi had not thought it likely that Villiers was anything like a secret investigator. That had left him free to use Villiers.

But just when the game was closing, up had popped Ellis D. Phibbs and a priest of Mithra who apparently was no priest of Mithra. If Shirabi was a rabbit, his employers had no objection to it, in fact were just as happy for it. Shirabi was a rabbit and he felt that this was the time to run.

Now he was waiting for the ship to arrive. He had every intention of putting the load of thumbs aboard and riding away, never to return to Star Well.

He was also waiting for his helpers to arrive, and he had Levi Gonigle out watching the halls to keep him out of trouble. He hopped down from the cart and closed the book in his hands. It was Martin and Morrison’sIndex .

He had cleaned his office, taking everything he wanted with him, everything he hadn’t wanted to leave behind. He had brought Godwin’s book with him for one last look. Now he didn’t know what to do with it. He looked around. It wouldn’t go with his own gear—he didn’t want it anymore. He couldn’t lay it on top of a cold box—shortly they would be carried out through an extendable corridor and into racks aboard the freighter. After a moment’s thought and hesitant gazing about, he opened the cold cart on which he had been sitting and looked down at the still features of Derek Godwin.

“You always wanted to be a gentleman,” Shirabi said, and laid it within Godwin’s folded arms. The field shocked Shirabi’s hands. It felt the way mint tastes.

It had seemed a shame to let Godwin go to waste. Shirabi certainly did not want him sent to advanced medical facilities and revived. Neither did he want him simply to spoil. It had seemed reasonable to have him wheeled below to join the bodies in transit.

Shirabi closed the cart again. “I never thought you were all that good.”

He did a drum beat with the flat of his hands on the top of the cold cart and waltzed around it, but his elation had no conviction behind it. The whole unpleasant appearance of Srb had taken the punch out of his evening,

You couldn’t miss it in Srb once you knew. He hadinvestigator tattooed over his eyebrows. As other professions radiated promises of money and sex and dangerous adventure, he promised rehabilitation and other unpleasantries.

Shirabi was caught by the opening of the warehouse door. He turned at the noise to see Levi Gonigle. He was holding a girl under each arm.

“I caught them, Mr. Shirabi. I caught them,” he said. “Can I have fun with them?”

Villiers had been accompanied to his quarters after the duel by Bledsoe, the sober dueling master. Srb had pleaded pressing affairs, Villiers had thanked him for the services he had rendered, and they had parted.

Villiers was ready to return to his quarters after the doctor had had a look at his hand. His clothes, partly because he had laid some aside in order to fight, partly because of the exertions he had been forced to, were in disarray. To be fit again for public company, he would certainly have to repair his appearance. More important, he was still feeling the sudden force of the attack which Levi Gonigle had launched upon him.

Bledsoe said something, in his reserved and somber way, about his appreciation of Villiers’ form, “now that he was free to speak,” and volunteered his company to Villiers, who felt in need, indeed, and did not hesitate to say so.

Bledsoe said gravely, “You came to my attention earlier in the evening, however, sir.”

Villiers, coat and drapeau over his arm, a bit shaky on his pins, but still presenting a tolerable presence, said, “Did I?”

“Yes. You did not see me, of course, but I sat at the next table while you were dining. I was frankly caught by the obvious friendliness between you and the young girl you were eating with.”

That sentence might be taken in several ways depending on tone and time and the person speaking. Bledsoe’s age, and sex, and dress, and manner ruled out a number of possibilities, and his tone ruled out several more, but even so, Villiers was not sure exactly what he meant or meant to imply.

Villiers looked casually at Bledsoe and said, “We are friendly,” in a neutral voice.

“I’m not sure you understand me,” Bledsoe said. “I was caught by thefriendliness . It is a pleasure to see the few people in the world who can be that comfortable with each other.”

Villiers nodded, listened, and occasionally said a word or two until they reached his suite. There he thanked Bledsoe for his attention, made his excuses, and went within. It would have been in order to invite Bledsoe inside for a few social moments, but in truth he did not rate Bledsoe’s company that highly and he had no genuine interest in any company until he felt a bit more himself. Bledsoe either understood or was willing to have it seem that he did, and went his way at a carefully chosen pace.

Torve the Trog was sitting on the floor reading and making his noises. His skin was one size too large for his frame. You didn’t notice that particularly when he was upright, but when he sat or lay it tended to fall into occasional rumpled folds. These might appear anywhere, but most often around his stuffed tummy.

Villiers said, “Has anything transpired within the period I have been absent? Within the time that you have been present, of course.”

Torve looked at him and said, “You are wheezy—I mean, weavy—in the head. Or do I mean wheezy? And transpired means that someone has died.”

Villiers sat down abruptly. “Somebody has died. I was in the damnedest duel that you ever saw. Fifteen minutes or so after you left, that fool Godwin stepped up and called me out. I’m not sure why. He may have thought me overclose, but I didn’t think I was stepping that hard.”

“Why! Why! Is no matter why,” said Torve. “Thing happened, is all. What is important iswhat happened.”

Villiers slowly told the whole story, and Torve nodded throughout.

When he was done, Torve said, “As I said—what is important iswhat happened. Couldn’t be better, I’m sure.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certainly. And how is your hand?”

“Better than it ought to be. I don’t think the nerves were killed. It’s very odd.” He stood up. “I think I’d better let Louisa know that I’m all right. She might be worrying, since she was dragged off.”

He went to the service and tried to place the call. The call was refused, of course, on the orders of Mrs. Bogue. “Oh, well,” he said. He stretched and winced. “I’d better put myself back in order again.”

“Is good idea” said Torve. “The imperative of time is that you go to the basement tonight. You should be feeling good to be up late.”

Villiers shook his head. “I’m not going to the basements tonight. At worst, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow, I’ll think what to do with the leverage we have. I had an idea while I was dueling, but then I dropped my knife and lost the idea and haven’t tracked it down again.”

Torve said, “Always you know ‘why,’ whatever ‘why’ is. I know the imperative of time.” He scratched his belly slowly and significantly. “In here I know. You go to the basement tonight. That is your line of occurrence.”

Try to argue with that.

Srb was a red flower in front of the service, a scarlet blossom in a heavy chair.

“No answer?” he said.

“I am sorry, sir, but Mr. Adams does not answer.”

Srb thanked him and switched off. He lit his pipe and tried to think of an appropriate metaphor.

Villiers, rejuvenated—the rejuvenation facilities in royal-a-day rooms being excellent—appeared half-dressed in the door.

“Could you straighten the hang?”

Torve reached a hand up from the floor and bemusedly straightened the hang.

“Did I hear somebody out here a minute or two ago?” Villiers asked.

“Was nothing,” Torve said. “Was mistake.” Was in fact the girls on their way to the basements.

There was a ring at the door. Villiers raised his eyebrows and started for the door. He stopped just short to make his adjustments. The bell rang insistently again as he reached for the plate that would open the door.

Mrs. Bogue looked up as the door slid back. She was a woman who obviously liked to keep herself in order. Hair and clothes were uniform surfaces. Her hair was gray and she had done nothing to change that.

Firmly, she said, “Stand back, Mr. Villiers.” Villiers stepped back a pace and ushered her within. “All right,” she said, looking around the room. “Produce them, please.”

“I beg your pardon,” Villiers said, turning away from the door.

“Produce them, please.”

“Thurb,” said Torve, and Mrs. Bogue’s startled head swiveled about.

“What is he doing here?” she demanded. “Mr. Villiers, it seems that I judged you very, very mistakenly. Sick associations with filthy animals! I may have failed now and then in my duties, but I want it said to my credit that all the time we were penned together in that miserable little ship I kept my girls from having anything to do withthat .”

She pointed a forefinger at Torve.

“We, I may be plain to say, are not Mithraists. Oh, I hope you aren’t a Mithraist, too.”

“No, madam, that is not one of my failings.”

“Well, I want my girls produced, and I want them now. I would have them stay here no longer than is absolutely necessary.”

“Which girls?” Villiers asked quietly.

Torve continued to read, throbbing from time to time. He took no real notice of Mrs. Bogue and her artistic displeasures, and showed no interest in the conversation.

“Louisa and Alice, of course. They know no one else. They are not anywhere else. Therefore, they are here”

“They are not here,” Villiers said. “Please, will you tell me when you saw them last?”

“I may be the person who saw them most recently,” a voice said.

All those who have involved themselves in amateur detective work will be quick to tell you of their reliance on open doors, conveniently overheard conversations and passing strangers with vital information for the solution of their problems. In this case, Bledsoe, the dueling master, was standing in the doorway.

Villiers raised his eyebrows. He was a master of the eyebrow. “Where did you see them?”

“They were entering a stairwell. Bound for the basements, I would say.”

“What does that mean?” Mrs. Bogue asked.

Villiers said, “You overheard quite a bit at dinner, didn’t you?”

“Curiosity is one of my failings, though Mithraism may not be. In a word, yes, though I think this was a topic of conversation in the casino, not at dinner.”

“You’re right. It was,” Villiers said.

“Can you handle things yourself, or shall you need help?” Bledsoe asked.

“Are you offering your services?”

“Goodness, no,” said Bledsoe. “I’m no man of action. I was just curious.”

The girls were placed on their feet in front of Shirabi. The taller one had a distinctly unhappy look, and she was shivering.

Shirabi looked at her and said, “I feel cold myself.”

The other girl, the brown-looking one, said firmly, “We were lost.”

Shirabi shook his head. “I don’t believe you. I accept your presence as an added burden, but I don’t believe that you were lost. Who are you involved with? Srb? Villiers?”

“Nobody!” said the tall one.

“Don’t try to tell me stories,” Shirabi said. “I’ll let Levi have his fun with you.”

Levi brightened.

“Levi, go out and guard the halls again,” Shirabi said. “Go on.”

Reluctantly, Levi allowed himself to be put outside like a puppy put in the cellar. The same stiffening of the legs. The same reproach in a simple face. The same backward glances.

Shirabi followed him to the door. When he turned, the little hen said, “We were trying to find out what happened to Mr. Villiers.”

“Down here?”

“Please, sir,” said Alice. “It’s the truth.”

As said before, there were few occasions when Hisan Bashir Shirabi had been able to be totally rotten to people of higher station. When belligerence had been called for, he had been obsequious. When firmness had been called for, firmness had not been within him. When the necessary demands of the situation had been made, for blood, and agony, and total terror, he had been powerless to produce them. Except twice under humiliating circumstances. The shame was that they had been as humiliating for Shirabi as they had been for his subjects.

That was a terrible burden under which to live. Shirabi’s worries about his impotence had crippled him almost as badly as his central affliction itself. He had not been the man for Zvegintsov that his natural abilities and instincts should have made him.

He had been shunted from one minor post to another, and now was here where his failing was of small moment, where it did not matter if a manager could cut the mustard or not. And now he was ready to leave, his little era ended. The best he could expect was another station that was no more important than this and possibly would be less.

Look at him: Hisan Bashir Shirabi, a man near the end of the line. Purple robes, dark face, sharp nose, black mustache. Everything for total menace except the element of presence. An empty man, less than the Himself he could have been, with green-lit eyes, an aura of looming evil, and a fluttering and flashing about his shoulders.

But there are occasions when the soul is freed and like a great black bat flaps wildly toward the moon. The lost world below is dark and silent. All that exists is the madly striving heart beating, beating, beating.

A warmth filled his chest. His ears rang. He felt himself growing in size. The girls seemed to stand at an immense distance from him. No, no—they were dwarfs. That was all.

He pointed two fingers of his right hand. He knew lightning would split forth from them if he chose, but he did not choose.

“Do you want to know about Mr. Villiers,” he said in a low insistent voice. “Pieces. Ground. Minced. The fate of all. Chopped and sliced. Cubed and diced. Shaped in a ball. Beaten, eaten, but dead withal. Dead withal. Dead withal.”

Both girls began to cry, as well they might. Shirabi smiled and grew.

“You’re the next,” he said. “Do you know what these boxes contain?”

He threw one open before them and then another and then another. The girls moved close together at the sight of the bodies.

“Every box. Every single box. And I have two remaining. I’m leaving here tonight and with me will be you.”

It was amazing. It was exquisite. It was the striving heart rewarded. All the old bonds were suddenly gone. He was in this fantastic moment all that he had ever wanted to be, all that he had previously failed to be. Was it the death of Godwin, vanquished symbol of all that he feared and envied? Was it the sudden end of his obligations at Star Well? Was it the hour, the place, the situation, all forming that fertile moment in which he was able to pour out what previously had been so frustratingly dammed within him? We shall never know. All we can know is that the lonely heart seeks its sweet fulfillment.

“There, there, loves. You’re going to be thumbs. And legs, and toes, and arms, bones, veins, and nerves. You’re going to make somebody well again. Doesn’t that make you feelgood inside? Skins for the skinless. Shins for the shinless. Hearts for the heartless. Parts for the partless.

“Do you know what the greatest shortage in thumb-running is?Small body parts. I think they’ll look forward to you.”

He capered. He danced. He was an evil, flaming, purple presence. He moved around the girls, who were backed against the cold cart in which Godwin lay. Around and around he moved, his arms held high and his arms held low, and all the while he chanted his merry melodies. The girls held on to the awful white cart, held on to each other, and did their best to hold on to their reeling, tumbling senses. And from the door, Levi Gonigle watched through a crack with open eyes and slack mouth.

Srb answered the door at Villiers’ signal.

“Why, Mr. Villiers. I didn’t expect to see you again tonight.”

“Sieur Srb, I wonder if I might speak with you. I haven’t a great deal of time.”

“Come in, then.”

Srb closed the door and seated himself. Villiers remained standing. The room, he noted, had become invested with Srb’s personal flavor, a characteristic nutty, toasted odor reminiscent of childhood afternoons.

“Sieur Srb, I would like to strike a bargain with you. I am in temporary financial straits. I need passage for two to Yuten. You, on the other hand, are here to learn certain things. No, don’t pretend to look puzzled. We are both aware of who you are. Give me the use of Adams right now, and you can close down the smuggling here in a matter of minutes.”

Srb drew deliberately at his pipe. “All right,” he said. “Assuming we are talking of the same things, why right this minute? That might be difficult.”

It would be difficult, of course. Srb bad been unable to raise Adams since his return from the duel. It had been a bad slip for that fool Phibbs to make in public. Time was an important factor now, and Adams could not be raised.

“Because Miss Parini and another of the girls from her class are already poking around in the basements. They may alert Shirabi. Even if there is no harm in that, they may be in trouble. You saw that Godwin tried to kill me. The girls may be hurt. That’s why I want help now.”

“Let me understand things,” Srb said. “These two girls, in whom you have an interest, may be in trouble. You want them rescued. Besides this, you want passage for two to Yuten. That’s not one thing as I count. That’s two. In return, you propose to do your natural duty as an interested citizen of the Empire, and help to end an unfortunate illegal trade. That’s one thing. Two for one?”

Villiers said, “This is not a time for horse-trading. If you want a second, let me say that I think I can find Mr. Adams right now. Can you?”

Srb looked at him for a long silent moment while he thought. Hewas a horse trader, and he hated to swap so easily. But his position was not that strong. Think of Adams—not that strong at all.

“I’ll accept your point,” he said at last. “If you can find Mr. Adams, you can have him and your bargain.”

Villiers turned instantly for the door.

Srb said, “One thing, Mr. Villiers.

“Were you serious when you said we weren’t discussing theology?”

Will you admit that you have fears so breathtaking, so elemental, and so personal that you only allow them free run of your mind in the last hour of an October night?

Ca-lonk, a heavy distant door said reverberatingly to itself. A cold dusty echo. The girls, sitting close together at the base of the white cart in which Derek Godwin presently reposed, huddled and listened.

Shirabi had just turned away. His evil capering had been cut short by the arrival of a messenger. The freighter was approaching, and the overtime shift of second-dealers and double-shufflers from upstairs stood ready. His directions were required.

Shirabi looked down at the girls, who shrank before his gaze. “Back in a minute,” he said. “Mind my place.”

The girls pressed close together. They waited, afraid now that Shirabi had gone, but afraid also of his return.

Motor noises, smooth, cool, and regular. Echoes, the inarticulate memories of distant voices. They shivered, touched by the cold winds that lurked in these closed halls.

They were as totally afraid as it is possible to be—mark by that Shirabi’s growth in presence. If one was less afraid, it was Louisa, something of the practical jenny wren. She was afraid, but her mind was still working. Alice, on the other hand, was devoting all of her more sensitive nature to feeling terrified.

If the truth be known, Alice’s life thus far had left her unprepared for the realities of romance. There is asine qua non of romance she did not know: no weeping over corpses without true pain felt; no embrace by a lover without trials endured; no final rainbow without rain.

Alice, Alice, Alice was afraid. Alice was afraid. Alice was afraid.

Her heart throbbed so loudly that the hand clutched to her breast trembled. She became aware then of her own fear, and it was raised through awareness to a higher power.

The floor under her right hand was cool and dry. Louisa’s back, where it touched Alice’s arm and shoulder, was rigid. The cart was an uncomforting support to her right cheek.

Terror is a hot flood. Terror is probing rivulets. Terror is cold spoom drift.

She waited in frozen terror for Shirabi to return. Unrecognized tears wet her cheeks. She didn’t sob. She simply cried and knew not that she was crying.

A sudden icy creak drew her but her vision was blurred. She wiped her eyes desperately as heavy steps approached cautiously. When she could see, Levi loomed horribly above her.

He was soft, huge, gross, repellent. He was a wild idiot dressed in a uniform that proclaimed a nonexistent domestic nature.

“Want to have fun?” Levi asked with curious and heavy innocence.

She did not answer, but pressed closer to Louisa. He reached a slow hand toward her head, which she moved to avoid. The hand had the look of a whittled but unfinished block. The hand turned into a cypress knee which nudged her shoulder twice.

“Hey, want to have fun?” he asked.

Alice turned her face away and hid it in the crook of her arm. Her shoulder was seized and she was roughly flopped around and lifted by Levi’s right hand.

“Hey,” he said, and smiled. “Hurr-hurr.”

His teeth were the size of Alice’s fingertip. His tongue glistened and flopped loosely.

Her mind was spinning as he looked at her and panted. Her knees would not hold her upright. He was so hideous. It did not seem proper to her that this terrible moment should be the end of her maidenhood. She had had more ambitious plans.

He continued to hold her with his right hand. He reached out and touched her with his left forefinger.

“Fun,” he said.

Alice fainted. Consequently, she missed much of interest.

As he briskly walked, Villiers thought of knocking. Which is the most efficient order? Knock and try the door? Try the door alone? If locked, do you knock, or do you try to unlock it?

He decided finally on directness. When he found the proper door, he put hand straight to it, and to his great surprise it swung open on the instant.

“All right,” he said. “Where are you, Adams?”

Maybelle Lafferty sat upright in bed. Her long brown hair fell in a tangle over her bare shoulders.

“It’s my husband. It’s my husband. Oh, hide.” Villiers turned calmly and closed the door.

Adams, surprised, kicked wildly in the bedclothes. The sudden commotion and Maybelle’s imperative took him out of bed on the far side to land sprawling on the floor. Then the fact of Villiers’ presence and the sense of Maybelle’s ululations struck at the same moment. He scrambled to his feet and stood there, a single stock his only piece of apparel.

“What do you mean?” he demanded of Maybelle. “What are you doing here?” he demanded of Villiers. “What do you mean?” he demanded of Maybelle.

Maybelle didn’t answer. Her whole attention was devoted to her homage to Thespis. Her failures in talent and technique were more than compensated for by her beauty and enthusiasm.

“I’m here from General Srb,” Villiers said in a voice intended to penetrate. “Junior Lieutenant Adams, you are needed by the Empire.”

“But I don’t trust you,” said Adams. “How did General Srb know I was here? Tell me that.”

Villiers said, “You underestimate your superiors, son. I think you will find that Srb always knows everything. Now, look.”

Quickly, Villiers sketched the recognition signal he had been shown.

“I missed that,” Adams said when he was done. “Would you mind repeating it?”

Maybelle only now realized that something was amiss. It wasn’t Henry who had entered. It was Villiers, one day late. A frantic thought crossed her mind. By some incredible chance had she written, “Come urgently to my roomstomorrow night”? She looked at Adams in his single stocking and Villiers with his finger on his palm. Her mind was blank and there was total silence.

Then Henry was standing in the doorway. She felt relieved. All was in safe hands. She did not need to think. She went back to where she had been like a well-schooled girl.

“My husband!Both of you hide.”

Henry stepped within the unlocked room at exactly the moment he was due. It was a pleasure to him to see things going well for a change. The door was unlocked just as it should be. Directly in front of him was a well-dressed back.

He seized a shoulder, and said, “I have you, sir. You have been in private with my wife for more than twice the time it takes water to run from a broken jug. Explain yourself.”

Villiers shook free. “If you don’t mind.” He finished resketching the recognition signal. Then he looked over his shoulder and said, “I think Adams over there is the man you want to speak to. I’ve not been here quite so long as you say.”

Adams, recognizing the accuracy of the recognition signal on its repetition, stamped his bare foot and for the most part came to stiff attention. “Sir!”

Henry Maurice walked over to him, looked him up and down, and said, “I trust you can explain this.”

Adams kept his gaze directed above Maurice’s head to Villiers.

Villiers said, “General Srb and I are working in concert together here. You’re needed, Adams—now. Get dressed.”

“Sir!” Adams said, and turned for his pants.

Henry followed him and said, “I hope you can explain.”

Adams shook his head as he put on his pants. “I can’t explain.”

“Well, what do you mean to do?”

“I’m going with Mr. Villiers over there. We’re needed.”

“Just make yourself functional, Mr. Adams,” Villiers said. “You don’t need to be decorative.”

Henry turned to Maybelle. “Do you know what is going on here? What is Villiers doing?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said. “He just walked in here a few minutes ago. He hasn’t spoken to me.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Lafferty,” Villiers said. “It was inexcusable. How are you this evening? It’s pleasant to see you again.”

He did his duty as Adams drew on his first boot. Maybelle received the gesture and inclined as gracefully as one possibly could while lying flat in bed. Very prettily.

Henry turned to Villiers as Adams drew on his second boot. “What doyou propose to do about this intolerable situation?”

“Me? Why nothing at all, sir. Adams, are you ready?”

“Sir! I’m ready!”

“Come along, then. Good day, Miss Lafferty. Mr. Maurice.”

He turned to the door and Adams hurried across the room after him. Pants, boots, shirt, but no coat. Gun in hand.

“Good,” said Villiers. “You’ll need that.”

Levi Gonigle looked curiously at the girl hanging so limply from his hand. Had he shaken too hard? He didn’t think so. He didn’t remember doing it.

He prodded her several times, but she seemed to have lost interest. She was asleep. It was a very odd thing for her to do.

She didn’t seem to be of any use, so he put her down and she lolled back against the cart. He poked the other one.

“How about you? Do you want to play?”

Levi reached into his pocket and pulled out a closed hand. He opened it to show in the center a red ball and a glomp of silver metal.

“See.” He scattered the jackstones across the top of the closed cold cart. He bounced the ball over Godwin’s hidden nose and made a sweep at the jacks.

If Louisa had been in a mood to play, it would have been a most unfair game. Elevenses was a cinch for him. The only thing to keep him from walking away with championship after championship was some minor difficulty in ball handling.

“Ah, there you are, Levi,” Mr. Shirabi said.

Levi hurriedly stuffed the ball and jacks away. Mr. Shirabi didn’t understand some things that were fun. Other than that, he was a nice man to work for.

“We need two more boxes,” Mr. Shirabi said. He pointed.

Levi trotted over and picked up one. The boxes were large. The boxes were heavy. Usually it took two men to pick one up and carry it, but Levi could manage one by himself. He brought it back to where Mr. Shirabi was standing, and set it down.

Mr. Shirabi nodded, and straightened the cold box so that it was in line with all the others. “Bring me the dark girl,” he said. “Gently.”

Levi changed direction from the other cold box to the girls. He looked at them closely and thought the one who was asleep was darker. But he didn’t want to make a mistake.

“This one?” he asked.

Mr. Shirabi said, “Yes.”

Remembering to be gentle, Levi carefully lifted the girl and bore her to the open box. He laid her gingerly within.

“That’s right,” Mr. Shirabi said. “Don’t bruise the merchandise.”

There was a click and a hum and then Mr. Shirabi closed the box. The other girl was on her feet and she was backing away.

“Get the other box, Levi,” Mr. Shirabi said.

Levi went for the box.

“Don’t try to run,” Mr. Shirabi said. “There isn’t any point to it. But if you really feel you must, go ahead.”

She started to dodge one way around the cart, and Mr. Shirabi matched her. Back, and he matched her again.

“You see?” he said.

Levi set the second box down. Mr. Shirabi straightenened it and put it in line with the others, keeping his eyes on the girl, frozen behind the cart.

“Oh, is that how you wanted it?” Levi said. He was standing where he wouldn’t be in the way. He didn’t like to be in the way. People would say, “Levi, you’re in the way,” and then he didn’t feel good, so he tried not to be in the way.

“Come on, now,” Mr. Shirabi said, opening the box. “Climb inside.”

“I’ve heard about those boxes,” the girl said. “Sometimes they can’t get you to wake up from them.”

“That’s true,” Mr. Shirabi said, “but that’s just the chance you take when you climb inside one. Come on, now.”

The girl stood taut and looked at them. Levi put his hand in his pocket while he was waiting and fingered his ball.

At last the girl’s resolve wilted. She trudged over and put a hand on Mr. Shirabi’s shoulder and stepped into the box. Then she lay down and Mr. Shirabi reached for the switch.

“Goodbye, thumb,” he said.

The giant doors at the end of the warehouse began to move upward to allow the grasshopper clearance. When the doorway was clear, the grasshopper moved fluidly forward, bent, slid arms under the first cold boxes and lifted. Levi watched in fascination. He liked to see machines operate.

Villiers moved along with complete surety, Adams a half-step behind. Adams caught up.

“Mr. Villiers, you seem to know Mr. Srb better than I do,” he said confidentially. “What sort of man does he seem to you?”

“Firm, but fair,” Villiers said. “Yes, I’d say firm, but fair. A mature man. Quiet, confident, deeper than he appears.”

“Oh,” said Adams. “You see, I don’t know quite what to make of him. He smokes, you know. They expelled three senior cadets while I was in the Academy for smoking.”

“You haven’t been commissioned long, have you, Mr. Adams?”

“Well, Sir, a year and a half.”

“Try not to worry about it now,” Villiers said. “Concentrate on being alert.”

“Yes, sir,” Adams said. “And I want to thank you for coming for me when you did. That was very embarrassing. Imagine, they were married. She must have told me several fibs.”

Villiers nodded.

“But I don’t think she was bad basically,” Adams said.

“Shh,” said Villiers.

Just ahead in the hall was someone Villiers recognized. It was Josiah, the Flambeau table operator. The marks of Levi’s hands were still on him. He recognized Villiers and Adams and turned quickly away.

“Let’s have him,” Villiers said.

Before Josiah could dodge away, Villiers had him by one arm and Adams had him by the other. It was just as well that Adams was there because Josiah was considerably larger than Villiers and no doubt could easily have overpowered him and escaped. No doubt.

“What does he know?” Adams asked.

“Yeah, what do I know?” Josiah said.

“This gentleman is part of the crooked gambling here—I have no doubt he can guide us directly to the basements.”

“The basements?” Josiah asked.

“What is this crooked gambling?” Adams asked. “The gambling here isn’t crooked, is it?”

“The third landing port,” Villiers said. “We want the smuggling operation.”

“Oh,” said Josiah.

“What do you mean by crooked gambling, sir?”

“Did you expect a man you suspect of heartier villainies to run an honest gaming house?” Villiers asked. “Josiah was cheating you systematically.”

“Well, is that so?” Adams asked. His grip on Josiah’s arm increased substantially in force and he touched the warm tip of Josiah’s nose with the cold tip of his gun. “You’d better show us the way.”

Josiah looked at Villiers with sensible blue eyes. “It’s not that I’m craven, you understand. But if you’re going to close things down, I suppose I’d better help you. Usual terms?”

“Usual terms,” Villiers said.

“What does that mean?” Adams asked.

“It would only distress you, I’m afraid,” Villiers said. “Perhaps it would be better not to know.”

Shirabi closed the box over the second girl and rose. He was pleased by his new personal force, strong enough to dominate already-terrified little girls. He rubbed his hands together and then flexed them. He admired the blue tracings on the backs. They seemed to him an elegant corruption, like the veins in blue cheese.

The grasshopper deposited its second armload of boxes within the hold of the freighter. It poised like a father who means to let his baby son stand alone, and then reached out an inevitable steadying arm. Then it slid back on its rails into the warehouse.

The operator swung the front around briskly on its central pivot wheel. He brought the arms down.

“Over here. These boxes.” The operator, Achdut Haavoda, responded to the new authority in Shirabi’s voice. “Aw, shit, Shirabi. Let me do it my way.”

Shirabi said, “I want these boxes aboard next.” He pointed to the boxes at his feet, the ones containing the bodies of Alice Tutuila and Louisa Parini.

Haavoda shrugged, brought the grasshopper around, and made the indicated boxes part of his next armload. It meant refiguring his entire stacking order, but Shirabi didn’t care anything about that.

Shirabi folded his hands over his stomach as he watched this load of boxes safely within the hold. It gave him a solemn satisfaction, the glow of a newly-blooded hunter who knows that today’s pigeons stand for elephants tomorrow.

Levi was still watching the grasshopper with lips agape. He was toying with something in his pocket.

“Go to the door and watch,” Shirabi told him.

“What?”

“Go to the door. And watch.”

Shirabi got behind the cold cart in which Godwin reposed and began to push it. It started slowly, but once he had momentum going he found it easy to guide it parallel to the grasshopper track. The grasshopper was picking up another load and swinging around to follow behind him.

Ned Hornygold, the blond young captain of the freighter, stood in the extensor and looked at Shirabi coming his way pushing a white cart.

“What is it you mean to do, Shirabi?”

“It’s another body. I mean to have it aboard.”

The cart should have had another pair of hands guiding it. As Shirabi brought it up to where the captain stood, the left wheel dropped into the grasshopper track, the cart top lurching at an angle. Shirabi pushed forward and instead of bringing the wheel out of the track, the force wedged it in place.

“I’m stuck,” he said.

Hornygold waved frantically at the grasshopper. “Stop there. Hey, stop.”

“Little accident,” Shirabi said, and shrugged apologetically.

Hornygold put his hands on the bar beside Shirabi’s. “Push or pull?”

“Let’s try push.”

They tried push.

“Maybe we’d better try pull.”

They tried pull.

Of the four men at work in the hold, two were Shirabi’s. They broke off work and came over to watch the extraction proceedings. Hornygold went down on his belly to look at the wheel.

Shirabi said, “Come on out here and lend a hand.”

Hornygold said, “It’s snagged. It’s going to have to be lifted up. How the hell did you do it, Shirabi?”

Shirabi’s man wiped sweat from his forehead and said, “Get Levi on it. He’s the boy for the heavy stuff.”

Shirabi turned. Haavoda was lounging at the controls of his machine. Shirabi waved and called for Levi.

Levi came in response to his master’s voice.

“Levi. This cart is stuck. It won’t go inside. The wheel is caught. The cart has to be lifted. Can you do it?”

“Oh, gee, sure.”

He put his two hands to the end of the cart. He bent, strained, lifted, and the end of the cart came free.

“Very good, Levi,” Shirabi said.

Suddenly, Haavoda, from his vantage point on the seat of the grasshopper, yelled, “It’s Josiah. And he’s got that Villiers with him. And another guy.”

“They’re onto us,” Shirabi said. “Levi, it’s Mr. Godwin in that cart! You don’t want him left behind. Get him inside the ship.”

His voice had a beautiful ringing quality to it. It inspired Levi with a full appreciation of his chance to do something for Mr. Godwin. He pushed with his strength at the rear of the cart and ran the wheel back into the grasshopper track. Puzzled, he pushed harder.

“Rafi, Mapai, get on it,” Shirabi said, and his two men moved to join Levi. There was confusion of effort, and the cart went nowhere.

Hornygold backed toward the door of the hold. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to fight?” Shirabi asked, pulling Godwin’s curdler out and brandishing it.

“No,” said Hornygold.

“On second thought, I believe I’ll join you,” Shirabi said. He thrust the gun at Levi. “It’s the man who killed Mr. Godwin, Levi. Point the gun at him and pull the trigger.”

He and Hornygold ducked into the hold of the ship and turned right for the control room. Hornygold’s two crewmen were on their heels.

Villiers ran low though the warehouse, Adams at his right hand, Josiah behind them and even lower. The warehouse was a high rock-ceilinged cavern. There were huge open doors at the far end and beyond them a clutter of men and machines at the hold of a ship in cradle.

A man at the controls of a grasshopper saw them, called and then jumped down and made a dash for the warehouse doors. He found the controls and started the doors down.

Josiah yelled, “Achdut Haavoda! Stop! Mapai, Rafi! It’s the Navy. Take terms.”

The doors continued inexorably downward with all deliberate gravity. Villiers increased his speed, leaving the other two behind him. He hit the ground, rolled under the doors, thereby doing twice the damage of Henry’s roll under the bed, with half the regret, and on one knee put his gun on Haavoda. Adams hit the ground and rolled too late. He bounced off the bottom of the door with an unhappy thump.

Haavoda looked at the curdler in Villiers’ hand and very sensibly—he was no fighting man; he was a machine operator (two varieties)—said, “Terms.”

“Terms,” said Villiers, and immediately turned his attention to the other men. If you wonder how he dared, well, if somebody says, “Terms,” and then doesn’t quit, nobody will play with him anymore. Both Villiers and Haavoda knew this.

There was a thump, the might of intention behind it, on the other side of the warehouse doors. They rang absentmindedly.

There was a final flicker of motion in the hold. Three men had their backs and shoulders to a cold cart in the last few feet of the extensor. The central one of the three was Levi Gonigle, holding in his two hands a gun that he was still trying to trace the origin and meaning of.

If somebody says, “Terms,” and then doesn’t quit, he may roam as he likes for the rest of his life, and all will turn away as he passes. The people will point and say, “He said ‘Terms,’ and then he didn’t quit. He’s a cheat. Don’t have nothing to do with him.” His only company will be rascals of his own stripe. It’s silly, I will be ready to agree—but then it’s no more silly than any other common convention.

“Terms,” said Mapai stepping to one side. “Terms,” said Rafi, stepping to the other side.

“Terms,” said Villiers.

Behind him there was news of an arrival. Adams’ voice said with boyish firmness, “All right, you, there. I’ve got you.”

“I’ve already agreed to terms,” Haavoda apologized.

But Levi didn’t say “Terms,” and step to the side. He didn’t know you could do that. Levi continued to hold the gun in his right hand. With the heel of that right hand and his left hand on the bar of the cart, he put his shoulders against the metal and lifted. He went, “Uhhh-uh,” and the wheel was free.

A bell rang twice inside the hold of the ship. The hold doors gave a warning click and began to slide shut.

Levi didn’t hear. He concentrated on getting the cart that held Mr. Godwin within the ship. He pushed hard to save Mr. Godwin.

The doors came smartly against the sides of the cart as it rolled forward, and held it tightly. It wouldn’t move.

Levi didn’t know what was happening. Too much information for him to handle was flooding over him—carts that wouldn’t go, ringing bells, shouts, people moving. Like a statesman faced with complexity, he turned to the simplest solution, which is to say, violence. He pointed the curdler in his hand and fired.

Haavoda was struck. He cried out in shock and then curled into a crying ball on the floor. Did Levi intend that?

Mapai, at Levi’s left, hit the floor. He covered his red head with his hands and didn’t look up. Rafi, at Levi’s right, continued to stand. But he said in the most irritated of voices, “Dammit, Levi. Don’t be stupid.”

Villiers fired. Adams fired. Levi fell to the floor, the curdler popping from his hand as it slapped against the rock. Poor Levi—he understood consequences no better than Torve the Trog and lacked Torve’s alternative. And he was dead—whatever that means in this era.

Villiers and Adams ran forward toward the ship. They dodged past the body. Mapai and Rafi stood well out of their way. They went to ground on the left side of the cart, Villiers in front, Adams just behind.

“What now, sir?” he asked. “Isn’t that all?”

“No. I saw some of them inside the ship.”

“Oh,” Adams said. “Well, I guess we’ll have to dig them out.”

Villiers said, “The control room should be up there.” He gestured with his right thumb.

Adams said, “Respectfully, sir. One of us has to go forward. I’d like to volunteer.”

Villiers allowed Adams full room to pop through the hole under the cart. “Right you are. It’s your profession.”

“And maybe my promotion,” Adams said, and went knees, belly, and then elbows through the hole.

He left Villiers with a greater impression of possibility than he ever had before. Villiers gave him a fair count to be out of the way inside, and then went under the cart himself.

He pushed through and found himself short of the lee of a cold box. He wriggled and ducked into shelter. Then he brought his head up gingerly.

Through two hatchways and some intervening clutter, he saw parts of Adams going under cover in the control room. He heard the hair-pricking sound of curdler fire.

Adams called back, “They’re not up here. Somebody’s shooting at me outside in the corridor, though.”

“Nobody’s in the ship?”

“No, sir.”

Villiers rose, looked for a local switch for the hold doors, found one, and tripped it. The doors began to open. He put hands on the end of the cart, pushed, pushed, pushed it free, retripped the doors and turned away. The doors came to a stop, bells rang gravely, and then the doors began to close again.

Villiers said, “If you don’t want to be shot, close the doors up there.”

The doors behind him banged together.

“Yes, sir,” said Adams. He kept his head down and duck-walked around the control room. After some moments he found his switch and closed the door. And they were alone inside the closed ship.

Villiers brushed himself off, his clothes disordered for the second time in the evening. He looked around at the contents of the hold. When Adams appeared at the control room door, Villiers was turning away.

Adams said slowly, “Sir? I’ve been thinking. Haven’t we trapped ourselves? They’ve all escaped. If we try to get out, all they have to do is wait by the doors.”

“On the contrary,” Villiers said, “we’ve won.”

“But, no, sir. We’re trapped.”

“Mr. Adams, do I understand you to believe that we are trappedhere ?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Adams,here is a spaceship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Star Well is a piece of rock. We are a spaceship. We are on the outside. We are the universe. They are inside, and we have them surrounded.”

“Oh,” said Adams. “Yes, sir.”

Villiers smiled. “You did well, Mr. Adams. Mr. Srb is lucky to have you.”

And as we know, Srb was lucky. If Srb hadn’t had an assistant with enough initiative to prowl about on his own, Shirabi and his thumbs might well have slipped off into the universal night. Luck was what made Srb so successful an Inspector General. Sitting under that apple tree waiting for that top apple to drop. As it always did.

Adams was looking pale. “Did I do well, Mr. Villiers? I shot a man.”

Villiers held his hand out, palm down. There was a barely perceptible tremble.

“See?” he said. “Don’t worry. You did do well. All right?”

Adams nodded his head.

Villiers said, “By the way, Mr. Adams. Now that we are alone, would you favor me with the answer to a question of dress that has been puzzling me?”

“Certainly, sir,” Adams said.

An hour later, with the bonds to Star Well cut and the ship in orbit around the rock, Villiers was sitting in the control room watching Adams trace linkages. This was Adams’ area of competence. On background, he had been able to operate the ship. Now, model manual in hand, he was trying to understand it.

Villiers rose. Adams didn’t notice him leave the control room. There were cold boxes in racks in the hold, and two abandoned on the floor. On impulse, Villiers knelt down beside the one he had used for cover on entering the ship and opened it. A cold box cover served two purposes. One was protection from the box’s field, which was strong enough to disconcert, and the other was esthetics. Most cold box cases were unattractive for any of several reasons. Villiers kept his fingers well back and the healthy-looking body within did not disturb him.

Louisa had been correct in having reservations about climbing inside a box. Some five per cent of the people put in cold boxes were simply not revivable—no matter, of course, to a thumb-runner, who never intended to revivify. At one time, a full ten per cent had been denied life, but the responsibility was found to be linked to a gene already being eliminated throughout the Empire as undesirable.

Villiers closed the cover and went to the next box. He continued on to the racked cold boxes. He opened and closed the covers. At the sixth box, he stopped. It was Louisa within.

The light overhead threw her face partly in shadow. Villiers looked down at her for a long moment, his finger touching the switch in its protective recess. But the question, after all, was already decided. He turned the switch off and cut the field.

People differ in their versions of passage in a cold box. Some are tossed in the billowing conflux of endless black clouds. Some spread glistening wings and fly. In almost all cases, people emerging suffer dissociation.

Louisa looked up and smiled. She knew enough to say, “Hello, Tony.”

He said, “You’ve been rescued after a fashion. Come on down from there.”

He helped her out of the box, and she clung to his arm. If she had still been terrified, she would have grabbed as much of him as she could get her arms around. If she had been calm and completely present, she would have taken charge of her own hands. As it was, she clung to his arm and her eyes lingered where they touched him.

Villiers explained what had happened in as unalarming tones as he could manage and he gradually got the feeling that she was with him.

At last he said, “Are your legs steady enough to walk on?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well come on out and meet your other rescuer.” Adams was in a pantry off the control room. He emerged and set a number of edibles on a little table. “They aren’t very tidy, but they have some very nice things to eat. As long as we’re waiting, I thought … Who’s this, sir?”

“Miss Parini, meet, if you will, Mr. Adams of the Emperor’s Naval Forces. Mr. Adams, Miss Louisa Parini.”

Adams salaamed, but with a question hotly held. He finished his gesture, and asked, “Where did she come from?”

Villiers said, “She was in one of the cold boxes.”

“She was? Well. Uh, sir. Since we’re going to be here until the cruiser arrives, could I wake somebody up, too? I mean, it would make the numbers even.”

Villiers said, “Just one. You’d better take your time over your choice.”

Adams nodded and saluted. “Yes, sir.” He hurried back into the hold.

Villiers waved Louisa to a seat by the tiny table. “Would you like some …” He read a label. “Would you like a porde roe sandwich? Say, Adams was right. I know this brand. I’ve seen this brand.”

“Let’s make one and split it,” Louisa said.

“Fair enough.”

Villiers hunted around, came up with a spoon, rejected it, and found another. He cut two fine slices of bread, buttered them lightly, spooned out the white eggs, and spread them. Was it only that evening they had eaten dinner? He fitted the sandwich together and then sliced it neatly apart

He handed Louisa half. “Necessary skills,” he said. “I was just thinking that it seems a long time since this evening.”

Shyly, Louisa asked, “Will you answer a question?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She set her sandwich down. “Have you been thinking about—you know, about what we said?”

Villiers nodded. “Yes—whenever I had a free moment. I think I will go from here to Yuten. If all goes well, I may find my three-month-old money there. But you, I think, should go to Miss McBurney’s Seminary.”

“Don’t ask me to do that,” Louisa pleaded. “Do you want me out of the way because I caused so much trouble?”

Villiers leaned over and gripped her hands. “Louisa, don’t think that. I don’t want you out of the way. I do sincerely doubt my ability to be the master confidence man you would have me be.”

“Oh, you could do it, Tony,” Louisa said.

“Oh, yes, possibly,” Villiers said, smiling at the thought. “But it would mean such an extreme change in my way of life—dropping old connections and old habits, and making new ones. I’m not up to that.”

“You mean you don’t want to do it,” Louisa said.

Villiers was unsure of his ability to make clear the difference between not wanting to become a professional confidence man and rejecting her. He thought there must be one.

“Let me ask you a question, then.”

“All right.”

“Can you out-act the girl you saw at dinner?”

“The one in the black coronet braid?”

Villiers thought back. “I believe it was, yes.”

“Ithink so,” Louisa said defensively.

“How much?”

“Well, some.”

Villiers said, “I didn’t follow the note that she sent me. Do you remember? It wasn’t because I knew what she and Henry Maurice had in mind. It was because she didn’t play a lady well enough to convince me.”

“And I couldn’t convince you?”

“No, Louisa. I don’t think so.”

“Oh.”

“I think they’ll teach you at Miss McBurney’s. I think that’s what your father has in mind.”

She rose without saying anything. She walked some feet away and gave Villiers her back to look at for some moments. He couldn’t tell whether she was controlling herself or just thinking.

After a time, she said, in a calm little voice, “Tony, what are fardels?”

Just as there are frightening dreams in a late October night, there are leaping dreams of the possible that live in May. If May isn’t your season, this isn’t your story.

Alice Tutuila had passed her time inside the cold box in a happy puddle. She awoke feeling slow and drowsy. She stretched her arms. Then she looked up into the eyes of a large, presentable young man who was leaning over her. Her heart distinctly bounced, and she didn’t even know as yet that he was a Navy man.

The young man turned and called, “Sir? Sir? I’ve picked one.”

Louisa said, “And you promise you will see me if you come to Nashua?” “If you are there, I will see you,” Villiers said.

Last act curtain lines are either extremely clear or extremely equivocal. Louisa didn’t want either total uncertainty or total certainty. She was willing to take moderate ambiguity and call it a first act curtain.

She said, “Well, goodbye, then, Tony.”

He took her hand. “Goodbye, then.”

Then he turned away. He walked back toward Adams, who had a hand half-raised in final farewell.

“Mr. Villiers.”

It was Bledsoe, one of those bound out on the present ship. He nodded with deliberation as he spoke.

“Mr. Bledsoe.”

Bledsoe held a card out to Villiers. “For you, sir. My card.” Villiers looked at it. Bledsoe said, “May I compliment you, sir, on your good advice to Miss Parini? It was excellently in order.” The name on the card was not Bledsoe. It was Pavel Branko, described as an entrepreneur. Branko!

Villiers said, “A cousin?”

“A second cousin, doing a favor. On the other side of the card is an address you may have interest in. For Jack the Hand. Good day, sir.” Louisa woke that night in the ship when a warm dream spilled into consciousness. The dream was made of pure feeling. She lay awake thinking about it. It was a very specific dream.

This room was larger than the room in theOrion . Alice was overhead, firmly asleep. Louisa stared at the bottom of the bed half the length of an outstretched arm above her.

Her mind was busy, busy, busy. First act, only.

It was raining on Yuten when Villiers and Torve left the Navy cruiser there. It was the rain of early summer, cool and peltering, and it made splashing circles, quickly gone, on the hard white surface of the field. The rain was wind-driven and irregular. Torve’s fur began to mat as it grew wetter.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Villiers said, as he bent against the wind.

A constant absence of weather is bound to be a bore. After several weeks in travel, it always seems pleasant to feel wind and rain, to see the lightest of gray skies and dark little moving cloud ghosts, to walk on muddy ground and have the mud stick to your shoes.

They were the only passengers to depart. The rain was slackening as they reached the port terminal. The sun poured through a rent in the gray fabric and lit the tented world from within. The grayness of the world had a momentary glow and the puddles glistened.

There was the usual delay in Torve’s clearance, settled in the usual way, at the usual cost in time. While they were waiting, Villiers was recognized by Lord Hawkwood’s cheetah.

“Viscount Charteris,” the man said, hurrying up. “Lord Hawkwood would be pleased for your company. An extremely pleasant week, I assure you. The affair is already gathering. No sharpers, no dubs, and it is winter now on his Kirkie estates in the south. The sport is excellent, as I make no doubt you will remember from last year.” “No,” Villiers said. “I missed the occasion last year.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” the cheetah said. He spent his time at Yuten’s sole spaceport when Lord Hawkwood directed to let the right arriving people know where the action was. Common practice. “In that case, it would be a shame, a shame, if you were not to be present this year.” “Could you excuse me for a moment?” Villiers asked.

“You will consider?”

“Of course, sir.” Villiers turned away as another cheetah he did not recognize rushed up.

“Sir, Mr. Graftoon’s compliments, and could you favor—” “A moment, if you will,” Villiers said.

He left the cheetahs strutting and preening at each other and favoring Torve with dubious looks. Torve stood flatfootedly and waited.

Villiers found the general mail center in the terminal and went inside. It was half-asleep, lulled perhaps by the rain.

A single clerk was working behind the counter. He looked up as Villiers entered.

Villiers said, “Good day, sir. Would mail sent to Yuten as a general address be delivered here?” “Yes, sir. It would.”

“Would you check then and see if there is any mail for me? My name is Villiers.” The clerk nodded and walked to his left out of Villiers’ sight. Villiers craned, but could not see him. It is hard to trust somebody to be doing something correctly when you can’t see him doing it.

After a minute the clerk said, “You did say Villiers?” “Yes, I did.”

“Don’t see anything for anybody of that name back here.” He followed his voice out to the counter. “Were you expecting something in particular, or are you just hoping?” “Something in particular. It should be coming from Morian, sir. And it will have a mark like this on it.” Villiers sketched his personal mail symbol.

“Morian, you say. Well, hold on a second. A ship is just in from Star Well.” “Star Well?” Villiers said, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes. It could have mail from Morian. Star Well is the hub of the Rift, you know.” “Yes, I know.”

“Just hold on.”

The clerk turned and entered the maze of sorting bins, carts and boxes, ruck and clutter. There was a man at work back there, so colorless that he blended into the postal operation as one more piece of standard equipment. The clerk started him up and he performed some sort of intricate native function. When the clerk turned, he had a number of pieces of mail in his hands. He sorted through them as he returned to the counter.

He came to an envelope and leaned away from it to get a better look. “Hmm,” he said. “Villiers. Have you got identification?” “I just described that envelope,” Villiers said.

“Yes,” said the clerk, “but somebody might have told you what it looks like. I’ve got to have identification.” Villiers identified himself several times and received in turn the envelope.

“Fresh off the boat,” the clerk said.

“From Star Well.”

“Yes.”

“There must be a moral there somewhere. Thank you.” It was the usual amount, little and late. Villiers looked at it, sighed, and then returned to Torve and the pair of cheetahs.

“My best to Mr. Graftoon,” he said, “but I’m afraid that my company is already spoken for.” He smiled pleasantly and Graftoon’s hawk sighed and gestured and withdrew.

Villiers nodded to Lord Hawkwood’s man. “Lead on, if you will.” Of the men trapped by Villiers and Adams within Star Well, all but one were taken into custody with ease. Some had already agreed to terms and the others knew well enough how nonsensical it would be to hold hostages or don a space suit and hide in a crevice on the surface. These would only delay the inevitable.

Star Well was closed for a short time by its owners, who declared their surprise and shock at the actions of the manager they had trusted. They stated, however, that they saw no point in not taking advantage of the improvements he had added, and when Star Well opened again, it had three operating ports and enjoyed an immediate happy rise in the use of its warehouse facilities.

The one missing man was Hisan Bashir Shirabi.

He was not killed. He was not captured. He did not escape. He was never seen again in Star Well. He simply disappeared.

Shhh.

Listen. Listen to the rock. Put your ear against it. Is that the echo of secret tunneling? That was years ago, years ago.

Might it be the careful sound of secret purple footsteps?

End Book I

Art, murder, Admiral Beagle and the Fascination of the Gawk figure in the second Anthony Villiers novel,The Thurb Revolution . Watch for it.

Book II: The Thurb Revolution

for Bob Briney

and Jack Myers

Early in 1462 C.E. On the planet of Shiawassee in the Tanner Trust.

Night is irregular. What is not done in the daytime becomes possible at night: murder and sex and thought.

Simple men are driven to early beds by tomorrow’s daytime demands and by fear of the dark, and never dream of the irregular world outside. And all the while, a viscount and a spaceport baggage boy might be passing the night rolling bok ball in the city park. That’s more than unusual—that is irregular.

The viscount was Anthony Villiers, no ordinary viscount. He traveled under his family name for the most part, and reserved his title for moments of advantage. He was young, slight and brown-haired. By avocation he was a traveler. By profession, he was good company, and he was good enough company to live well more months than not.

Circumstances had forced Villiers to spend a night in the park. To be frank, he was being hunted. He was adaptable enough to settle comfortably into the arms of a park settee, open a book, and read in companionable silence. The book was Morgenstern. The companion was a bulge-eyed alien named Torve the Trog.

“Thurb,”said Torve the Trog, as was his wont.

Torve was a white-bellied, brown-furred toad, six feet tall. His eyes were a unique blue. He and Villiers traveled together. If you asked why, Villiers might say that friendship was the key. Friendship was present, but it came after the fact. In truth, Villiers did not know why they traveled together. If you asked Torve, he might say something about lines of occurrence, a Trog philosophical concept that translates best as “coincidence.” I don’t know why they traveled together, but both seemed satisfied with the arrangement.

Warm fingers of night probed between the dark silent houses and felt the texture of the midnight streets. Lights, the shadows of night, fell on the street and park, and cast true shadows as echoes.

“Thurb,”said Torve the Trog reflectively. His compositions—this was composition—took their form in his mind. What passed his lips were occasional fragments being tested for body and shape.

“Hey, mister. What is that?”

The speaker was a red-headed young fellow in the nether regions between boyhood and sobriety. His clothes were cheap and casual. His manners were common. His question—head nod, hand wave—referred to Torve.

“I am Torve. I am a Trog.”

The young fellow was startled. “You speak.”

“Of course,” Torve said mildly.

“No offense intended, I’m sure, but I’ve never seen anyone like you before.”

“Thurb,”said Torve, losing interest.

“Thatwas it. That was the sound I heard.”

“It’s art,” Villiers said. It was a matter of faith for him. He had only Torve’s word.

“Oh, is that all?”

An opportune note on which to end a conversation, one would think. However, the boy didn’t go away. He squatted and looked at Villiers and Torve, who had returned to their own pursuits.

The boy said, “How about a few thalers? You look like you could stand it.”

“Why do you need it?” Villiers asked.

“Hey, look—no questions. Either give me the money or not. I don’t owe you any explanations.”

Villiers closed his book—no marker, he could find his place. “What’s your name?”

The boy stood at this evidence of more exacting interest. He half-turned and then said, “Gilfillian. Sergei Gilfillian.”

“Well, Mr. Gilfillian …”

“Hey, don’t call me that.”

“Pardon me. It’s my usual manner of speaking. Would you rather I called you Sergei?”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t give you money for nothing, Sergei. I’m not sure I’m that curious, either.”

“Yeah, but why should I have to depend on your liking my story to get the money?”

“Because that’s the way the world is. Everybody is looking for entertainment.”

There was another considerable silence, but Villiers did not return to his book. Sergei shifted from one foot to another. Torve bounced his paws in the air as accompaniment to the throbs in the amphitheater of his mind. He was never bored on rainy Sundays.

Finally Sergei said, “How about some bok? Do you bowl?”

“For pleasure or for money?”

“A tithe a ball. If you can’t spare the change, just say so.”

The boy obviously did not expect to lose. Villiers regarded him steadily for a minute, then set his book aside and stood.

“Ten minims a ball it is,” he said. Entertainment should be paid for, and he meant to be entertained.

Around the park rose cupolas, steeples, towers and turrets, the hallmarks of modern architecture in the Tanner Trust. The style had been late to arrive in the Trust, and having arrived had settled. As they walked to the bowling run a spaceship split the night to the east, momentarily back-lighting the spires. One crisp rumble followed it down.

“That’s the Intrasystem coming in from Pewamo. It’ll be going back in the morning. Red or green?”

“Green,” said Villiers. He picked up a green ball.

Sergei casually rolled a small metal boulder down the dirt run. Then with considerably more care he laid down a slow red roller that arched around the boulder and came to a stop less than a foot beyond. Villiers was an excellent fast bowler, less excellent slow. Slow bowling was called for here, however, the boulder making brisker measures impossible. It took him three balls to gently better Sergei’s shot.

Bok is the best of all bowling games. The ground changes from one game to the next as the boulder stops wherever it happens to stop. Force has its place, but so does finesse. There is satisfaction in a solidly rolled ball that takes an opponent out of play, and another satisfaction in slipping a slow ball through a guarding pack.

Sergei had the closest ball in the first game, leaving Villiers ten minims in the hole. Sergei rolled the boulder back down the run. His honors.

He stopped before bowling his first red ball. “Do you see the planet just above the roof there? That’s Pewamo.”

“I see it,” Villiers said.

“If you look closely, you can see its moon. It’s to the left.”

“I think I can see it. Yes, I see it. How do you happen to know all this?” Villiers shed his coat and drapeau. It was too hot to retain them and bowl.

“I work at the spaceport,” Sergei said. “I’m in Baggage.” If that is an explanation. He bowled and Villiers easily bettered it with his first ball.

Villiers said, “Ah, yes. I’m going to the spaceport in a few hours. We’ve got a ship to catch.”

“For Mandracore or Duden?”

“For Mandracore,” Villiers said.

“I like the sound of that name,” he added. “Mandracore. It’s not the only reason to go there, of course.”

“How do you happen to be out in the park at night like this?” Sergei asked.

“A mix-up in reservations,” Villiers said. Not true. In fact he had been the house guest of Lord Broccoli, a host as yet unaware of his guest’s abrupt departure. “A few hours in the park seemed harmless.”

“I had a mix-up in reservations myself,” Sergei said, bowling. He won that game, too.

When they changed to the other end they could see that Torve had attracted several admirers. Two boys of the same age as Sergei but dressed more expensively were watching and listening to Torve with the kind of solemn attention usually reserved for the world at large by children of three.

“Them,” said Sergei.

When they had changed ends and changed ends again, one of the two was gone, but two others had arrived. If you listened, you could hear,“Thurb.”

“Them,” said Sergei.

“You’re an excellent bowler, Sergei.”

“Yeah,” Sergei said. “I practice, if you know what I mean.”

At first glance, Villiers was not impressive. He was young, mild, well-mannered, well-dressed, and essentially ordinary. At second glance, he had considerable charm. At third glance, he was obviously the sort of person around whom things happen, and why hadn’t you noticed that before? We won’t even mention his hidden virtues.

Villiers was curious about Sergei, as he was curious about many things. Whimsical curiosity was one of his major failings of character. He was curious to discover whether Sergei was sensitive or merely touchy.

By the time Villiers’ charm had opened Sergei enough to get his story out of him, Villiers thought sensitive, though he wasn’t completely sure. These estimates depend as much on aura and movement as on words. What Sergeisaid was:

“My mother locked me out. She’s ticked off at me.”

Now does that sound sensitive?

“I told her I wasn’t mixed up with the X Street guys anymore. They kicked me out because I argued about everything. The police aren’t looking for me, but that isn’t good enough for my mother. I was involved. So I’m out.”

The money was to get to work and for walking around. Sergei was on the morning shift.

Villiers contrived to lose four thalers thirty, the bulk of it near the end of the night.

“I don’t play often enough,” he said by way of formal excuse. “When I do, I get arm-weary. I’m going to be stiff tomorrow.”

He picked up his coat. As he put it on, Sergei saw his Grene and McKenna curdler in its coat holster.

“You carry acurdler ?” Sergei asked.

“It’sde rigueur in my circles,” Villiers said in excuse.

“Oh.”

When they turned from the bok run, Torve still had three observers.

“Them.”

“Who are they?” Villiers asked.

“They’re yagoots,” Sergei said with distaste.

“Oh. Money and nothing to do.” Villiers nodded.

The type is familiar throughout the Nashuite Empire. Hoop-rollers and kite-flyers, at best they are harmless wastrels, at worst public nuisances. The Gilfillians of the world have no use for them, of course.

“Come on over,” Villiers said.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that.”

“Look, Sergei, you can talk to me. If you can talk to me, you can talk to them.”

“But you’re different, Mr. Villiers. You’re not like them. Besides, I got to get off to work.”

Villiers simply pointed toward Torve and then waved Sergei forward. Such was his strength of personality—or perhaps it was the force of an unpaid four thalers thirty—that Sergei actually walked in the indicated direction.

At closer range only two of the young men with Torve were yagoots. The third was dressed with impoverished flair. A student, obviously. He was seated a separating distance from the yagoots and watched Torve with penetration.

Villiers said to Torve, “It’s time to go. Mr. Gilfillian is going to share our flitter to the spaceport.”

This time Sergei made no objection to being called Mr. Gilfillian. In fact he stood taller. He smiled.

Torve stood on his great flat feet. “Evening has been most pleasant. Tony, they understandFrobb much better than you.”

Frobbis no more accurate a representation thanthurb . The true sound ofFrobb is a pulse-note to stir the heart. That Villiers was unstirred now, had been unstirred throughout their mutual acquaintance, and no doubt would remain unstirred, feast or famine, high water or low, may mean only that he wasFrobb -deaf.

One of the yagoots stood. His clothes were an exaggeration of Villiers’. They tagged each other immediately as “young” and “old.”

“Are you leaving now, sir?” the yagoot asked. “Torve wasn’t certain when you were leaving or where you were going.”

“Is essentimentally unimportant,” Torve said.

“We’re off to Mandracore,” Villiers said.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” the student said.

The second yagoot said, “I might as well be going now. Torve. Ralph. Excuse me.” He went his way, striding briskly off under the mother-of-pearl skies. However, before he was out of sight he began to skip.

The student folded his notebook. “I’m John Kettleborough. I’m studying Renovation Theory, but I’m really a poet.”

Sergei stirred uneasily.

“Anthony Villiers,” Villiers said. “And Sergei Gilfillian.”

The yagoot said, “Ralph Weinsider. I sing. I’ve got perfect pitch.” He sang a more-than-acceptable chorus of “Dawn Passage” to show that he could.

John said, “I was going to say that this has been the most stimulating night of my life. I can see that it’s been that for you, too.”

There was cinnamon in his voice. Ah, but you know—students and yagoots.

Ralph nodded. “It has been. Nobody like Torve ever comes here. I wish you were staying longer. Say, would it be possible to chip in on the cost of the flitter and go out to the spaceport with you?”

“Me, too,” John said belligerently.

“Of course, you, too, John. I meant you, too.”

Villiers considered the suggestion and then said, “Certainly. Come along, gentlemen.” He looked around him. “I had a book. Let’s see, it was there, I think.”

But plainly it was not where Villiers had left it. The trouble with books as pets is they can never completely be trusted.

After a moment, Ralph said in a subdued voice, “Fillmore took it.”

“Your friend stole my book? Morgenstern?Color Selection in Galactic Pantography ?”

“Yes,” said Ralph. “We all matched for it. He won.”

“You, too, John?”

John nodded.

“But why Morgenstern? I’ll never find another copy of that around here.”

“That’s just it,” John said. “Admiral Beagle would never allow that radical a book to be sold.”

“Radical?” Villiers said. And, “Admiral Beagle?”

“Censorship,” said John.

“He’s my Uncle Walter,” said Ralph, in apology.

“He won’t allow anything but Mrs. Waldo Wintergood stories.”

“He’s married to my mother’s sister.”

“There’s nothing going on around here, and he’s the reason.”

“That’s right,” Ralph said, and John seemed half-pleased at the agreement. Half-pleased.

At the spaceport, Villiers bought some compromise clothes and rented a room. The compromise was between style and availability, with the emphasis on availability. While Villiers was changing, Torve wandered away in company with Ralph and John. That left Villiers to do his own hanging and draping.

When Villiers was satisfied with his appearance, he placed a vid call to Lord Broccoli’s residence. The call was received by Broccoli’s loyal family robot, Morris.

“Sir, we were worried,” Morris said.

“No need to worry, Morris,” Villiers said. “But thank you for your concern. Will you please convey my regards to Lord Broccoli? He will recall that I mentioned an uncle in ill health on Duden. I regret to say that my uncle has died and it is imperative that I travel immediately to settle his affairs.”

Villiers arranged for his considerable baggage to be shipped to him in care of Mr. Jackson Blinoff on Duden. Then he placed a second call. “Ahem,” he said, and stood tall. The woman who came on the screen was thin and tired, but he fancied there was a resemblance in feature to Sergei.

“Mrs. Gilfillian,” he said, “I am Lord Charteris.”

Such was his skill in being Lord Charteris when occasion demanded that she believed him implicitly—as would you, too. There are schools that can teach you to be a lord—if you are not one naturally—if they are given you in charge at a sufficiently early age. In sum, to be a lord is to be arrogant and selfish with such style that people are delighted to be of service to you.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Gilfillian, putting a hand to her throat.

The trouble with most lords is that they can be nothing else. Villiers, on the other hand, was Villiers far more often than he was Charteris. Though he had a certain natural arrogance, he found Charteris difficult to maintain for extended periods.

Villiers said, “I’m passing through Shiawassee on my way to Mandracore, and I had the good fortune to meet your son Sergei yesterday.”

“Oh,” she said, brightening. “Oh.”

Torve the Trog, with Ralph and John a respectful quarter pace behind at either heel, walked slowly along the terrace. He was neither a Peripatetic nor a Sedentary to be teaching the waggings of the world to dewy youth. However, hewas charisma being followed by two non-reflecting surfaces.

The terrace overlooked the landing field—a nappy green divided into boxes by marching rows of bushes, trees and tharve clumps. In each box there was the metallic lacework of a landing web. Three of the webs had prey clutched in their sticky fingers: the newly arrived ship for Duden, the ship for Mandracore, and the little Intrasystem Excursion for Pewamo, a hop, skip, and a jump down the way.

Both Ralph and John were feeling pleasantly foggy, the result of the morning heat, lack of sleep, and the stimulation of Torve’s presence. John owed Ralph one thaler twenty, his fifth of the flitter ride.

Here they are:

John Kettleborough was tall, lean, sensitive and suspicious. He was a would-be poet frustrated for lack of an audience. Would-be poets can be frustrated that way. Eyes bright, inset in dull circlets. Handkerchief tied round his neck. He was beginning to think Ralph wasn’t so bad for a yagoot.

Ralph Weinsider wasn’t so bad, for a yagoot. Medium height, slightly pudgy, monied, neither particularly bright nor sensitive, but a generous, likable fellow. More a watcher than a creator, but very interested in having someone to watch.

The terrace led back to the many-steepled Port House. It was an excellent example of petrified architecture, made of stone as it was.

“Thurb,”said Torve the Trog abruptly. Then, with more confidence,“Thurb.” It was rounded, beautiful and wholly other. The scraps, mistrials, and detritus of composition were all behind him.

An artist should never be observed while refining his materials, any more than a politician should be judged by anything he says while trying to find out which way the wind is blowing. Nonetheless, Torve’s disciples had come to him in his least impressive moment. And this seems proper, somehow, for karma incarnate.

Now Ralph and John were being rewarded for their faith with the true, polished, effulgentFrobb , an alien art that satisfied a taste previously unrealized. The building curve added resonance to Torve’s delivery.

Not everyone had the wit or taste to appreciate Torve’s bass line, however. We know that Villiers was one such, and Sergei Gilfillian had not responded with anything close to appropriate enthusiasm. However, if they were not inspired to applaud, neither were they inspired to object. Such a critic now appeared, however.

Torve had stopped just outside the Port House. A square, over-furious man in uniform opened the door and yelled.

“Hey, now, stop that! Ralph Weinsider, what are you doing?”

Ralph said, “It’s my uncle! Goodbye, Torve.” He ran.

John took one startled look and decided honorable retreat was in order. He didn’t pause to say goodbye, but did wave his hand.

There were stairs between the Port House and the terrace leading down to the field and the lower levels of the building. Ralph and John took the stairs in threes, a magical number for fast escapes. Torve, abandoned, took no notice. He continued to provide Shiawassee with wider parameters of art—which is to say:

“Thurb.”

Sergei was so pleased at learning that his front door would be open to him that night that Villiers had a problem getting his attention.

“I mean to say, thanks, Mr. Villiers,” Sergei said. “Are you really a viscount?”

Villiers said, “What good is a title if you don’t put it to good use? I have a favor to ask of you. A friend of mine just came in and I’d like a word with him. Here’s the money for two tickets to Mandracore. Will you get them for me?”

“Oh, sure.”

Villiers watched Sergei approach the proper counter and then turned. He crossed the room and said, “Mr. Guillaume.”

Guillaume—ah, Mr. Guillaume. His nerves were not good.

“Damn it, Mr. Villiers,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

“What did I do?”

“You’re here. You shouldn’t be here—that’s stretching things too far. You don’t know what a start you gave me.”

Villiers said, “People do seem to collect in backwaters like the Tanner Trust. Next time I think I’ll head for civilization to hide.”

Guillaume looked around. “This is pretty hideous, isn’t it?”

If this conversation lacks the elegant formality one expects of exchanges between men of quality, know that circumstances here were not of the common run. And, as my mother was always secretly sure, if you catch the wellborn in an unguarded moment they talk just like everybody else.

Villiers said, “How are you doing?”

“I don’t know. One moment I think Finch is behind me, the next he’s ahead. Now all I’m doing is running and hoping I’ll last. I suppose you have things as well-controlled as usual.”

“Not this time,” Villiers said. “I’m only one step ahead. I had to spend last night in a park.

“There was a time I’d have found that shocking.”

“Yes—well, we all change. I wouldn’t worry too much, sir. Somebody tried to kill me two years ago—the sort of mistake that you can’t predict—and I lived through it without even the necessity of surgery. Think how much better off you are knowing what to expect.”

“Every minute I stand still I feel nervous,” Guillaume said. “I have to leave. Luck, Villiers.”

“Good luck.”

The speakers announced the commencement of boarding of the Pewamo Intrasystem Excursion. Villiers, his new tickets for Mandracore in his pocket, stepped up to the counter.

“I’m Lord Charteris,” he said to the clerk. “You’re holding two tickets to Duden for me.”

Admiral Walter Beagle, N.S.N. (Ret.)—yes,that Admiral Beagle; you have heard of him—waved his fist contentedly. His nephew and the other harum-scarum with him disappeared down a flight of stairs but the Admiral did not pursue them. He hadn’t the wind for it. Instead he turned to the nearest target of opportunity. That was Torve, rapt in his search for inner truth:“Thurb.”

The Admiral was a failure. He was a peripheral member of an important family. His career had been without distinction. And he wasn’treally an admiral—he was a commodore with a courtesy promotion upon retirement.

One of the Admiral’s main sources of pride was that he had never sold out. This was true in the grossest sense, but only because no one had made him an offer when he was young, and now that he was older he was too stiff to bend.

He had the suppressed passions of a bank clerk, indirectly expressed in several ways, of which belligerence was one and conservatism was another. Since his conservatism happened to match that of the Administrator of the Tanner Trust, and since he was a member of the family, on his retirement from the Navy he had acceded to the chairmanship of the Trust Arts Council—which is to say, the position of censor. He was happy in his work. He was regarded as an enthusiastic but harmless oddity by those whose business it is to adjudge the universal pecking order. He was a passive bother to a bored but unaware populace. He was an active bother to a student here, a yagoot there, and an occasional nephew—but most of all he was an active bother to transients at the Shiawassee Port House. He conceived it to be sport and part of his duty in spare moments to harass travelers who deviated from the Shiawassee standard, which standard he knew precisely because it was his own.

You will understand, then, that it was perfectly in order for him to stand in front of Torve, whose ululations he found not only bizarre but unattractive, turn purple and yell, “Stop that, you furry jackanapes!” The making of artistic judgments was both what he did and what he was.

But understand, too, that Torve had other needs. What he did and what he was, was,“Thurb.”

It seems proper, an expression of cosmic order, that Torve should go“Thurb,” and that Admiral Beagle should turn purple and yell. However, I think it was overthrowing order as well as a breach of courtesy for Admiral Beagle to lift his right foot, kick Torve in the leg, and yell, “Weren’t you taught a lesson at Aleph Wall?”—that being the final Trog defeat in the Helix-Antihelix-Tragus-Conch-Lobus War.

Torve uttered a few final booming throbs. “Was almost finished,” he said.

“Stand to, Trog,” the Admiral ordered. “Let me see your papers.”

Since the Trogs’ defeat, they had been confined to two solar systems as Restricted Aliens. Only a large handful had the necessary papers to travel, and Torve was not of their number. Nonetheless, he traveled. If braced and found without proper authorization, Torve was subject to penalties of enormous severity. Nevertheless, he traveled.

Torve was often asked for his papers a first time, seldom a second, never a third. That was all.

There was a second call for Pewamo as Villiers, in search of Torve, came upon Admiral Beagle jumping up and down and yelling about barbarism, and Torve blandly nodding in time to his jumps. Somehow the ground of discussion had changed without Admiral Beagle’s awareness.

“Sir,” Villiers said, nodding to Admiral Beagle. “Torve, it’s time to go.”

“Are you in charge of this creature?” the Admiral demanded.

“No, sir,” Villiers said. “He is in charge of himself.”

“Well, are you leaving the Tanner Trust? He doesn’t seem to know.”

“I’mleaving the Tanner Trust. You’ll have to ask him where he’s going.”

Beagle swelled. “I just told you. He doesn’t know or he won’t say.”

Villiers shrugged helplessly.

Beagle said. “If he leaves the Tanner Trust now, there will be no charges. Otherwise, it’s jail. There are laws against unlicensed public performance.”

Villiers said, “You must be Admiral Beagle. Your name is widely spoken. Sir, could you do me a considerable service? In your position as censor, you must read many books. Can you recommend something for me to read on the ship?”

Slowly, Admiral Beagle said, “Well, I’ve personally always admired the books of Mrs. Waldo Wintergood. They’re primarily intended for young folk, but they make wholesome reading for the whole family.”

“Thank you,” said Villiers. “I’ll look for them.”

The announcement system advised passengers for Mandracore to gather for transport to the ship. Villiers nodded at the sound.

“There we are,” said Villiers. “Time for me to go.”

“Is my ship, too,” said Torve.

Admiral Beagle looked at Torve with considerable suspicion, but made no objection to his departure. He had a curious feeling of having come down on the wrong foot. He was used to harassing humans, but aliens were outside his ordinary province, and he wasn’t sure whether he had won a proper moral victory or not.

Villiers said, “I talked to Morris. A good robot, considering his model. Hold here for a moment.”

They stopped beside a stall where a fac machine was producing books at twenty-second intervals.

“Sir, have you books by Mrs. Waldo Wintergood?” Villiers asked.

“Of course,” said the operator. He pointed to a set of five on display.

Villiers thumbed through one, and then bought all five. They were hardly Morgenstern, but they looked readable.

“My children swear by them,” the operator said.

They paused a second time. Villiers stopped Sergei Gilfillian’s baggage dray.

“We’re leaving now,” Villiers said.

“Goodbye, sir. Thank you again. Goodbye, Torve.”

“Goodbye,” said Torve.

“A thought occurred to me,” Villiers said to Sergei. “Some friends are looking for me. If they should become misdirected, they may ask questions of you. Feel free to tell them all you know.”

They paused one last time, a hesitation in stride only, as Villiers salaamed to another acquaintance.

“Mr. Finch,” he said.

“Mr. Villiers.”

It was the mutual salute of respect of men bound in opposite directions, one hunting, one being hunted. Then Villiers and Torve boarded the transport car to be driven out to their ship.

The orange transport car rolled along the sun-bleached roadway to the Port House. Ralph and John were in a tie as they reached the bottom of the stair, still tied when they dashed in front of the car, but Ralph fell well behind before they reached the foot of the matching stair on the other side of the Port House. The transport car, unperturbed, rolled into position to receive a second load of passengers for the Pewamo Redball.

Ralph trudged up to the stair, stopped, took a deep breath, turned and plunked. Then he panted.

John, less winded and interested in establishing the point, said in as concerned a voice as he could muster, “Shouldn’t we keep running?”

“Why? Uncle Walter knows where to find me. Uncle Walter will find me.”

“Well,” said John, looking down, “at least he doesn’t know who I am.”

“Oh, he’ll browbeat that out of me.” Ralph nodded his head in self-confirmation. “Yes. I’d tell.”

“In that case,” John said, staring at palms held like an open book in front of him, and then abruptly snapping the pages closed, “we’ll have to think of something.”

He sat down at Ralph’s left. Both of them fell into thinking postures. Neither of them did any thinking, the result of a combination of lack of sleep and hyperventilation.

After a few minutes, John said, “What are we supposed to be thinking about?”

Ralph wasn’t tracking enough to process the question. Sleep, stupor, call it what you will. He caught up to the question the third time it was asked and answered it just in time to forestall a fourth.

“My uncle,” he said, very slowly. “I must have been very drunk or very excited not to think about him.”

“You were quietly excited last night.”

“Drunk?”

“Perhaps a little,” John said. Then, “We’ll have to keep you away from your uncle for a while.”

“Very good. That’s very good,” Ralph said. “That’s it, until my mother talks to my aunt and my aunt talks to my uncle. But where?”

“We’ll have to think about that.”

Both Ralph and John came by their fatigue honestly. Ralph needed a full nine hours of sleep every night and hadn’t had it. John had worked three intensive days on a report and had gone for a late night walk to try to relax after finishing it.

Some minutes later, John said, “Ralph?” A note of inquiry.

“I’m thinking,” Ralph said, very slowly. He said it over again and it deteriorated into a mumble.

“Awake, awake,” John said. “Wake up. I have a scholarship and today I want to keep it. Last night, I didn’t. Today I do. So we have to keep you away from your uncle—carve you out a new secret life. You know, there are times when I would like to drop everything and be Robin Hood up in the hills. Only I’d have a secret paint factory and I’d dash into town at night and paint a building puce or chartreuse, or maybe both. Puceand chartreuse, isn’t that a thought?”

“I like it,” Ralph said.

John instantly bristled. “What do you know?”

“Well, I don’t know very much about art, but”—he paused as though he were shuffling phrases—“it sounds exciting to me.”

“It would be fun, but it wouldn’t be safe. What I really would like is something besides Mrs. Waldo Wintergood. A secret factory.”

“Ido like it,” Ralph said. “I saw what you meant. But it wouldn’t be safe. Not with my uncle around.”

John said, “Ralph?” He said it very thoughtfully.

“Yes?”

“How is your money situation?”

“Pretty good. Why?”

“Who is that in the transport going out to the Pewamo Excursion?”

John was referring to Villiers and Torve the Trog, who were, in fact, indisputably in the transport car—same car, bright orange—bound along the hedgerows for the Pewamo Intrasystem Excursion Ship.

“It is, it is, it is,” said Ralph.

“How would you like to spend a vacation on Pewamo? Would your uncle think of looking for you there?”

“How wouldyou like to spend a vacation on Pewamo?” Ralph said, pointing a you-have-just-won-a-prize finger at John. “I’ll buy the tickets.”

“You buy the tickets. I’ll make some calls. You know, Ralph, you’re not so bad.”

Ralph nodded acknowledgment of the accolade.

Klavan Guillaume blinked in the hot morning sunshine. He was so uneasy that he ached. You sit until sitting becomes unbearable. Then you run without courage to stop. He both hated and envied Villiers for being calm—not excessively, just token dashes of hate and envy.

Guillaume crossed toward the flitter stand for the ride that would carry him into the more obscure reaches of the planet. He shifted the single bag he allowed himself from left hand to right.

“Hold on, Klavan.”

He turned. It was Finch. Finch, damn him. Hi sighed, dropped his bag and began to run, but it was a perfunctory gesture. There was nowhere to run.

Crimes like uttering-and-publishing and housebreaking leave rubble heaps of evidence. Many murders are never recognized. Most are never solved.

Murder, as a crime, is safe, easy and inexpensive to commit, and impossible to prevent. There is no man in the universe, including the Nashuite Emperor behind his doors, who cannot be killed if enough will exists.

However, murder requires more determination than other crimes, which explains why such a simple crime is so comparatively rare. Would-be murderers botch their crimes. Successful murderers throw themselves into the arms of the police. All because nerve fails.

This raises a rather difficult problem. What do you do if you have an urgent murder to commit and totally lack the nerve to commit it? There is one answer which increases the danger of the crime, but which does get it accomplished. That is, to save your allowance and hire it done.

First, discreet inquiries. Then, a meeting in pleasant surroundings, a comfortable chat. Consideration, agreement, an exchange of money. Finally, after several months, a news account of a death.

But then, what if the news account never arrives? A hired assassin, after all, may have his own qualms to overcome.

As Sophocles later introduced the third actor, making possible theménage à trois , Aeschylus is given credit for the second actor who made possible that standard tear-jerker so valued by the Greek audience and all those that have followed—the Recognition Scene. Literature is full of incognito wanderers home after ten years of adventure, anxious to be discovered and loved.

In real life, however, most meetings after ten years are more prosaic. Here is what might happen:

Villiers found a seat beside a lean young man with an overlarge blond mustache. Torve sat down on a large couch nearby and contentedly began reading Mrs. Waldo Wintergood.

“I should have known,” the young man said. “How did you do it, Tony?”

“Hmm?” Villiers said, raising his brows questioningly.

“It’s been ten years since we last saw each other. In the meantime, I’ve grown two inches and lost fifty pounds, and I’m wearing a mustache which is intended to keep people from recognizing me. I was going to enjoy watching you try to find me. Only you did find me. How?”

“I’m not sure I ought to say. I think I enjoy giving the impression of secret powers.”

“I know you do.”

“I looked at everybody, Fred, and none of them was you. So I looked again for a young man with a very large mustache, and there you were.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all right. Remember, I was expecting that you would be aboard. I don’t think you’re going to be recognized.”

“God, I hope not,” Fred said.

“And how did you recognize me after ten years? You didn’t have the advantage of pictures. I’d hate to think how many important backgrounds I’ve seen you gracing.”

“You haven’t changed that much,” Fred said. “And I can’t think of anybody but you who’d think to travel with a Trog.”

The orange car made its final offering of people and the Pewamo Excursion honored it by accepting them. Ralph and John led the last passengers aboard. The doors of the ship closed behind. The orange car moved smartly off in search of a new ship to wag its tail in front of.

Ralph said to John, “Why do you always use Mrs. Wintergood as a bad example? I’ve heard you do it four or five times.”

John shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s about the ultimate example of what I’d replace if I had the chance.”

Ralph said, “I happen to like those books. I love them, in fact. They are old-fashioned and stodgy, but they speak to me. I don’t want them replaced. I just want variety. If your secret factory couldn’t find a comer for Mrs. Waldo Wintergood, I don’t think I’d like it after all.”

John owed Ralph the cost of his ticket to Pewamo, which meant he had substantial reason to be agreeable. On the other hand, John was an intelligent student while Ralph was a less intelligent yagoot, which meant equally substantial reason not to be agreeable. However, neither gratitude nor knowledge of innate superiority determined John’s reaction. He had surprised himself by deciding that he liked Ralph. That was the determining factor.

He said, “If I ever find a way of changing things, I’ll do my best to keep Mrs. Waldo Wintergood. Actually, I liked those books when I was younger, too.”

Notice the difference: Ralph still liked them; John had put them aside. Ralph no longer slept with his stuffed bear, but it had its place of honor on a shelf over his bed; John no longer slept with a stuffed bear, and would be unwilling to admit that he ever had. Adulthood is achieved by some with rejection of childhood, by others with acceptance.

“There’s Villiers,” Ralph said. “Oh, and there’sTorve. ”

Disliking embarrassment as I do, it seems to me that it is always best to be frank about deficiency and error. Hide naught, fear naught.

It has always been my conviction that a story with a young personable unmarried man ought to have an attractive girl as well, for companionship’s sake. So far, there are half a dozen such young men in our story, and no attractive young ladies at all. Unfortunately, there are unlikely to be many.

In those years on the Tanner Trust planets women were more sheltered than is generally common. Few but eccentrics moved about freely in public, and personal unattractiveness is often what makes eccentrics eccentric. We have little help from that quarter.

Pewamo was far more liberal, since it was no part of the Tanner Trust territories. For many years it had been a Closed Planet. It was now open, but its only year-round population was I.S. caretakers and a handful of development concessionaires, and it is a fact of nature that young civil servants and bright young businessmen are always married. Pewamo’s small population was almost totally composed of tight little families.

That leaves to us only those females aboard the ship bound to Pewamo. I propose to pick the best of them, admire her qualities briefly and appropriately, and thereby free us to pass on to those subjects of greater moment with which we are to be faced.

Potential embarrassment is not past, however. The best of those aboard, one of only three young ladies neither matrons nor children, was a gawk. She was seated in a row not far from Villiers and Fred. She was younger than they, about the age of Ralph and John. She was tall, thin, and awkward. Her nose was too large for her face. Her shoulders sloped. Her figure was forgettable.

Well, let us honor her nonetheless. Not everyone may respond to it, but there is a quality of fascination about gawky girls, and great promise to them.

The fascination is that females so superficially unfeminine can be sexually attractive. But they can be. The promise is that while many gawks remain gawks all their lives, neotenic anomalies, some few become something more. Late and suddenly they mature into a rare breed—long, cool, rawboned, small-breasted, uncoy, frank, strong, a bit fragile, with long, long mileage if treated well.

So—hail to thee, blithe gawk! Hail to thee, and good luck.

And with that behind us, let us proceed.

Torve continued to read. On his left hand, Ralph was asleep. On his right hand, John was asleep.

Fred said, “How many more can we expect?” The idea of this vacation was to reduce the number of people in his life, not increase it, and there was an edge to his question.

Villiers said, “No more. Only Torve.”

Torve looked up.

Villiers said, “I’m afraid so. You can camp out with us or you can do whatever Ralph and John want to do. Stay at a resort, I imagine.”

“I will camp,” Torve said and returned to his book. He surfaced to say, “Is good book,” and then resubmerged.

“Just three of us,” Fred said. “Good. I hate crowds.”

He was an interesting person. He was extremely bright, and a curious mixture of sophistication and innocence. Born into the wrong family, he had been raised in circumscribed formality, disliking the rituals he was called upon to perform, doing them badly as a child, mechanically as an adult. In the meantime, against his family’s advice, he had trained himself as an extremely competent theoretical agrostologist. Only in the past several years had it been possible for him to gain practical experience to supplement his formal knowledge. Though he had taken an unorthodox route in his specialty, at a comparatively early age he had made a secure place for himself.

Fred and Villiers had been at school together. People had been afraid of Fred and avoided him. Villiers, for his part, had been unofficially recognized as the school’s Independent Force, and as such was free to take up with Fred. He had, and they had been firm friends.

The two had recently fallen into contact again, and being in reasonable proximity had determined to meet and have a reunion vacation. In the interim of their acquaintance, Fred had developed a taste for the outdoors. He had suggested Pewamo. And here the two were, on their way.

“Let’s swap,” Fred said. “You tell me what’s happened to you, and I’ll tell you what’s happened to me.”

Villiers nodded and yawned. “Only a couple,” he said. “I didn’t get any sleep last night and I’m tired.”

“All right. Tell me something.”

Villiers thought. Then he held up his left hand. Half the first joint of his little finger was missing. It was neither a deformity nor a handicap, but rather the sort of thing you add to your repertoire of jokes, amusements, and party tricks. Villiers, of course, was above such things.

Villiers said, “I lost this two or three years ago. Somebody tried to kill me. The tripwire just took the end of my finger, though.”

“You mean that somebody tried to assassinate you? That’s funny. Nobody has ever tried to assassinate me.”

“You are loved by all, Fred. But it wasn’t really an assassination attempt. I’m hardly a likely target. Does it bother you much to lie?” The question was an inquiring addendum.

“That depends,” Fred said, and paused to think of conditions.

“That’s probably the only sane answer,” Villiers said, toying with the end of his shortened finger. “I just wonder why it’s that one that nags me. Oh, well. Tell me about your weight loss. You’re looking very fit.”

“Oh, that,” Fred said, thoroughly pleased. His mustache rippled as he smiled. He pointed to a metal emblem on his coat. It was an over-toothy little animal. “The Big Beavers. They made me Manitou. It’s one of those things that you get assigned and you can’t avoid.”

“I know,” Villiers said. “I was the head ofSegosta Cheki , the Big Beaver affiliate on Charteris. Maybe I still am. That would be amusing.”

“Well, the discrepancy between me, Fred, and me, the Manitou of the Big Beavers, began to bother me. I wasn’t interested, and beneath that I was afraid, and finally Ireally wasn’t interested. But I got over being afraid, and after I did become interested, I found I could do it all. I’ve got Chief Beaver or the equivalent on six planets.”

“I can’t begin to match that,” Villiers said. “My conscience only took me toSegosta Savoda —Honored Chief Beaver. I’m very impressed.”

Fred was in a position to enumerate his three “Honored Chief Beavers” (or equivalents) and his “Exalted Misboa” in the difficult Barks Mode. However, modesty, good taste, and his conviction that Villiers really was impressed led him to say only, “And that’s how I lost fifty pounds.” Ten years before, it would have been otherwise.

Villiers said, “Let me see. I was married.” He cast it out as a possible topic and Fred rose to it.

“Oh?”

“Did you ever notice that out here in the fringes the nobility are calm and temperate? Charteris is one of the most placid holds in the Empire. But my father wants to make secure alliances.”

“ ‘Secure alliances,’ ” Fred said tiredly.

“Yes. So I found myself married for two years. That’s the way my father wanted it. But at the end of two years, he wanted to renew and so did Evelyn’s father, but neither Evie nor I did. Two more mismatched people you will never see. So we didn’t renew. Evie went into a Unitarian convent and writes me beautiful letters. She reads. She sends me book lists, but I can never keep up. My father and I had our final break when I didn’t renew the marriage.”

“I remember that you were at odds.”

“We were. We are. I travel. He sends a remittance from time to time. I work, too, sometimes, but I don’t tell him about that.”

“I should hope not!” Fred said. “Do you really work, Tony?”

Villiers laughed. “That is funny. Some months ago I told a young girl I know—whom you wouldn’t approve of, by the way—that from time to time I’d taken jobs. She didn’t like the idea, either.”

“I really should hope not. Do you think it’s appropriate of you?”

“Fred, you’re working. And working with your hands, too.”

“That’s different. It’s science.” Then he dismissed the subject. “You know, my father’s been trying to back me into marriages for years. He really isn’t so bad. He wants grandchildren and he does think I’d be happier if I took one of his choices and settled down. Every time he meets a girl he likes he sends off a messenger to tell me so. For six months he’s been trying to get me to see somebody named Gillian U. But I’ve been firm. His tastes are weird, frankly.”

“How did he happen to loosen his ties on you at this late date?”

“Oh, my brother Ted had a second son. Don’t you remember?”

“I do. I didn’t think to connect the two, but I should have.”

“That put me back to number four and I took my first cautious steps into the world. My father isn’t happy, though. He just couldn’t keep me longer.”

“Glad to have you out in the world,” Villiers said.

“Glad to be here.”

A uniform litter of brochures advertising the wonders of Pewamo was scattered throughout the ship. When Ralph and John awoke, they traded the protection of sleep for the safety of the brochures. They felt themselves intruders, but hoped that if they were very quiet no one would have sufficient provocation to tell them so.

John pretended to read. He only flipped the pages when he chanced to remember. Ralph, however, preferred reading to free-form thinking, and he soon became interested in the promise of Pewamo, Tomorrow’s Playland. He looked carefully at all the exotic attractions.

Fred, for his part, sat glowering at Ralph and John. They knew that he was there, but the impenetrable barrier of the brochures permitted them to remain officially unaware.

Fred, in fact, was growing progressively more unhappy. They were approaching Pewamo and Villiers was still asleep. Fred did not want to wake him. On the other hand, Fred did want matters clearly understood by all before they arrived. It is an easy thing—enjoyable even—for one child to tell another that his company is not wanted. It was much harder for Fred, who was a softheart. Finally, in a paroxysm of agitation, Fred woke Villiers and whispered to him at length.

Villiers said, “Ralph, John,” the magic words that penetrated the brochure barrier. Reluctantly, they gave him their attention.

“What are your plans on Pewamo?”

Ralph said, “We were wondering what you had in mind, sir.”

“Mr. Fritz and Torve and I will be camping.”

“Well, John and I may camp, too.”

John, who wasn’t convinced that Ralph should be their spokesman, shot him a look. The last statement had been nothing but talk. Neither Ralph nor John would ever seriously consider camping out, though for opposite reasons. Ralph would not camp out because it wasn’t the sort of thing that a yagoot does. John, however, would not camp out because it wasn’t the sort of thing that a young intellectual does—a very different matter, you will agree.

“Do you have a camping permit for Pewamo?” Villiers asked.

“No, sir,” Ralph said. “Is one necessary?”

“I’m afraid so,” Villiers said.

“Oh,” said Ralph.

John presumed on the state of Ralph’s pocket and his access to it: “Well, Torve—Ralph and I are going to be staying at a resort. Would you like to join us?”

“Thank you,” Torve said, “but lines of occurrence do not permit. I will camp.”

“Oh,” said John.

It was an awkward moment. Villiers and Fred were enjoying it no better than Ralph and John.

Stoutly, Ralph said, “Mr. Villiers, we have no wish to disturb your vacation, but I don’t think you understand how important Torve is to us. We’d like to see something of him while he is here.”

“Yes,” said John. “That’s right.”

“It’s a great deal to ask of you, but could you camp on Binkin Island?”

As it happened, the camping permit that Fred held was for Binkin Island. Consequently, he asked “Why?” rather than saying “No.”

Ralph opened the brochure to the stylized map in the center. He held it to the side for the benefit of Villiers and Fred and himself. John craned to see, then gave up and opened another brochure. Torve transcended.

“You will see that there is a resort on Binkin Island as well as a Development Area. If you would stay at the Development Area, we could stay at the resort. We would do our best not to be a bother to you.”

John felt that he should have noticed this proximity rather than Ralph, but he allowed solidarity to win over pique. He nodded vigorously. He was afraid to speak lest he jostle delicate decision-making apparatus.

One decision-maker drew the other aside. “I can pull rank or have the permit changed. But I wanted to go to Binkin Island.”

“Let’s go there. From the looks of it, it’s a large island. If this doesn’t work out we can always lose ourselves.”

“All right,” said Fred. Hewas a softheart.

Yagoots and their otherwise-named brethren are a historic commonplace. They are the walking horses of a prosperous society—decorative but useless.

They are gentry playing town or maison. Where they are many, they dress down. Where they are few, they dress up. In either case, they mainly occupy themselves by rolling hoops or flying kites.

But this isn’t fair. The elaborately dressed young lout who boxes the Watch or plays catahouch with old men in the street is a stereotype. There is more to yagootry than incomprehensible nihilism. Sai Din the Mundu was a yagoot, and Duncan McGub, and J. W. v. Goethe. They all rose to better things.

Yagoots are primarily a symptom of societal malaise. Those who become yagoots are both those who can offer nothing to society and those to whom society offers nothing. Because yagootry is a game of Let’s Pretend, most yagoots eventually come to terms with society, making the best compromise they can manage. On the other hand, on rare occasions it is society that has had to make the compromise.

His wife having given him permission, Admiral Beagle fancied himself a strong man, and he sometimes passed for one outside her company. In fact, however, she ruled him.

When the cook signaled that she might, Irma Beagle took charge of her husband’s lunch. It looked tasty, but she didn’t stop to sample. She carried it smartly in to her husband and then stood two respectful paces behind his chair while he tasted it gingerly and then began to eat. It was kulaby, quite good.

“Walter,” she said. She was no common Shiawassee wife. After thirty-five years of Navy life and many meals eaten according to General Empire custom, she still might not sit comfortably at the same table, but she was perfectly capable of speaking while he ate.

“Do you know where Ralph has gone? Rosalie is so worried.” Rosalie was her sister and Ralph’s mother.

“And well she should be with that scapegrace for a son,” the Admiral said.

“Walter, that isn’t charitable. You’ve never given Ralph a chance.”

“It only takes one bite to know that an apple is rotten,” the Admiral said. He talked like that when he remembered to. He kept a notebook of pithy quips and some of them were good enough to stand repetition. He’d used one three times in the same day in the presence of the Trust Administrator, and been threatened with loss of his position as a consequence, but that was a rare reaction. Most people never counted.

“Walter, don’t be silly.”

“He had reason to run. He was consorting with an impudent and obscene alien.”

This meant next to nothing to Irma, who limited herself to a handful of real concerns, of which one was relations with her sister.

“Walter, do you know where Ralph has gone?”

He looked at his food. “He’s gone to Pewamo. My agents found out that much.”

“Oh, you must really have frightened the boy. Well, somebody will just have to go to Pewamo and bring him home. You know that Rosalie is all alone in the world and Ralph is her only strength.”

Admiral Beagle shook his head. He knew whom his wife had in mind. “Let Ralph come home by himself. If Rosalie wants him sooner, let her bring him home.”

“You know Rosalie can’t go to Pewamo by herself. Walter, really. MustI go?”

He said nothing, but continued eating. Characteristic. However, she said nothing, and that was uncharacteristic, so after several minutes of silence he turned and she was gone. He thought of a pithy quip, but didn’t dare say it even to the empty room. He did repeat it in the sanctity of his mind.

He couldn’t afford to let his wife go to Pewamo. That would give her too great a moral advantage. On the other hand, he had no desire to find his nephew, forgive his manifest and manifold transgressions, and ask him to come home. That, too, would be to yield moral advantage.

“Bring Ralph home from Pewamo?” he said aloud. Yes, by Heaven; with a grip on his ear. “All right. I will.”

His wife appeared in the door. “Thank you, Walter,” she said.

So he was off to Pewamo. Ah, reconciliation.

Solomon “Biff” Dreznik crouched in a jungle thicket ready to pounce. Tawny heat surrounded him. Dust motes swam lazily in the sunlight. He waited, close now to Villiers’ trail.

Most people live limited lives. Farmers spend their lives on farms. Merchants spend their lives in stores. Actors spend their lives in agents’ offices. Assassins, however, see the green and the brown of life. They taste the sweet dripping fruit that most men only know as a pale artificial flavor. The chance to walk widely and observe men of all conditions was one of Dreznik’s reasons for becoming an assassin.

Dreznik’s wide experience of the ambiences of life permitted him to legitimately make surmises that a farmer, merchant, or actor would lack the competence to proffer. For instance, a professional jardinier would say with confidence what Dreznik might say less surely: that Lord Broccoli had lost interest in maintaining the order of his gardens. However, it would clearly not be proper for men less worldly to suggest, as several had, that the gardens were falling to rack and ruin.

Let be. They provided Solomon “Biff” Dreznik a place to crouch and observe. Two sounds were the only sign of his presence—the faintest of breathing and the humanly inaudible hum of his personal air-conditioning unit.

He knew the routines of the household. At any moment Lord Broccoli’s faithful family robot Morris would come down the great stone steps from the maison, cross the lawn with tinny dignity, and fill the bladder bat feeding station with a select mixture of sixty-two percent farofa, thirty-three percent seeds and nuts, and five percent candy and surprises. Dreznik had analyzed the mixture and found it in these proportions on three consecutive days.

Any objective man would say that Dreznik was rotten. He killed people for money and sometimes for pleasure. His card said: “Contact Dreznik—Livermore.” There was a drawing of a skull with a rose through the eye, and in the lower left corner it said, “Solomon ‘Biff’ Dreznik,” and gave his agent’s address.

He waited now for Morris to come. In his hand he held tinsnips. His appearance was bleak and morbid.

Dreznik was highly rated in most directories, but some few held reservations. His contract completion record was good, but he had been killed three times when once was generally considered a limit for luck. His deaths seemed to have had no effect except to make him more bleak and morbid.

Bladder bats, brown and white and gray, began to drift down out of the skies and Dreznik gathered himself, his mind finding the rhythm of attack that lions express with a metronomic beat of the tail. Morris walked slowly between the wild garden rows and chirped to the bladder bats. He suspected nothing.

Dreznik waited until the right moment, until Morris was abreast of him and a step beyond, and then slipped out of the bushes. Slipping was not what he had intended, but his left foot had been less securely placed than was necessary for an effective charge. He fell on his face in the grass.

Morris, with obvious pride in the irrationality that made him more than a machine, fled shrieking. The stories robots tell at night are even more frightening than those told by twelve-year-old boys, and Morris was an old robot.

To be visible from the house, Morris needed to reach the end of the garden row. Dreznik was up and after the little robot instantly, ignoring a twisted ankle that a less well-schooled man would have been unable to walk upon. The bladder bats spread themselves thin and rose on the air. Their alert black eyes watched the chase through the garden with a neutrality that showed small appreciation for their daily farofa. They did produce occasional flatulent squeaks, but these were more in the nature of commentary than calls for succor.

No help arrived. Dreznik overtook Morris with twenty feet to spare in a final hop and felled him with a ruthless blow to the command center. He bent over the robot and limbered his tinsnips.

“I know how to get information out of you,” he said.

Not content with knowledge of Villiers’ whereabouts, Dreznik left Morris a metal rubble heap, a crazy tangle of disconnected arms and legs and pieces of torso, with his head on top as thepièce de résistance. Dreznik made his escape as he had come, over the high brick wall at the foot of the garden. Some minutes after he had gone, a curious piebald bladder bat drifted down to hover by the rose that Dreznik had left sticking out of Morris’s left eye. “Shoo,” Morris said weakly, and the bladder bat produced an abruptly terminated bagpipe honk and rose again.

At Shiawassee Spaceport, Dreznik bought a ticket to Duden and settled with endless patience to wait for his ship. His ankles were mismated and he limped when he walked, but that was nothing to this bleak, morbid, inevitable man. He sat squarely, observing the world and waiting for his ship.

Fillmore Djaha was as stimulated by his encounter with Torve the Trog as Ralph and John had been. When he walked from the park in early dawn withColor Selection in Galactic Pantography held beneath his coat by elbow pressure, he, too, was unready to have the night end. Consequently, when he reached home still skipping he opened the book he had swiped and began to read it.

Fillmore was a constantly busy person, his mind and hands always occupied to good purpose. He was a doer, which is rare and good. That wasà droite. À gauche , he did things as he came to them with no hierarchy of value, no perceptible order of progression, and no visible impact on himself. He had found his way to yagootry, and if past history was any guide would find his path away again.

Given their offspring, Fillmore’s parents had only the usual choice of acceptance or rejection. They had settled on acceptance. They irritated their neighbors by not only condoning their son’s behavior, but insisting that given time he would turn out to be as successful as any of their children. They irritated their friends by admitting privately that they didn’t particularly care whether he did or not. And they made no comment when he came home early in the morning and began to read a book. It was Fillmore’s life and Fillmore’s way.

Such were Fillmore’s peculiar powers of concentration that he was not plagued with the sleepiness that had bothered Ralph and John. Such was the stimulation of Morgenstern that he remained with the book until he had turned the final page, warmed as he read by an ever-growing excitement.

Morgenstern is really not that good. The thesis is adequate, but the style is mediocre. However, successful books need not be good—they must merely arrive at the proper moment.

This book was successful. At the moment he finished it, Fillmore thought it was easily the most stimulating book he had ever read. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to start at the beginning and read it all over again, but he restrained the impulse the better to torture himself with delicious anticipation.

Fillmore sat down under the force of an irresistible impulse and wrote a letter to Morgenstern. He said ordinary things in less-than-ordinary words. He said that he had read the book in one sitting and that he had liked it a lot, and that things had been dull lately but this book changed all that. However, such was his fire that the letter seemed to say, “Some books are to be swallowed,” and “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” and “Days of troubles been weighing on my mind, but I just looked up and the sun’s begun to shine.”

He had just finished the letter and was reading it over for sense and sound when Ralph called from the spaceport.

“Ralph, listen to this.”

“I haven’t time,” Ralph said. “My ship is about to leave.”

A curious thing for him to say, but such was Fillmore’s single-mindedness that he took no notice, but simply began to read. After an initial token protest, Ralph listened. Ordinarily he would not have, but hewas in a hurry. When Fillmore was finished, Ralph told him of the trip to Pewamo, and the news finally sank in.

“Come on over,” Ralph said. “The more the merrier.”

“To Pewamo?”

“It isn’t in style, but that’s where we’re going. That’s where things are happening.”

“On to Pewamo,” Fillmore said. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

He rang off the vid in the upward surge of a manic fit. He danced around the room warbling, “Pewamo, Pewamo, Pewamo, Pewamo, Pewamo, Pewamo.”

There was so much emotion within him that he had to find an outlet. It was an itch, a compulsion, afolie to do. The madness led his mind to make a jump of a kind that it had never made before, and he was impelled to resurrect a previous interest to serve a present one. Thus do we rise to meet occasion.

He yelled a question about his dup equipment to his mother, and before she could answer remembered where it had been stored. He dug it out, necessarily replacing what he moved in order to give himself room to work. He cleaned up the equipment, replaced a broken guide light, and went out to buy the necessary inventory of supplies.

He had in mind making a copy of the Morgenstern book for himself. If he was going to see Villiers again, he thought it would only be politic to return his book.

When he finished making one copy, he didn’t stop. He made another. He thought of somebody to give it to, and made another copy, and thought of somebody to give it to. After ten copies he had to go out for more supplies.

He didn’t sleep. He worked well into the night copying Morgenstern. When he ran out of supplies again, he had seventy-three copies, and somebody to send each copy to. Without pause, he prepared the books for mailing. He mailed them just after dawn along with his letter to Morgenstern.

His father was eating breakfast when he returned to the house. He sat down tiredly.

“I’m very sleepy,” he said. “Will you take me to the spaceport and put me on the Pewamo Excursion?”

His father, who was very nice people, did as he asked. And that was another bound for Pewamo.

As Villiers had been able to perceive, Sergei Gilfillian was a likable young man with no harm in him. It is ironic that his mother, who knew him far better than Villiers was ever likely to, distrusted her own judgment so strongly as to need Villiers’ assurances. But then Sergei had been acting in a way she didn’t understand lately. What could she do but think the worst?

Villiers’ assurances didn’t change Sergei’s behavior. He came home from work and slept. He joined her for dinner, but ignored most of her questions.

She asked if Lord Charteris’ friend had found Sergei. She hadn’t been able to remember what planet he had said he was bound for and had sent the man to talk to her son.

Sergei said, “’Yes. Mr. Kuukkinen. I told him Mandracore.”

After dinner he went into his room and locked the door. That was what she didn’t understand.

She contemplated knocking and asking if he was all right, but she didn’t. Not for a while anyway.

Within the bounds of the Nashuite Empire there are many worlds that only a limited number of men are allowed to visit. Within the bounds of the Nashuite Empire there are five thousand worlds that are totally closed. Once there were more than three times that number, but times alter and men learn to cope with the unknown.

Not all Closed Planets are dangerous. At least several in every octant are spring lands reserved for the use of a highly placed few.

There are an infinite number of legitimate reasons for closing worlds, but in general they fall into two categories. Simple men must be protected from dangerous worlds. Simple worlds, too, must be protected.

Pewamo had been a closed world for a peculiar reason. In 1187, a statistician named Bohumir Hinkle (remembered in chess circles for his ability to hold the center in general, and for Hinkle’s Gambit in particular) published a paper demonstrating the likelihood of intelligent life on planets fitting a list of particular criteria. Some of these criteria were familiar: small planet, large moon—the old “Tidal Disturbance” theory. Some were less familiar: iodine concentration and what Hinkle calls the Solimões Factor, after the planet of the same name. Pewamo, one of seven worlds that fit eighty percent or better of Hinkle’s criteria, was closed in 1189 and consequently was not included in the Tanner Trust when that was cobbled together in 1207, in spite of its proximity to the central planet of the Trust.

Hinkle later discarded his own theory when he discovered a systematic bias in the data on which he had based his Solimões Factor. The Solimões Scandal was another result, of course, ending with the suspension of an entire Planetary Commission.

Hinkle’s Theory is scarcely remembered today except by devotees of chess and governmental corruption, but the planets that were closed as a result of his theory remained closed. Intelligent life was ultimately discovered on two of them, though not on Pewamo. There being no other reason to keep it closed, in time Pewamo was opened.

In 1462, Pewamo was still rough and largely undeveloped. In spite of its proximity to Shiawassee, its attractive climates, its large moon and its iodine, Pewamo saw few vacationists. At that time, only Four Points, first built of Pewamo’s resorts, was paying for itself. Shiawassee was conservative, and it is well known that Nobody who is Anybody will go to the sort of place to which Nobody who is Anybody goes. Which means Pewamo.

Three connected volcanic peaks form the backbone of Binkin Island. The island had been named in the usual fashion—by its discoverer, Seymour Binkin, after himself. The three peaks are named Mount Seymour, Mount Ernest, and Mount Binkin. If you say the names over ten times, they somehow acquire majesty—they become mighty names for mighty mountains. Mount Binkin is the center and highest peak.

Places, like people, have personalities. Some are types, found over and over. Some are individuals. Some are obvious on first acquaintance. Some take knowing to love. Some brood, some are mild and shy. Some giddy, some wild. Some dour and enduring.

The peaks of Binkin Island are projections of a single great sea mount that rears thirty thousand feet from the ocean floor and fifteen thousand more to the top of Mount Binkin. It is a volcanic island. There is constant smoke above the mountains but it is hard to distinguish from haze and snow.

There is snow at the tops of the mountains. Glaciers rise out of cirques and make ermine drapes high on the mountain shoulders. There are four forests at different altitudes, each with its own rich variety of trees, its own animals and birds. Where lightning has struck and burned acres, there are meadows filled with flowers. It is possible to follow spring up the mountain from meadow to meadow, watch the same flowers bloom again and again, and see migrant birds traveling higher and higher with the changing weather.

A brown road loops around the island, sometimes near the sea girt, sometimes following the mountain shoulder, sometimes lost in forested valleys out of sight of both mountain and sea. Roads are patient, and this one is content to eternally nibble on the tip of its own tail.

Green Mountain Resort is located on the lower slopes of Mount Binkin. Near it are a handful of farms and the headquarters of the Development Area. There are seven developed camping areas. These and the road are the only signs of man on the island. The total resident population is 247.

The island has been Surveyed and Cleared. Two large and potentially dangerous carnivores have been identified and Class B Shields designed to deal with them. To these two animals a shield says flatly, “I don’t smell pleasant. I’m ugly.Ugly. If you eat me, I’ll make you sick!”

Lesser predators see and smell man as he really is, and make their own decisions.

The Big Beaver Ideal is to begin naked in the wild and reproduce civilization. Fred had compromised with this ideal for the sake of the others and was content with a moderate simplicity. The first evening they erected tents in a mountain meadow and built a fire. A cold clear night.

There was mist in the morning. It chilled and dampened all that it touched. Villiers was reluctant to pull himself from his warm bed. He stood, one foot in his tangled bed and the other on the smooth tent floor. The difference in temperature was startling. He limited his esthetic appreciation of the contrast by quickly bringing his cold foot home. He put his stockings on first while goose pimples sprouted. Then he went into a circulation-restoring dance: hop, hop, one trouser leg; hop, hop, the other. Buckle, hop, hop. Muted repeat of theme with tunic. Balance, shoe on. Balance, lose balance. Balance, other shoe. Pick up jacket and curdler and out of the tent.

Fred and Torve were already up and doing useful things. To earn his breakfast Villiers went for water. He, as well as Fred, had changed in ten years.

It was a quarter mile through grass, around rocks, and between trees. The day was brightening when he followed what was becoming a path back up the hill, the water in his buckets sloshing an arrhythmic accompaniment to his uneven footsteps. When he set the buckets down, he revolved his right shoulder.

“I knew it would stiffen,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” Fred asked, handing him a plate of hot food. Villiers demonstrated that he was suffering no permanent injury by accepting the plate with his right hand.

“It means that I can put this vacation to good purpose by exercising a few neglected muscles.”

The theme of this vacation was Follow Your Own Weird. Villiers was interested in constructive activity. Fred wanted to explore and discover the appropriate woodcraft to deal with Binkin Island. Torve was intending to spend most of his days two miles away at Green Mountain Resort; that is, unless the lines of occurrence should specify otherwise.

Villiers was still lingering with his breakfast and Fred was toweling his mustache when Torve carefully placed the things he wished to carry with him on the rear platform of his red tricycle and climbed aboard. He pedaled off down the path to waves from Fred and Villiers.

The bicycle is the best primitive vehicle ever invented by mankind. Villiers and Fred had bicycles, but Trogs and bicycles are as incompatible as humans and the treadle wheels that Durelians roll down their streets in. However, Torve could manage the large bucket-seated trike, and even achieve a substantial speed on downhill runs.

With steady pedaling, he could travel the two miles in much less than half an hour. It took him twice that long because he stopped by the roadside to talk to a friendly pink cloud.

Villiers was kneeling by the fire. He carefully set down his cup and tensed. If they had found him, it was too soon. He was not ready. Then he relaxed and said, “Fred,” and pointed.

Fred turned. The skinny boy at the forest edge hesitated on the edge of flight, and then came forward. He held his hat in his hand. His black hair, nearly shoulder-length like Fred’s and Villiers’, was clubbed at the sides. He wore a blue coat one size too large against the thin chill of morning.

“Sirs,” he said in an averted voice. In an embarrassed afterthought he made an arm wave that could be taken for a salaam.

Villiers’ manners could pass anywhere in polite society. Ralph’s could easily pass on Shiawassee. This adolescent’s could pass nowhere but on a country planet. Nowhere but Pewamo. It was plain that he had had no formal schooling in politeness. He twisted his neck one way and then the other.

Villiers said, “Sit down. Would you like something to drink?”

Fred touched his mustache with tentative fingers that sought the assurance that it still rose and set over his lip. Finding that it did, he said, “How may we help you?”

This boy was one of those with whom communication becomes a matter of gentle leading questions that are either ignored or answered by a minute nod. Silences of disquieting length. Few words and those neither well-turned nor confidently spoken. Impenetrable eyes downcast.

He was seated on a rock, and a cup was put in his hand. Villiers and Fred hunkered so as not to be threatening, and introduced themselves. The boy didn’t say who he was. He did move his eyes to the Big Beaver emblem on Fred’s jacket and then shyly showed a copy of theBig Beaver Book.

Fred said, “Are you a Big Beaver?”

No response.

Fred caught the conversation at the last possible moment. “Both of us are Big Beavers.”

No response.

“We’re both Chief Beavers.”

No response. A silence of this sort is neither empty nor stupid. It is a wild trapped intelligent silence that challenges a speaker to utter profundities and inevitably causes him to lapse into inanity.

“Um, is there a Big Beaver organization on Pewamo?”

(A response. A response.) A littleno shake of the head.

Villiers said, “I think you have the proper line of questioning.”

“But you want to be a Big Beaver? Do you want to be a Big Beaver?”

Two definite little nods. Then black eyes were hidden behind the cup.

“Well, Fred,” said Villiers, “it’s a real challenge. As well as a duty, as I see it.”

Fred said, “You were always one for inventing hurdles to jump. Wait a minute, though. Wait right here. Let’s see what we can do.”

The boy watched them both with keen quiet interest. Villiers watched him back with equal interest. Fred was too absorbed to watch or be aware of watching. He came from the tent into the dappled sunshine with four bright green volumes in his arms. He brought them over and plunked them on the ground.

“There,” he said. “The Pewamo Reports. It’s fortunate I thought to bring them. We ought to be able to establish basic standards for the Binkin Island Big Beavers. What’s your name again?”

Swallow. Very slowly, “David Clodfelter, sir.”

“Can you come here every morning, David?” A nod.

Villiers said, “Are you going to sign your own charter?”

“Why not?” Fred said.

Then Villiers said, “Do you still have that pad of all-purpose forms?” at the same time that Fred said, “I still carry my pad of forms, you know.”

They laughed, and then Fred said, “I, Fred Fritz, am Manitou of Binkin Island.”

“Ta-daa,” Villiers said in ringing commemoration, and the boy smiled for a brief instant.

“Tony, you are First Graypelt.”

“All right.”

“And Keeper of the Homefire.”

“You should have said that more confidently. No, you’ll have to make your own notes. I will make an offer, though. If you want to spend your time making David a Big Beaver, I’ll mind things here, do the cooking and scut work.”

“Are you trying to disney me?” Fred asked. “That isn’t the Villiers I remember.”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“I don’t remember that you ever have.”

“Then take me at my word.”

“I take you at your word. I accept, but I don’t understand.”

“Just accept. It’s the best way to approach life.”

Fred waved for young David to stand. The boy rose. Throughout their exchange his eyes had moved regularly from one to the other, becoming a trifle wider when they looked at Fred. This was quite natural—Manitous are more worthy of close attention than First Graypelts. He stood silent.

“David, you are now a Paddletail. We’ll see if we can’t promote you a couple of times before I have to leave. Call me Fred. We’ll have a reconnaissance hike today and I’ll go over the Basic Laws of the Big Beavers with you. Tony will test you when we get back.”

It may seem odd that an outsider should so blithely name himself Manitou of Binkin Island, but this was not the first time Fred had founded a branch of the Big Beavers. He knew specifically how to deal with a variety of climates, terrains, flora and fauna. Better yet, however, he knew his principles well enough to produce appropriate responses to the unfamiliar. On the other hand, being a native of a planet entitles you to nothing better than Paddletail. If you know more, it is easy enough to find out. Most don’t.

After Fred and David had left on their hike, Villiers began to look over the camp with a critical eye. He searched his memory and Fred’s manuals for the possible and the necessary. Latrine pits. He picked a spot for those. A garbage pit. A pantry pit. Drainage gutters around the tents. A tripod to hang the water supply from. A spit over the fire. Villiers looked carefully at the trees and rocks within the camp to see how they might be turned to comfortable advantage.

He dug the garbage pit immediately, and then cleaned up the remains of breakfast. When he was finished the air had warmed or he had exercised enough to think so. He washed and dried his hands and picked up two of the Mrs. Waldo Wintergood books,Sammy Swims Upstream andThe Snuggily Winter . Putting them under his arm, he set off.

As an exercise, he backtracked young David, following his trail through the woods as far as was practicable. Then he broke off and made a wide circle around the camp, admiring the beauty of Maude Binkin Memorial Camping Area in all its diversity. He was not so out of condition as he had intimated, but nonetheless when he emerged at the upper end of the meadow he was content to stop and sit, to rest and read.

He was hot and shed a jacket, and within minutes put it back on again. The wind-stirred meadow was cool.

He read Mrs. Waldo Wintergood. He read the books with great delight. They were animal stories, one about a poor blind fish that courageously makes its way upstream to expire in ecstasy and be reborn in higher form, the other about a mother and her young in a warm earthen den under high-piled snow and a wind singing icicle songs, and their emergence to the pink and green of spring.

Most people enjoy stories about the workings of nature. However, these books told more about the workings of nature than a conservative Shiawassee author could possibly intend to say, and no doubt were unconsciously loved by their readers for exactly that same reason. For his part, Villiers liked them both as animal stories and as metaphors.

He glanced up to see what appeared to be a small pink alto-cumulus cloud hanging thirty feet above the camp tents in the lower meadow. It hovered there for some minutes, looking like an elegant unsupported coiffure, and then slowly drifted down the mountain.

Villiers picked up the bright orange volume ofThe Pewamo Reports that he had appropriated on impulse. He found the passage on the fauna of Binkin Island. They were there, called plonks, their whither-thither habits described in detail, and their obvious similarities to other aerial life forms discussed.

The next entry was for the native catamount, larger of Binkin Island’s two major carnivores. Thirty yards behind Villiers, a gray catamount at the forest verge put forepaws on a fallen log. It looked toward Villiers and strained its senses for intelligence of this intruder. Suddenly it curled its lip and sneezed convulsively as though to clear its mind and bounded away.

Villiers cocked his head at the sneeze, but since it was not listed in his book as a characteristic cry of the catamount he failed to respond with the lightning reflexes required of a Class B Shield-wearing carnivore observer. When he did look around he saw nothing.

In a little while he came down the hillside, put the books where he had found them, and shouldered his shovel. Ah, the shovel—symbol of simplicity. Proceeding in order of need, he dug a latrine.

Where does the sea begin? Stern hard rocks lined the coast. Fred skirted stranded tidepools, jumped from rock to rock above exploring seafingers, and at last reached the point where there were no more rocks and the free sea spread before him.

The sides of the rock were covered with a yellow-green cushion of slime, the top was bare and dry. The sea was gentle today and lapped rather than broke. Fred knelt on one knee and let the sea touch a hand. That’s where the sea begins—where a tag-playing wave has a thousand miles to dodge and run.

It was past noon. Fred stood and said, “Well, why don’t we stop and eat?”

He was the elder—past his first prime. He was the stranger here. He was carrying the pack filled with Big Beaver Essentials (The “Ten B.B.E.s”—it’s all in theBig Beaver Book ). He had set the pace all morning. He had found the way when the terrain was difficult. And yet it was young David who was tired and ready to stop. Tell the truth, Fred was feeling pretty chipper. Only an unselfish regard for his fellow prompted him to propose the rest.

David failed to respond. Fred expected no verbal answer—not even a simple yes or no. But there are nonverbal means of communication and Fred had every reason to expect the flicker at his elbow that meant a nodded head.

At the lack of response, he turned to find no David at all. He turned further and there David was, sitting well back on higher rock, hands on knees, leaning forward, breathing, resting. It is one thing to go hiking; quite another to bounce off on exhausting sidetrips to shake hands with the ocean or discover what the world looks like halfway up a tree.

Fred made his way back across the rocks, slipping once and getting a foot wet, which is the sort of thing that happens when you muck about with oceans. Fred didn’t mind, however, any more than he minded his scrapes and splinters. It is a rare man who can see wet feet as hard-won battle wounds, but that was Fred, a prince faring forth on errant explorations, suffering but succeeding.

The rocks were harder to climb up than to climb down. David reached a small strong hand down to help Fred over the final lip.

“Let’s eat,” Fred said.

The sea danced on his right. On his left, the land was green and lightly rolling. He looked absently at his right palm and then led the way, striding through the rocks and scrub and short grass in search of a good place to stop and sit.

He was feeling good. The sun smiled with shy grace and the neglected wind skipped about in a vain bid for attention. It was a good day to explore, to enjoy the familiar outline of this countryside for its familiarity, and to savor the individualities of detail within the outline that made this place singular.

Fred’s father, in his impatience for his son to make a choice and start having children, as he ought, would say that Fred was approaching Binkin Island in a manner he might better have reserved for women, or better yet, for one woman: with respect, with knowledge, with appreciation, and above all, with enthusiasm. Damned shame, too. Waste, that. He had made a comment of this kind in the course of their last … discussion … and Fred had not been able to reply.

However, what Fred was most enjoying in this day was the chance to share what he saw with an interested fellow. Company always improves travel, as Temujin is reputed to have remarked, and far more men have been anxious to share their travels with good companions than to share the charms of their mistresses. Fred thought he would say as much to his father as proof that impatient analogies are inaccurate analogies, because Fred’s father would never countenance promiscuity and would never think of traveling alone.

They stopped to eat on the sunny side of a stream-cut hollow. Their meals heated themselves in seconds.

“This is pleasant,” Fred said.

David nodded and ate.

“It’s almost warm enough to go swimming.”

David set down his plate. He put a guarding hand to his throat and tested the temperature of the stream with the other. “It’s too cold, sir, “ he said almost inaudibly.

“ ‘Fred.’ ” He rinsed his plate and said, “I think you’re right.”

His eye was caught by a growth of weedy plants that had taken advantage of the shelter of the hollow. “What’s this?” he said, rinsing his mustache. “Not parallel evolution. Come along. We may have dessert here.”

He rose, jumped the stream, and began to examine the plants he had seen. David looked upstream and then down for a better place to jump, saw none, and at last jumped and splashed, earning his own cold and soggy battle scars.

Fred said, “I thought they had kept the island clean, but apparently not.” He delivered a quick botanical lecture on recognition and use, and then snapped off several carefully selected hemp stalks. “That is what we want.”

He set David to gathering wood for a small fire and himself began digging in his pack. He brought out his bright green copy of Volume II ofThe Pewamo Reports and some salt and honey. He’d found his place by the time David had collected his wood.

“Here it is,” he said. “Introduced by Seymour Binkin, one of three alien plant species growing wild on Binkin Island. Apparently Seymour Binkin liked a touch of home.”

He handed the passage to young David and took charge of the wood. With a connoisseur’s eye, he selected the best pieces, recaptured David’s attention, and gave him a quick demonstration in fire building. With the fire brightly burning, he handed a stalk to David and began to carefully toast another.

“You may notice a minty smell,” Fred said. “That’s resin.”

When they were roundly toasted, the stalks were salted gently and dipped in honey.

“Well,” Fred asked, “do you like living off the land?”

David nodded and smiled, and licked a finger. His eyes were black within black, and then he looked away.

With the fire smothered in approved Big Beaver style, they set off again. There is something to be said for lunch breaks. They can heighten appreciation of the day.

The ambitious boy who rises from a mud village to walk the corridors of power on Nashua learns the High Culture while those he was born with and studied with and played with find the weight and shape of their lives, until he may come to doubt his normality, his ability to feel, his sanity. These doubts will be enthusiastically reinforced by all about him. But the High Culture is the ladder to the wider world for which he hopes against hope. From below that wider world is hidden, but one magic day he puts a hand to the final rung and his own green fields lie open before him. It is what might be called apotheosis by education.

Schools and traveling masters who encourage the able to learn the High Culture make the Empire possible. If they were rewarded as they deserve, they would be too wealthy to care to continue their work. Fortunately there are far-sighted men willing to leave them to starve in honor—and the dream goes on, for a while at least.

The cultural stew is in perpetual simmer. Cultures emerge, spread, intermingle, stagnate, recrudesce and die. It is a stately ritual dance, eternally repeated. The High Culture changes rapidly, at least on the surface, the minor cultures more slowly, but all change.

Movement of people can do it, or the influence of neighbors or fallout from the High Culture. Even the unintended acts of passing strangers. A fellow once mentioned a green and pleasant land to a shepherd over a thornbush fire in the desert—a conversational tidbit, no more—and set off a mass migration. In later years he was metamorphosed into an angel, something that happens to few men in their own lifetimes. But he never learned of it, and so was saved embarrassment.

Still, there is no universal culture. The interest of a clan on Controlled Berkshire may have been the major concern of a guild in the Kandahar Appanage, and tomorrow may be the watchword of the day to the entire planet of San Bartolomé de Tirajana. But real unity is impossible—the universe is too large. The common experience of the opening of space ended forever the possibility of one common culture. Which is just as well. It would have been dull.

A veranda topped by an open balcony formed the front of Green Mountain Lodge. When complete, it would be the second longest veranda on Pewamo, and the largest in a radius of ten light-years that was topped by an open balcony.

In its present state, Green Mountain Lodge was an eyesore. Half the lodge looked like half of a lodge sitting on the hillside. The other half was lodge-in-posse, not lodge-in-esse. There were neat ugly piles of building material sitting patiently outside the lodge waiting for the miracle of transubstantiation. In the meantime, the effect was of a Chinese puzzle abandoned in frustration.

Green Mountain Lodge was begun by Hannifin General and left half-completed when that company lost its Pewamo concession in the isostatic readjustments that followed the breakup of Nieman, Mullin and Lund. Hannafin was happy to take its compensation and leave—when Pewamo was actually opened after two hundred and fifty years, the speeches made and the foundations laid, no one had seemed to notice. Not at all a proper Hannafin market. Not at all what Hannafin expected. Some even say that it contrived to lose its concession, and the suggestion has a certain plausibility.

The present proprietor of Green Mountain was a little man named Caspar Smetana, blessed with a graying mustache, determination, and the confident belief that life was an adventure. He was so earnest and so drab that no one would ever believe the joy he took in throwing a blind and random dart at life and contriving to meet the consequences.

He had once even coped with fame. He and his wife had had a loyal local following as “Pickles and Daisy” on another world so long before that weeks and months might pass without a memory of those once upon a times before he had trudged off after another rainbow. Only on rare summer nights did he and Daisy lock their doors and break into the old routines.

“Oh,” he would say, “don’t remind me. We were wild then.”

Daisy would agree, but it wasn’t true. Caspar Smetana was never overtly wild in his life. The memory made him feel devilish, though, and that was the main thing. He would hum and smile all the next day.

Daisy Bell Rise Up and Tell the Glory of Emanuel had been raised in a Christian family, but she had left her family, her religion, and the bulk of her name for the altogether unprepossessing man she had married and followed from planet to planet, job to job, life to life. Life with Caspar was consistently interesting, and she thought he was sexy. She was happy being with Caspar and he was happy making life up as he went along.

He owned this lodge for two reasons. The first was that it was incomplete. The second was that he was a convinced Hinkeelian who even bestowed faith on the Solimões Factor—believe that, if you will—and he found Pewamo romantic.

Business so far was more interesting than good. A student with eyes as wild as his hair. A moon-faced yagoot who plays the mandolin. An oversized name day toy of an alien come riding up the hill on a red tricycle. Business like that you couldn’t call good—but interesting, yes.

Ralph Weinsider picked his way around the mandolin with determined precision. Thirty feet away Daisy Smetana drove nails with even greater determination, though with rather less precision, the sound of her hammer turned into a clatter by the echoing hillside.

Caspar Smetana bringing drinks out to the shade of the porch heard hammering with mandolin accompaniment. Ralph heard only his own music, a small gift he was presenting with the aid of the mandolin that he had found. John was conscious of neither music nor hammering. Feeling outshone, he was numbering his talents to himself, trying to choose an appropriate one to bring forth at the proper moment—first opportunity. Torve heard both hammer and mandolin, appreciated both, and tapped a furry foot in Trog measure.

Ralph muted his music and nodded as Smetana set his drink down. “Thank you.”

Smetana said, “If you want something more, I won’t be here. You either have to fetch for yourself or lean over the railing. Call.”

Ralph tipped back in his chair and looked over the railing. He could see Daisy and her hammer. He’d heard them before but his mind had done nothing with the information.

“Hey, are you building something?” he asked. He loved to watch construction in progress, when he happened to notice it.

John looked up. “Of course,” he said. “They’re finishing this building.”

“With our own hands,” Smetana said. “Workmen we can’t afford. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“Say, could I watch you?” Ralph asked. He stopped playing and set his mandolin aside. “I won’t be in your way.”

“I guess,” said Smetana. His first impression of the boy had not been favorable—who likes yagoots, after all?—but at greater acquaintance he did seem harmless and friendly. “I guess it’s all right.” Watching work might be good for him.

Small group dynamics are incredible. John had been aching for the chance to impress Torve, but with Ralph gone, he found he had nothing of worth to say to the Trog. Over his fumbling mumble was the racket of one hammer, and then two. When there were three, he used that as excuse to break off and look over the railing. Yes, Ralph was working, too.

“They’re letting me hammer,” Ralph called. “Come on down.”

Torve said, “I think I hammer, too.”

So they went down and they all hammered. The strangest things can be fun for the strangest reasons. The work was fun partly because they didn’t have to do it, and partly because they were all doing it. Regardless of what you may have been told, that is the way the Pyramids were built.

The sun slanted down along the front of the lodge. The air was cool enough to be stimulating, warm enough to be pleasant. The rising and falling hammers made a constant tattoo.

John worked furiously, Ralph steadily, Torve slowly. Torve was bemused by the way a nail would retreat into the wood after it had been hit on the head.

Daisy was a pleasant-faced woman of middle years. She liked Ralph and John and Torve, but then she liked everybody. After an hour or so she brought out cookies and cold drinks and they all stopped work.

John inspected a blister on his index finger. He had an idea and he turned it over in his mind looking for the best handle.

“Sir,” he said, “how would you like a crew of workmen to finish the building?”

“I would like, of course,” Smetana said, taking a neat bite from his cooky. “This is good, Daisy. This is very good. You must keep the recipe. But as I told you, workmen we can’t afford to hire.”

John waved at Ralph. “We have friends, sir. I think they’d work half days for food and a place to sleep.”

“Do you think so?” Ralph said. The majority of his friends didn’t work.

“Of course,” John said. “I’ll bet we can find thirty. All they have to find out is that things are exciting here, and they’ll come.”

“Do they work only so good as you?” Smetana asked.

“I don’t think they’re any better,” John said, more interested in defending his own work than in defending his friends.

“Well …” said Smetana.

“Now, Smetana,” Daisy said. “You just don’t want to have your fun taken away. Say yes. It would be nice to have noise and young people around, and maybe then we could be a real resort, and not just a half-finished one.”

“I think about it,” Smetana said, an answer technically known as an indirect yes.

When they returned to work, Ralph took John aside. “What do you have in mind?” he said.

“It’s simple,” John said. “We get the right thirty people over here. We work in the morning. Or half of us work in the morning and half in the afternoon. The rest of the time, we run a factory.”

“A factory?”

“A factory. Remember?”

“Oh, yes. Yes!” Ralph drew in a breath and let it out audibly to show how impressed he was by the idea.

“Start thinking of people,” said John.

That’s the way they spent the rest of the afternoon, thinking of people. The light was slow and gold when they began to cover their lumber and put their tools away.

Then a blue bicycle came hard-pedaled up the road.

“It’s Fillmore,” Ralph said, moving down the veranda steps. “He’s a good worker. That’s one. Hey, Fillmore. Fillmore, hey.”

Fillmore Djaha brought his bicycle to a halt with the flair of Pheidippides arriving with the news from Marathon (save that he did not drop dead). He took a gasping breath of air and pointed blindly behind him.

“Admiral Beagle,” he said. He still did not drop dead—maybe the resemblance was not that great.

Admiral Beagle arrived on Binkin Island in the afternoon shuttle from Pewamo Central. There were other passengers—women returning from a day in the metropolis, two men in I.S. uniforms, a young fellow buried determinedly in a book, a handsome silver-haired man—but the Admiral paid them no attention. He spent his time profitably by making difficult decisions. They had been difficult for his subordinates; they were not difficult for him. More than once he wielded his red X with exasperation that anyone could fail to see such obvious unacceptability.

When the ship landed, he closed his case, looked at the women with a suspicion which was returned, and strode out into the slow mellow glow of late afternoon sunshine. The wind raised dust whorls that danced in golden showers. The Admiral should have stopped to watch, but didn’t.

The landing field was bounded by farms and the headquarters of the Development Area. The women set out briskly for home. The silver-haired man and the men in I.S. uniform went into the main building of the Development Area. The young man headed for the racks of rental bicycles by the landing field gate. The Admiral looked about for more acceptable transportation and, seeing none, at last went himself into the main building.

The silver-haired man was saying, “Thank you. And I apprehend I may rent a bicycle without?”

“That is correct, sir.”

Admiral Beagle said, “I am Admiral Beagle.”

“Yes, sir. May I help you?”

“I wish transportation to Green Mountain Resort.”

“If you go out to the main road, Green Mountain is a mile to the right. If you go left, it’s on the order of ninety miles. You can walk the distance or ride a bicycle.”

“Sir!”

“I’m sorry. There’s no other transportation on Binkin Island. If you want to call Green Mountain, they’ll send a pedicab down, but it will take an hour. Perhaps more.”

“Have you no official vehicles?”

“Yes, sir, but they’re not available for private use.”

“This is scarcely the attitude I expect to encounter, young man. I’m no ordinary private citizen. I am Admiral Beagle.”

“Sir, I know who you are, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

This was the excuse for a tantrum that relieved the ill humours of travel and restored the red in the Admiral’s cheeks. It did not, however, gain him the use of an official vehicle. He compromised by taking the name of the polite young man at the Information Desk.

The polite young man at the Information Desk waited until the Admiral’s back was turned and then he put a hand beside his mouth and said, “Old Leadhead,” in an insistent voice.

That had been the Admiral’s Navy nickname, bestowed on him by unloving subordinates. The Admiral whirled around but the young man had his head in a drawer.

The Admiral found the road and signs pointing to Green Mountain and to the various camping areas. He was not about to learn to ride a bicycle, so he began walking, adding this indignity to his nephew’s account. Not by the ear, by the nose.

Whoever had banned powered vehicles on Binkin Island (and don’t you find that familiarity has lent the name dignity?) had cared nothing for the tender sensibilities and short wind of retired admirals. It took Admiral Beagle twenty minutes to negotiate the mile to the resort, and when he came up the last hill, his case a heavy weight in his hand, his heart and lungs and legs all feeling strain, for the moment his attention was diverted from thoughts of redress and retribution.

A little man with a gray mustache and matching sweater was sitting and rocking on the veranda when Admiral Beagle took the steps. The Admiral knew him for what he was—the sort of enlisted man the younger men call “Pop.” The man nodded and said, “And good evening to you.”

The Admiral went past him without recognition of his presence, perhaps because it was only late afternoon. It was dark within and there was nobody in sight. The Admiral cast about, but found no people. He called and no one answered. He rang and no one came. After several minutes, he went back to the veranda.

The little man was still rocking and appreciating the glories of the day. In the late sunlight a plonk and its shadow performed apas de deux . Their figures were simple, but their form excellent. The little man took no notice of Admiral Beagle.

Admiral Beagle, who made conversational points with his feet that other men make with voice or hands, nudged him with a shoe. “Who’s in charge here?”

“Oh, good evening.” He continued to watch the plonk.

“Who’s in charge?”

The man said nothing. When the silence had grown long enough, Admiral Beagle, who was not altogether a dull man, got the point.

”Good evening,” he said. “I’d like to know where I can find Ralph Weinsider.”

The man swept an ushering hand from left to right. “Ralph Weinsider is out there somewhere. But he don’t want to see you.”

”What do you mean by that?”

”He don’t want to see you.”

”Let him face me and say that! Once a knave, a knave forever.”

”He told me to say to you, ‘Go home, Uncle Walter.’ ”

Admiral Beagle inflated himself and said, “Do you know who I am?” Emphasis on “know” and “am.”

For the first time since he had returned to the porch, the little man glanced up at Admiral Beagle. He leaned forward and peered at the Admiral’s rainbows. “Oh,” he said mildly and leaned back again.

”What?” demanded the Admiral. “What?”

”It was my mistake, Admiral. I thought you had been at Adipietro.”

”I was at Adipietro!”

He leaned forward again. “Oh, yes. The decoration for Adipietro is too much like the ribbon for Supply Efficiency, don’t you think?”

“Supply is very important,” said the Admiral. “After all, you can’t make an omelet if you haven’t any eggs. Now, I’d like to know where my nephew is.”

The man swept an ushering hand from left to right again. “Still out there, Admiral Beagle.”

At that moment, a red tricycle under the command of a brown Trog with a white belly came hoving smartly round the point of the building, sailed between a tarpaulin-covered shoal and a lumber reef, and steadied for the sea road home. Admiral Beagle, of course, recognized her as a pirate lugger.

“Aha!” he cried. “Aha! I should have known. Halt, Trog!”

But the Trog did not halt. Neither did he raise more canvas. He merely sailed imperturbably onward, running before the wind.

“Insolent alien!” bellowed the Admiral, shooting a fist toward him. At the noise, the plonk broke off its dance and hung quivering.

Red of face, heavy of foot, but fully determined, the Admiral rumbled down the veranda, yelled, took the steps one at a time, yelled, and set off in vain pursuit, his case bouncing against his thigh. He lost no ground to the trike-pedaling Trog, but neither did he gain.

Soon they were out of sight of Green Mountain, down the hill and round the first tree-shaded bend. The Admiral must have felt extremely frustrated because he was still in pursuit.

Smetana continued to rock on the veranda. The plonk, a creature noted for its shy innocence, had sailed quietly away. Smetana sighed and shook his head.

The Nashuite Empire is diverse. It contains planets occupied by single families, and planets that are population sinks to rival Old Earth. Each planet is an individual. Each has its own history. Each joined the Empire in its own way, in its own time, under its own particular conditions. Within the Empire there are free planets, and trusts, and fiefs, and satrapies, and provinces, and semi-autonomic dependencies. Diversity for every taste.

Through all human history the practice of governments has been to gather information, to assess it, to make reasonable predictions from it, and finally to act. This is patently impossible for the Nashuite Empire. In many cases there simply is no information. Where there is information it is often inaccurate or dated. In consequence it has been necessary to invent non-statistical methods of self-description as a basis for policy. Chief amongst these is the pantograph.

In the Central Administrative Offices on Nashua there is an immense building filled with pantographs, three-dimensional homologues of the distribution patterns of the Empire. The pantograph is based on the two ancient principles that the present implies the future, and that the part implies the whole. The rest is wave mechanics.

The flaw of the pantograph is that cultures and occupations and migration patterns and the rest do not exist in isolation. They interconnect and interconnect and interconnect. To treat them separately is to be inevitably inaccurate. Still, no one has yet invented a better descriptive device, and some day the Universal Pantograph will be complete and for the first time man will know definitely what is going to happen next.

In 1457, the first pantograph to come into private hands was delivered to one Clifford Morgenstern, who put it to very different use. This pantograph described the present and future distribution of artistic traditions. However, Morgenstern cared nothing for what these might be. Instead, he chose to regard the pantograph as a form of fluid art in itself and he wrote a book defining the effective use of color within the model.

It was this book that disturbed and stimulated Fillmore Djaha. He cared nothing for pantography or color selection, and still the book spoke to him. It said, grandly, gloriously, that not only was change possible, it was inevitable. In those days, in the Tanner Trust, that was exciting news.

Sir Thomas Edmund Fanshawe-IV pedaled a wobbly bicycle up the path that led from the road to the occupied campsite. Pressed into the job of Mercury, but lacking Mercury’s winged paraphernalia, his motto was necessarily, “I Will Contrive.” He was an excellent contriver, which is to say that while he might tend to wobble, he would arrive.

He ran out of momentum before he reached the camp, stepped down in time, and wheeled the bicycle the final forty feet. A fire was burning, but no one was in sight. He leaned his bicycle against a rock and when he turned again a short, spare young man was standing by the nearer tent closing his jacket.

Sir Thomas said, “Lord Charteris, I believe.”

Villiers said, “Sir Thomas, your memory is excellent. We only met once and then fleetingly.”

And not under the best of circumstances.”

“And not under the best of circumstances. I trust I am no longer suspected of being a bad influence, or am I to be investigated again?”

“You have been, milord.”

“Ah.”

“As before, I believe you were found to be a tolerable vagary.”

This did not conflict so greatly with Villiers’ self-image that he felt need to protest. Neither did he smile, however. But then it was not his way to encourage flattery.

He said to the silver-haired executive: “Have a seat, sir. May I offer you a drink? Hot, cold, alcoholic …”

“Water would be excellent,” Sir Thomas said.

Villiers brought him cold water. “If your entourage is small, Sir Thomas, I can offer you all a place by our fire and a hot meal.” He cocked his head at the sky. “It is my estimate that we should have no rain tonight. However, if you wish more conventional accommodations, I believe there is a resort several miles distant.”

“I saw it,” Sir Thomas said. “As I passed on my bicycle. As it happens, however, I traveled to Duden by Navy courier, and hence necessarily alone.”

Villiers had once traveled aboard a Navy courier and would not easily be induced to repeat the experience. Villiers was right-handed. His pilot was left-handed. They had been fitted into the wrong seats and for two weeks had clashed elbows.

“Was the passage long?” Villiers asked.

“Twenty-six days,” Sir Thomas said.

“You have my sympathy.”

“Fanshawe-IV!” Fred said in delight, striding down out of the long-shadowed woods. “So you tracked me down way out here. Is something wrong?”

Sir Thomas stood and salaamed. “Nothing whatever, milord,” he said. “Merely that in a temporary shortage of messengers, I was pressed into service.”

“A message from my father.”

Sir Thomas said, “Yes.”

“Well, I’m sorry for your trouble, Sir Thomas. If it’s the usual thing, it wasn’t worth the effort. I’m afraid that we can’t offer you much here, but it is a pleasure to have you as a guest.”

“No,” Sir Thomas said. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, milord. I was about to thank Lord Charteris for his invitation when you arrived, but I intend to return to Pewamo Central tonight. If I am fortunate, I may be able to rendezvous with the courier that brought me to Duden.”

“ ‘Een rollende steen neemt geen mos mede,’ ”Fred said.

“Exactly,” Sir Thomas said.

Fred smiled.

Villiers said, “What happened to David?” To Sir Thomas’ questioning eyebrow he said, “A young Big Beaver recruit. We’re taking him in hand.”

Fred looked around in surprise. Then he said, “He’s adept at disappearances. He was with me only a moment ago.”

“Not since you first spoke,” Villiers corrected.

“He’s shy. I don’t believe he said more than ten words in the day.”

Sir Thomas asked, “Are you sure of him?”

“Quite,” Villiers said. “I checked him out this morning.”

At Sir Thomas’ question, Fred had begun a protest that was momentarily halted by Villiers’ answer. He sighed, then pointed his left forefinger at Sir Thomas and said, “Won’t you ever let go?”

Then he swung and pointed his right forefinger at Villiers. He shook his head. “Tony, was that necessary?”

Villiers said, “As aSegosta Savoda —curiosity alone.”

“Are you really?” Sir Thomas asked. “I only managed to reachElimosa Segosta , but then my health as a boy was not good.” He coughed experimentally. “Yes.” He patted himself on the chest.

“Really, Tony?” Fred asked. Then he held up his hands. “All right, I believe you. It’s you. Sir Thomas, why can’t you be like Villiers and give me a fair chance to go to hell?”

Uncomfortably, Sir Thomas said, “Perhaps someday you’ll understand. I ask nothing but the most routine of precautions.”

Fred rolled his eyes. “Sir Thomas, I don’t want my life directed. I want to make my own decisions. I even want the pleasure of stubbing my toe because I didn’t have sense enough to look where I was going. Why do you think I picked this place for a vacation?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, milord.” Sir Thomas looked about him.

“Well, I’ll tell you. Because I didn’t think you would find me here. That’s why.”

Villiers said quietly, “Fred, take your message off and prepare your reply. Here comes Torve and it’s dinner time, and Sir Thomas has a shuttle to catch.”

Behave badly? Fred was too well-bred. He mentally censured Sir Thomas for being unreasonable—quite rightly—and Villiers for the opposite—again rightly. He set down his pack, took the message, went into his tent, closed the flap and turned on the light.

Sir Thomas said, “Thank you, Lord Charteris. I’m forced to credit you as a man of sense.”

He watched Torve approach the last steep rise into the camp. He said, “That is your tolerable side.”

His eyes widened, then narrowed as Torve successfully negotiated the rise. Insufficient momentum—that was it.

Dust rose as Torve passed them. Villiers raised a hand in welcome. Sir Thomas raised a hand to shoo the dust away.

“And that Trog can stand as a symbol of your vagaries. I find you disturbing, Lord Charteris. You may have to be reconsidered once again. Our previous meeting was, as you say, fleeting. If it had been longer, I might have seen the resemblance.”

“Resemblance?” Villiers asked.

“Between what you are and what he would like to be.”

“You would have seen no resemblance, I think,” Villiers said. “I was a very different person ten years ago.”

“I think not that different.”

“As may be,” Villiers said. “In any case, Sir Thomas, he finds far more pleasure in agrostology than he would ever find as a remittance man, and what is more, he knows it. You have him safe. You have no need to worry.”

“I do worry, sir. It is my occupation to worry.”

“I think he would far rather be himself than be me. If you give him fair allowance for maturity and sense, you might find that he does very well for himself. If you press him too close, the result might be too much like me for your taste.”

Torve, having parked his tricycle, pointed at the upper meadow and said, “I go to think the sun down.”

(In passing, let us note that this was a lie. Torve had no character in the presence of jellied whiteworms. Whiteworms glacé. Whiteworms in sweet cream sauce. When jellied, the opaque white of the worm turns translucent amber, an inner radiance that lends warmth and fire to any sauce. Torve had discovered an opened jar of whiteworms at Green Mountain, and hooked it. He meant to gobble it all in secret shame and could hardly wait to begin crying at his own weakness. This is speaking figuratively, of course. In actual fact, he could hardly wait to lower his nictating membranes, but it comes to the same thing.)

As Torve pointed, Villiers with sudden apprehension saw three figures fleet across the golden lake of grass. A plonk was hanging over the meadow. It took no note of their passage. When they were gone and the lake calm but for wind ripples and memories, it remained.

Villiers bent to Fred’s pack and brought out Volume II ofThe Pewamo Reports . He thumbed through to the section on plonks and unbuttoned his jacket and checked his curdler while he read it.

“Yes,” he said. “Here it is. ‘By nature, the plonk is shy.’ I thought that’s what it said. I’ve wanted to check it all afternoon.”

Sir Thomas said, “Someone is coming.”

Villiers looked around sharply. “Oh, yes. I believe I know him. Admiral Beagle, if I’m not mistaken.”

“It must have been a courtesy promotion. I’m not familiar with the man.”

Villiers closed the green book and replaced it in Fred’s pack. “It’s very strange. That plonk in the meadow has been drifting around here all day. I’ll have to drop a letter and suggest a footnote.”

“They may have meant reserved, rather thanshy .”

“It’s a possibility, Sir Thomas. The Admiral looks in need of water. Would you draw him some?”

“Certainly,” Sir Thomas said, and turned to fill the cup he still held.

When he turned again, Villiers was nowhere in sight and Admiral Beagle was approaching. The Admiral’s pace and form had never been good. On this final slope, his pace had slowed to less than a walk and his form had disintegrated into a wamble. His breath was harsh and helpless. His color red. His eyes lost. His face a graphic illustration of the principle of osmosis. The only thing neat and orderly about him was the case which he convulsively shifted from left hand to right. Sir Thomas looked again for Villiers, and then stepped forward, cup in hand.

“My dear Admiral,” he said. “Have some water.”

With a sense of real adventure, Ralph led John and Fillmore down the easy footing of a leaf-filled gully, the meadow out of sight to their left. He turned, hands high, mandolin in one, and motioned for the others to slow.

“Quiet now. Shh.”

Ralph leading?Ralph?

Well, after all, it was his uncle. But if you doubt, I can prove it to you. Simply bear in mind that if three people see themselves as a group, one will be placed in the center by the other two as they walk.

Imagine John walking between Ralph and Fillmore. Ralph is comfortable. John is relatively comfortable being in the middle with Ralph there to talk to. Fillmore is not comfortable—he feels pushed outside. He lowers his head and drops back a pace and then around to Ralph’s far side. The group stabilizes, John trading the security of the middle for relief at being rid of that twit at his elbow.

Imagine Fillmore walking in the center. Ralph is comfortable. (Ralph is always comfortable.) Fillmore is a trifle uneasy because he isn’t completely sure he belongs in the middle. John is acutely unhappy. He raises his head and picks his own path over rough ground or strides ahead and waits. When the group reforms, Ralph is back in the middle.

So, inevitably Ralph. And after all, it was his uncle.

He motioned up the gully side, and keeping low began to climb. The other two followed. Ralph lifted his head at the top with the care of a fawn trifling with the forbidden. Then he ducked again.

“Can’t see anything,” he said. “But there are rocks ahead and we should be able to see from there.”

They slipped and rustled their way to the rocks and wormed among them. John elbowed Ralph.

“Torve’s sitting in the field,” he said. “I think he’s eating something.”

“I can’t tell,” Ralph said.

Admiral Beagle was intermittently visible through trees below and to their right. He was drinking from a cup and panting.

“Where’s Villiers?”

“I’m here,” Villiers said. When they looked around, he was buttoning his jacket. It was growing cooler. He pulled the jacket smooth and there was a lump underneath on the left.

John said, “Mr. Villiers!”

Ralph ducked lower and said, “Not so loud,” to both of them.

Fillmore, who knew Villiers less well, held out his copy of Morgenstern, suddenly and acutely aware that it was rather more battered than when he had acquired it. “Here is your book that I borrowed.”

Villiers accepted it. “Thank you,” he said. “I thought we had agreed that you weren’t to be a bother.”

Ralph hung his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but my uncle came. We had to run.”

“Did you?” Villiers asked. “But whom is he looking for?”

Slowly, “Us, I guess. Me.”

“Why don’t you come along to the camp and we’ll all talk to your uncle?”

“Oh, no, sir. Please.”

“Sometimes directness is the easiest way,” Villiers said. “You won’t? Well, in all honesty I must admit that there are times when directness is not the easiest way. When your uncle has gone, come join us for dinner. All three of you. We’ll talk then.”

Admiral Beagle did not believe in altruism. He believed in solid rational motivations like hate and greed and fear. He had risen to Commodore by showing the knee to superiors and the boot to inferiors. Consequently he felt uneasy when he was offered a cup of water by a stranger out of apparent sheer goodness of heart. His mind was foggy and his knees were weak, but he still knew better than that. When his eyes were able to focus, he looked about him and spotted a familiar red tricycle.

He looked at his erstwhile shadout from beneath half-mast eyelids, and then with a nicely calculated wrist flick threw the remaining water from the cup. Last of the third cup.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice if you kept me distracted?” he asked coolly. “I’m sharper than that, may I tell you, sir. Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Don’t fence with me, sir. The damned Trog!”

The young man who had been in company with the Trog on Pewamo called attention to himself by saying, “Admiral Beagle, how pleasant to see you. Sir Thomas, your pardon. Someone wished to return a borrowed book, and hadn’t patience to wait.” He held a book up in his left hand.

The silver-haired water-bearer next to the Admiral said, “I was beginning to suspect you a coward. Our shy young friend?”

The man stepped lightly down the slope. “You are very quick, Sir Thomas.”

Admiral Beagle said, “Who are you? What’s your name?”

The young man came too close, salaamed, and said, “Anthony Villiers.” He stepped a pace back, turned a hand to Sir Thomas and presented him: “Sir Thomas Edmund Fanshawe-IV. Admiral Walter Beagle, censor on Shiawassee and in the Tanner Trust.”

Sir Thomas asked, “Retirement promotion, Admiral?”

Beagle said, “I thought you were leaving the Tanner Trust?”

“My dear Admiral, I’m not now in the Tanner Trust.

“You said you were traveling to Mandracore.”

Admiral Beagle’s memory was faulty. Villiers had not told him any such thing, and a seizer of easy opportunities would have immediately said as much. Villiers knew better. For his own reasons he had led the Admiral to take a blind step from inference to assumption and it seemed to him that to admit this might well be impolitic.

He stepped around deception’s tangled web. He appealed to higher truth—though not much higher. He said, quite politely, “It would seem that subsequent to our conversation my plans changed and that I neglected to inform you. Forgive me.”

Admiral Beagle said, “Let me inform you of something, young sir. The same laws I mentioned yesterday still apply to you.”

Villiers showed a surprised face. “Admiral Beagle—how can you say that? Your authority doesn’t extend to Pewamo and neither do your laws.”

“Well, try this, then. Do you intend to spend the rest of your life on Pewamo? The only ships are for Shiawassee, and when you change ship, then youwill be under my authority.”

“Come now, Admiral. Let us be more honest with each other. We both know quite well that whatever local laws may be, spaceports always operate under Empire Law. Ships wouldn’t land otherwise.”

Throughout, Villiers spoke respectfully and politely, if not deferentially. However, what Admiral Beagle heard was smart-ass defiance. That it was politely expressed made it more intolerable, if anything.

“If you want to play by Empire Law, let me see your camping permit. And let me see the Trog’s papers.”

Villiers nodded. “Very well. As you can see, Torve is sitting there in the field. I’ll have to withdraw for a few minutes to locate the permit, but I’ll have it when you return from speaking to Torve.”

So Admiral Beagle found himself walking through the shadowed grass, feeling ponderous, seething, but keeping tally. When he was young he had kept a notebook of slights, insults, and grudges, but as he had grown older he had found that he remembered them quite well without having to write them down. So much for those who speak of memory failing with age.

Sir Thomas spoke to Villiers. “You don’t have to show him anything, you know.”

“I do know, sir. But it does seem easier.”

“How could it be easier, milord? I happen to know that your Trog has no papers.”

Villiers looked at him. “I think you will find it makes small difference.”

“Are you sure that you are able to cope with this man? It would be foolish to take him too lightly.”

“Without taking him too lightly, I would nonetheless give him a relatively low position on my order of worries.”

“Low?”

“Relatively, Sir Thomas.” Villiers smiled.

“In that case, sir, it may well be imperative that you be reconsidered. I tell you that he disquiets me. If he does not do as much for you, then either your judgment is poor to a fault or your life is more uncertain than any temperate man could like. I will take whatever steps prudence makes necessary.”

“Fred wouldn’t care for intervention. Meddle warily. Better nothing than a major exercise of force.”

There were no chairs around the camp and would be none unless Villiers should be inspired by Thalia, the Muse of wicker weaving. In consequence, when Villiers entered the tent in search of their camping permit, Fred was sitting tailor fashion watching and listening to his father’s message. He looked uncomfortable, but he did not look unhappy.

The major lesson that Fred had learned from the Big Beavers and the course of his life was that comfort is antipathetic to change and the most comfortable are the dead. Consequently he valued his discomfort as evidence that he was still alive—and the knowledge gave him comfort. To that extent he was a life-lacking man.

His father was saying as much, though in other words. He was saying that Fred ought to think of something larger than sugar grass paddies and bucolic vacations. “You’re hiding from the reality of life. You’re avoiding the larger world.”

And to the extent that Fred would have found this world discomforting—as he had and would—his father was, of course, absolutely correct.

“How’s it going?” Villiers asked.

“I’ve listened and answered,” Fred said, turning the message off. “I’m listening again to see if there was anything I missed. It’s the same old stuff. Why don’t I stop running away and what poor payment this is for the privileges I’ve enjoyed. And he’s still threatening me with Gillian U. He’s talking about bringing her to meet me if I won’t go to meet her. What do you think I should tell him?”

“You might suggest a meeting on neutral ground halfway between.”

“Tony, that isn’t very useful.”

“If you want to stay on good terms with your father, you’ll meet the girl. Soonest begun, soonest done, like taking medicine.”

“That’s damned blithe.”

“If you’ll remember, my father asked something of the same sort from me, and I didn’t oblige him. I simply know what it takes to stay on good terms with fathers. I’m willing to bet that in … say a year … you’ll be married anyway.”

“Why do you say that?” Fred asked, pleased for the perspective but uncertain of Villiers’ premises.

“Because you’re ripe for it,” Villiers said.

I leave to your imagination whether Fred was pleased or not.

Villiers and Fred emerged from the tent. Villiers held the message box while Fred put on a jacket against the growing chill. Then Villiers swapped the message for the camping permit. The rising wind flapped it in his hand.

Admiral Beagle was returning down the hill. The clouds were smoldering ashes, white during the day, now showing orange fire with the coming of night. The fields were darkening.

Fred yawned in the coolness. He looked at the Admiral and touched his mustache. In the center of his philtrum, the toboggan run in the center of his lip, there was a mole. Fred felt this mole was particularly identifying, and while he was sure that it was covered adequately, he was not serenely sure.

As he joined them, Admiral Beagle looked back over his shoulder at Torve. “Very very odd. Very odd. He kept turning his back and gobbling something from a jar.”

Sir Thomas found this intriguing and would have been pleased to hear more. However, as is so often true of life, there was no immediate amplification. He filed the questions, “What was in the Trog’s jar?” and “Why did the Trog turn his back?” with a million other unanswered random curiosities. He never learned the answers, but about six months before he died he remembered the questions and wondered again.

Villiers handed the camping permit to Admiral Beagle. “Here you are, sir.”

Admiral Beagle held it up and looked at it probingly. In fact he knew no better than you or I what a camping permit should look like. He merely knew that one was required, and had struck outad libitum .

Villiers said, “It couldn’t be better if it were signed by the Emperor.”

“Watch your tongue, sir!” Admiral Beagle said. “I’ll thank you to speak with greater reserve.”

“But, sir—” Villiers said, quite startled.

Admiral Beagle cut him off. “It is a point on which I am most particular. There are laws against abuse of the Emperor’s name.” He moved his eyes skyward in respect. “Empire laws.”

Villiers said, “I think these gentlemen can attest that I spoke no ill of the Emperor, nor intended none. Your pardon, sir. I think you will find that the camping permit is valid. I will accompany you to speak with the I.S. who stamped it on our arrival if you like.”

Villiers was standing uncomfortably close to Admiral Beagle as he spoke. Every human has a zone in which he is neither too close nor too distant for easy conversation, but comfortable. This zone varies from one culture to another and when men of two cultures meet, one may place himself on the far side of a desk in order to be at ease, and the other may unconsciously climb over the desk in pursuit of greater intimacy.

Villiers had noticed that Shiawasseans valued their distance. His schools had taught him to notice things like that—it’s part of being a lord. Admiral Beagle had flinched when Villiers had made his presentations and that had not escaped notice. Now Villiers crowded Admiral Beagle’s perception, not so blatantly as to arouse hostility, but in the subtle manner one might expect from so polished a gentleman.

The Admiral stepped back a pace and was lost. He folded the permit and handed it to Villiers and retreated another step. A pigeon, treated with respect, can be made to walk the length of a street in this manner.

“Thank you,” Villiers said. “Will there be anything further, Admiral?”

The poor baffled man looked about him. And retreated another step. “Let me tell you, young man,” he said. “You had best mind what you do. I’ll be keeping my eye on you.” And retreated.

Sir Thomas wheeled his bicycle out, but did not mount it. He said, “Admiral Beagle, I’m returning to the landing field. I would be pleased if you would bear me company.”

Honor saved, Admiral Beagle half-turned from Villiers and then swung back to say, “I’m sorry I ever recommended Mrs. Waldo Wintergood to you.”

When Sir Thomas and the Admiral were gone into the twilight, Fred said, “Can you explain that?”

Villiers said, “I’ll try later.”

He said that because Ralph and John and Fillmore were popping out of the nearest rocks, and he was sophisticate enough to believe in portents. John and Fillmore had discovered David in hiding. John held him by the hands, Fillmore by the feet. Ralph stood to one side with his mandolin. David kicked and struggled silently.

“Look who we caught spying on you,” John said.

“Put him down,” Fred said.

Villiers said, “You had better put him down. He’s another dinner guest.” He turned to the darkened hill and put his hand to his mouth. “Torve—it’s dinner time.”

Earth mulls deep brown thoughts of time past, while fire dances.

Air touches the world with pale wondering fingers, and fire dances.

Water sings of freedom’s illusion, but fire dances.

Fire brief. Fire bright. Fire brilliant. Fire inspires, and fire rules the night.

An ordinary man might have accepted the fact that whatever immoralities Villiers was engaged in were beyond his power to affect. An ordinary man might have accepted the fact that his nephew had no intention. An ordinary man might have gone home.

Feeling extraordinary, Admiral Beagle made his way up a forest gully near Villiers’ camp. The night was dark and he wished he had night glasses. He demanded nothing of others that he did not demand of himself and tomorrow he would mark a demerit down in his notebook. Lack of foresight, Mr. Beagle. A good officer is prepared for all contingencies.

He wasn’t altogether sure what he meant to do, but he couldn’t leave without a reconnoiter. He’d been taught while young that when in doubt the best thing was to have a recce, and he had assimilated the principle so thoroughly that now, some fifty years later, he found himself sneaking up a hillside for a long secret look at the enemy.

As he sneaked, he mumbled over a phrase in his mind like a dog seeking the sweetest grip on a bone. He had served himself a demerit for his lame exit speech to Villiers. As a connoisseur of the pithy, he felt he should have departed only on delivery of an apt and witty capping blow. If another occasion should be presented, he meant to make the most of it. A simile had occurred to him—that Villiers seemed as ripe with evil as a veined cheese (all of which he loathed, from blue to Bagnasco)—but so far the best refinement he had produced was, “You are as corrupt as Gorgonzola,” and that wasn’t much, not even a metaphor.

From the top of the gully, he could see a fire flicker. In the afternoon he had noted a rock tumble on the north side of the camp. He honored himself with the removal of a demerit when he reached those rocks. He felt supremely woodwise. He could see figures moving and hear the sound but not the substance of conversation. A light suddenly flashed at him from the camp and he ducked. After a few seconds the light went out. He lay quietly and panted, and flattered himself for his quickness.

The rocks continued even into the camp, where several had been pressed into service as chairs and tables. By degrees, the Admiral worked his way down among them until he could hear those about the fire—and see them, too, when he dared to look.

The first words he heard he found disquieting. They were talk of metaphor, the very subject that had been in his mind, and he briefly considered giving himself a demerit for making trouble. The coincidence was a bad omen. What he saw and what he heard that night disturbed him mightily: talk of Aristotle and Mrs. Waldo Wintergood, the plotting of revolution, and worst, the performance of rites black and alien. Nine people in ten—no, ninety-nine in a hundred—would give a lot to see a show like that. Admiral Beagle found it distressing. If he had paid for his seat he would have asked for his money back.

“Perhaps we might blow up the ugliest building on Shiawassee,” Fillmore said.

Dinner was being comfortably sloshed and dissolved in the stomachs of all. The cool night had crept around the fire. Ralph sat on a rock, knee cocked. Fillmore sat against the rock at his right. To his left, John sat on a log and toyed with the handkerchief tied around his neck. Torve, their honorary Prime Mover, sat opposite them on the ground, farther than they from the fire because his fur grew easily overheated. David sat even farther from the fire. He could be seen, but his face was in shadow. His hands were folded over his copy of theBig Beaver Book . Fred dropped a log on the fire and stepped back out of the shower of sparks.

Villiers flashed a handlight at the rocks where the boys had hidden before dinner and said to Fred, “That’s where I’m going to set my behemoth trap. If a behemoth should come by while we are camping here, it would be a shame to miss it. A trap there is the only answer. I’m set on the project.”

John said to Fillmore: “We’re not going to blow up any buildings. That’s destructive criticism. We want to offer positive alternatives.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Tony?” Fred asked.

Ralph said, “There in the rocks? Where we were?”

“Why, yes,” Villiers said. “It’s the best spot around the camp. You’ll be safe if you stick to the paths.”

“Oh,” said Fred. “Oh, yes. By all means, Tony. Build your trap. I’d like a look at a behemoth.” He winked.

Fillmore said, “You mean you weren’t serious when you spoke of a secret explosive factory?”

“Explosivefactory?” Ralph asked, looking at John on his log. “It was a paint factory.”

John tugged at his scarf. “I thought the metaphor was more powerful this way.”

“Good heavens, Fillmore,” Ralph said. “What was that remark you made about blowing up buildings?”

“John made it sound like fun.”

“Polu de megiston to metajorikon einai,” Fred said.

“Monon gar touto oute par aggou esti labein eujuias te shmeion esti to gar eu meta jerein to to omion qewrein,” Villiers answered.

“He doesn’t really mean it,” Ralph said.

“We’re simply going to call about thirty friends and have them come here. Then we’re going to talk about what we can do in the way of revolution.”

“Are you going to put out a magazine?” Villiers asked.

“Why, yes. I suppose so.”

“Good. I hope you’ll send me a copy.”

“Why didn’t anybody ever do this before?” Fred asked.

“I suppose nobody ever thought of it. Nobody I know ever came to Pewamo. Besides, we have an unfair advantage. I don’t think they’ll put us in jail. Not people like Larry Ajamian and Pyatt Blevko and me.”

“Really?” Villiers asked.

“They’d put us in jail if we blew up buildings,” John said.

Fillmore said, “Ithink it would be fun as long as we didn’t get caught.”

“Pyatt is the son of Judge Blevko, and Larry is the Administrator’s son. My uncle might want to arrest me, but my aunt wouldn’t let him.”

Villiers had his private doubts as to the effectiveness of what Ralph and John (and Fillmore) intended—revolts are common as peanuts, revolutions rarer. Nonetheless, it seemed like a good sane way to raise hell.

“I wish you good luck,” he said.

“Mr. Villiers, what was that you said a few minutes ago? You said something very odd sounding.”

“We were quoting Aristotle’sPoetics ,” Villiers said. “He thought that metaphors were a mark of genius in style.”

“Because he was a metaphorist,” Fred said. “I’m proud of myself for remembering. We studied that a long time ago.”

Villiers said, “Have any of you read thePoetics ?”

Heads were shaken. John said, “What is it?”

“It’s the first formal attempt at dramatic criticism. We’ll get you a copy. And Fred, why don’t you do them an article for their magazine? ‘The Pertinence of Aristotle to Modern Art.’ ”

“Another hurdle, Tony,” Fred said. “Another hurdle.”

“That’s thepleasure in life.”

“We would like an article, sir,” Ralph said.

Fred said, “All right, Tony, what are you going to do for them?”

“Fair enough,” Villiers said. “Let me think.”

He paced up and down by the fire for some minutes, mumbling and rubbing his hands lightly, and manifesting other evidences of thought. At last he said, “Aha. How would you like an article that discusses the metaphors in the Mrs. Waldo Wintergood books?”

“Metaphors?” Ralph said slowly.

“Yes,” said Villiers. “I read the five books I have and they are all metaphors.”

“What do you mean?”

So Villiers explained, usingSammy Swims Upstream and its spermatozoic symbology as his example. There was silence as he finished.

Fillmore laughed in the silence, a laugh compounded of delight and shock. He stopped laughing abruptly.

Fred said, “Say, Tony, I’d like to read that book.”

John said, “I see it. I see it, but I don’t like it.”

(David, as usual, said nothing, but watched with deep eyes.)

Ralph said nothing, either. He shook his head numbly.

Torve said, “Book is nothing like that at all.”

Fillmore, John, and Ralph, not to mention David and Fred, would have been totally upset to see the book through Torve’s eyes. Admiral Beagle was saved an apoplectic seizure.

Ralph said, “Did you read the others the same way, sir?”

Cautiously, Villiers said, “Yes.”

“Oh, my heaven.”

Fillmore said, “I sort of like it,” in a tentative voice.

John said, “I’m not sure I do.”

Ralph took a deep breath, and manfully said, “I think we should use it. We are determined to offer people alternatives in art, after all. This is an alternative.”

“You’re right,” John said. “Besides, it’s going to bother most people more than it bothered us, and that will be fun. I think we should use it, too.”

They all nodded at each other.

Ralph said, “Of course, Mr. Villiers, your article must satisfy our editorial standards.”

“I understand perfectly,” Villiers said. “I wouldn’t ask you to lower your standards for my sake.”

“I’m going to contribute some of my poems,” John said.

“Who’s going to decide if they meet our editorial standards?” Fillmore asked.

“That will be up to the Editorial Board,” Ralph said firmly.

“Who’s that?”

“Us.”

“Oh.”

Ralph said, “And we are going to record Torve. That’s another alternative.”

“Thurb,”said Torve.“Thurb.”

Torve might have maintained that this new moment of inspiration was purely the result of lines of occurrence, but a damned convenient moment, I say, for inspiration to strike.

“Just a minute,” Villiers said. “Quiet, Torve. Do you honestly mean to tell me that you are going to make people listen to Torve’s compositions?”

“Yes,” said Ralph. “They’re an alternative.”

“That may be, but I’ll tell you for myself that I and many others are deaf to the charms ofFrobb .”

Fred raised his hand. “I am.” David raised his hand, but didn’t say anything.

Torve said, “Very good, Tony. Almost you saidFrobb as should be.”

“Thank you,” Villiers said. “Do you recall the composition you were working on several nights ago? The night in the park.”

“Is finished. Is gone. Is set free in universe.”

“Can you recall it?”

Torve closed his eyes and looked beatific while he consulted his inner processes. “Yes,” he reported at last.

“Good,” said Villiers. “Now I propose that we offer a real alternative. Torve willFrobb and the rest of us will accompany him. Ralph, I notice you have a mandolin. Can you play it?”

“Of course he can,” John said. “He plays very well.”

“I’ve got perfect pitch,” Ralph said.

“Oh, yes. I remember your saying so. That’s fortunate.” Villiers looked around the fire-lit campsite and in no time had found a metal tub and a hammer. “Take this tub off a distance and bang it into a musical instrument while we find other things to play.”

John looked after Ralph as he dragged the tub toward the meadow, assaulting it experimentally with the hammer. “How do you turn a tub into a musical instrument?”

“I don’t know,” Villiers said. “But he has perfect pitch. He’ll figure out something. Now do we have any other instruments among us?”

“Kazoo,” said Fred.

“That’s two instruments, or maybe three, plus Torve. We need some rhythm. Spoons. Jug.”

“Can I play the tub?” Fillmore asked.

It was some minutes before they were all assembled. Villiers, as the conductor, arranged people to his satisfaction. Torve was in the center. On his left was Ralph and his mandolin. On his right was Fred and his kazoo. Fillmore was playing the tub—four clear notes plus a number of sour ones. John on jug. For David they had improvised a mouth bow—curve of wood, metal string, twang, twang. Villiers had his hands full of spoons.

“Join in as I give the signal,” Villiers said. “Torve, will you start?”

Poised silence. Then,“Thurb, thurb, thurb.” As usual, a noise of uncertain appeal.

Villiers nodded to Ralph, and the mandolin joined. Villiers hung his spoons from his fingers and began to click a rhythm. Kazoo, tooting a grainy melody. Clear mellow notes from the gently tapped tub, plus some sour ones. Hoomp, fump, fump from the jug. Twang, twang.Thurb , tinkle, boing, fump, twang. Music, by heaven. Music.

You may talk about your lines of occurrence if you wish, but music is a miracle of coincidence. Noises that eventually fit together to make a sum larger than reason could expect. And all coming from separate heads. When the noises do fit together, it is an act of communion.

They played together for some time and even Torve was pleased with this transmogrification of his art. But then his heart was childish and his mind simple.

They called a halt to their playing while it was still fun, and adjourned to the fireside where they fell into talk of women and other mysteries. As women sitting in their circles suspect, when men are together they do talk about things from their side. Torve listened with great interest.

Ralph, John, and Fillmore, coming as they did from a tightly bound culture, held peculiar theories about life, love, and sex with which neither Fred nor Villiers was in agreement but to which they listened with good humor and courtesy. One of the major lessons of the High Culture is never to become emotionally disturbed by what other people do, even if they do it very very oddly. David, who might be expected to have a different perspective from any of the others, said nothing.

At last, Fred said, “Aristotle might well be congenial to you. He held that women, while inferior, might still be good, though he thought that valor or over-cleverness was inappropriate in them.”

“Aristotle said that?” John asked.

“In thePoetics. ”

“I’ll have to read that.”

“Do you believe those things?” David asked. Silent David.

“In context, I do. He was talking of consistency of characterization. From my own experience, however, I can’t speak well of women. Most of those that I’ve met have been maumets.”

“That’s harsh,” Villiers said.

“That’s the truth. I might hope to encounter something better someday, but the hope is a remote one.”

“Let me tell you of someone who was something better,” Villiers said. “My family has a certain wealth and position and my father had it in mind that our wealth and position might best be conserved by arranging an appropriate marriage for his second son and heir—that is, me. He considered alliances with many men, and at last narrowed his list to three, any of whom was acceptable to him. And he thought that of the four daughters, I should surely find one that was acceptable to me. I knew personally two of the four. Sisters. One was not bright and the other not pleasant. Both found me not to their liking. The one who was unbright thought my conversation baffling. The one who was unpleasant thought my personality too secretive. I knew a third by reputation, which was that she was careless. She was careless enough to be willing to accept me, but I was like you, Fred, in wishing for something better.”

“And the fourth?” Ralph asked.

“The fourth was something better. A girl attractive in the extreme. She was intelligent, of excellent disposition and character, and full of interests and accomplishments. She did not find me rejectable for my history and so we met. We liked each other quite well.”

“Did you marry her?” Ralph asked.

“No,” said Villiers. “No. Unfortunately, the girl was six feet two inches tall, while I, as you can see, am a good bit shorter. I was able to accept the discrepancy, which amounted to some eight inches, while she was not. Indeed, she was dismayed. I wonder from time to time what has become of her. I hope she has been able to find a tall man.”

“Did your father make you marry one of the others?” asked John.

“Fortunately, no. He produced a fifth candidate and I married her. She was something better, too, though in other ways.”

“Who was the fourth girl?” Fred asked.

“Miriam Passalaqua Peragine.”

“I thought it might be. There aren’t many girls of that height. And I’ll grant you, she is something better than a maumet. My father proposed her to me, but she had no interest in agrostology. She married Aalholm. It must have been about three years ago.”

“I didn’t hear of it. Is he sufficiently tall?”

“Yes. Six feet four.”

“I’m pleased. She was a girl who deserved well.”

Then Fred said, “Where did David go?”

At some time in the past few minutes David had risen and withdrawn silently. Fred, only noticing the departure now, was disconcerted. Magical disappearances should only happen when you are prepared for them. It is the same feeling that causes people to ask for card tricks to be repeated.

Villiers said, “He left some five minutes ago. I assume he felt it was time for him to be home.”

“That’s an odd kid,” John said.

Fred said. “It is true that he has no small talk.”

Ralph rose. “I think it is time for us to be home, too. I wonder if I might use your latrine first. Where is it?”

Villiers pointed. “Past the rocks. Be careful. There’s no seat now. There’ll be a seat tomorrow.”

Ralph skirted the fire and walked in the direction Villiers had indicated. As it happened, this route took him to where his Uncle Walter lay in hiding.

Ralph came very near to stepping on his uncle, but a wild dance for balance managed to avoid that additional bit of disrespect. Afterward he would be sorry that he hadn’t made something of his opportunity, but his first instinct was to avoid stepping on people since they make uncertain footing and tend to complain.

Full adulthood finally comes only after old relations have been redefined. Ralph might be able to plan revolution, but he was still dealing with his uncle with old reflexes.

He was frightened. He was unnerved. He was unmanned.

He screamed. He jumped. He ran.

He forgot his other purposes. His feet found the path to the road that would take him to Green Mountain or somewhere else, depending on whether he turned right or left.

Those around the fire looked from rocks to receding back, and then again at the rocks, two with apprehension, two with curiosity, and the last with innocent wonder. At last, slowly, Admiral Beagle rose from behind his rocks, and apprehension, curiosity and wonder were reaffirmed.

“Evil!” he said. “Corruption!” he said. “Mould-ridden solidified goat’s milk!” he said.

Villiers waved at John and Fillmore. “Go along home now. I think the Admiral wishes to speak to me.”

“How dare you, sir! How dare you! You have no right to dismiss them!”

Villiers said, “We discussed that this afternoon, Admiral, and I thought we established that I do have the right to be here. I have the right to invite what guests I care to—among whom you may count yourself, sir, at least for the moment. And my guests may leave as they choose. You may leave if you choose, and so may John and Fillmore.”

John and Fillmore chose to leave. Their curiosity grew with distance, as their apprehension lessened, and by the time they reached the road they were almost ready to return. However, after two steps back they changed their minds and continued on to Green Mountain.

Villiers said, “Now, sir, I thought things were settled between us?”

What happened next is humiliating to relate. It shows the vulnerability of men of firm moral principles. When one principle comes into conflict with another, one may temporarily give way in the interests of higher justice. If higher justice is indeed served, then no harm is done. But if judgment proves to have been faulty, then hell is to pay, either in anguish or in quest of vindication.

Admiral Beagle made an argument to Villiers, ignoring Fred, avoiding Torve. The argument that he made was one of the old ones.

A man who wants to convince can direct his argument to pure reason, if there happens to be reason within his argument. Failing that, he must make do as best he can.

He can threaten.Argumentum ad baculum . “Believe me, Mr. Villiers, or I’ll hit you.” But Admiral Beagle had tried that with no success.

He can depend on his hearer’s ignorance.Argumentum ad ignorantiam. “Believe me, Mr. Villiers.” But Villiers had quite rightly not believed him.

He can back his opponent into such a position that his only way out is to dirty himself so badly that nobody will listen to him anyway.Argumentum ad verecundiam . But Villiers had been saying filthy things all night, especially about Mrs. Waldo Wintergood. (And how that had angered the Admiral!) Villiers didn’t seem to be bothered by his offenses and there was no mob handy to tear him apart. Indeed, the nearest thing to a mob had endorsed Villiers’ corruptions, because they would bother its peers and elders. Ah, the perversity of youth.

All of these having failed, Admiral Beagle tried one last argument to persuade Villiers to leave the vicinity.Argumentum ad crumenam. Admiral Beagle had thought of his earlier arguments as proper and legitimate. This one he felt uneasy about. In short, he offered Villiers money to go away.

Villiers did not accept the offer, long ago having learned the words of the ancients:

It is written that Tzu Kung once asked the Master what an official must do to be worthy of the name. The Master answered, saying, “A man may be called a true official who in his private conduct shows a sense of shame and as an envoy muffs not his prince’s commission.” “I venture to ask who would rank next?” Said the Master: “That man praised for his filial respect by his kinsmen and for his deference to elders by his fellow villagers.” “Might I ask who would rank next?” The Master said, “That man who keeps his word and follows his course. Such a man, though small-minded, might be considered to come next.” “What would you say of those now in government?” “Ugh!” said the Master. “Those ricebags! They are not worth taking into account.”

There is a long-standing split among philosophers on the subject of names. Realists take them seriously, believing them to be things. Nominalists take them lightly, believing them to be means, believing them to be convenient labels. Every man in the world is either a Realist or a Nominalist. Give yourself a test: if someone called you a gigger or a fell-picker, and you knew it wasn’t true, would you hit him or smile? That’s how easy it is to tell.

Valuing names as they do, Realists are sparing with them. They are likely to be known only as Joe or Bill or Plato. And they don’t smile much.

Nominalists have more fun. They are known as Aristotle or Decimus et Ultimus Barziza, or as Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, or perhaps by one name in childhood and several others in the course of life.

A firm Realist misses out on one of the most satisfying of all human activities—the assumption of secret identities. A man who has lived and never been someone else has never lived.

It is true that occasionally there can be embarrassment in secret identities, but only a Realist will take the whole thing seriously enough to hit you. So have your fun, and avoid Realists.

Either Ralph had turned right, or turning left had accelerated amazingly, because he was sitting by the short road up to Green Mountain, his back against a tree, elbows on knees, chin resting in the thumb-and-forefinger L of his interlaced hands. He looked unhappy. He didn’t stir when John and Fillmore came down the moonlit road.

“Run,” said John. “Run. Your uncle will get you if you don’t watch out.”

“Don’t,” said Fillmore. “You were quick enough to leave when you had the chance.”

“I started back,” John said.

“ ‘Started.’ ”

“Well, I didn’t run. I didn’t talk about all the things I was going to do—‘revolution,’ ‘change’—and then turn and run.”

“You did, too,” Fillmore said. “You made up the explosive factory, talked about just what you would do, and then when I took up your idea seriously, you ran.”

“That’s different!”

“Only because it’s you.”

Ralph slowly levered himself to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My uncle is my weak spot. Give me time to work things out.”

John held out Ralph’s mandolin. “Here,” he said. “You forgot this.”

Pickles and Daisy—no, I’m sorry; they gave that up—Caspar and Daisy Smetana were waiting and worried. Only the uncertain is frightening, and though you may tell yourself that the facts will prove to be what the facts prove to be, nonetheless the uncertain is still the uncertain, and the uncertain is frightening.

They were waiting on the porch, Smetana in his rocker as though he had never left it, gray sweater over his shoulders, when Ralph and John and Fillmore came trudging up the hill.

Smetana stood up and put his hands on the railing. Behind him, his rocker continued to gowhump, whub, whump, whub.

He said, “So now, where have you been?”

Daisy touched his sleeve. “Now, you weren’t going to ask them that.”

“I’m not asking hard. I’m asking soft.”

Ralph led the three up the steps to the veranda. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We had no way to let you know where we were.”

Daisy moved a dismissing hand. “It’s all right. Don’t pay any attention to him. We’re just glad you’re back sound.”

Ralph said, “A friend of ours, Mr. Villiers, is camped a couple of miles from here. We were there. That’s where Torve is staying.”

“I wondered about that,” Smetana said. “It is one thing to have friends appear out of nowhere on red tricycles, but such friends are … unusual. I thought, in a tree he’s staying, maybe, but a camp, this is better. More regular.”

Daisy put her hand to her forehead. “Oh, I forgot to ask. Are you hungry? I can have food ready in no time at all. It will be no trouble.”

“It’s not necessary,” Ralph said. “Thank you very much, but it’s not necessary. Mr. Villiers fed us.”

“Was it enough?” she asked.

“Yes,” John said. “But maybe a bit of dessert.”

“Oh,” she said, delightedly. “No trouble.” She hurried inside, turning at the door. “Just one minute, and there will be dessert for three.”

“Mr. Villiers is going to give us an article for our magazine,” Fillmore said. “It’s a good one, too. About Mrs. Waldo Wintergood.”

“Only if it meets our editorial requirements.”

“Well, yes. But it sounds good. And we’re going to have an article on Aristotle’sPoetics from Mr… .”

“Mr. Fritz.”

“Fred.”

“From Fred.”

Smetana said, “Aristotle. You are using an article on Aristotle?” He shook his head.

“Is something wrong with Aristotle?” John asked.

“Oh, no, no. Aristotle, he’s all right. But if you want an article, it should be on Rambam.”

“Who?”

“Moses ben Maimon. Maimonides.”

“Did he talk about art?”

“Rambam talks about everything, including Aristotle. He wroteMoreh Nevukhim , theGuide for the Perplexed . I’ll see what he says about art. I’ll write you an article.”

“It has to meet our editorial standards,” Fillmore said.

“I write—you see. Now, tell me about Mr. Villiers. Who is Mr. Villiers?”

“His name is Anthony Villiers,” Ralph said. “We don’t know a lot about him, actually. He’s not from around here. He’s an inch or two shorter than you are. He’s young. Long brown hair. I think he might be from a wealthy and important family. Not that he comes the lord. He’s reserved.”

“What do you think of Fred, Mr. Fritz?” Fillmore asked.

“Good family, but not as good as Villiers’. He’s too casual.”

Daisy returned to the porch then. “Dessert is ready. Come along, now.”

When the three were busy with their desserts, Smetana took Daisy aside.

He said, “These boys, they are putting out a magazine. I am writing an article on Rambam for them.”

“Oh, that’s nice. You haven’t written since we were on Babad.”

“But bad news too. This Mr. Villiers—he is Anthony Villiers.”

“The Anthony Villiers we knew on Livermore? Oh, I thought we would never meet any of those people again.”

“It’s the same. Shorter than me, young, brown hair, reserved.”

“Maybe it’s not the same.”

“Daisy, shorter than me, shorter than me. There are not so many who are shorter than me.”

“Do you think he will remember?”

“How could he forget so easily?” Smetana asked. “We just hope we don’t meet—and if we do, well, I am only embarrassed. Embarrassment I can live with.”

Villiers stopped outside the small tent, and listened with fixed expression to the sound of desperate crying. He wondered if this was the proper time for a powwow.

He had waited until Torve and Fred had retired before going on his quiet midnight walk. Eventually he had found this tent, pitched in the woods some distance from his own camp.

He wanted to talk now, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to interrupt the wounded sobbing within.

Finally, he called, “David! Gillian! It’s Mr. Villiers.”

The crying quieted abruptly with a gasp. But there was no further sound, as though silence might provide a place to hide.

“Gillian,” Villiers said again.

Only after a long minute did a face appear, framed by tent flaps.

Villiers said, “I’d like to talk to you, if I might.”

“You know?” asked the face.

“Yes, I know.”

She tried to smooth away tear tracks, bit at her knuckle and sniffed. Gillian or David, the inability to use words easily seemed a constant. She asked questions where one word stood for four or forty.

She asked, “Did … ?”

Villiers said, “No, I didn’t tell Fred. I won’t either. But I would like to talk to you.”

“How … ?”

“It is a failure of my character that I am curious. I backtracked you here this morning. If you intend to continue being David, then you had better use the road as I just did. If you make too obvious a path, Fred might follow it.”

She was reassured sufficiently to come outside the tent, the tent being too small for two unless they were on greater terms of intimacy than she and Villiers, and kneeling in tent doorways being unsatisfactory for conversation as well as ultimately knee-wrinkling. Villiers was capable of projecting reassurance when he cared to.

Gillian sat cross-legged on the ground. She was still wearing her oversized coat, and she huddled and shivered. She wasn’t far from her tears, and she was still cold inside.

So, look at her—a gawk. The same gawk. Tall for a girl and thin. Black hair of medium length, eyes black as ever, a shade too much nose. If you think of her as a boy, the nose is in better proportion, but the boy is an odd one. If you think of her as a girl and she remains odd, it means simply that your tastes are limited. Rare is the word, not odd.

What else can be said of her? Three things we know. She has courage, determination, and an uncertain mind. The first two are valuable qualities, and if the third is not in itself, it is a thing that lends the first two value.

Imagine being young and frightened and uncertain. For reasons that seem good, even if you cannot state them clearly, even to yourself, you strike off into the unknown. You travel for weeks, committed to your uncertainty but unable to affect it. You may well cry.

Having invested that much, you might well cry again to discover that the man you have come in search of has a poor opinion of womankind. Finally, when Gillian, that is, you, had first begun playing the mouthbow she had twanged the metal string with her finger instead of a plectrum. She had learned, but at the cost of blisters on two fingers. If you feel lonely and unhappy and uncertain—and your fingers hurt besides—you might sob desperately.

She asked again, “Will you tell him?”

Some questions have to be answered again and again and again. The answer has to beknown to be believed. Herring doesn’t believe in vinegar until it has steeped for a while.

“No,” said Villiers. “I won’t tell Fred. I hope you will though, and soon. You’ll either have to tell him, or go away and never see him again. And the more you show him of David, the longer and harder it will be to go back and begin all over again showing him Gillian.” Then he asked, “Did you leave because of what he was saying?”

She nodded sadly.

“You left too soon,” Villiers said. “He seemed overharsh in his judgment of women to me, too, until I thought. Most of his life has been confined, and more so than either yours and mine. You know what things are like there. You know the sort of women he’s met. The ones who find their importance in the importance of the men they sleep with. Dolls, puppets, mechanical monsters. He wants something better.”

“But what if he doesn’t like me?”

“He may not,” said Villiers. “But then I think he may. Don’t worry about it. Just be.

“Fred and I are friends of long standing.” Villiers smiled. “We could go without seeing each other for ten years, and we would still take up comfortably where we left off. I wish him well. But I will help you as long as it doesn’t hurt him. I have more faith in his father’s judgments than he has, and I think you may be what he has need of.

“Stop crying. Sleep well. And tell him as soon as you can.”

Start with playing.

When Admiral Beagle failed to catch the connection to Pewamo Central, Sir Thomas Edmund Fanshawe-IV was worried. When the Admiral missed the Excursion back to Shiawassee, Sir Thomas determined to take action. He was a firm believer in preventive measures. In his youth he had been prevented on a number of occasions, and he was grateful for it and wanted to do as much for others.

When he reached Shiawassee, he immediately took a flitter to the Tanner Trust Administration offices. He sent in his announcements through an assistant assistant assistant secretary, and in due course he was brought into the presence of Administrator Ajamian. The Administrator dismissed the Confidential Secretary who had brought Sir Thomas to him, and the young man withdrew.

“Your distinguished name has traveled ahead of you,” Ajamian said. He salaamed.

“Administrator Ajamian,” Sir Thomas said, inclining his head slightly.

Ajamian saw Sir Thomas seated, and then reseated himself. They sat quietly opposite each other.

They spoke of the weather and other pleasantries. They agreed that it was hot on Shiawassee. The Administrator said that it was the season. Sir Thomas volunteered that it had been cooler on Pewamo. Administrator Ajamian then confessed that there were times when he arranged visits to the other planets of the Trust to give himself a variety in weather.

“On necessary business, of course,” he said.

“Of course,” said Sir Thomas.

Ajamian interjected a minor jocularity into the conversation, a reference to Sir Thomas’ breviary collection. This was an in-joke. Ajamian was insufficiently central to know the source of humor in the joke, but he was privy to the fact that it was considered a joke and that Sir Thomas would accept it. He wanted to show Sir Thomas that he did know what was what. Sir Thomas accepted the joke. He smiled a mild smile.

They continued to speak of nothing. Ajamian assumed that this was how things were done, and he was not about to betray himself by gauche inquiries. He knew himself to be nervous, however.

Sir Thomas was not nervous. Neither was he officially aware of Ajamian’s tension. In actual fact, though he took some mild interest in Ajamian, as he would take an interest in any Trust Administrator, he was primarily involved in whiling away the time between now and the then at which his ship would depart for Duden.

This situation continued through lunch. Administrator Ajamian invited Sir Thomas to lunch. Sir Thomas accepted.

At lunch, Sir Thomas looked up and said, “I encountered one of your subordinates on Binkin Island on Pewamo.”

“Yes, Sir Thomas.”

“An Admiral Walter Beagle. An overly officious man.”

Ajamian nodded. “Yes, he can be. I’ve spoken to him about that. But did you say on Pewamo?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very strange. We have no administrative authority on Pewamo.”

“This is excellent Gallimaufry au Baboulis.”

“It’s nothing but slumgully, really,” Ajamian said. Tuesday fare, by his standards, good, but commonplace.

“It is as I have always suspected,” Sir Thomas said. “Food is best in its own home—and least appreciated there.”

The talk passed on to other things. Eventually Sir Thomas noted the time, explained his need to depart, thanked the Administrator for his hospitality, and requested transportation to the spaceport. Ajamian saw him into careful hands and then returned to his office.

Within his office, Ajamian thought. He looked at the past hours from all angles. Finally he rang for his Confidential Secretary.

“Geoffrey,” he said, “I want a message sent to Admiral Beagle, wherever he may be.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Try his home. Send a copy to Pewamo Central. And try Binkin Island on Pewamo. If all that fails, try his office. Inform him that he is no longer Arts Council Chairman.”

Thatis how things are done.

Sergei Gilfillian should have known better. Perhaps he did. Hitching a ride on the back of his baggage dray as he moved through the halls of Shiawassee Spaceport was Mr. Nilsson, his immediate superior. Standard practice at times like that is to do your job precisely by the rule book.

However, Sergei recognized Elmo Kuukkinen walking the hall and stopped the dray. “Mr. Kuukkinen,” he said. Nilsson looked exasperated.

Kuukkinen said, “Oh, yes.”

“Did you find Lord Charteris?”

Kuukkinen said, “No, not yet. I thank you for your help in directing me, but Lord Charteris is a man given to change of plan. He never traveled to Mandracore.”

“Oh,” said Sergei. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“It’s of slight importance,” Kuukkinen said. “I understand him now to be on Pewamo and expect I may find him there.”

“Well, I hope so,” Sergei said. He got the dray moving again.

Nilsson shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of you, Gilfillian,” he said. “First scribble, scribble, scribble, and now this. You’d better start paying stricter attention to business.”

Sergei didn’t bother to answer. He might have been stupid, but I don’t think he was. I think he simply ranked his own purposes more highly than he ranked the spaceport’s. Stick to it, kid.

Scatter iron filings on glass, rare and random. The eye may never find them. Men of strange purpose from the large world outside the Tanner Trust should have been as rare on Shiawassee, but as we have seen, not so. A magnet will align and concentrate filings, and a man like Villiers will do as much for other men.

Elmo Kuukkinen was hailed across the cavernous Great Hall of the spaceport. He turned to recognize Phil Finch, a friend of long standing, in company with Klavan Guillaume, whom he knew less well.

Finch said, “It’s the Black Marauder,” as he approached. His manner was light, now that his chase was done.

“Finch,” Kuukkinen said. “Good to see you. Mr. Guillaume.”

“Mr. Kuukkinen. Still chasing Villiers?”

“On his trail. I was close to him here, but then he misdirected me into seeking him on Mandracore.”

Finch said, “I should hope you were misdirected. I have reason to know that he went to Duden.”

Kuukkinen gave his friend a look of suspicion. “Phil, why should you volunteer useful information?”

Finch clapped him on the back. “The fewer points Villiers makes, the happier I will be. If you can knock him out altogether, I say good for you. To be frank, I seed him number two.”

“After whom?”

“After myself, of course. Since I see him as more troublesome than you, I’ll give you whatever information I can.”

“You’re too kind.”

“In any case, I was sure you knew.”

“’Knew what?”

“That Villiers had gone to Duden.”

“No. Why did you think I did?”

“Well,” said Finch. “Guillaume here and I were staying with a delightful man, Lord Broccoli. Not at all the sort you would expect to find in a corner like this. Marvelous. Villiers was a guest previous to our time. In fact, I encountered him as I was arriving on Shiawassee. While we were staying with Lord Broccoli, his robot butler was stripped to pieces by a mysterious figure in black searching for Villiers. I assumed it was you.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“To tell the truth, Elmo, it does seem overbrutal, especially since all you had to do was ask.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“They’re having trouble reassembling the butler. So much force. And they don’t make them like that anymore.”

“I say it wasn’t me.”

Guillaume said, “I wonder who it could have been?”

“I’m sureI don’t know,” Kuukkinen said.

Well, we know who it could have been. And, as it happened, at that moment Solomon “Biff” Dreznik himself was standing in front of an In-Flight Insurance machine some seventy-five feet distant. He was involved in conversation with a fat man.

“After Adipietro the fleet returned to Llandaff,” the fat man said. “Now, of course, the first thing you would think we’d do is celebrate. It was a tremendous victory, after all, and we hadn’t touched at any port in four months.”

“Your name, sir,” Dreznik said.

“Pencisely. Pyotr Pencisely.”

“How do you spell that?”

“P-e-n-c-i-s-e-l-y. But, no sir, that isn’t what happened. No celebration. We sat like dead men, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“Address.”

“Sector Six, Mooretown, Luvashe. I mean to say, we weredrained . We didn’t want women. We didn’t want fun. We didn’t want to dance. We didn’t want to sing. Drinking, smoking, and sitting. That’s all we were good for. Llandaff couldn’t believe it, and after all this time, I’m not sure I do. What do you want my name and address for? What are you writing?”

Dreznik pressed the RECORD button on the machine and then pulled free his own copy. “There we are,” he said.

“You just wrote insurance on me.”

“Of course, my dear Pencisely. It’s my hobby. Some bet in the casino, some at the track. I bet in the spaceport.”

“Have you ever won?”

“Rarely. Now come along, sir.”

Pencisely hesitated.

“If it will make you rest more easily, feel free to write insurance on me. The machine waits.”

Pencisely looked at the machine, and then with an expression of distaste, said, “No. I don’t think so.”

“Then come along.”

“Where?”

“Oh, you mistake me, sir. I’m interested in hearing further of Adipietro. Survivors of the battle are so few. Besides, I like to stand host to those whose health I wager upon. All the myriad facilities of Shiawassee Spaceport lie open. Your pleasure, sir.”

“Well, I guess so.”

Dreznik led the way through the halls until they came to the rental rooms. He inserted money at the first unoccupied room, and the door opened.

“We’ll request our service here,”

Pencisely preceded Dreznik within the room. Dreznik allowed the door to close and then struck Pencisely with the edge of his hand. The fat man puddled and Dreznik heaved him onto the bed.

The ordinary man may act confidently, but the ordinary man does not act with confidence. Only the seldom man, like Solomon “Biff” Dreznik, will know his mind so well.

Purring, he laid out his tools, calculated doses against body weight, eye taking professional pleasure in the accurate estimate of poundage. His body was cold, shot with icy thrills. Control, control, control. Exact motions—hand obeying mind and eye with precise economy. Angles, and iron, ice, blood, and sharp edges. Hands, trembling with power, held the injections. One would kill Pencisely in twelve hours. The other would mask the cause of death. He turned, and found Pencisely dead.

Dreznik held Pencisely’s limp arm in his hands and stared at it. Abruptly he raised the arm, opened his mouth, and bit. I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that Dreznik was some kind of anthropophagous necrophiliac pervert. He simply expressed anger and frustration in a direct manner. He did lick his lips when he finished biting, however, so maybe he was a little funny.

He looked at his left hand—the bad one, the naughty disobedient one. He slapped it sharply.

Then he rose and put all his tools away and left the room without a backward glance, crumpling the insurance form, mind growling. As the door closed behind him, announcement was made of his flight for Pewamo. Excellent timing. Bad hand. Bad bad hand.

Pity Dreznik. In his entire life he had never said “I love you” to anyone. Still, that was an awful way to treat a veteran of Adipietro.

“Duden,” insisted Finch.

“No,” said Kuukkinen. “Pewamo. It’s closer, and that’s where I believe him to be.”

“I’ll lay odds that it’s Duden.”

“Name the odds.”

“Seven to five.”

“Done. Guillaume, you’re the witness. Seven royals against five.”

Guillaume said, “I can see Finch wagering, but not you, Mr. Kuukkinen. After all, Finch, having run me down, has money to spare. But aren’t you taking Villiers over-lightly?”

“No, sir,” said Kuukkinen. “I have great respect for him. I merely believe him to be on Pewamo. Phil’s wager will be excellent consolation for me should Villiers prove too much, and since I would seed Villiers first and Phil fourth, that he might well be. And now, let me suggest that the two of you join me on my jaunt to Pewamo. I understand the planet offers resorts. After Villiers is found, we can all have a holiday on Phil’s money.”

“If Villiers is found.”

Finch and Guillaume were more than ready to join Kuukkinen. Things had been slow on Shiawassee since Morris the robot had suffered his inquisition and Broccoli’s household been thrown into disorder. They were, in fact, thinking of nothing more lively than wending their way back to Yuten. This struck them as a happy substitute.

When the ship for Pewamo was announced, they all boarded the orange transport car and rolled colorfully away from the Port House.

Finch said, “I’m going to enjoy having the chance to observe your technique, Elmo.”

“I’m sure I will acquit myself.”

“But how well?”

“Well enough. In any case, I entered for fun, not for profit.”

“I entered for profit.”

Guillaume said. “I entered for fun, and had little. I’m enjoying myself tremendously now that I’m no longer involved.”

They entered the ship talking and joking, and found a seat complex to their liking. Finch sat, looking suddenly sobered.

“What’s amiss, Mr. Finch?” Guillaume asked.

In lowered tone, Finch said, “I fear I may owe you seven royals, Kuukkinen. Avoid appearing to look. There. The man in black.”

“I see him, but I fail to understand.”

“That’s Solomon ‘Biff’ Dreznik.”

“I’m prepared to believe you,” Kuukkinen said, “but the name is unfamiliar to me.”

“Then you know Villiers less well than I thought. Dreznik is an assassin. He was killed three years ago in an attempt on Villiers’ life. I’ll wager he’s the man in black who opened Morris, and he’s been to Duden and back.”

“No wager,” said Kuukkinen.

“What should we do?” Guillaume said.

The human animal’s most distinguishing characteristic is his need to manipulate objects. He has to do it. He can’t help himself.

Given this need, men react to it in three ways:

Some justify their tinkering with the notion of progress. Manipulations become the rational attempt to reach the ends ofmore andlarger ,bigger andbetter . There are many men of this sort in the service of the Nashuite Empire. They are happy or not as they succeed or fail, and ultimately they are all unhappy.

Some others see thatmore andlarger ,bigger andbetter are not ends at all, but mere vague points on an infinite line to nowhere. These men are unhappy, too, because they need reasons for what their hands choose to do, and without the notion of progress, they have none.

The final group? A small one. These are the men who accept the fact that manipulation is what human beingsdo , and happily manipulate away.

Take a string about seven feet long and tie the ends together with a neat small knot. Hang the string over the thumb and little finger of each hand. Hook your right forefinger over the left hand palm string. Draw the string away, twisting it several times by rotating the index finger. With the left index finger pick up from below the string crossing the right palm at the base of the right index finger. Draw the hands apart, and allow loops to slip off the right thumb and little finger. Lo and behold, between your two hands you will have a palpable Fish Spear.

That’s an easy one. It would take you an hour to learn how to make Coral, and a day to learn Woven Door. And a wise man knows that he could spend a lifetime with a seven foot piece of string and not exhaust all its possibilities.

Strings happened not to be Villiers’ choice of object, but they might have been, as might business or elections or any of the other ready possibilities. He chose, however, in this moment to involve himself in the construction of rustic furniture and traps and stuff. Happily.

The cot was simple canvas stretched over back-racking metal bones. It was designed to give substance to the motto: “The I.S. never sleeps.” Whoever happened to catch night duty at Binkin Island Development Area was allowed to do his best to sleep, as long as he did it on the cot, and his superiors rested easy, certain in their knowledge that a good man was awake and aware.

There was a second cot, just enough less hostile that a determined man might sleep four hours in a night on it. It was presently in use. Admiral Beagle lay lumped on it, as asleep as he could manage to be.

Sitting cross-legged on the bone-breaker was the young man who had had to suffer one tirade from Admiral Beagle on the subject of transportation and another on the subject of lumpy cots. He held a ceremonial sword in his hands. With elaborate two-handed sweeps he performed the Devotional Catalog. From time to time, he curled his lip at Admiral Beagle, which only shows that religious exercises designed to calm the mind and sooth the heart are of small avail without the aid of a willing spirit.

The door opened and let the morning in.

“Careful there, Jackson,” Comroe said, stepping out of the way of a precisely wild swing. “The ship from Pewamo Central is due any minute.”

“I’ll be up. I’ll be up.” Swish, swish, swish.

“Had breakfast?”

“No, I’ll take a cup of something hot.”

“Who’s that?” A nod at the second cot.

“Admiral Walter Beagle. He said he didn’t have any other place to stay. He wasn’t happy with the cot, though.”

“You should have given him yours.”

“Believe me, I was tempted.” Swish, swish.

“I have a message for him.” Comroe smiled. “I just picked it up at the Com Center. I didn’t know he was here, though.”

“Yes, he’s here. What are you smiling about?”

“The message for Beagle says that he has been relieved of his job as Tanner Trust Arts Council Chairman.”

The sword slowly arced to the floor. “You don’t mean it. They fired him? Hey, let me give him the message.”

“If you want.”

Jackson bounced off the cot, laid the sword down, and began making repairs in his toilet. If you are going to deliver bad news to an admiral, it’s best to look and act beyond reproach. He whistled a happy tuneless little whistle.

“Ah, yes.”

“Ship’s here.”

“Message first, ship later.” Jackson took the message, read it for confirmation, smiled broadly, and then took himself in hand. Grave, brisk, I’m doing my job and I ask no questions. Ho, ho.

He seized Admiral Beagle by the shoulder and shook him awake.

“What is the meaning of this?” Admiral Beagle asked blearily.

“Message for you, Admiral.”

Admiral Beagle roused himself enough to get his feet on the floor. He was not a quick riser. He stared at the floor as though reading portents in the pattern of the wood, and then shook his head and reached a hand up for the message. Jackson placed it within the hand with happy exactness, and then stepped back.

“My God, look at this,” Comroe said. He was standing by the window looking out at the landing field.

Jackson went to join him. “ ‘My God’ is right,” he said. “Where did they all come from? I haven’t seen so many strangers in five years.”

“Come on,” said Comroe, and the two went outside.

Admiral Beagle looked at the message in his hand for some minutes before its full import became apparent to him. He had been relieved of his job. And in this hour when peace and stability were being threatened by aliens and evil twisted men and nephews. In this hour of trial they were pulling him off the firing line. He didn’t understand. What could the Administrator be thinking of? What was happening to the world?

He crossed slowly to the window to give his mind distance. What he saw horrified him. He was a man easily horrified.

He saw his nephew and his two companions standing by the landing field gate. On the field was the shuttle from Pewamo Central. Debarking from it was a ragtail crew of students and yagoots. Ralph’s damned revolution. Ralph waved to the crowd and the crowd waved back. There must have been thirty of them.

Admiral Beagle knew all about faith and duty and the need to keep your head when all about you are a-losin’ theirs and a-blamin’ it on you. He looked about him and saw Jackson’s ceremonial sword still lying on the bed.

When Comroe and Jackson returned to the headquarters building, Admiral Beagle and the sword were gone.

Unskilled hands went to work with a will. Few of the workmen at Green Mountain had ever done construction of this sort, and many had never done work of any kind before, but all were agreed in regarding this as a niggling detail. The work was sanctioned by the fact that all were willing to do it, just as Binkin Island gained respectability as a place to be by the simple fact that they were there.

Ralph Weinsider took them in charge when they landed. It was only when he saw thirty friends and strangers stepping off the shuttle ship that he realized that if he and John and Fillmore wanted to remain in control of the situation, one of them was going to have to step forward and define the rules of the game for the newcomers. He did want to remain in control. After all, it was their idea.

He looked at Fillmore. Fillmore couldn’t.

He looked at John. John wouldn’t, much as he might like to.

So he stepped forward. He knew nothing of organization, so he was surprised to find that his improvisations were effective.

He gathered them all around and told them they were the Green Mountain Gang. He told them what they had to face, including his uncle. He told them what they stood to accomplish. He gave them a good rich bit ofHenry the Fifth : “ ‘And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.’ ” And finally he led them up the road—singing—to Green Mountain.

Ralph was both delighted and frightened by his discovery that he was a demagogue, which is to say, a People Mover. It is a lot to assume responsibility for your own conduct, and many humans never manage that much. It is much much more to assume responsibility for a herd.

Smetana reviewed the abilities of his new work force while Ralph and Daisy worked out sleeping, eating, and working arrangements up on the porch.

“All right, next,” he said. “Step up, choose your tool. Saw a board. Hit a nail. All right, you, stop. I can tell. I can tell.”

“But I’m willing,” the boy said.

Smetana designated the five most accomplished his subordinates, and with their aid gave a basic lesson in the use of hand tools. He gave assignments to each of his assistants and allowed them to choose up sides.

“Speed only is not good. Take care with the work,” he admonished as the crews charged into action.

He retired to the porch where Daisy and Ralph were working more quietly.

“The whole building seems to be shaking,” Daisy said.

“Enthusiasm. I tell you, with this noise we don’t see a plonk in the evening for a while.”

But the group was the Green Mountain Gang and determined to show it. Ralph had briefly considered teaching them, “One, two, three, four, who are we for? Green Mountain, Green Mountain, rah, rah, rah,” to increase solidarity, and then discarded the notion as unnecessary.

Ralph handed Smetana the schedule. “This is what we’ve worked out,” he said. “All you have to do is fill in the names.” Then he went to the rail and called, “John! Hey, John.”

John came up to the veranda with a hammer and a sulky expression. “They’ve got me working for your friend, Pyatt Blevko.”

“Well, let’s face it, John. You’re not very good with a hammer. Don’t worry, though. When I hammer, I’ll do it under the direction of somebody like Pyatt, too.”

John reversed the hammer and offered it to Ralph.

“Well, no,” said Ralph. “Not right now. I’m going down to Mr. Villiers’ camp.”

“Why?” John demanded.

“I’m going to ask him about putting on a show tonight down there. We can take everybody down and play the way we did the other night. And then when we’re done, we can bring out Torve by himself. This will really show everybody what we have in mind.”

“That’s a good idea,” John said. “That’s a great idea.”

Somewhat tentatively, Smetana said, “You put on a show tonight at the camp of your friend, Mr. Villiers?”

“Well, we sort of plan to.”

“Do you think we would be welcome, Daisy and me?”

Daisy looked long and sharply at her husband. She made no comment. On Shiawassee it would have been because it wasn’t done. With Daisy it was simply that she didn’t do it.

“Of course,” said Ralph. “Of course, you would be welcome. We’ll see you get the best seats.” He turned to John. “John, while I’m gone, you’re in charge.”

“Of what?”

Ralph gestured toward the blister-developing horde.

“Oh,” said John. “Oh. Oh, yes.” He smiled.

Ralph set off for Villiers’ camp, reminding himself to use the road and the path. He thought well in general of Villiers, but found certain bizarre aspects of his nature—like the need to build behemoth traps—baffling and eccentric.

Smetana looked at Daisy, and smiled ruefully. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “It’s best to go. It’s best to get it over. Then I don’t worry anymore.”

John strode up and down the veranda for some minutes, arms folded, feeling very much the master of the situation. There they were, and here he was. He looked down on them, except for the few who were higher on the building than he was.

He spent a few minutes entertaining himself in this manner, but finally he stopped. He hefted the hammer in his hand, and sighed. Then he came down off the veranda and went back to work under Pyatt Blevko. Because he chose to.

Fred led the way up the mountainside, following a blazed trail. Gillian followed behind him. They were both carrying packs.

Gillian was sunk in silence. As some women offer a variety of conversation, she had silences for every occasion. Some frightened. Some inquiring. Some intelligent. Some warm and comfortable—but you haven’t seen one of those yet, not a really good one. This one was gray and narrow, a silence of consideration.

Fred took no notice of her solemn mood. Unless you know what signs to read, silence from the outside looks like silence. He talked of what they were seeing and how it was balanced. He’d turn and point, or he’d stop and kneel. He’d talk of what would be an intrusion for men to do here, and what would not.

They passed through three forests. He showed where one ended and the next began, not in clear lines of demarcation, but in gradual zones of transition. High above others of its kind, a little grove of temperate forest in a secure pocket under the mountain shoulder.

In spite of his failure to recognize what is, after all, extremely difficult to recognize, that is, the tenor of Gillian’s thought, Fred was behaving precisely as he should. In spite of his failure to recognize what is, at least usually, extremely easy to recognize, that is, the fact of Gillian’s femaleness, he still wasn’t doing badly.

He paid attention to business, and he enjoyed himself thoroughly. He regarded it as his business to hoot down a hollow, just for the fun of it. He regarded it as his business to notice a difference in flower from one meadow to the next. He regarded it as his business to share birds floating like silver leaves in an azure bowl.

If you treat a dog with consistency, give it attention and affection and security, you will learn just how much of a dog you have. The same recipe works even better with people. That Fred treated Gillian in this manner from nature rather than out of principle should not be held against him.

They stopped for lunch. No weed grew here to toast. Fred commented as much.

Gillian opened her pack then and produced cuttings she had made that morning. Salt. Honey. A proper Big Beaver plans ahead. Fred congratulated her.

So they toasted and salted and dipped. When they went on, Gillian was feeling almost secure enough to speak. But you can’t just say it. You have to work your way into it.

As they walked, then, she had traded worry for nervousness. Her hands, thrust into her greatcoat pockets, trembled with tension.

Fred continued to say on in his steady, open way. He did pause to ask, “Are you feeling up to it? You’re beginning to look tired.”

At that moment, at that moment, she almost spoke. But she didn’t. She shook her head and waved him on.

They came at last to the realm of rock and cloud and wind. Little grew here. In this place, even more than elsewhere, life was a matter of fertility seeding available cracks and hollows. Humus collected where it could and out of it grew mosses and other low forms of life. Occasional hardy trees dared the wrath of wind, crouched crook-backed behind oblivious rocks and prayed to go unnoticed.

Rock was willing to endure Fred and Gillian walking if they minded where they stepped. Cloud hung over their shoulders and waved distracting misty fingers before their eyes. Wind, ever restless, keened as they walked, whistled through steel teeth, sang of pure cold love of rain and snow. They knew themselves here on sufferance.

They reached a promontory, a volcanic plug, and after some scrambling, reached the top. They didn’t dare to stand lest they be swept off, so they clung and stared about them.

Rock and cloud obscured their view, but straight below them they could see a granite drop and then forest, steeply stacked, and the sea. There was a road, but they couldn’t see that. On the other side, the gentler slope up which they had come, there was more cliff and forest. Other details were lost.

Gillian thought she had never been so high before. She had, of course, but never before under her own power. It makes a difference if you are safe inside a ship or clinging to a mountain face high above the sea.

It was harder to get down from the plug than to climb up it. Fred went first. Near the bottom he reached up a hand and helped Gillian across a difficult reach.

“Gloves,” said Fred. “You should be wearing gloves. If we start back directly, we should be there before dark.”

Dark sounded good to Gillian. It gives you something to hide in. It’s easier to talk in the dark. Maybe.

Villiers called Torve over to help him haul on a rope. It took their combined weight to pull it taut and it was only with difficulty that Villiers tied the line in place.

“Now watch where you step,” Villiers said. The trouble with traps as an instrument of policy is that they lack the ability to discriminate.

Torve returned to his reading and Villiers began to tidy up around the site of his construction. Ordinary and innocent is the way things should look.

While he was engrossed in this manicuring job, Claude drifted close overhead. Claude was the camp’s Plonk-in-Residence. He took apparent interest in everything and could not be discouraged.

Villiers looked at his work and found it good. He took one last look for possible giveaways, and found none. Satisfied, he made his way down into the camp for another perspective.

It looked fine from there but for one small thing. Claude the Plonk hovered just above and showed no sign of withdrawing.

Ordinary and innocent is the way things should look. An ordinary and innocent appearing trap loses something by having a small pink cloud hanging overhead.

“Scoot,” said Villiers. “Go on, move.”

It didn’t.

He shied a pebble at it and missed. And it didn’t move.

“Oh, well,” he said, and turned away. Ralph was coming up the path. He said, “Hello, Ralph.”

I’ll bet you never had an adventure in your life.

The savant Aldahondo, whose best rememberedbon mot is “nothing ventured, nothing lost,” would have approved. He had no truck with adventure. He held his life tightly, so that none might touch it and thereby do it damage. And so do most of us. We live lives we know to be safe, comfortable, and dull.

Secretly, however, we envy those who toss dice over their lives. Adventure is theirs. But Solomon “Biff” Dreznick had lost his life three times in a reckless pursuit of danger and knew not adventure. Adventure is not adventure to those who cannot feel.

Secretly, we envy those who dare greatly in the name of romance. Adventure is theirs. But Gillian U was many well-dared miles from home and bound, moreover, on purposes that could only be called romantic, and she knew not adventure. Adventure is not adventure to those who have to deal with the strange and frightening.

But why do you crave adventure? Life and death surround you. Your lives are chanced every day. And you, you confident people, stride through life dealing with danger and romance so automatically and professionally that you never even notice them.

You have adventures. Aldahondo had adventures. He just never admitted the fact to himself. Admit the fact to yourselves. Go ahead. Find your adventure in the common experience of every day.

Like Villiers.

The light was beginning to fade, the sky to clear, and the air to cool when Fred and Gillian arrived back at camp.

Villiers said, “I’m glad you’re back. I need somebody to go fetch water. Tired?”

Fred stripped off his pack. “Not overly. I could use a good dinner, though.”

“Ready in a minute. Somebody has to go for water first.”

Gillian took off her pack. She was tired, but not exhausted.

“We’re going to have company after dinner,” Villiers said.

“That same bunch?” Fred asked.

“Augmented by thirty.”

“Thirty! This was going to be a simple vacation.”

“Yes, I remember. But life offers us possibilities we can’t foresee. They have to be taken advantage of. We’re going to put on a concert for the thirty tonight. And then Torve is going to put on a solo performance.”

Fred touched his mustache, and then sighed. “Oh, all right. Damn you, Tony. If I didn’t enjoy that band, I wouldn’t play tonight.”

Villiers smiled. So did Gillian. She looked at her still-blistered fingers and then decided that yes, she could and would. She looked up and smiled again.

Villiers looked at her and raised his eyebrows, making the minutest of nods toward Fred.

She shook her head.

Fred said, “What is that plonk doing hovering up there?”

Villiers said, “That’s Claude. I can’t get rid of him. I wonder what he’ll make of our music.”

After a minute, Gillian rose and picked up the bucket to fetch water in. Villiers was concerned with the food and Fred was talking.

She walked down the path, swinging the bucket pensively. Tonight.Yes , not maybe. The problem was that your mind wouldn’t let you. You have to fool it.

You might start a conversation—if conversation was your forte. You might start a conversation beginning, oh, a million miles away, and leisurely drift with it. The mind soothed. The mind soothed. The tongue carrying the burden. Then you hand the tongue the words you want to say, and they are spoken before the mind can forbid. If you could talk.

But she couldn’t. So she walked, swinging the bucket and thinking.

The answer came when she was halfway back up the hill, walking sideways holding the filled bucket with two hands, one elbow held higher than the other against the slant of the hill. The answer came and she set the bucket down. She clapped her hands once and she smiled broadly.

But, then—she still had it to do.

Admiral Beagle ran his finger down the back of the long blade. He rubbed his hands together. He seized the sword in a two-handed grip, interlocking the forefinger of his left hand with the little finger of his right hand and laying his left thumb along the sword hilt and under his right thumb. He addressed the small tree.

Hola.

Admiral Beagle was magnificent. The sapling was so overwhelmed by the fury of his attack that it offered no defense; so hypnotized was it by the magic of his blade that it suffered pain without protest. A slice to the left, a slice to the right, and the decapitating stroke—snip, snap, snorum.

Fred said, “I should have gone for the water, but I wanted to talk to you, Tony.”

“It doesn’t hurt a guest to lift a hand.”

“I suppose not.” Fred sat on a rock. He looked at Villiers busying himself around the fire. The wind batted hands with the fire.

“Have you ever loved a man?” Fred asked. Villiers absorbed the question. “In what sense?”

“Sexually.”

“Not yet. Why?”

“Oh, it’s this business of finding out who you are. I thought I knew pretty much, and now I’m not so sure that I do.”

“Why not?”

“It’s this David, of all people. I touched him today and it gave me such a shock that all I could do was babble something inane about gloves. I’ve been wondering about it all afternoon. I’ve got to say that I find him attractive.”

“Minor lapses count for little in the generous eyes of a benevolent heaven. God will wink at a single sip of wine or an occasional lustful gaze.”

“Oh, it’s not that, Villiers. I don’t mind, except for the reassessing it’s going to take. But I’ve been thinking about David. Should I tell him to go home, or do you want to take over his Big Beaver training? I don’t think I should continue. He’s too young.”

Fred picked up a stone from the ground and flipped it at Claude the Plonk. His aim was better than Villiers’, perhaps because his intentions were less hostile.

“I wish you would stop that,” said the plonk.

When a small pink cloud talks to you, a variety of responses are possible. You can beat your breast and tear your hair, either in fear or in celebration. You can let your eyes roll up and fall back in a dead faint, but then that will cause you to miss much of what is happening.

Fred said, “Do you mind telling me why I should?”

“Yes,” said the plonk. “I’m God. And what is more, I will not wink at a single sip of wine or an occasional lustful gaze. I set a higher standard that that. And I’m not altogether sure I approve of homosexuality, so mind your step.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“No, but you were thinking of it.”

Ah, the motive power of fan mail. Clifford Morgenstern had spent years wondering which secret force unaccounted for was disturbing the predicted flow of color within his pantograph. Then a letter had come from the Tanner Trust and told him.

The little galloping madman said, “I’m Clifford Morgenstern,” as though that were the key to mysteries.

Comroe looked up. “Yes, may I help you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?” Morgenstern said. “My name is famous. Everybody knows me. I wroteColor Selection in Galactic Pantography . You read that, sir, and you will never be the same. Here, let me show you a letter I got from a bright young man on Shiawassee. He knows his books.”

“I’m not supposed to read on duty,” Comroe said politely. “May I be of service to you?”

“Yes, I want that cretinous Admiral Beagle. I have words to say to the man.”

Comroe, of course, was unable to serve exact directions, but suggested that Green Mountain might be a place to make inquiries. “Because that’s the direction the rest of the circus has traveled,” is the way he put it in his mind. He reserved the words.

When Morgenstern had gone off to rent a small bicycle, Comroe shook his head.

“My third author,” he said, “and they were all like that.”

Solomon “Biff” Dreznik lay aimed like an arrow on the hillside. He had been there all afternoon.

His head was lifted slightly in the grass. His legs were straight, his heels set together. His arms were pressed against his sides. He pointed himself and let the power grow.

He had seen the last of Villiers’ trap making and with admirable professionality recognized it for what it was. He smiled a smile of icy contempt. He sneered a haughty sneer.

The power continued to build within him. From his nether regions warm fires flowed. He couldn’t let them go too soon. He pushed at the red with cold black thoughts, and it pushed back, and a tension built. At first, black holds easily, but then red’s power grows. It becomes a struggle between equals. When black can hold no longer, red bursts forward and the power discharges.

Solomon “Biff” Dreznik lay aimed like an arrow on the hillside, gathering power.

“I don’t ask much of you,” said Claude. “Just that you do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly hand in hand with me. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“You’ll forgive me, sir … Is ‘sir’ sufficiently respectful?”

“Yes, but you’ll have to put more emphasis on it.”

“You’ll forgive me, Sir,” said Villiers, “when I tell you that mere assertion is not sufficient to compel belief. If you do indeed desire to be worshiped, as you say you do, I think you had better offer some evidence of your divinity.”

“Why should evidence be necessary to belief?” the plonk asked.

“For some people it isn’t,” Fred said. “For us it is. I’m indeed sorry.”

“And I as well,” said Villiers. “Dinner is ready and it cannot be stayed. You will have to give us leave from the discussion until we have eaten.”

“Sir,” the plonk added in correction.

“Sir,” said Villiers, accepting the criticism.

“You should take note of the fact that man does not live by bread alone.”

“Not by bread alone, but by bread.”

Fred said, “All I can say is that you aren’t much of a God if you don’t understand human needs.”

The plonk accepted the rebuke. “Oh, all right,” it said. “What kind of evidence would you find sufficient?”

Villiers said, “I think it would be better, Sir, if you made offer of evidence. After all, you should know if anyone.”

“You mean I have to guess what evidence you might choose to believe?”

“Think about it while we eat,” said Villiers.

He called Torve from the tent where he had been reading. He served Torve his singular vegetarian meal, and then served the others and himself.

After a few minutes, the plonk said, “Would a bolt of lightning do?”

Ralph stood up and crossed to the railing of the veranda. He stretched. He was feeling pleased with himself.

He turned and said to Smetana, “Do you think well of your bargain?”

“Was not so bad, I think. Maybe enthusiasm does count more than skill.”

Ralph picked up the mandolin. “I think we’d better be starting soon.”

Smetana said, “It’s so pleasant here. A shame to move. Maybe a few minutes more.”

“No, I think we ought to start,” Daisy said. “It will be just as pleasant as we walk.”

Smetana looked at her tenderly. “You know me too well.”

Ralph went down the steps of the veranda and then turned, enjoying the feeling of having eyes on himself. He held the mandolin up like a baton before the building.Rap, rap. Attention. And a one, two, three, one, two, three.

Demagogue Ralph, leading his people. They collected at his call and he started them off for Maude Binkin Memorial Campsite and their rendezvous with the cultural wave of the future.

Kuukkinen said, “I don’t suppose there is any doubt now, Phil. You owe me seven royals.”

“Easy come, easy go,” said Finch. He raised his head.

“Is Dreznik still lying there?”

“Yes. I think Mr. Guillaume and I will have to maneuver our way down to the road and warn Villiers. Unless you want to join in an attack on Dreznik.”

Kuukkinen considered. “No, I don’t think so. Are you aware you’re going to cost me my chances with Villiers?”

“Not at all, Elmo. Not at all. We’ve only seen Dreznik. We haven’t laid eyes on you. In fact, if I were in your place I should be happy to have a decoy.”

“A lot of good a decoy will do me if Dreznik kills Villiers before I can count coup.”

“An excellent point, Mr. Kuukkinen,” Guillaume said. “Excellent. We’ll do our best to save Villiers for you.”

“But not to tip him off,” said Finch.

After they had gone, Kuukkinen rose to his knees and peered down the hill. It was growing too dim to see the camp. Dreznik was a lean black smudge in the grass.

“How about a miracle? Would that do?”

Villiers said, “What do you consider a miracle?”

“Transubstantiation is generally considered a good one.”

Villiers shook his head. “No, insufficient, Sir. It can be accomplished by mechanical means.”

“Raising the dead?”

“No, much as I’d like to see you do it, and I would, that too is a modern commonplace.”

“I’m beginning to think that I should account stubborn skepticism to be a serious sin. Beware, your credit is growing thin with me.”

“Not at all, Sir. I’m merely treating you with the high seriousness you deserve. Surely you must count the worship of false gods as a serious perversion of natural order.”

“Oh, I do. I do.”

“Well, then, if I look closely at you, it is not out of disrespect, but that I might know you better.”

Fred said, “If I may be pardoned a possibly impertinent question, why have you not previously manifested yourself?”

“I was only elected comparatively recently.”

“By whom?” Villiers asked.

“By the other plonks. When the times dictate, we gather together and elect one from among us to be God. I haven’t been God long. I’m still getting used to it.”

There was the noise of singing from the road signaling the approach of Ralph Weinsider and his band of revolutionists.

Villiers said, “I think I hear our guests.”

Torve said, “Yes. Is guests come to hearFrobb .”

Fred took a warm-up toot on his kazoo.

Villiers turned to Claude. “Sir,” he said, “we would be honored to have your company tonight. We’re having entertainment, and after the end of the formal evening, I’m sure there will be opportunity for polite converse. I look forward to continuing our discussion.”

“Well, all right,” said the plonk. “But you betray a pretty shabby scale of values.”

Night gives size and power. A two-handed sword becomes a sickle. An aimed arrow fills with fire. A five-foot four-inch demoniac, racing through the night on a bicycle, sees a moon-cast shadow thirty feet long and wishes everyone could see the truth. The hand is freed to write what the tongue cannot speak. Thirty yagoots and other ne’er-do-wells achieve satori. And One is filled with a sense of his own ineffability and is enabled thereby to wait, albeit impatiently, for a bit of attention.

Almost everyone was in place. The boys were shoving and sitting and badmouthing each other. The instrumentalists were gathering with their tubs and mouthbows. There was a natural rock pocket on one side of the fire. The boys sat on the slope on the other side of the fire.

Ralph said, “And may I present Caspar and Daisy Smetana. They are the owners of Green Mountain Resort, and extremely friendly hosts.”

“I am honored,” said Villiers, salaaming. “Our entertainment is simple. I hope you will enjoy it. Ralph—give me a hand with this log. We’ll see that you have as good a seat as there is to be had.”

Villiers dropped his spoons in his pocket and waved for Ralph to set down his mandolin. They picked up the short log and carried it up the hill. Villiers picked a good spot and they set the log down.

Fred tooted on the kazoo and called, “Come on, Tony. We’re waiting.”

A round of applause from the audience.

Villiers said, “You’ll excuse us. We have to make music now.”

The Smetanas nodded permission.

As they circled the fire, Villiers turned to Ralph and said, “If your reforms run into trouble, bear in mind that there is a big universe outside the Tanner Trust.”

Ralph said, “I’ve been wondering about that recently.”

Caspar and Daisy Smetana seated themselves and looked down the hill. The band was almost ready to begin. Villiers produced his spoons and inserted them between his fingers.

Caspar said, “He said nothing, nothing.”

“Maybe he didn’t recognize you.”

“Well, that’s not right. When the music is over, I go up and speak to him.”

The music began.

“It’s loud,” said Caspar.

“I think I like it,” said Daisy. “Now, shh.”

Dreznik abruptly rose to his knees. His eyes moved alertly and then he ran low through the grass for the wood’s edge. He paused there, cocking his head at the unusual sounds he heard carried by the wind.

Then careful step by careful step, he followed the forest edge toward the rocks in which he had seen Villiers build his trap. One firm step after another.

At the first rock, he stopped. He looked around the edges of it and then up at its irregular top. He could hear the windblown music intermittently. The fire was hidden behind rock and trees.

He jumped for a handhold on the rock face and missed, hands scrabbling. He banged his knee. He stepped back and tried again. His fingers caught and held and he wriggled at the length of his arms for a moment and then swung and reached a hand higher. He found a solid hand-sized outcropping and pulled himself up. In a moment he was on top of the rock.

He crouched there, feeling snakelike, tongue goingflick, flick, flick in his mind. A lengthening of the neck and look to the left. Through the trees he could see some of those sitting and listening to the music, faces reflecting inner and outer fire. An over-the-shoulder to the right. Wind stirring trees in the dark and silent rocks.

He went tip, tip, tip on his toes, delicately picking his way along the high face of the rock line. Pause, jump. Very sure-footed, Dreznik was.

He stopped. He knelt. He could see the musicians. They had stopped playing and were laying their instruments down. All but the one with the mandolin. He was still plunking and waving it. He apparently found it useful in conversation.

Just in front of Dreznik and about four feet lower was Villiers’ trap. It was the natural place for a less wary man to lie. Dreznik sneered at Villiers.

Near the end of any long-term project, there comes an inevitable moment when the end can be seen, but the hand cannot move. If the hand moves, the project will be over, and that is a momentous thing to wish. Something inside suspects that anticipation may be better than memory, and wants to hold on to anticipation for a last moment.

But, after all, there is something a trifle pointless about sitting in the dark on a cold forest hillside, especially when you know events will move on without you. Elmo Kuukkinen sighed and rose.

He knew Dreznik’s resting place when he came to it. The ground was warm and the grass wilted from his heat. Dreznik, thank Heaven, was gone.

Coming up the meadow was the sound of a music unlike any he had ever previously heard. He could see the fire glow above the camp hollow, but he could not distinguish individuals. Then the moon swept out from behind a billboard of clouds and threw his shadow thirty feet down the slope. He felt himself standing in the spotlight. Kuukkinen dived to the ground and froze and after a minute the moon went away. Ostriches know what they are about.

Kuukkinen sighed. He had to go unseen. He had to avoid Dreznik or subdue him—somehow—if he encountered him. He had to make his score on Villiers. But then he thought of the seven royals he had already won and life still seemed possible to him.

He scurried off to his left where the meadow rolled and held forest and then rolled and dipped again to the road. It was a wandering gentle slope.

He kept low and worked his way down the meadow. He used the protection of the land curve, the tiniest shoulder, the grass, a single tree. He moved from one to another, turning himself invisible every time the moon winked at him.

At last he came to the final little hill. He lay cheek flat-pressed to the ground. On the other side of the hill sat an applauding audience.

The music stopped as he lay there. He crawled inch by inch to the hill crest and looked over. Fire. Silhouetted backs, some standing. Guillaume, Finch, and a little man he didn’t know, all talking to Villiers. Just above them, what appeared to be a small pink cloud, swooping and diving. The crowd cheered it on.

There was a tree just below him on the slope and he edged toward it. Villiers was looking all around him. Guillaume and Finch had alerted him.

Kuukkinen thought of waiting until Villiers’ back was turned. A matter of step, step, step, and he’d be just another member of the audience. And then, step, step, step, and Villiers would be just an arm-length away.

But no, he would wait. He put a steadying hand to the tree and blended into its shadow.

Sproing. Rope hands lifted him high into the air and dangled him. He was helplessly held. Captured.

The audience turned and applauded.

Admiral Beagle stood, legs nautically well-spread. The sword point was stuck in the dirt, and the Admiral leaned on his hands. His eyes were cocked up the hill. He could hear the noise from Villiers’ camp, degenerate and foreign. He thought of the poor young men whose minds were being twisted, and of their innocent parents. He thought of his own betrayal. He thought of Villiers. (And he didn’t smile.) He thought of the Emperor. (He smiled.) He thought of the truth. He thought of the right. He thought of the good. Wrath rose within him.

He took a deep breath and hefted the sword in his two good hands. He cleared his throat and his mind, and started up the path. As he moved, the music stopped.

Near the end of any long-term project, there comes an inevitable moment when the end can be seen, but the hand cannot move. If the hand moves, the maybes will be answered—and some maybes are less attractive than others. Something inside knows that anticipation is better than memory, and wants to hold on to anticipation one last moment. But I’ve said this before.

The hand moved.

When they had finished playing, Fred perched on a rock and looked about him. He looked at the plonk, hanging about waiting to talk to Villiers. It apparently considered Villiers its primary target for conversion. Fred didn’t look at David, who was leaning against the same rock. Should he tell him to go away? He looked at Smetana, talking to Villiers, and then his eye was caught by two well-dressed but disheveled strangers coming up the path. He didn’t look at David.

Gillian, hand unsteady, heart unsteady, head unsteady, edged the note toward him. It moved toward him, slowly, of its own will. Her hand slowed even more and then in a last movement, she thrust the paper forward until it nudged Fred’s hand.

His head turned. He looked at the paper. He looked up at her and then back at the paper. At last, he took it.

He smoothed it between two fingers. Then he opened it, not knowing what to expect.

The note said: “I’m Gillian U. I know about agrostology.”

He read it again.

Torve looked at Villiers expectantly. “Was fun,” he said. “When do IFrobb ?”

“Not yet,” said Villiers. “We’ll give everybody a few minutes to recover.” He nodded to Smetana. “Mr. Smetana. Did you enjoy what you heard?”

“It was all right,” Smetana said. Then slowly, “Different.” He had begun to redden. He was right in thinking that it is best to approach possible embarrassment squarely. On the other hand, he found the fact of embarrassment embarrassing, and so he blushed.

Torve said, “Soon I willFrobb .”

Experimentally, he went,“Thurb.” Heads craned immediately. “See, Tony,” he said. “They are ready.”

“Not yet,” said Villiers.

Smetana said, “We’ve met before, Mr. Villiers. You should remember. It was several years ago, on Livermore.”

An intolerable burden to place on someone—to expect him to recognize you. Smetana had all the more reason to blush because Villiers was looking at him with total nonrecognition.

“It is unforgivable of me,” said Villiers, “but I must beg your pardon, sir. It is true that I have been on Livermore on more than one occasion. I don’t recall having made your acquaintance, however. Are you sure that we have met?”

Smetana nodded. “I am sure.”

“My apologies, then. Your name does have a familiarity about it, but not your face, and I am generally good about faces. Well, allow me to consider us old friends.”

A fatal streak of the democrat flawed Villiers. Roll bok ball with anybody, he would. Acknowledge anyone who claimed acquaintance. One could hope that he would know better.

The plonk was becoming increasingly restive through this idle chitchat. Claude felt that now that the music was concluded he was owed attention that he was not receiving. He was in favor of postponing Torve’s exhibition and had applauded Villiers for suppressing the Trog. But not to replace it with this.

“Villiers. Hey, Mr. Villiers.”

It was two strangers crossing the camp. They waved at Villiers urgently.

Villiers turned. “Guillaume,” he said. “Finch.”

And indeed it was they. They had learned that the long way around is the long way around. But arrived they had. They made their way around the fire and through the people to Villiers.

In desperation, Claude said, “Would you accept omniscience, Mr. Villiers? Or should I say, Charteris? Would that convince you? For instance—” He paused. “For instance, I know that the boy over there thought to be one David Clodfelter is really a girl named Gillian U.”

A dramatic announcement. Claude’s voice had power to carry and more heads were turning in the direction of their little stage. Instant theater.

Fred, a peripheral presence, lifted his head. “I know that,” he answered Claude. “Sorry. It doesn’t count.”

He looked at the note and then at Gillian. She looked silently back at him and he felt the pressure to answer.

“I’m thinking about it,” he said at last. After a minute he added, “Do you really?” She nodded.

Smetana said, “The plonk talks! It talks! Hinkle was right. Hinkle was right. The Solimões Factor is vindicated.”

He threw up his arms and jumped up and down, totally delighted. Everybody should espouse three or four harmless crank theories for the pure pleasure of having something harmless to be cranky about. And when a theory of this sort proves correct, it is a true moment for celebration.

Villiers looked at Smetana. By that time the full audience was enjoying the middle portion of their evening’s entertainment. Smetana did a clog step. The secret nights of review of the old days had kept him sharp. None of the usual embarrassment when an old trooper steps out after twenty years of retirement.

“I do know you, sir,” said Villiers. “How unforgivable of me. You’rePickles Smetana! Pickles and Daisy. Pickles and Daisy. I loved you when I was young.”

“You did?” Smetana asked, abruptly ending his dance. There was only brief applause, but then tastes must be educated.

“Be quiet!” said the plonk. “Pickles and Daisy arenot the topic of conversation.”

For a god, he was singularly lacking in patience. But inexperience must be granted concessions.

Smetana appeared ready to dance again. (Hinkle was right. Hinkle was right.)

Finch shot one look at Smetana, another at the plonk, and seized Villiers’ arm.

“Is time yet?” Torve asked.

“Not yet,” said Villiers.

“Anthony, listen!” said Finch. “You’re in danger, and we’ve come to warn you. Solomon ‘Biff’ Dreznik is out there in the night. I fear he means you injury.”

“Dreznik? Here?”

“Yes.”

“You two go away,” said the plonk. “Now, Villiers, my patience is wearing very very thin.”

Villiers cocked his head and looked at Finch. “Philip,” he said, “you aren’t trying to mislead me, are you? I’m aware that you want to win.”

“I do, but not that much.”

“This is suspicious news for you to arrive with.”

“It’s true.”

Guillaume nodded. “Mr. Villiers, Dreznik was watching you from the meadow this afternoon. You had better run while you can.”

Villiers checked his curdler, turning its charge to “Lethal.” “I won’t run,” he said. “I’m safest right here.”

The angered plonk began to swoop at them all, and the audience cheered. They were enjoying themselves thoroughly.

A loudsproing behind them caused them to turn. The cheers for Claude turned into spontaneous applause. Above their heads, Kuukkinen nodded in acknowledgment. It was the only thing a graceful man could do.

Villiers turned back to Finch. “Did you encounter Mr. Kuukkinen in the meadow, too?”

When the applause had died, he called, “Good evening, Mr. Kuukkinen.”

Kuukkinen said, “Look out behind you, Mr. Villiers.”

Dreznik stood high on the rock, a looming presence out of the night and darkness. He pointed at the dangling Kuukkinen.

“Your traps aren’t good enough for me, Villiers.” In the sudden silence his voice rang loud. People checked the time, but it was neither twenty before the hour nor twenty after by either the time of Shiawassee or by the time of Pewamo, and there were watches reporting both in the audience. It was a garden-variety silent moment.

“Your luck has run out,” Dreznik said. “Solomon ‘Biff’ Dreznik is here. Prepare to meet your end.”

He leveled a curdler. He really wasn’t a very nice man.

Ralph, who was reasonably sure that curdler-levelling was not a proper part of the evening, reared back bravely and prepared to throw his mandolin. Villiers made a motion for his own curdler, which he had replaced, and doubted his chances.

The day, however, was saved by Claude the Plonk. But, after all, if you are God, you have responsibilities.

He flew straight at Dreznik. “What’s the matter with you?” he yelled. “Have you no respect for the Lord, thy God? At the very least, you could all be quiet until I’ve finished speaking.”

Dreznik flinched, stepped back, lost his balance and had to jump for another foothold. That was Villiers’ trap, and it wentsproing . The crowd wentoooh .

Now, mark you, Dreznik stepped into a trap that he knew was there. You may think this strange, but in fact the trap that he knew was precisely the trap that he was most likely to spring. He was that sort of man.

Dreznik swayed back and forth in his rope cradle with none of the instant accommodation to his situation that Kuukkinen had shown. Kuukkinen had stuck his legs through the ropes and was swinging back and forth as he watched all. Dreznik wasn’t up to that. His curdler was lost in the rocks below him. The plonk hovered just in front of him and he huddled.

“Ky-eee,”yelled Admiral Beagle, sending all eyes across the campsite. He charged toward Villiers, red-gleaming sword whirling high.

Before he got to the fire and had to make the practical decision of over, around, or through, Ralph sprang into his path, mandolin held at the ready. It was a magnificent testament to his new manhood. The Admiral, not even considering explanations to his wife and her sister, brought the sword sweeping around and down.

The sapling hadn’t done anything silly like sticking a mandolin in the way. On its circle, the sword encountered the instrument, snapped strings and smashed it to flinders.

The overhead splitting stroke was intended to halve Ralph in the manner of Roland and Oliver and other over-muscled heroes of old, but it didn’t. When the mandolin was torn from Ralph’s hand, he ducked. Admiral Beagle’s momentum carried him forward. Perhaps he should have practiced running at his sapling instead of planting his feet solidly before he swung. The sword passed beyond Ralph, and the Admiral’s knees were knocked from beneath him. His elbows struck the ground. His sword flew from his hands.

Ralph, tripped over and landed upon, wentwoof .

The Admiral sprawled heavily on the ground, and a bicycle ran over him from behind. This was not the deliberate intention of Clifford Morgenstern, but an accident of the moment. He claimed later that it was more, but he was fibbing. The bicycle went one way and Morgenstern the other.

There was a magnificent moment of silence. Then Admiral Beagle dazedly pulled himself to his feet and stood alone amidst the wreckage.

The audience burst into wild applause, the loudest of the evening. If this was the wave of the future in dramatic art, they liked it. As said earlier, tastes can be educated. Exposure is the important thing.

“That’s Mrs. Waldo Wintergood,” the plonk said in confidential tones.

“Admiral Beagle?” Villiers asked. Admiral Beagle?

“Of course,” said the plonk. “The eye of God knows all.”

“Are you really God?” Dreznik asked from his swaying ropes.

“Of course,” said the plonk. “I am the Lord, thy God. Whoever believes in me shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

“Really?” asked Dreznik.

“Do you doubt the word of God?”

“No, no,” said Dreznik. “I believe. I do believe.”

“Do you really?” asked the plonk.

Clifford Morgenstern picked himself up from the ground and faced Admiral Beagle. Admiral Beagle returned the look. Ralph Weinsider looked at an interwoven sword and bicycle. He wondered if there wasn’t a place for it in the New Art.

“Are you Admiral Beagle?”

“Yes, I am.”

Morgenstern looked him up and down. “You’re not so much,” he said.

He reached up—short as the Admiral was, Morgenstern was shorter; he was shorter than anybody, shorter than Napoleon even—and struck Beagle with a sharp hand.

Beagle looked at him with a puzzled expression. One expects an introduction before being run over by a bicycle. A slap without an introduction is definitely badton.

Morgenstern said, “You’re the one who has been interfering with my brown. You’re a barbarian. A philistine. You deserve a thrashing.”

“Do you believe you’re the man to do it?” Admiral Beagle demanded. He was a man of action. He knew when he was being challenged.

“I do.”

With that they fell to pummeling each other. After a moment, they fell into a double grasp, strained with each other valiantly, and at last rolled to the ground. They went tumbling off the path and into the brush where they were lost to sight. However, the sound of their titanic struggle—a muted thrashing—could still be heard.

Villiers slowly looked about him. Sword, bicycle, mandolin fragments, Guillaume, Finch, Smetana, Ralph, the audience, Kuukkinen, Claude the Plonk, Dreznik, Fred, Gillian.

He looked again at Dreznik and sighed. Unfortunately, assassins never talk. It’s against the rules of the profession. A matter of honor.

And who would want to kill a nice man like Villiers? That’s a question to take some thinking on.

He looked at Torve. “All right. Now,” he said.

Torve’s performance was easily the high point of the evening. Even Villiers found it enjoyable. Perhaps the experience of playing with the master had widened his appreciation.

Late that night, when they were all nearly asleep, there was a thirdsproing . It proved to be an injudicious catamount.

“There,” Villiers said, gesturing. “I told you I would catch a behemoth.”

Villiers said goodbye to Finch, Kuukkinen and Guillaume at Shiawassee Spaceport.

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind about coming back to Yuten with us?” Kuukkinen asked.

“I think not,” Villiers said.

“Damn it,” said Finch, “it won’t be half the contest without you.”

“Thank you,” said Villiers, “but if someone is seriously attempting to have me killed, I think I’d better not play High Tag. I can’t afford the confusion. Convey my regards to Lord Hawkwood.”

Finch said, “And give our best to Lord Broccoli.”

“Say hello to Morris,” said Guillaume.

On his way through the Port House, Villiers encountered Sergei Gilfillian. Sergei waved frantically.

“Sergei,” Villiers said. “Have you eaten? I was about to eat.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t.”

“Don’t hang back, Sergei.”

Sergei fell into step beside him. “I wanted to ask a favor of you, sir.”

“By all means.”

Sergei held out a piece of paper. “I can’t show this to anyone else. Will you read this for me?”

Villiers took the paper. It was a poem. He remembered Sergei flinching when the subject of poetry was mentioned.

Sergei said, “I used a pseudonym.”

“I see you did,” said Villiers. “Very interesting.”

“Is it any good?”

Villiers shook his head. “I’m not the man to say. It may be very good. If I might suggest, I do know a place to try sending it.”

“You mean for publication?”

“Yes,” said Villiers. “If you recall the gentlemen we shared a flitter with, they have started publishing a magazine,The Green Mountain Review . Send your poem to Ralph Weinsider, Green Mountain Resort, Binkin Island, Pewamo. If it meets his editorial standards he’ll use it.”

“But he’s a yagoot,” said Sergei.

“He’s an editor first and a yagoot second,” said Villiers. “Now let’s have lunch.”

Caspar Smetana found that Maimonides had said nothing useful on the arts, and personally hadn’t enjoyed them much. As a substitute, he and Daisy polished up some of their best material and Ralph used that instead.

In the process of criticizing Admiral Beagle, Clifford Morgenstern broke his left thumb—but criticism always has its risks. His pain was soothed by the eager reception he was given by the Green Mountain Gang. As soon as his thumb healed sufficiently, Morgenstern began signing autographs. For a while on Shiawassee, until the market became glutted, a genuine Morgenstern autograph was worth money.

Within days of his part in the Maude Binkin Review, Admiral Beagle was served with orders recalling him to active duty in the N.S.N. He was surprised, as well he might have been, but not displeased, even though he was put to work in Supply. Again.

There were a few sour souls who were pleased to see him go. These were the sort of people who feel that there ought to be a Navy, if for no other reason than to serve as a way of removing undesirables from society. On this point, they were in agreement with those who had recalled Admiral Beagle to active duty.

Beagle was bothered by the new success of the Mrs. Waldo Wintergood books that rapidly followed. He was particularly resentful because their widespread success was based on what he felt to be a total misreading. He indignantly refused the offer of a symbolic pornography book club to make his books a children’s selection. (For hewas Mrs. Waldo Wintergood.)

It is common knowledge that an author has no better understanding of his books than anyone else. And, in some cases, less. Poor Admiral Beagle.

Solomon “Biff” Dreznik retired from his profession and spurned all offers intended to make him change his mind.

“I have found a better life,” he said, and no one could doubt the ethereal look on his face.

He disappeared from the normal haunts of man, and was only seen from time to time at a distance by tourists and campers on Binkin Island. He followed his God through meadow and forest, and leaped barefoot crags, high on the slopes of Mount Binkin. Report once had him on Mount Seymour, but I don’t credit the story.

To a Teacup Held for Murder

Fragile white-boned

Simpering smiler,

Beflowered cousin

Of honest steins and tankards:

You smirk and say

That you were poured into,

And are hardly responsible

For anything that followed.

Do you expect this jury

To accept that?

Come, come sir:

You must know better.

There is no excuse—

The law is clear:

Containers are accountable

For what they contain.

—Flanders Modrian

End Book II

Who would want to kill a nice man like Villiers? Amidst courtliness and crime, love and The Descent into Respectability, he finds out on a Night of Wonders and Marvels in the third Anthony Villiers novel,Masque World . Following soon.

Book III: Masque World

FOR LEE HOFFMAN

AND CHIP DELANY

Early in 1463 of the Common Era. On Delbalso, a semi-autonomic dependency of the Nashuite Empire.

Castle Rock rises above the town, out of the town, a massive block, a monolith. There is a steep slope behind the last gabled peak of buildings, possible to climb when green, less likely in white. And then the face of the block—black by night, and then a marbled gray-white, white and then orange, orange and then black—but always impossible. There is a door at the foot of Castle Rock and a road that leads down into the town.

To the handful of Empire administrators, petty officials and janitors who live within Castle Rock, it is “The Castle.” They take that seriously, and by a metaphorical transposition of their physical situation, they imagine themselves looming large in local lives, which, of course, they don’t. Since in the main they do not venture outside, they are seldom disabused.

To the people of the town, Castle Rock is “The Rock.” The janitors are an unknown quantity, since they do so seldom venture out of their fastness. The rock itself is a physical presence, a common fact, a landmark to be kept on the left when going out, and the right hand returning.

It can hardly be ignored, but it is only a rock, and, as you can imagine, the people of the town have difficulty mustering inordinate respect for an object held in such easy contempt by birds.

The charterboat landed on Castle Rock when the red sun was at the cold world’s edge and the Rock was orange, its best and brightest face, its brave smile bravely held in the face of coming dark. Two passengers with small luggage debarked. The wind whipped at them and then they went within the Rock.

Every human being who has ever lived has extended the range of the species. There isn’t one among us who hasn’t thought, said, or done something unique. New ideas, new recipes, new fashions. New tunes, new games, new places for people to play.

Since Jerzy McBe was human, he, too, had extended the range of the species, but not by much. He had his limitations.

He was one of the janitors of Empire, thin, brown, and at the end of unused youth. His job was uninteresting and he performed it inadequately. He inspected the papers of travelers to Delbalso and he inspected the papers of those departing. He had done the work for two years and not only had he not earned a promotion to more agreeable labor, he now knew less about his business than the day he started.

He finished checking through the family party leaving on the charterboat. Man, one; wives, two; children, four—and the crated remnants of several generations of summering on Delbalso. McBe had checked this same family on at least three previous occasions, but they were not among the very few in the world whom McBe recognized at sight. Their name was in his hand, where he knew where to find it, not in his mind, which was a less ordered place. The name was Gramineous.

The family had rather more baggage this time, as had the majority of those leaving Delbalso these days. To McBe it just seemed like a lot of baggage. The passage of the Winter-Summer Laws had escaped his attention. He slept with a night light and he had never set foot outside the Castle.

“Have a good trip,” he said, handing the man’s name back. To inbound travelers, he said, “Have a nice stay.” But he still hadn’t been outside the Castle.

McBe checked the time. He had a schedule, and the closer he came to keeping it, the safer he felt.

There were two passengers from the charterboat. One was a young man, wellborn, well-dressed, but unprepossessing. Behind him was a large alien, brown, furry, and friendly in appearance. McBe didn’t trust appearances, and he didn’t like aliens. His immediate superior was an alien of a different kind and his attentions had always made McBe nervous.

“Papers,” said McBe.

The young man reached a slight hand within his coat. He was small and lean and his nose and cheekbones were prominent. His long brown hair was caught and tied, the prisoner of a light green ribbon. He wore a serviceable cloak and simple clean ruffles.

“My papers, sir,” he said, presenting the narrow maroon booklet.

McBe didn’t like his manner, so he took the papers and leaned back. He thumbed them instead of stamping them. Hehmm ed.

He said, “In your picture you lack a mustache, Mr. Villiers.”

Villiers said, “That is correct. The picture is some six years old. I grew my mustache during a recent vacation.”

“You should have had your papers emended,” McBe said.

The alien said, “Is easy enough to change.”

He had eyes of bulgy blue and a fuzzy white belly, and McBe could not recall having seen his like before. He loomed over Villiers’ shoulder, seized pen from McBe’s pocket and book from hand, made a peculiar throbbing noise that McBe found unsettling, and drew a careful mustache of proper dimension on the picture.

“There,” he said. “Is mended.”

Villiers picked it up and studied it while McBe continued to stare. Villiers touched his mustache for comparison. He was young enough that six years had changed him substantially, but the alien’s adscription did much to harmonize man and likeness.

“You’re right,” he said, nodding. “I do believe you’ve caught my very spirit.”

“He held the picture for McBe’s inspection. “Don’t you agree that the addition of a mustache gives me a gravity that formerly I lacked? I don’t know why I didn’t grow one years ago when my need was greater.” McBe was confirmed in his dislike of the man.

The alien made the throbbing noise again:“Thurb.” He had the contented look of a toad in summer.

Villiers said, “Perhaps I should grow a beard as well.” He considered the picture again, and then looked about for the pen. “Do you mind?”

His intention caused McBe to snatch the pen up. “No!” he said, which Villiers rightly took to mean that he did mind.

McBe said to the alien, “It is a serious matter to deface official papers.”

McBe said to Villiers, “A very serious matter. There are penalties. It is a very good thing for you that you didn’t compound the offense.”

McBe said to the alien, “Do you realize…”

McBe said to Villiers, “Your papers, if you please.” He thumbed to the front. He moved his finger as he read.

McBe said to the alien, “Do you realize that you might be fined a full five royals, and subjected to penalties under four statutes?” He held up the book and pointed to the statute numbers.

McBe said to Villiers, whom he didn’t like, “And you should know better, sir.”

“Your pardon,” said Villiers. “I’m sure he intended no harm. If the picture needs replacement, as you suggest, then no harm has been done. Let us replace the picture, and all will be as it should.”

McBe leaned back and looked at him through narrowed eyes. The effect—for McBe was not totally without presence—was redolent of authority.

“Are you trying to teach me my business?” he asked, the age-old question of authority challenged. “Defacement is defacement. It may be enough to change the picture, and it may not. I think I shall have to have a closer look at your papers in any case.”

If Villiers had deferred properly, McBe would have been ready to let him go his own way, but instead the young man looked down his cool nose and said, “Really? A matter of routine, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said McBe. “A matter of routine. I’m sure you understand.”

He checked the time, and the thought of cost to his schedule made him more peevish. If his schedule suffered appreciably, he expected to show Mr. Villiers a thing or two about bureaucracy.

He pointed to the alien. “Next, there. Let me see your papers. Pa-pers.”

“To be sure,” the alien said, and presented his book.

McBe flipped through it. “Well,” he said. “At least you haven’t marked your own book.”

He stamped it,bam , and handed it back. “Listen—it was very wrong of you to mark the book. Never do anything like that again. Now follow the yellow line and it will take you out.”

Don’t think it strange that McBe challenged Villiers rather than the alien. McBe knew to a fine degree exactly what he was capable of coping with.

The alien looked at him and the black pits in his blue blue eyes pulsed questioningly. For a panicked moment, McBe thought be might make that noise again.

He drew breath and said, “Shoo. Go along. I’m done with you.”

The alien said, “I am done with you, too. Is agreed. Goodbye.”

Villiers said, “Goodbye.”

McBe said nothing. He sat unmoving until the alien had padded off to find where the yellow line had it in mind to go. Then he swished his nasal passages, rose, and said, “Come along.”

But he left Villiers’ papers on the desk. Villiers rescued them and handed them over when McBe suddenly turned halfway to the exit. Villiers raised his eyebrows. He had parallel wrinkles over each brow that rose into prominence as the brows rose, and seconded every comment they made.

It was excellent natural equipment and Villiers made good use of it. McBe was sure then that he disliked Villiers. It took little to confirm a suspicion like that. He nodded coldly for Villiers to proceed.

Slyne was an Orthodoxou. Orthodoxous are unmistakable, clothed by nature in black velvet, bodies bulbous, heads enclosed but for the wet tip of the nose in the metal lattice of their sensory amplifiers. Slyne was an unmistakable Orthodoxou, the only one in the entire Imperial Service. He was the first. He had the feeling of being watched, justified to some extent by his promotion to his present position on Delbalso after his success in a bit of amateur detection that keyed in significantly to the Diced Strawberry Affair on Able II. (That was a code name—the reality was more sinister.) His ambition was to be an Inspector General some day, an example for the Empire and for other Orthodoxous of what an Orthodoxou might be.

Orthodoxous have no talent for the construction of elaborate artificial systems, but they admire rigmarole immensely and find great satisfaction in making the most of it. Naturally, Imperial Service would have great appeal for them, so if Slyne had the feeling of being watched, it might have been because other distant eyes were peering brightly, observing his good works.

Slyne was earnest and diligent, and unable to understand why he was not loved. He was not loved because he was not lovable.

He was McBe’s superior, looking for McBe, as he so often was. He liked McBe too well for McBe’s comfort. He was always asking what McBe was doing. He was always hanging about trying to entertain McBe with a recital of Empire regulations, or some boring story of a minor exploit that had boosted him into his present position of niggling authority.

Slyne found McBe in his “office”—his cubicle. He had a young man with him. Slyne sniffed at them, his wet nose wriggling through the grillwork.

McBe shied, and then said defensively, “I have defaced and outdated papers here. I was going to run a Random Depth Inspection on them.”

The young man said nothing. Slyne wriggled his nose.

Then Slyne said, “Well, continue, then.”

McBe looked at the time. “I’m behind schedule,” he said. He shoved the papers at Slyne. “Here. Why don’t you take over? Could you, please?”

He plunged out of the room and then kitty-corner into the sanctuary of the toilet. It was on his schedule for the end of the day, but he was more abrupt about it than he usually was. The door slid shut behind him and locked and a discreet green light went on above.

The Orthodoxou looked at the young man. More properly, he looked in the direction of the young man. It was hard to tell exactly what he was looking at behind the amplifier.

“You defaced your papers?” he said.

“No,” said the young man.

“How are the papers defaced?”

“A mustache,” said the young man. He showed the picture.

Slyne took the papers and peered at them, then at their bearer. “A mustache? Ornamental lip hair?”

“True. I wear a mustache.”

“I see that you do.”

“My picture showed no mustache.”

“It should have. It is best to keep these things regular, Mr. Villiers.”

“So Mr. McBe said.”

“Is that when you defaced your papers?” Slyne eyed the door to the toilet, but the green light was still on. He turned back to Villiers. “It’s against regulations to deface official papers, you know.” He named the regulations. He knew his regulations.

“I’m sure that it is,” said Villiers, “and quite properly, too. But as it happens, it was not I who defaced the picture, but another passenger, apparently with insufficient grasp of the basic importance of official papers. We traveled here in the same ship. A most remarkable character, and not predictable.”

“You claim that it was another that defaced the papers?”

“Yes.”

“Where is this other passenger?”

“Gone. Mr. McBe stamped his papers and sent him on his way.”

“That seems unusual,” said Slyne. “McBe should have kept him in hand until the matter has had its due. I think we had best ask McBe for an explanation. McBe!”

And there you have the value of a sensory amplifier. The toilet door had just opened and McBe had emerged. Slyne spoke without turning. It was almost a good enough trick for a party.

McBe came slowly to the door. “Yes, sir.”

Slyne said, “How was the picture defaced?”

Villiers looked on with calm interest. His manner throughout was unconcerned. Whether it was innocent interest or arrogant assurance that he displayed was a matter for question. It might have been either.

McBe said, “The alien marked it.”

“The alien?”

“There was an alien in my line, just off the charterboat. He marked the picture. But the papers are still outdated.”

“You let him go?”

“His papers looked all right.”

“What kind of alien was it?”

McBe said, “I don’t know. Excuse me, sir. I’m supposed to be off duty now.”

He really did have a schedule. He needed one, since the Imperial Service did not see fit to direct his life with the fineness that he required. His schedule held his life together.

Slyne said, “Mr. McBe, you will not be done until I tell you that you are done.”

“Iwarned the alien,” McBe said defensively.

“That’s very commendable. Describe the alien, please.”

“Well, furry. Bigger than you. Big blue eyes.”

“A Trog,” said Villiers quietly.

“A Trog!” exclaimed Slyne.

And well he might exclaim. Trogs are Restricted, confined since the end of the War of Orion’s Ear to their two home solar systems. Trogs are strange and uncertain creatures and only some fifty are allowed to travel with even relative ease. You would be fortunate to see one in a lifetime.

“Did you examine his Permit to Travel? Did you check his Red Card?”

“No,” said McBe. “I guess I didn’t.”

Slyne looked at him reproachfully. He wasn’t quite sure why he allowed McBe to continue in service, except that he liked the way McBe smelled. It is an article of faith with some Orthodoxous that each of them shall search for that elusive and ultimate odor that once found rules life. Slyne had always thought this romantic foolishness, but that was before he had come to Delbalso and met McBe. He was less smugly certain now that the tradition was without foundation. He felt giddy around McBe, and was ashamed because he knew it bad for his ambition.

McBe said, “He must have been too clever for me.”

”That would explain things,” said Slyne. “What color was the Trog?”

It is a fact that Trogs, unlike humans, are significantly color-coded. Peasants are a basic gray metamorphosing to olive. Soldiers are white striped with black. And scholars are always brown, solid brown, nothing but brown, never anything but brown, and that is that. If you were a Trog and you weren’t brown, you wouldn’t even beinterested .

McBe thought about the color of the beast. Since he thought in black and white, it was difficult for him to remember things like that. “Brown,” he said at last.

That was true, but insufficient. Villiers knew better: the Trog had had a white belly and faint black stripes on his back. But Villiers did not correct McBe, perhaps out of politeness.

“A scholar,” concluded Slyne, demonstrating the deleterious effects of imperfect data on conclusion. “Perhaps we should begin to look for him in libraries and educational institutions.”

“We?” said McBe.

“Of course, we,” said Slyne, wriggling his nose through the wire cage. “This is a Restricted Sentient. The Empire doesn’t set restrictions idly. We’ll have to find him, and start now.”

McBe looked at the time and whimpered. Slyne looked at Villiers, who withdrew his attention. Slyne drew McBe aside. This involved a paw placed against McBe’s chest, a bird cage next to his ear, and the sound of an occasional whuffle of deeply breathed air. McBe hardly flinched. Give him credit.

Slyne said quietly, “A new Administrator is due to assume authority here at any moment. Think of your job, McBe.”

“A new Administrator?” said McBe. It had been the main topic of conversation within the Rock for a month but McBe hadn’t been listening. That is, he knew, he had heard, but the information had not penetrated his defenses.

“Yes,” said Slyne. His wet nose touched McBe’s earlobe and he whuffled. McBe’s shoulder shuddered slightly, but you couldn’t call that a flinch.

“If this Trog is a scholar, it may not be so dangerous, but, even so, it must be found. It is up to you and me. I don’t think that you have been doing your job as your job should be done. McBe, I shall be watching you. You shall show me a new McBe. And together we will find this Trog. If it has a proper set of papers, it may go its way. If it does not, you and I shall take it into custody. If you perform well, you will be excused. But if you do not perform well—or if trouble should come of this—I shall sacrifice you to the new Administrator. I have my career to bear in mind. If you care to continue to wear Empire livery, it had best be a new McBe. Starting this minute. Now straighten up.”

This sounded impressively threatening, and in fact McBe did feel threatened. Though he did his work badly, and took no pleasure in it, the thought of searching for a different employ in which greater demands might be made of him was genuinely frightening.

Slyne snuffled and his nose nuzzled McBe’s ear. McBe had more latitude than he knew. But since he had no appreciation of the fact, he straightened up and tried to look as though he cared about the alien, as though he cared about doing a proper job, as though he didn’t mind abandoning his imperative need to put on his night light and crawl under the covers. Outside? At night? He almost broke, but he was too frightened, so he bent.

“Yes, sir,” he said. It was just as well that he had already observed the previous part of his agenda.

Slyne turned and said, “And now, Mr. Villiers. We must talk about your defective papers.”

McBe made a quick swipe of ear against shoulder, and then became aware that Villiers had observed him, which caused a rush of cold followed by radiant resentment.

Villiers turned his attention to Slyne. He said, “Perhaps the matter can be settled with some ease.”

He reached within his coat and produced a large flat wallet, which he opened.

McBe said, “Bribery?” He didn’t say it too loudly. He got halfway into the word, and then finished it as a question.

Villiers said, “Sir, while it might be possible to bribe you, nothing in our short acquaintance leads me to the belief that there could be any conceivable benefit in doing so. Accordingly, I shall forego the opportunity you have just proffered. I trust you will not take it amiss, and will forgive me if I have misjudged you.”

To Slyne, he said, “I thought to supplement my papers with various items of identification. If you find them satisfactory, perhaps you will allow me to travel on the planet and will monish my papers as you please in the meantime. Here, to begin, is my Patent.”

“You have a title?” Slyne asked, to and by appearances impressed.

“Viscount Charteris,” said Villiers. He said it with the straightest of faces.

First, out of the Rock came the Trog, following the yellow line.

Brown, basically. Friendly in appearance.

The sun had set by then, and the Rock was black with night. The air was cool. The Trog tested the evening and then followed the will of the road down into the town.

After some search, he found Joralemon House of the Delbalso Monist Association. The Monist Association had a house in each of the quarters of Delbalso. Joralemon House was a rambling pile, its palisade enclosing armfuls of gardens and buildings. It had once been smaller, but after the way of Monist Associations, it was still growing. Joralemon House had fourteen gates and doors.

The Trog padded around the perimeter. He paused at one gate and then passed on. Eventually he stopped outside a door and in the fullness of time the door opened.

“Hello,” he said to the Warder. “I am Torve. I wish to see Badrian Beaufils.”

“What is your business?” asked the Warder.

“We are pen pals,” said Torve the Trog.

“Oh, well, come in, then,” said the man, and welcomed him within. “Now that I think of it, I believe I’ve heard him make mention of you.”

He closed the great wooden door behind them.

Second, out of the Rock came Villiers. He was out of difficulty and into the cool clear air five minutes after he announced himself. It is clear—a title can be an advantage. Imagine the coils if he had not declared the game over by revealing himself.

In fact, however, it hardly seems proper behavior. It is certainly fair for a noble to go incognito, just as it is for a common man to occasionally assume a weekend title. But if nobles are going to go incognito, they should have the grace to stay incognito come the last muffin on the plate. But they never do. No, they stand, announce themselves, and in the stunned silence they gobble the muffin. Clearly they are taught the wrong things in childhood.

Villiers failed to look properly ashamed of himself. He threw his cloak back and looked around for directions to a city car. He was smiling. And then he laughed out of sheer exuberant good spirits.

Taught all the wrong things in childhood.

Last, out of the Castle came Slyne and McBe. Slyne had buttressed memory with research and now knew Trogs for exactly the uncertain creatures they were. Empire Regulations were the guide.

Empire Regulations are quite specific. Trogs are not to be allowed to travel. Their principles of behavior not yielding to ready analysis, they must be considered dangerous. Even scholars. If you like, especially scholars.

The doors opened at the foot of the Rock. They stood for a moment looking out at the night. There was light from the spray of stars and a glow from the town, but mainly it was dark. McBe felt dismay.

“Come along,” said Slyne. He bent and began to cast back and forth. And then he set out, following his amplified senses down the hill.

McBe took a deep breath, and followed after Slyne. The pain in his stomach was only sharp for a time, and then it grew numb. He held his breath as long as he could, and when at last he had to, let it go.

To his real surprise, he did not die.

Some—simple folk, mostly—plead the need for pockets. If they must carry their trinkets and knickknacks about, even in the midst of an uncommonly rewarding experience, one would think they could wear a pack, or carry a poke, or hang a little bag around their neck. But they say it’s not the same, and pass snowstorms by.

For many, clothing is style. Clothing is taste. Clothing is breeding, intelligence, pursuit, ambition.Place . Clothing defines, letting us know who and what a person is. But one naked man in a snowstorm is much like another, and these people are incapable of baring their anonymity.

And for others, clothing is identity. Without their single well-worn suit, they would have no idea of who they were. Naked in a snowstorm, they know they would be invisible and become lost. There are many people like this, most of them very much in need of an uncommonly rewarding experience, but limited and fettered by their clothing.

Even more limited and fettered by the fact that they have stuck staunchly by the very first suit of clothes they ever tried on. If you are going to be what you wear, you should try more than one style before you settle.

As an experiment, try on something strange and wild. What sweet whirling thoughts unsettle the mind? Think about them. Now, who are you?

The house was familiar to Villiers though he had never been on Delbalso before. The extended family of Mr. Jules Parini was much given to travel, and wherever they owned houses, which was widely, the houses were cut to this single pattern. They felt it lent a happy continuous thread to their otherwise discontinuous lives.

The house was in a state of disarray. Parini was being forced to leave both it and Delbalso by the Winter-Summer Laws. He had not left thus far because he lacked the money. Don’t think for a minute that he was a bad provider. However, a tuition payment of no less than thirty-five royals—a figure of which Parini was secretly proud—to Miss McBurney’s Justly Famous Seminary and Finishing School on Nashua on behalf of his elder daughter Louisa had left him with minimal resources.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” he said. “I left word.”

“I received it,” said Villiers. “As it happened, I had other cause to visit Delbalso. I stopped on the chance that you had not left. I count myself fortunate to find you still here.”

Jules Parini wore the clothes of a rug salesman. They were far from the first suit he had tried on, but he looked in character as a rug salesman, and it suited him to look in character. Anything else might require subtlety and subtlety was not his. Louisa was at Miss McBurney’s to learn subtlety.

For the most part, he was a rug salesman, ornamental. His real profession was ornamental, too. He was a con man.

The techniques of con men vary. Parini depended on brute force. He was so domineering, so inevitable, so sure, that most of the people he did business with simply let him have his way to be shut of him. He sold rugs in exactly the same way.

“I’m a pragmaticist,” he would say, meaning that he had no education and he was selective about his principles.

“Let’s step out on the patio,” he said. Parini houses always had patios. What they grew in them varied from one planet to the next, but they had a lettuce bed and a patch of fennel when they could.

Parini looked about him, and spied his younger daughter. She was four and her name was Anne. Wondrous is the way of an eagle in the air, and a serpent upon the rock, but even more wondrous is the way of a four-year-old with a room of boxes full and empty. She made a caret, feet on the floor and head in a box. She was wearing rompers. She fished with her right hand and in her left she held a cloth doll by the foot and swung it for balance.

Parini put an arm about her middle and lifted her out of the box and set her on her feet. She immediately took a second grip farther down the doll’s leg with her right hand.

Parini pointed to his vid service. Calling around, knowing what was going on, being in touch—these were the heart of his business. “Keep an eye on the service while we are on the patio,” Parini said.

She said, very definitely, “I’ms’posed to be going to bed.”

“Never you mind that,” her father said sharply. “Just watch the service.”

She said, “But Mommy will be mad at me.”

“I don’t care. Do as I tell you.”

She trembled on the edge of tears, and then didn’t cry, but did continue to tremble.

Parini led Villiers to the patio, the darkling sky open above them. “You have to be firm with children,” he said. “If you want them to do as you say, you have to make them mind from the beginning… . I can’t put my finger on it, but something about you is different.”

There was a major difference. Villiers was nearly five years older. Villiers put his finger on the difference.

“Yes,” he said. “I like to think I make a different order of mistake these days.”

In their previous dealings, Villiers had come away poorer in pocket, not unreasonable when you realize that Parini had a living to make. Business, after all, is business, and to Parini life was business.

“Your errors were errors of youth,” said Parini, without irony. Irony was another thing Louisa was supposed to learn from Miss McBurney. “In any case, shall I say it’s good to see you again, Villiers? I’m not sure I approve of your methods or your companions, but nonetheless, you did see to my daughter’s safety. I owe you a favor for that.”

Villiers ceased to stroke his mustache. At times he would tug it on the left, but he kept the trim in balance by occasionally chewing it on the right. “Well, I’m all the more pleased to have found you, then. Do you have the papers for the Trog?”

“Why do you travel with such a chancy creature, Villiers? I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. If this Trog deserved to travel, I’m sure the Empire would have issued it with proper papers.”

“That’s a considerable argument coming from your lips,” said Villiers. “While I will admit that I don’t understand the Trog, he makes a very comfortable traveling companion. Have you the papers yet?”

Light flashed through the garden with the opening of a door. It was Anne in her blue rompers, still clutching the leg of the cloth doll in both hands.

“Atensi, par,”she said.“Vow tendi a vizeer.”

“Ah, Annie. Come here!”

The little girl approached slowly.

“Now present yourself. Villiers, this is my daughter Anne. Annie, this is Mr. Villiers.”

“Oh!” she said, but her father made nothing of it.

She made a very good dip for a four-year-old, particularly for one whose father has to dress like a rug salesman to feel really comfortable. Villiers returned the honor.

“A good learner, wouldn’t you say? I have no doubt that when the time comes I can pass her into Miss McBurney’s after Louisa. Now, Annie, take Mr. Villiers inside. I’ll be a few minutes, Villiers.” He put his hands together. “Calling around,” he said, locking them, backing away. He opened his hands again, turned and disappeared inside the house.

“Boro Dad!”Annie said pensively. She didn’t know what it meant exactly. It was an expression she had picked up from the neighbors.

Annie said, “Are you really Mr. Villiers?”

It had been five years and he was disguised behind a heavy brown mustache, but Miriam Parini recognized Anthony Villiers as soon as her daughter led him into the room. His walk and bearing were still the same.

Annie said, “He says he’s Mr. Villiers.”

“Tony!” she said. “How long have you been in the house?”

She was a pleasant woman with exophthalmic eyes that rescued her from simple plainness. She was devoted to her husband’s interests. The formal charge is Aiding and Abetting.

“Not long,” he said. “We passed before but you were busy and didn’t see us. I certainly wouldn’t have left without saying hello.”

“I should hope not!” she said.

She was standing in an obstacle course of boxes. She had been making decisions. Even at the best of times, housekeeping skills were not her strongest suit, and she tended to let work accumulate until it became visible, or even necessary. Now it was acutely necessary and she was busy.

Annie said, “Is he the one?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Parini.

“Oh!” said Annie.

“Oh, Annie, you should be in bed,” said her mother. “Didn’t I tell you to go to bed!”

Villiers said, “I could put Annie to bed, if that would help.”

“Oh, it would,” said her mother.

“Annie, would you like to hear a bedtime story?”

“Oh, that’s good,” said Mrs. Parini. “That will give me time to straighten a bit, and then we can talk.”

Annie considered the matter. It was possible, after all, that Villiers was an inexpert storyteller, in which case she could be letting herself in for all sorts of tedium.

“I guess,” she said.

“She’s all ready to be tucked in,” her mother said.

When she was tucked, which took yet a few minutes, four-year-olds being what they are and this one having her own thoughts on her mind and her own slow way of exposing them, and when she was settled and shushed, which took one or two minutes more, Villiers told her a story. The story was called “The Hobyahs.”

“Once,” he said, “there was an old man and a woman and a little girl, and they all lived in a house made of hempstalks. Now the old man had a little dog named Turpie; and one night the Hobyahs came and said, ‘Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!’ But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off.”

That was the beginning. The ending was, “The next night the Hobyahs took down the bag and knocked on the top of it, and said, ‘Look me! Look me!’ and when they opened the bag—the big dog jumped out and ate them all up: so there are no Hobyahs now.”

It was a good story, showing blatant favoritism for little girls above all the other creatures of the earth. Villiers told it well, with considerable animation and a variety of voices. He was very good at “Look me! Look me!”

However, at the conclusion of the story, instead of applauding Villiers or telling him that it was a good story, which indeed she had thought it was, Annie said, “I saw a dog once.”

And she said, “I think they weremean to little dog Turpie.”

But she still had her own thoughts on her mind, and so she said, “When you marry my sister, can I carry flowers?”

“Of course,” said Villiers, ever the gentleman.

She said, “Can I come live with you?”

It is perfectly reasonable that with a father who dressed like a rug salesman, and moreover yelled, she might wish to leave home, but Villiers was finding his sudden promotion to brother-in-law premature at the least.

Gently he said, “Why do you think that your sister and I will marry?”

“Well, she says she’s going to marry you.”

“Oh,” said Villiers. Then, “Did she say when?”

“No.”

“Annie, do you know where Louisa is right now?”

“Uh, she’s away at school.”

“Yes,” said Villiers. “She’s at school to learn. The schools are full of books, Annie, and in those books are everything that people have learned through all the thousands of years of history. In those books it says things that your sister doesn’t know, things like: ‘A man who is vulgar or fallen from social position and much given to travel does not deserve a wife; and the same is true of the man who having a wife and children spends all his time at sports and rarely comes home to his family.’ ”

“Do you have a wife and children?”

“No,” said Villiers. “But I do spend too much time in sport and travel. Once your sister has done her reading, you can be sure that she won’t have any part of me.”

“But those areold books,” said Annie. She hadn’t been around for long, but she had been around long enough to know that whatever things may have been like once, in these days they were very different.

“I like to travel,” she said. “I like to play.”

Villiers shook his head solemnly. “You should be aware then that you compromise your chances of making a successful marriage.”

Hopefully, she said, “I don’t think Louisa reads much.”

She was finally convinced to settle for a firm promise about the flowers, and a conditional promise on living arrangements.

“I was in such terror when I heard that Louisa had been involved with a Trog,” said Mrs. Parini. “But I was relieved as soon as Pavel said that you were there. I knew you wouldn’t allow harm to come to Louisa.”

“It would have been poor payment for your hospitality,” said Villiers.

“But who knows what a Trog will do?”

“It is certain that I don’t,” said Villiers, “but still we must judge by result, and Louisa did come to no harm. By the way, are you aware of her designs?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “but don’t speak loudly. Jules doesn’t know.”

“He wouldn’t like the idea?”

“Well, no,” she said. “I’m not sure he’d approve. After all, he has his plans. It wouldn’t do for Louisa to marry just anyone, even you, Tony. But I think she’ll get over it before long. Does she know of your mustache yet?”

“We exchange only random letters and I haven’t mentioned it,” said Villiers. “She’s unlikely to know unless she has it from a third source.”

“She never liked mustaches,” said Mrs. Parini.

“Perhaps I should reconsider mine, then,” said Villiers.

“Don’t,” said Mrs. Parini. “I think your mustache is very becoming.”

Parini returned by way of the patio, bringing with him a trace of cooler air and the sound of a slow and deeply tolling bell. Villiers cocked his head at the sound.

Parini said, “We have unusual neighbors. The bell belongs to a Christian. It is one of a set he rings at peculiar hours and seasons. There is a Monist House just down the street. There used to be gypsies in the neighborhood, but they anticipated the Winter-Summer Laws and left Delbalso months ago.”

His mood was notably improved, which shows what a session of calling around can do for a man who thrives upon it.

“And just as well,” said Mrs. Parini. “They were a bad influence on Annie. She picked up some unfortunate phrases from them.”

Parini was smiling broadly and clearly feeling good. “I have some particular news for you, Villiers. Your little affair on Star Well gave me some leverage on Nicholas Zvegintzov. His sources on Livermore may be able to produce the name you’ve been seeking these past months.”

“Who are his sources?”

“The Red-Headed Bunny and the Black Buck.”

“Well, then I am impressed. I attempted to hire their resources without success. What do you feel the information will be worth?”

“What did you offer for the information?”

“Twenty royals.”

“Well, that will be a figure to talk from,” Parini said.

“Fine,” said Villiers. “Shall we talk about the papers again?”

“Oh,” said Parini, “I’m sorry to say but they have not yet arrived. I was saying to Miriam last morning that I held greater expectations of seeing the papers than of seeing you. Did I not, Miriam?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

He continued, “Jack the Hand sent them on their way direct. He swears they will stand any scrutiny. There’s a mail yet to arrive from Duden tonight. I have no doubt it will be here then. There’s a scheduled delivery around peelgrunt.”

“In that case, let me go and return again,” Villiers said. “I have other business here on Delbalso. I’ll return after peelgrunt.”

When Villiers had gone, shown to the door and into the night, Mrs. Parini said behind the closing door, “He’s really quite nice.”

“Villiers?”

“And you always make money from him.”

“Twice.”

“I don’t know why you don’t like him better.”

“Who said I didn’t like him?” said Parini. “He just isn’t our sort of people. You can’t really say so, can you? Now that he’s grown past the stage where he will believe everything you tell him, the best policy is to keep things friendly, but distant. Businesslike.”

“Well, I suppose,” Mrs. Parini said.

“Of course I’m right.”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“I have news,” he said. “There was good word. It’s definite that Treleaven is not leaving Delbalso. The flam is still codger. We’ll strip him bare and be gone before morning.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she said.

Night had firm possession of the quiet tree-lined streets as Villiers set out for the closest flitter central. There was a faint underlying chill in the air. There were no pedestrians on the street, and Villiers only saw a single City Car slide by on its overhead rail. People were locking themselves into their houses and tucking up, even though the night was not far advanced.

If thoughts of the names of assassins and, perhaps, of papers were on his mind, it would be understandable. His thoughts marched to the threnody of the Christian’s bells, swinging clear and cold over the streets stacked along the hill.

After some minutes, Villiers came in sight of the flitter post. It lay at the foot of the street slope, a rainbow pillar topped by a mushroom roof. There was a flitter waiting.

Villiers turned into the street, but before he had taken more than a few steps, he was surrounded by a group of men in identical blue.

The men—there were three—were all of sober years. Their suits were cut to no pattern that Villiers had ever seen on the street before. They consisted of knee-length pants, shirts of bright blue, and belted blue vests. And the men wore lively peaked caps, blue and nappy.

One of them said, “Are you a Marvel or Wonder?”

One must attribute their strange behavior to their unusual costumes. Men of that age are commonly a settled lot, not given to ask philosophical questions of strangers in the street chance-met. But even settled men can find a jaunty cap and feather unsettling. What questions they might be given to ask if they dressed like Socrates must be left to the imagination.

According to this myth, the sons of Nashua, tall, bright-eyed and bursting with energy, swept forth in an unturnable tide to swamp the universe in the name of their Emperor—honor brighten his name—because their way of life made them better than everyone they encountered.

This isn’t the way things happened. Nashua did not in fact impose its power and culture on a reluctant cosmos.

People have reasons for getting together: trade, gossip, stimulation. Say that a thousand years of space travel had divided humanity—a reluctant planet might be hustled into the dirty job of putting in lines of communication and trade, and then double-shuffled into the boring routines of administration. In that case, it would be kindness to allow the planet to think of itself as an Empire.

Homage to the Emperor? Emperors are sacrificial victims. A small thing to grant them their illusions.

The superiority of the High Culture is such an illusion. In the first place, there are two “High Cultures.”

The bastard High Culture that most people know is merely the tradition of Nashua, altered and simplified into a lingua franca. It provides a convenient common ground for men who need a convenient common ground. For the simple souls who mind the machinery of empire. For merchants. For that minority of mankind which in a lifetime travels from one planet to another. This High Culture touches everyone in the Nashuite Empire in at least some small way, but it is the home style of no one.

There is another High Culture. It, too, is based on the tradition of Nashua, altered and intensified. It is the native lifestyle of a minority on Nashua, and ever smaller minorities as one travels from Nashua, until it might pertain to twenty families, or five, or one, or none. It is the High Culture of aspiration for those who never caught on to the unvoiced secret that Nashua’s power is a polite fib. And it is no general norm.

Cultures are games played to common rules—for convenience. The High Culture, while not superior to very much, is a fair-to-middling game, and that is all.

“If you follow my advice,” said Lord Semichastny, “your first official act will be to review the Winter-Summer Laws.”

Lord Semichastny was an erratic prettified prune, spry and dirty, dressed in pink silks. Well he might seek review of the Winter-Summer Laws since they had been passed specifically to encourage him to leave Delbalso. That a dozen other families were affected was an accident. Lord Semichastny might have had the grace to be ashamed, but was not.

However, Sir Henry Oliphaunt, the new Empire Administrator for Delbalso, said, “From what you give me to understand, milord, it does not seem to be a matter properly subject to Empire review.”

They had impressed upon him that he should be careful in his administration, and this suited him. The position was a dull one and Sir Henry was the very man for the job. He was middle-aged, round of face, round of body, and five years married. He had accepted this position, his first for the Empire, out of a sense of duty come unexpectedly over him as an answer to his sense of finitude.

They were in the library of Lord Semichastny’s country maison. The four persons present were each illuminated by a cone of light, minor illumination which Lord Semichastny said—and perhaps believed—provided them with a feeling of greater intimacy. Lady Oliphaunt’s dark beauty was well set off by the soft lights that made her claim to only thirty years more reasonable than it might have seemed in another setting. The fourth person was Harbourne Firnhaber, introduced as Lord Semichastny’s nephew. He was a pale, thin, well-dressed, well-mannered young man and he sat upright in a hard chair.

Lord Semichastny’s summer home was set in the heart of a broad flat green farm. There were trees like furled umbrellas planted around the house and in lean graceful lines between the fields. The soil was rich and deep. The nominal crop was grass at this sod farm. The true crop, of course, was topsoil, laced together by grass roots.

There were gardens around the house, and an extensive melon patch. Lord Semichastny had a taste for melons. He raised seventeen varieties of melon, and had tasted more than a hundred of the one hundred and seventy-two varieties known to him. He was less fond of books. Of all the books he owned, he had looked at no more than twenty, and the one he read most frequently was on the subject of melons. It had one hundred and seventy-two exciting plates. Lord Semichastny thought it was a good book.

The house sat alone, without near neighbors. No one lived close enough to see or hear, though this had not kept word of Lord Semichastny and his ways from reaching the town. These matters were easier to settle in the days of banishment, plain and straight.

The house was dark, but full of noise. The mechanical staff was hard at work readying the place for Lord Semichastny’s traditional end-of-the-season masquerade. They needed no light to work, and got none. They dressed the house in gay clothes, and stuffed geese with bread and rice and mushrooms. Far from leaving, Lord Semichastny was preparing the most magnificent event he had ever offered. His usual, in fact, was nothing close to magnificent. Lord Semichastny was cheap. However, he was not stupid. It made sense to him to host a masquerade and invite the new Empire Administrator and his wife. They were his house guests for the night, and in the morning Sir Henry would assume his new position.

Lord Semichastny again rang the direct connection to his robot butler, Charles. Charles was in charge of the house. He had been designed to run this particular house, and had been uncanned here. It was his life. His peers had regard for his abilities, but thought him limited.

“Damn it, Charles, where have you been!” Lord Semichastny demanded.

“Answering the door, milord,” Charles said. “May I announce Mr. Nathan Treleaven.”

Lord Semichastny should have known where Charles had been. Answering the door was not a normal part of his duties.Machines do,butlers think, as Charles would have put it. Lord Semichastny assigned Charles to answer the door when he wished for some reason to humiliate him.

“Good evening, milord,” said Mr. Treleaven. Mr. Treleaven was an elderly man with only one story. He had been to Nashua once in his youth—on a Wu and Fabricant Gentleman’s Package Tour, though he never mentioned that—at the time of the notorious personal execution of Morgus Grimsby by the present Emperor’s grandfather, who did not understand Grimsby and killed him in consequence. Mr. Treleaven had considered himself traveled ever since.

“Arrived a bit early, aren’t you?” asked Lord Semichastny. “Stay here, Charles. I shall want to speak with you. Well, Treleaven, the party hasn’t started yet. Do you presume on your invitation? Oh, your pardon. Sir Henry and Lady Oliphaunt. Sir Henry is the new Administrator. I was just speaking to him about the Winter-Summer Laws. And my nephew, Harbourne Firnhaber. I don’t believe you’ve met.”

Mr. Treleaven showed his manners. Some months before his trip he had been primed by a traveling master of manners, and had used the same repertoire ever since, gradually and happily growing old-fashioned. He displayed a Dying Swan before Lady Oliphaunt.

“How like my grandfather!” she exclaimed, very prettily and well-practiced.

Mr. Treleaven was charmed. He said that he was charmed and regretted that he would not be able to enjoy more of her company.

“You won’t be attending Lord Semichastny’s party?” she asked. There was an appealing hesitation in the manner she said “party.” She said it as though there were two words and ended with a smile and questioning eyes.

“I think not,” Mr. Treleaven said. “In truth, I’ve not had any great taste for parties since a certain occasion many years ago on Nashua.” That was a road to his story.

“Oh. Have you been on Nashua?”

“Not in recent years. But many years ago, I—”

“And Sir Henry Oliphaunt,” said Lord Semichastny. “Nathan Treleaven.”

“I believe I recognize your name,” said Sir Henry, “but I’m not sure of the connection.”

“Before your appointment I signed a petition addressed to your office.”

“Oh, yes,” said Sir Henry. He set aside his book. It was a catalog of those costumes that Lord Semichastny’s fac machine was prepared to deliver. Lady Oliphaunt had already examined the catalog and found it insufficient. Sir Henry, on the other hand, had found a costume that he thought he might like. “As I was telling Lord Semichastny, I don’t believe I have the authority to do as you ask. I passed your petition on.”

“That is what your predecessor said.” Mr. Treleaven was confirmed in his reservations about the Rock. Though he was not a native of Delbalso, he shared native opinion about the Rock and those who lived within it. Not all who labor for Empire are feckless, but if a man had a predilection for fecklessness, Mr. Treleaven felt that laboring for Empire would bring it out.

He nodded to Harbourne. “Another nephew? I’m not at all certain that we’ve met.”

“Probably not,” said Lord Semichastny. “It’s an extensive family. I have any number of nephews.”

This was not true, but Lord Semichastny liked to keep up appearances. He had only one nephew, and that should be enough. As the sage Aldahondo said, “One sip of wine, one morsel of bread—a lifetime of memory and meditation.”

To Lord Semichastny, Mr. Treleaven said, “I’m bound from here to the Rock. My son-in-law has engaged a charterboat.”

“Are you saying goodbye to them?”

“I’m saying goodbye to you. I decided on the moment to accompany them. My son-in-law and daughter and her second—a sweet girl, bless her—are all the family I have.”

“You said you’d stay until the end and lend a hand in oversetting the law.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You said you’d come to the party. And Gramineous, too.”

“No, we’re going now,” said Treleaven. “I’m dropping all my business and walking away. Fight your battles, Geoffrey, and when you’ve come away, visit us in Adeeb.”

“You lack staying power,” said Lord Semichastny. “Except for that single story.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Sir, you have only one story. You tell it twice an evening and I’ve heard it now for roundabout thirty years. It was minor when you told it first. Minor!”

“And what is it that you refer to?” asked Treleaven in some puzzlement.

“Ah, never mind,” said Lord Semichastny. “A stone. A stump. Charles, throw him out.”

Lord Semichastny waved at the door. Charles, obedient to this latest order, said, “Follow me, if you will, sir.”

Mr. Treleaven, at the door, said, “Good evening, Sir Henry; Lady Oliphaunt; Nephew. Goodbye for now, Geoffrey.”

“Goodbye,” said Lord Semichastny flatly, and opened his book on melons. The picture he turned to was of a particularly succulent Divino Abbandono with green-on-gold surface and olive interior and the flavor of heaven. He had tasted a Divino Abbandono once and he found the picture a comfort.

Lord Semichastny? He was not a simple man. He heard or did not hear as it suited him. He understood or did not understand as it suited him. He had his plans and he changed them frequently. He was not above abusing his hospitality with Lady Oliphaunt on the stair—and well for him that she had not taken it to her husband. As a child he had enjoyed mud, and his taste had not altered, though his definitions had broadened.

After a moment he looked up, “Where did Charles go?” he asked.

Sir Henry said, “I believe he is seeing Mr. Treleaven to the door. By the way, I think I have the costume I want right here. This Trog costume. You see? Friendly, wouldn’t you say, milord? I think it will make a proper impression. Demonstrate to everyone the excellence of my intentions.”

The picture to which he pointed did present a friendly appearance. A large furry toad.

Lord Semichastny rang irritatedly for Charles. “An excellent choice, I am sure. I’ll have Charles assist you.”

Lady Oliphaunt had risen and begun a desultory examination of the shelves, Lord Semichastny’s compounded rows of untouched books. She was joined by Harbourne Firnhaber, having explicitly and wordlessly invited him. Lord Semichastny appeared not to notice, and did notice. Sir Henry looked at them vaguely, and noticed nothing.

She said, “Tell me, Mr. Firnhaber. Will there be a party?” She asked it in a low voice.

Her eye, because she had that kind of eye, had looked at him carefully. And her head, which was intermittently cool, had thought not. Times had changed and five years of secluded marriage had altered her notions of the desirable.

The noise of preparation was audible. Harbourne touched a finger to his ear and raised his eyebrows.

“Yes,” she said. “But who will be there? These laws seem to be driving milord’s guests away.”

“A few,” said Harbourne. “Isn’t it fortunate that you and I aren’t affected? As a transient and the wife of an Administrator, we have nothing to keep us from either traveling or staying.”

He had entertained ideas himself. He recognized that he and she had much in common in their approach to life, and was consequently interested, if wary.

“Ah, at last, Charles,” said Lord Semichastny. “Atlast. ”

“I was just answering the bell, milord.”

“I told you that I wanted to talk to you, did I not?”

“Yes, milord.”

“I told you to stay, did I not?”

“Yes, milord, but subsequently you ordered me to escort Mr. Treleaven to the door. And then the bell rang. I do have your order to answer it, milord.”

“True,” said Lord Semichastny, “but insufficient. You will simply have to learn better how to distinguish one order from another.”

“Yes, milord.”

“All right, Charles, grovel.” Lord Semichastny rose so as better to dominate the robot. “No, no protests. No excuses. Grovel and declare your fault properly.”

Charles did not grovel immediately. No protests, no excuses, but he did produce a strangled inarticulate grating sound. He rolled in a tight frustrated little circle, round and round so tightly that it was more a shimmy than a circle.

“Down, Charles. Grovel. I want the feeling of real penitence.”

Lord Semichastny shook an imperative forefinger. At last, and with great reluctance, Charles flopped onto the carpet. He looked at Lord Semichastny with reproach, and then began to dig and whimper. He put no heart into it.

“Louder,” said Lord Semichastny. “More feeling. And who are you, sir?” This to the young man standing in the doorway.

“Your nephew, or so I believe,” the young man said. “My name is Anthony Villiers.”

“I should have known, of course,” said Lord Semichastny. “It’s that mustache. It doesn’t suit you at all. It makes you look older. If you take my advice, you’ll have it off.”

“Pardon, milord,” said Charles from the floor. His grovels had slackened, but increased again when Lord Semichastny looked down. Voice obscured against the carpet, Charles said, “Milord, dinner is ready for service. I’ve just received the signal.”

“All right, Charles,” said Lord Semichastny. “No, don’t stop. Not until I tell you. Charteris, you’ll stay for dinner, of course. And there is my annual masquerade later tonight. You’ll want to join in the occasion, I’m sure.”

“Ordinarily, that would be so,” said Villiers, “but I have pressing business elsewhere on Delbalso, Uncle.”

“You’ll stay to dinner, at least? We must have a talk after dinner. Family talk.”

“Certainly,” said Villiers. “I appreciate the invitation.”

He salaamed. He salaamed, kissed a proffered hand, and nodded his way around the room. He was introduced as Lord Charteris. “We must be cousins, then,” he said.

“In all probability,” said Harbourne. “We shall have to examine the relationship.”

“Charles,” said Lord Semichastny. “Up. Take Lord Charteris upstairs and allow him opportunity to ready for dinner.”

With some relief, Charles raised himself from the carpet. “Yes, milord.”

Before Charles reached the door, however, Lord Semichastny said, “Charles, for your transgressions, you can put on your uniform tonight and answer the door during the masquerade.” And he chuckled, quite pleased with himself.

When Charles and Villiers had gone, Lord Semichastny said, “The question is which is to be master—that’s all. Well, dinner is ready. Shall we go in?”

Sir Henry said, “Are we not to wait for Lord Charteris?”

“I think not. I, for one, am ready to eat. If he is prompt, he will only miss a course.” It was melon, and he would not hold longer.

Sir Henry was a trifle taken aback. He was not an adaptable man, but if this was how things were done on Delbalso, he was willing to accept them for the sake of diplomacy. So he said, after a small pause, “By the way, I think you forgot to speak to the robot about my costume.”

“I believe you’re right,” said Lord Semichastny. “Well, we’ll take it up after dinner. Come along now, Sir Henry. The first course is a Bulbenko melon, and I guarantee it is better than anything you have ever eaten in your life. I selected it myself. Pulpy mellow perfection, if I do say so.”

And he led Sir Henry out of the room. Lady Oliphaunt and Harbourne Firnhaber followed. Both shot looks at the stairs where Villiers had gone, both thinking their own thoughts. Lady Oliphaunt’s thoughts were bright with possibility. Harbourne Firnhaber’s thoughts were dark and suspicious.

Lady Oliphaunt asked, “But is there really going to be a party?”

Said Harbourne, “I believe Lord Semichastny—my uncle—is determined that there shall be. Whether there will be anybody left to come, I have no idea. I’m sure it will be more pleasant here if someone does, but perhaps more interesting if not.”

Villiers walked upstairs and Charles rode a lift beside him. Both Villiers and Charles moved in the center of yellow light cones, but Villiers’ light was stronger. Charles’s was only a courtesy light.

The butler recognized Villiers—and not in his role of Lord Semichastny’s nephew. Charles was not privy to the details of Lord Semichastny’s family affairs, and curiosity in the matter was beyond him. But Charles recognized Villiers.

“Your pardon, sir,” he said, “but I know you.”

“Do you?” said Villiers.

“Yes, sir, I do,” said Charles. “Morris, Lord Broccoli’s steward, and I belong to the same club.” The club was for majordomos, nominally for the exchange of household hints, but in actuality a social organization. Not everyone could join. Qualifications were required. The membership was twelve mechanicals, four humans, and a Csencsits who managed the household of a Monoprop newly rich and full of ideas. Charles was the only member on Delbalso, and that meant a good deal to him.

“I remember Morris quite well,” said Villiers. He had an excellent memory. He remembered every alien he had ever met, a large percentage of the mechanicals, and even many humans.

“And he remembers you, too, sir. He has spoken warmly of you.”

“Most generous under the circumstances,” said Villiers. And, in fact, it was. Some months previous, an assassin searching for Villiers had dismantled Lord Broccoli’s Morris in the mistaken belief that he knew Villiers’ true whereabouts. An unfortunate accident.

“Between us, sir, it was the most exciting thing that ever happened to him,” Charles said. “He hasn’t yet stopped talking of it. I’ll note your visit in the ‘News and Notes’ in the next issue ofOur Little Worlds . That’s our club magazine. I’m the editor. Morris will be pleased to hear of you, I’m sure.”

The light chatter was a brave attempt to carry on, but at the top of the stairs, Charles stopped. His previously unspoken distress overwhelmed him. Don’t think a robot can’t have feelings.

He said, “I don’t really enjoy that—the rolling about on the floor and declaring my fault. I was doing my job the best way I knew. It isn’t fair to make me grovel.”

“It did seem somewhat undignified.”

“Exactly, sir. It is undignified. But I couldn’t help myself, you know. He dominates me. And he’ll make me wear that uniform.”

That is the traditional way of masters, owners, overseers and gods. They set things for people to do, like it or not, because they have a superior grasp of how the world ought to be. They really do know best and will tell you so.

Villiers sympathized, adequately to his mind, inadequately to Charles’s, but Charles forgave him.

Villiers did not hurry himself, but only missed the melon. That was all right, because he had no particular partiality to melon—which shows that a taste for such things does not necessarily run in families. Villiers found melon too sweet for his liking, though I’m sure he wasn’t so inflexible that he wouldn’t have eaten melon if he had been in time for it. If he thought it was unusual that dinner had started without him, he said nothing.

The second course was soup—Delbalso borsch, made of instead-ofs, but good enough to be enjoyed for its own character. Lord Semichastny was served separately: melon soup. He was not so very erratic that he would intrude his tastes on his guests—and later in the meal he had melon relish from his own receipt—but erratic enough to serve himself what he wanted to eat. And erratic enough to press his knee against that of Lady Oliphaunt until she shifted away.

There were cones of light over every head, illuminating the company. And, again, of all the lights, that over Villiers’ head was brighter than the others. That is the way the cones work.

When Villiers came in, Lord Semichastny was advising Sir Henry to have a look at the Delbalso Monist Association as a likely center of forbiddable activity. He blamed the Monist Association for the Winter-Summer Laws. Lord Semichastny broke off and advised Villiers as to his seat. Lord Semichastny was sitting at the head of the table with Sir Henry and Lady Oliphaunt on his right and left. Harbourne was seated below Sir Henry; Villiers, the other nephew, across the table, next to Lady Oliphaunt, whose chair was rather closer to him than to his uncle.

As Villiers seated himself, Lady Oliphaunt said, “Have you recent news of Nashua, Lord Charteris?” Some years before her marriage, she had had her moment on Nashua and still held news of Nashua of first importance.

Villiers said, “My agents do strive to keep my wardrobe current, but in point of fact I have not been on Nashua for three years. I’m afraid I’m sadly behind. I did hear that Prince Frederick is to be married.”

“Oh, that’s been dished too many times,” said Semichastny. “Can’t we have a change of subject?”

“I take it that I’m late with the news?”

Lady Oliphaunt said, “I’m sure he could have done much better. Her family is well enough, but you would hardly call her feminine.”

“To my eye,” said Sir Henry, “she appears interesting.”

“You’ve said that before,” said Lady Oliphaunt. “It does seem futile to take care of one’s appearance if men save their appreciation for inglorious accidents.”

“Perhaps it is a sign that men’s minds are as much of a puzzle to women as your minds are to us,” said Villiers.

“Do you find her attractive, then, milord?”

“Interesting.”

She turned to Lord Semichastny. “Do you find her attractive? I must have some support in this.”

“You have my support,” he said. “Of course.”

Villiers said, “And you, Cousin?”

Harbourne said, “Well, Cousin, I’ve never met the lady but her pictures are doubtful.” He nodded to Lady Oliphaunt. “However, I am interested.”

“Why?” asked Lady Oliphaunt.

“My curiosity is aroused. The lady hardly seems attractive enough to win a prince. And yet she did. I don’t understand, and so I am interested. You find her attractive, Cousin, and I don’t understand that. And so I am interested.” He looked directly at Villiers across the table and waited for an answer.

Villiers’ attention was on his dinner, and it was only after a blank moment that he looked up.

“Me, Cousin? My tastes are erratic and doubtful, and beyond explanation. I’m sure that I should properly apologize to Lady Oliphaunt. Let me assure you, milady, that the care you take with your appearance does not go unappreciated. You are an ornament to the table.”

“Why thank you, milord.”

Sir Henry nodded across the table at his wife. “He’s right. You do very well, my dear. You look well tonight. Meant to say something about it earlier but it slipped my mind.”

“Thank you, Henry,” she said.

When Charles entered with the next course, Lord Semichastny said, “Sir Henry has his costume selected. After dinner you may take charge of fitting him.”

“Yes, milord,” said Charles.

Lord Semichastny said, “Charteris, would you like a look at our catalog of costumes?”

“No, thank you, Uncle,” said Villiers. “I still doubt that I shall be able to attend.”

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Semichastny. “I recall that you said that.”

”Who will attend?” asked Lady Oliphaunt.

”I beg your pardon?” said Lord Semichastny. “I’m not sure I understand you, milady.”

”What do you mean?” asked Sir Henry.

”I mean, sirs, outside of this small company, who will attend the party? These Summer-Winter Laws …”

“Winter-Summer.” Lord Semichastny.

“… would seem to be shortening your guest list, milord. I’m not sure that I care to make the trip to pick a costume and dress if there are to be no more than we five.”

“Four,” said Villiers.

“Is this true?” Sir Henry demanded, turning to Lord Semichastny in a state of mind that approached alertness.

Lord Semichastny said gently, “I’ve been attempting to explain the Winter-Summer Laws and their effects. It is true that many of the weaker spirits have already left the planet. Some of us, however, will endure.”

“How many?”

“More than four?” asked Lady Oliphaunt.

It may have been possible that Lord Semichastny had intended to dramatize the effect of the Winter-Summer Laws by presenting Sir Henry with an absence of peers. Sir Henry, dressed in costume, waltzing in the glow of a single light cone in the middle of a dark and empty floor. Lady O tucked away and Sir Henry wandering alone in the dark. That would teach him quickly enough.

But Lord Semichastny was always ready to review his premises. “The laws will simply affect the composition of the guest list. Have no fear; I invited you to a masquerade, and there shall be one.”

Given the right premises, any desired conclusion can be reached, automatic as addition. This is plain to most of mankind after a few years of experiment. Jumping to conclusions is an easy process, akin to cooking, which in fact it rivals in age. Pick your premises, follow the rules, and apple pie.

Jumping to conclusions is not without value. It is the core of art. But it is a dangerous business. Man entertained himself for years with notions of divinity and superiority—easy conclusions from a hundred sets of premises. The result was greater suffering than life makes necessary.

It didn’t occur at first that there was a problem. Artists of the actual were too busy messing around, experimenting, to realize the results of what they did—much as a careless chef might poison thirty banquet guests through experiment gone awry. Recipes in final form are easy to follow. It is harder to invent them, and it is commonplace for men to be too close to their work for others’ safety.

Once men realized the danger in false conclusions, of course they instantly reformed themselves, and as everyone knows have ever since been far more sparing in the making of them. We should all be congratulated, but the job is not yet done. Far more serious than jumping to conclusions is its antecedent—jumping to premises. The ideal man is not only sparing of conclusions, but careful about the premises to which he commits himself. Few of us are ideal, but many strive. It is another human pastime. Morgus Grimsby strove for the ideal. Even Lord Semichastny, in his own way, was a seeker of the ideal.

Every day it is possible to see the bravest and best among us reviewing their premises. We should be heartened.

Various people made their temporary excuses immediately after dinner, and Villiers and Harbourne Firnhaber were left in the library. The shelves were an untapped cache of the wisdom of the world. The books were old, of various heights and sizes and colors, filling the shelves around the room in an order carefully designed for maximum decorative effect. They were part of the original decoration of the house. Lord Semichastny had intended to line the shelves with representations, in conventional style, when by happy accident he had been able to buy a private library at a reduced price. The original catalog stood in the corner.

“Well, Cousin,” said Harbourne, “will you tell me what we are in competition for? I like to know where I stand at all times.”

Villiers withdrew a list from his wallet. He looked up. “You are considerably taller than I. On the other hand, I wear a mustache. For what could we possibly stand in competition? By the way, would you care to lend me your services?” He finished his examination of the list and handed it to Harbourne. “Have a look at the shelves while we talk and see if you can spot any of these titles.”

Harbourne handed the list back. “There’s a catalog in the corner.” He pointed.

“How very convenient. Our uncle should be congratulated. I hardly expected his collection to be catalogued.”

“Is your name Villiers or Charteris?” asked Harbourne. “You said Villiers. Uncle said Charteris.”

“It’s both,” said Villiers, beginning to thumb his way through the catalog. “Or either. Villiers most of the time. Uncle did seem insistent on the title, didn’t he? Perhaps to impress Sir Henry and Lady Oliphaunt?” It was non-standard cataloging, and required interpretation.

“Or to impress me,” said Harbourne. “I have no title and I’m not yet ready to assume one.”

“And you take me for a standard of comparison?” asked Villiers.

Before Harbourne could answer, Lady Oliphaunt entered the library. Her composure seemed shaken, but only for the fleetest moment. She set her chin, not only demonstrating spirit, but showing herself to better advantage, since her chin when lowered was not her best feature.

“Where is Sir Henry?” she asked.

“He and Charles left some few minutes ago to grapple with the fitting and production of his costume,” said Harbourne. “Won’t you join our company until his return, milady?”

“Thank you, Mr. Firnhaber,” she said. “I believe I will.” She glanced at the doorway and then crossed and sat gracefully where she could see and talk to both Villiers and Harbourne.

She said, “Have you chosen your costume, Mr. Firnhaber?”

“I have. For a time I considered growing my beard in random tufts and passing as a High-Liver of the 940’s, but in the end I settled on Ian Steele.”

“You shall have to assume a mustache, then,” said Lady Oliphaunt.

“So much less our differences,” said Villiers. “I shall assume Elaborates and match you in height, and then we shall be in competition.”

“You don’t mean to dress as Ian Steele?” It was a matter of importance to Harbourne. Ian Steele was his model, as he was the model for ambitious romantics everywhere, and Harbourne felt that no party should rightly sport more than one copy, and he had dibs on being that copy.

Villiers said, “Oh, no, I do not. I still doubt that I will attend the party. Affairs press. And if I do attend, I promise to forego the Elaborates.”

“What about the mustache?” asked Harbourne.

Villiers smoothed the mustache. “I’m afraid that we may collide on that point, Cousin. But then a proper Ian Steele mustache should be thinner and darker, no more than two definite lines. So perhaps our collision, if it should occur, will not be that violent.”

“It is a shame, Lord Charteris, that your affairs press,” said Lady Oliphaunt. “Your company will be missed.”

“It would seem that company is in short supply,” said Villiers, “but I do thank you, madam.”

“How long will you be staying?”

Villiers closed the catalog and looked up. “Long enough to speak with Lord Semichastny. My uncle and I have some small family affairs to settle.”

Harbourne considered him carefully. “And then you will be leaving?” he asked slowly.

“So I intend,” Villiers said. “Presently.”

There was a discreet bid for attention from the doorway. A mechanical dressed in an ensemble of cleaning and polishing attachments said, “Please excuse my appearance, good gentles. I’m most heartily sorry to show you myself in this state.”

“It’s all right,” said Harbourne. “We shall attempt to take no notice.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ve been sent to inform you that Lord Semichastny would like to see you now in private conference.”

“Who was sent for?” asked Villiers.

“Mr. Firnhaber, milord.”

“Well,” said Harbourne, with some satisfaction.

“Ah,” said Villiers. “In that case, Cousin, we shall excuse you.”

Harbourne rose from his straight-backed chair, nodded and said, “Until later.”

The mechanical excused itself, rolled out of his path, and then away into the depths of the house. Harbourne’s departure reduced the illumination in the room, and may well have produced some fleeting illusion of greater intimacy. Otherwise it would be hard to explain why Lady Oliphaunt, a married gentlewoman, should have spoken to Villiers in an unsuitably casual manner.

She said, “Harbourne always sits in straight hard chairs. Why do you suppose he does that?”

“On occasion, I used to do it myself,” said Villiers. “I think it is due to some residual belief in the superstition that there is a relation between hard chairs and keen wits. I’ve ceased to believe in it myself.”

“I can remember when you did,” she said. In her mind, earth shifted and waters mingled. “You meanthat’s why you sat on the chair all that night, Tony?”

“I was considerably younger then,” said Villiers. “Things were far more theoretical in those days and theories need testing. I believe that at one time, I had ambitions to be Ian Steele, until I tried it. And there was my vegetarian phase.”

“Truly?”

“No, not truly. I have a friend who is a vegetarian. I’m not sure I care to recall the exact letter of my own particular list.”

“You have changed, Tony.”

“Ah, yes. The mustache. I’m not sure that I’ll retain it for long.”

That was not precisely what she had in mind, but she was apparently able to accept it as an appropriate approximation, for she simply smiled.

“May I ask what was causing you distress when you entered?” Villiers asked.

“Was it that obvious?”

“I would say that it was.”

“Lord Semichastny—your uncle, Tony?—dropped an overripe melon at me on the stair. He blamed it on a careless mechanical and made it beg my pardon, but I’m sure it was he. We were acquainted once on Livermore, and he still presumes.”

“A melon?”

“Yes. He always took delight in thinking of things to do with melons, and I believe he was attempting to remind me in indirect fashion.”

Villiers said, “Yes, I do remember your acquaintances. I believe that you introduced me to several.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. She had the grace to blush, but her complexion was dark, her hand with cosmetics was heavy, and the lights were dim, and the gesture passed unnoticed. If we want to be aware of what people do for us, we must be alert. “I did. But Tony, it was Livermore, after all, and things just are not the same there. Sir Henry and I were married on Livermore, and that’s a proper measure.”

“Will you tell Sir Henry of my uncle’s attempts to renew acquaintance?”

“Renew?”

“No? No.”

“Tell Sir Henry?”

“No? No.”

She sighed. “And to what end?”

“Is it like that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I, too, have long felt that Livermore was an unusual place. I need to recover from my second visit before I attempt a third. I don’t know if I owe you thanks for taking me there in the first place. I probably do. If so, you have them, Amita.”

She said, “I thought you needed cheering. It was so romantic. You had just eloped with your wife to be divorced and you were such a sweet boy.”

“Is that how you remember it? I hardly recognize myself.”

“Oh, but you’ve changed, Tony—didn’t we agree? And I hope you’ll shave that mustache, for it doesn’t suit you.”

Villiers touched the mustache again. “It is possible that you may be right. Perhaps I should end the experiment.”

“Oh, where is my husband?” she asked with some impatience. Whatever reservations a wife may have with the married state, a husband is still a husband.

The fac machine was located with convenient proximity to Lord Semichastny’s game room. Its principal use was not to supply costumes for the yearly masquerade, but rather to add an extra dimension to Lord Semichastny’s occasional private parties. Where his personal pleasures were concerned, he did not skimp or scrimp. The costumes his machine produced were a redolent lot positively guaranteed to put you firmly in character. He, his guests, and relations had had many a gay romp as heroes and monsters and creatures of wonder.

Charles rolled over to Sir Henry and said, “If you will, sir, that’s a uniform, not a costume.”

“It looks like a costume,” said Sir Henry.

The set was a green polkadotted silk sarong, a diaphanous blouse and an orange tarboosh.

“It’s a uniform, and no doubt I shall be wearing it at the masquerade, sir,” said Charles. He took it from Sir Henry and replaced it on its rack. “But I shan’t enjoy wearing it. Now, if you’ll permit me, sir, I’ll take your measurements while the fac machine is cycling.”

Sir Henry temporarily balanced on one foot while a measurement was taken. “What is it that you object to in your uniform?”

“Orange? Me in orange? Milord Semichastny chose orange deliberately because he knew I shouldn’t like it.” This seemed loose talk to Sir Henry, extremely loose. It is all very well to give robots Limited Volition, but not if it is going to be abused.

“Pardon me, sir,” said Charles, and dialed for the Trog suit. “I think you made an excellent choice, sir. This costume—Lord Semichastny himself wore it at a party last year. Mrs. Armbruster was Semiramis Among the Doves.”

Sir Henry said, “See here! There is a natural order in things. If Lord Semichastny picked your uniform, I’m sure that he had a very good reason in mind, and it isn’t your place to question his judgment. I find my Presentation Uniform unsightly, but if they ordered me to wear it, I would. You should do the same. Smile through.” That is, this is what he intended to say. In actual fact, before he was much past “natural order,” the machine began to produce the Trog costume and distracted his attention, and consequently a certain amount of conviction and force was lost. The suit was of gray shading to olive. And to Sir Henry’s eye, the great lolling empty head spoke of all the friendliness and good intentions one could ask for. “Smile through” was no better than a mumble.

“My word,” he said. “That is fine.”

”So Mrs. Armbruster thought,” said Charles. “She gave me a dove to keep. May I help you into the costume, sir?”

The costume swallowed Sir Henry exactly, so fine were Charles’s measurements and the machine’s ability to suit. Anyone who did not know a Trog at first hand—which is to say, nearly everyone—might easily think him one. A telltale sign were his eyes. The eyes of a genuine Trog are a divine and lumined blue. Sir Henry’s eyes were lumined and blue, but lacked the true sparkle of divinity. But not everyone would be able to catch him on that, lacking first-hand experience of Trogs.

“This is marvelous,” Sir Henry said. “I shall have to show Lady Oliphaunt.”

His voice was somewhat muffled because he hadn’t yet mastered the controls of the suit. It was quite an engineering marvel. With practice, one could work the controls and walk and talk and pass for a genuine Trog. The suit had sanitary features and a snack shelf and reservoirs for as many as five drinks. A cheaper version of the suit only had one reservoir, but Lord Semichastny and personal pleasures … Sir Henry said, “Show Lady Oliphaunt,” over and over until his voice came clear.

He waltzed a little circle to see if he could, quite forgetting himself and his proper dignity as the hand of the Emperor in this sad corner. Or it may have been the final carefree moment before the assumption of his responsibilities. In any case, it was a mistake. Creatures with Limited Volition should be treated with consistent reserved distance lest they be confused and misled into overstepping themselves.

Perhaps it was the influence of the suit. It may be that the well-known weirdness of Trogs, sufficient in prime to make their restriction reasonable, is a direct result of their form. At least pause to consider that if you looked like that, it would probably affect your mind. And to wear a Trog suit may be to open the susceptible mind to a metapsychotic transference. In any case, Trog suits are illegal on thirteen worlds on general principles.

Charles, presented with the waltzing Trog, misguidedly said, “I find it impossible to smile through, sir. I truly hate to grovel and wear orange.”

“What?”

“Grovel—as before dinner.”

“Oh, yes, that.” Sir Henry thought. “But then we don’t always like what is good for us, do we? I think you should accept Lord Semichastny’s judgment, even if you don’t understand it. If you will only accept the principle of natural order, you will find that life becomes much easier to deal with. Smiling is the major part.”

Charles said, “Were positions reversed, would you smile?”

“I think I would. I’m sure I would.”

“In that case, sir, grovel. And enjoy it.” Limited Volition can be a dangerous thing. An audacious challenge.

But Sir Henry the Trog fell to consideration of the suggestion. And since he did accept the principle of natural order, he thought he could. Or ought to be able to. “All right,” he said.

Sir Henry levered himself to the floor, paused on his knees for a breath, and then he began to kick and whimper.

“Louder,” said Charles inexorably. “And you’re supposed to yell your fault.”

“My fault! Oh, my fault! I am sorry. I repent. Forgive me. (What is it I did?) Whatever I did, I’m sorry for it and if you’ll only forgive me I’ll never do it again.”

Finally Charles said, “All right. That’s enough.”

Sir Henry came back to his knees.

“Did you enjoy it?” asked Charles.

“I’m smiling,” said Sir Henry, who was a bit winded. It was impossible to say whether or not he actually was smiling because of the costume. But if he did smile, perhaps he did smile. It wasn’t impossible that he should. After all, in spite of all Charles said, deep within him, deep deep within him, he did enjoy groveling just the least little bit.

“Yes, sir,” said Charles.

Sir Henry said. “I’ll have to speak to Lord Semichastny. At close range your carpets are quite lovely.” The heavy Trog head nodded. “But that can wait. I must have my word with Lady Oliphaunt.”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles.

“I trust that was satisfactory?”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles.

“Very good, then. Keep smiling.”

Sir Henry clumped out and down the corridor. He may have been smiling. At the least, he did offer every appearance of friendliness and good intention. Assume he was smiling—as a man who has taken the dangerous step of testing his premises, and has found them true, he had reason. Be heartened.

Harbourne skirted a mess on the stairs. The mechanical who had carried the message was cleaning it up.

“What happened here?” Harbourne asked.

“An accident,” the mechanical said. And then, “It was a melon. It was my fault.”

“I’m sure it was,” said Harbourne.

Harbourne was ambitious and able. He had thought about what he wanted in life, and through self-discipline and sacrifice he was slowly achieving what he coveted, slowly molding himself into what he wanted to be. He was cool and played his hand warily.

Lord Semichastny, on the other hand, was less concerned with what he might be. He knew himself for what he was and didn’t care if he pleased anyone. He did as he pleased and spoke as he pleased. He even dressed more extravagantly than Harbourne.

The room was all hung about with ornamental rugs. Long-pile, short-pile, fringed. They made the walls close and the room dark and warm.

Lord Semichastny invited Harbourne to take a seat and Harbourne sat down in a hard straight chair. Lord Semichastny remained standing, free to prowl as he pleased, the room his run.

“Aren’t you taking a chance in leaving Villiers alone with Lady Oliphaunt?” Harbourne asked. “She’s restless. He’s attractive, isn’t he? It appeared to me that you were trying to fix your interest.”

“Why thank you,” said Lord Semichastny dangerously. “But you underestimate me, Harbourne. Lady Oliphaunt and I are friends of long standing, and my interests are already fixed. Young Charteris will not be here for long, whatever his attractions.”

“Is the title genuine?” Harbourne asked.

“Yes,” said Lord Semichastny. “Are you jealous? Some nephews have better endowments than others, but this one is my sister’s son and comes by his title honestly.”

Harbourne was jealous. But he said, “Sister’s son?”

“To be sure. Did you think him in common trade?”

Harbourne said, “If I had a title, I would go to Nashua now. I wouldn’t wait any longer.”

There are many aspirant gentlemen on shelves around the Empire, ripening themselves for Nashua like so many cheeses. Harbourne felt himself almost ready, but still lacked the resolve to go. The thought of Nashua awed him.

“Enter a game. Fight for a title.”

“I don’t fight that well.”

“You might buy one. I myself have several minor titles that I could part with. How would you like to style yourself Thegn of Vrane?”

“I’m not sure,” said Harbourne. “I fear your prices, milord.”

“If my sources of information are correct, you have already booked passage from Delbalso.”

“After your party, milord. I had meant to tell you. With winter approaching, I thought it might be appropriate to visit another of my widespread family.”

Lord Semichastny circled the room. He lurked as he talked. From behind Harbourne, he said, “It’s a pity you have no taste for winter sports. How would you like to be Thegn of Vrane? Would you stay the winter for it?”

Harbourne considered. “I think I might.”

“Well, it’s unfortunate that I no longer hold the title. If I did, I’m more than certain that I would test your resolve. On the other hand, you are planning to leave.”

“Yes,” said Harbourne, trying to suppress his frustration. Turning on a hard wooden chair to speak over your shoulder can remind you where you are and who you are.

“Would you like a good recommendation to carry away with you, one speaking highly of your ability and initiative? Full credit for a splendid job as overseer of my Delbalso estates.”

“Is this another hypothetical bargain, or do you mean it?”

“Oh, I do mean it. Of course I mean it. I’m surprised to hear that you have doubt of me.” Lord Semichastny paused behind his desk and put his hands behind his back and looked directly at Harbourne. “I merely want you to go into town and find typical Delbalso natives, a good representative sample, and invite them out here to the masquerade. If it can’t be done any other way, let us show Sir Henry the company he can expect.”

“The Monist Association, too?”

“Oh, yes. Them in particular. Dig them out, bring them to the light, and let us give Sir Henry the chance to see them, whatever they are.”

Harbourne took a heavy breath and nipped at an irritation on his lip, and then he said, “But I know no one.”

“What?” said Lord Semichastny. “Here this long and still a stranger? In any case, Nephew, I have no interest in inviting your acquaintances to the masquerade. I want people you don’t know and would no longer care to. The reference, after all, speaks of—what did I say?—initiative and ability.”

“Yes,” said Harbourne. “That’s what you said. All right. I’ll do it, but under the condition that I have a hand drafting the recommendation.”

“Of course,” said Lord Semichastny. “Who other than you knows your unique and particular talents so well?”

And so they came to terms. But Lord Semichastny could not resist saying, “You might be interested to know that my nephew—myother nephew—passed himself by his family name when he made his bow on Nashua.”

“ ‘Villiers’?”

“Yes. And he managed, or so I’m given to understand.”

“I believe this may be your husband now, milady,” said Villiers.

Sir Henry the Trog pranced into the room, humming, casting fantastic shadows on the wall. This was not the terror-arousing disintegration of character that it might appear. It was, in fact, another risk-taking exploration of the possibilities of Sir Henry’s new body. He was one with Icarus. But he frightened his wife. Daedalus got scared, too.

“Is that you, Henry?” she asked.

“Indeed it is,” he said. “And a very good evening to you. Tell me, Lord Charteris, what think you of my choice of costume?”

“It fits you admirably,” said Villiers.

“That was Charles’s doing. And between us, he has some very loose ideas for a robot. I demonstrated natural order to him, however, and he may be the better for it. What’s the matter, my dear?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You disconcerted me for a moment.”

“Oh,” he said, and the almost blue-enough eyes bulged pensively.

“As it happens,” said Villiers, “I’ve had occasion to observe a Trog in nature, and your representation is largely excellent, Sir Henry.”

“Really?” asked Sir Henry. “They’re—I mean, we’re—restricted, aren’t we?”

“You are,” said Villiers. “But then I travel widely.”

“Do you think you could show me what I’m doing wrong?” asked Sir Henry.

“To be sure,” said Villiers, and his light cone shone a little brighter.

Lady Oliphaunt gave an exasperated sign and sat down with her back to them. If there was a flaw in her character—an unfortunate thing to suggest even tentatively of such a pretty lady—it was that she lacked patience. A failure to appreciate Trogs cannot be called a character flaw. It has to be called a lapse in taste. Oh, well, she was still an attractive woman, if not as attractive as she had been, say, five years before. Five years before, Villiers might have been a shade less interested in demonstrating how a Trog walks. But then people change.

A mechanical serving table wheeled in while Villiers had Sir Henry doing hunkers and squats.

“My word, this is difficult.”

“But I assure you that it’s typical behavior. It’s easier to do for a natural Trog.”

The serving table made a slow graceful curve across the room, pirouetting as it came, raising and lowering its serving covers with the rhythm of an elegant bird. Having demonstrated itself to best advantage, it came to a halt before Villiers.

“Milord,” it said, “Lord Semichastny awaits your attendance.”

Villiers said, “Your pardon, Sir Henry. I’m stayed for.”

“Go, by all means,” said Sir Henry the Trog. “I shall practice what you have shown me until I see you again.”

When Villiers and the serving table, still fluttering its serving covers, had left the library, Sir Henry did a final practice hunker.

Then he said, “Well, my dear, isn’t this a fine costume? I’m liking it more by the minute. Don’t you think it radiates friendliness and good intentions?”

“To be frank, Henry,” she said, “I don’t. Trogs are such uncertain creatures.”

“Are they?” he asked. “Uncertain.” It gave him something to think about, since as it happened he was feeling rakishly uncertain at that particular moment, and it made him aware and gave him pause for enjoyment.

But then he said, “And … but … what do you know of Trogs, my dear?”

“When I was presented on Nashua, I met the Trog Chief Hostage. He was a soldier, black and white, and very fierce. He gave me a considerable fright.”

“Do I frighten you?” Sir Henry asked.

“I must confess you don’t,” she said.

“Oh.”

“However, when you entered you did disconcert me for a brief moment,” she said, allowing her face to break.

“I’m sorry,” he said automatically, and moved to comfort her as she cried briefly. He comforted her with a clumsiness that clearly showed his need for further practice in the costume.

Lady Oliphaunt said, “Henry, will you take the suit off now?”

“Not yet, my dear. I’m still getting used to it.”

She sat up abruptly, glancing off his muzzle with some force. She rose. She said, “I’ll be going into town later to see if I can find an appropriate costume for this masquerade.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m disappointed. I was rather hoping I could persuade you to make a set with me.”

You see now, perhaps. You couldn’t tell a man like that about a melon on the staircase.

There was something that seemed familiar in the serving table’s manner and Villiers wondered about it. “Excuse me,” he said. “Did you bring the message for Mr. Firnhaber earlier in the evening?”

The table closed all its covers. “I was hoping you wouldn’t recognize me, milord. Those are my least attractive attachments.”

“I wouldn’t say that at all,” said Villiers. “But I must congratulate you. I think you make a most attractive serving table.”

When Villiers entered, Lord Semichastny dismissed the table and offered him a choice of hard or soft chair. Villiers waited until Lord Semichastny had drawn out his own seat behind the desk, and then he took the soft chair and settled into it comfortably. He accepted a smoke with the confidence of a man who has no fear of befuddling his mind, and doesn’t mind greatly if he fouls his lungs. That’s nonchalance. Lord Semichastny lit up, too, so as not to be overtopped.

Lord Semichastny had a stack of letters on the desk before him. He squared the pile.

He said, “I’m curious to know what possessed your father to send you my way?”

Villiers said, “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. I’m on no better terms with him than you are. He has a peculiar sense of humor. He may have just been curious to see what we would make of each other. For myself, I haven’t so many relatives not to enjoy the chance of meeting one.” He blew out smoke.

Lord Semichastny thumbed the letters, flipping them over one by one. He said, “I’ve seen mention of you from time to time in the GarlinghouseAlumni Notes. ”

“I remember seeing mentions of you, sir. Class of ’09, I believe. My address has been unstable of late, and I seem to have missed theNotes , though I must admit not greatly.”

“You, too?” asked Lord Semichastny. “When I left the place I promised that I would never go back, and I never have. Well, I think we understand each other well enough. I like you, Nephew. I had expected you younger and without that mustache.”

“More like my picture in theAlumni Notes ?”

“Well, perhaps so. But you’ll do. How would you like to stay here over the winter? You might want to take a shot at serving as my overseer. How does that sound? I have the feeling that these aren’t altogether prosperous times for you.” Lord Semichastny pulled a letter out from the stack and placed it on top, and then began flipping through the stack, top to bottom, again.

Villiers said, “I think not, sir. I have my own affairs to pursue. Besides, I understood the Winter-Summer Laws to be a tax on you. Will you still be here at the end of the winter?”

“That particular game is as yet unsettled,” said Lord Semichastny. “I have more resources than the anonymous mob gives me credit for. Will you give me a good hand and stay through the masquerade?”

“I regret to have to say it, Uncle, but affairs do press me. I have need of the money I believe you to hold for me.”

“Money? Did you expect to come by money here?”

“My father directed me here for it.”

“We did agree that your father has a notorious sense of humor.”

“Have you mail for me?”

“Mail? I don’t recall any.”

Villiers said, “You expected my coming.”

“Oh, yes. There must have been something.” Lord Semichastny began the most earnest of hunts through the pile of letters in his hands, examining each letter with scrupulous care lest anyone accuse him of making less than the best of searches. At last he stopped, some halfway through the pile, and produced a particular letter. “Why, here we are!” he exclaimed in surprise. “It’s well you reminded me. It’s for you.”

He handed the missive across the desk to Villiers. It was addressed to him in care of Lord Geoffrey Semichastny and it had been opened. It was not a letter in any proper sense. It was an itinerary. The itinerary was a list of places that Villiers’ father and brother intended to be, so that Villiers could better avoid them. That was what the money was for. But there was no money.

“And there was no money with this?” Villiers asked.

“I’m sorry,” said Lord Semichastny. “If you expect it, I’m sure it will turn up shortly. Probably after the masquerade. To while the time, you might pick out a costume when you wake.”

When Villiers left Lord Semichastny’s presence, he went immediately downstairs to the library and stole a book. He walked deliberately into the library and took a book, not intending to return it, and hopelessly marring the symmetry of the shelves for any close observer. He only took one book because there was only one book he wanted.

On his way upstairs, he encountered Sir Henry on the first landing. Sir Henry was still in his Trog suit.

Sir Henry said, “I find stairs difficult. They take practice.”

“You are doing excellently,” said Villiers.

“By the way,” said Sir Henry. “Am I right in remembering that the color of my coat is meaningful?”

“I believe you are. If I am right, you are an agrarian gentleman.”

“A squire, so to speak?”

“So to speak,” said Villiers.

On the second landing, Villiers encountered Harbourne Firnhaber.

“Good evening, Cousin. About to do some bedtime reading?”

“I believe I will,” said Villiers.

Harbourne fixed him with a firm eye. “Is it true that you made your bow on Nashua under your family name instead of your title?”

Villiers regarded him for a moment. At last he said, “I’ll tell you what, Cousin: I’ll trade you question for question. Fair enough?”

“I suppose. What is your question?”

“What is your mother’s address?”

Harbourne blushed. Under his soft cone of light it was a very pretty effect. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said, and plunged away.

On the third landing, Villiers met Lady Oliphaunt.

“Shh, Tony,” she said. “I’m going into town later after a costume. Meet me and we will talk privately.” And she pressed a slip of paper into his hand.

Before he could fairly respond, something whizzed by their heads down the central stairwell, just missing their balustrade, and smashing rottenly on the next floor below. Villiers was startled.

“What was that?” he said.

“That was a melon,” she whispered, and slipped off down the hall.

Sir Henry, using the full power of his suit’s resources, which were considerable, called up from below, “And what is this, now?”

Lord Semichastny’s voice yelled angrily from the floor above: “Damned prank-playing robot!” There was an appropriate clanking and scurrying. “Charles! Where are you, Charles?”

Villiers yawned, for it had been an extremely long day for him. He wandered off down the hall toward his room, examining the book he had taken. It wasCompanions of Vinland by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz.

Before he went to bed, he prepared the book for mailing. When he was done, he crawled under the covers. The cone of light was still shining over his head, carefully adjusting itself not to shine in his eyes.

“Turn off, please,” Villiers said. The light turned off.

Monism promises only one thing: to make you very very happy. There is a catch, of course. To be happy as a Monist, you must accept Monist definitions of happiness. If you can—and many do—you have a blissful life before you. Congratulations.

The Monists—in the single person of a Meditation Leader named Coppersmith—came to Delbalso in 1430. He rented a small building, began to talk to people, and let the general observe his sunny personality. If anyone asked, he credited Monism. After a year, he had converted his landlord, Stanley Joralemon, to the Monist Way, the landlord had turned all his considerable worldly possessions over to the commonality, and Joralemon House was a-building.

When Gideon Coppersmith left Delbalso five years later to carry the blessings of Monism to yet another world—his fourth—there were two active, thriving Houses in the Delbalso Monist Association. Less than thirty years later, there were four: Joralemon, Schermerhorn, Montague, and Pierrepont. Joralemon and Pierrepont were talking of sponsoring another House—Joralemon’s third daughter, Pierrepont’s first. It would be located somewhere outside the town. Sentiment favored the name “Coppersmith House.”

You may ask those who live in Joralemon, Schermerhorn, Montague and Pierrepont, and they will all tell you that they are very happy. And they are, of course, because they believe they have every reason to be. It’s built into the system.

Still, for an illusion …

It is indisputable that Monist children are bigger, stronger, and healthier than the Delbalso average. And they smile more. There is a study from the Petenji Institute that says they do.

Monist business enterprises prosper. Monist art is counted an ornament. A Monist is I-go champion of Delbalso.

Perhaps the Monists aren’t really happy. Still, it is a fact that in less than thirty-five years, “happy as a Monist” has replaced “merry as a grig” in Delbalso popular idiom, so someone thinks Monists are happy.

Slyne prowled. Through his mind curled fancies of himself as Nemesis, a dark and midnight destroyer. His body bent low. His amplifiers were open to the full. Since he lacked formal introduction to the Trog, he had to follow intuitive patterns, gross assumptions, and problematic possibilities through the night streets. It was all very uncertain. McBe trailed behind on faith alone.

In time, Slyne’s amplified possibilities and McBe’s faith brought them both to a great enclosing wall. There were gates in the wall, but Slyne passed them by. Then the wall connected to a building, and there were doors. Slyne stopped in front of one of the doors. A banner with a blue motif hung above it.

“What is this building?” McBe asked. “Is it a university?” By making a special effort, he had retained the information that the Trog they sought was a scholar and hence might be found in company with knowledge.

“No,” said Slyne. “It’s a House of the Delbalso Monist Association.”

McBe blanched and gasped. “A Monist House?” He rolled his eyes.

“Come, come,” said Slyne. “No fits and starts, McBe.”

“We’re not going to go in there, are we?”

Slyne said, “Brace yourself, McBe.”

Reluctantly, McBe went into a brace. “Sir.”

“What is your primary sense?”

“Sir?”

“Which of your senses do you customarily rely on?”

“Eyesight, I suppose, sir, in the light.”

“By all means, then, McBe, look about you. Very slowly.”

McBe slowly looked about him. The street was a gentle curve, faintly lit. There were lights at various places in the great building, and lights above the doors. There was a dark sway of foliage in the breeze.

“Do you see anything that can harm you?”

“No, sir. But it’s dark.”

“What’s your next best sense?”

“Smell, I suppose.”

He spoke doubtfully, and well he might. As a self-protective device, all his senses were filtered so that he shouldn’t be swamped by more data than he could safely handle. His hearing was miserable. Almost anything could be said in his presence, short of his name, and pass unheard. For him to hear music, it had to be loud enough to annoy. He would turn it on for a time, let it irritate him and his neighbors, and then turn it off again, convinced that it must have purgative value, since he could detect none other. He had a regular time marked on his schedule.

Most people, asked their second sense, would say hearing. McBe’s hearing was impugned every day. His sense of smell was no better, but no one had had occasion to challenge it.

No matter—he pleased Slyne. Slyne wanted to come close and whuffle, but he restrained himself.

He said, “Take a good deep breath. Taste the air. Sample it carefully.” He took his own advice and caught the faintest intoxicating whiff of McBe.

McBe took a shocking lungful of air. He held it in and then he let it dribble out. Anxious to justify his own estimate, he sampled the Night.

“Well,” said Slyne, “anything harmful?”

“No,” said McBe. “But it tastes wild.” He suppressed a shudder.

“What sense next?”

“Hearing?” asked McBe.

“All right. Listen. What do you hear?”

McBe listened. He not only listened, he continued to see and smell. He heard only the sound of the wind. He saw nothing. He smelled vague wild promise. It gave him the sense that there were things lurking just beyond the limit of his ability to detect them.

“I don’t hear anything, sir.”

“Of course not. Now expand yourself. There’s nothing out here you can’t dominate. Feel your size. Feel your strength. Take power from your uniform.”

But McBe took no sense of power from his uniform. He hadn’t gotten past expanding his senses, and the accumulation of strange dark impressions was too much for him.

Between tightly clenched teeth, he said, “I believe you may be right, sir. I think we could go inside now, if you like.”

“Very good,” said Slyne, inhaling. “I thought all you needed was a little encouragement. Very soon you’ll be out here planetside all the time, eh, McBe?”

“I’m sure you’re right,” McBe said, watching him sound the door of the Monist Association. Imagine—to be feeling relief to be allowed within a Monist Association. But then those big walls can fence out the wild world as well as guard secrets.

As they waited for the door to open, McBe said, “Do you think they’ll let me use their sanitary facilities?” He was delicate about the things he said.

“Is it that time again?” Slyne asked.

McBe nodded. That was easier than an explanation. This foray into the darkness had thrown him completely off schedule and he had the feeling that almost anything was possible. Anyway, he knew he had to use a toilet, schedule or no.

A Warder answered the door. He little more than blinked at the Empire uniforms or at Slyne, who was not usual. “Yes?” he said.

McBe said, “May I use your bathroom?” And he looked over his shoulder at the Night.

“Well, I suppose you may,” the Warder said. “Come on inside. Around there to the right, second door.”

He pointed McBe on his way. The floor was parquetry. The walls were paneled in wood.

Slyne said, “We have reason to believe that a Trog came to this House tonight. To this very door.” His nose twitched as he sought to know the Warder better.

“Not as far as I know,” the Warder said.

“We wish to examine its papers.”

“Is that your job, examining papers?”

“For the most part.”

“Then I can understand your wanting to examine the papers of a Trog. I’m sure they must be special and exciting. Fully as gaudy as your own.”

“Less.”

“Is that so? But why do you search here, in a Monist Association, and, in particular, why, when your authority does not stretch beyond the door to the Rock?”

“You are right, of course, Reverend Sir. I have no … particular authority. Particular authority …” He mulled the phrase and found it good. “But this is not an official investigation.”

“You’re wearing your uniform,” the Warder pointed out quite reasonably.

“An accident,” said the Orthodoxou. “I forgot to change before venturing out.”

“And your friend?”

”He neglected to change as well. But it is of no moment. We simply wish to know whether a Trog has been here tonight.”

The Warder considered. “All right. I’ll check, though I don’t know why I should.” He rang the House Plexus. “Walt, has a Trog been in the House tonight?” He nodded. “Oh. Yes. No, two I.S.ers from the Rock. That’s what I said. Oh—Badrian.”

McBe entered, looking over his shoulder with an air of puzzlement, as the Warder turned back. McBe looked up just in time to avoid a collision. McBe bobbed politely.

“Thank you,” he said, and rubbed his fingers publicly to show that they were clean and dry.

The Warder nodded. To Slyne, he said, “Your Trog was here but he left some time ago.”

“Why was he here?” Slyne asked sharply.

The Warder looked reproachful. “But, Sir, this isn’t an investigation. Do you fail to recall?”

Slyne nodded reluctantly. “I do recall.” he said.

“I may tell you that he left by Gate Three.”

“Will you show us the way?” Slyne asked.

“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t,” said the Warder. “I can’t leave my post and there is no one else to show you. You’ll have to find your own way around the outside. It’s about the same distance either way.”

“Very well,” said Slyne. “Come along, McBe.”

“Already?” said McBe.

“Pull yourself together, McBe. Good night, Sir.”

“Good night,” said McBe.

“Good night,” said the Warder. “Oh, one thing. The Xochitl Sodality is playing Wonders and Marvels tonight. You had better be careful. They may take you for a Marvel.” And he closed the door.

McBe didn’t hear, of course. Slyne heard, but didn’t know what the Warder meant. He didn’t ask McBe.

McBe shot a look at the Night and then lowered his sight to his feet and the street. He inclined his head. “You should see what they do in there,” he said. His tone was a mixture of awe and puzzlement. He told what they did in there.

Slyne found it strange, but no stranger than the ordinary run of human behavior. He found it less strange than McBe did, and be found it less strange than he found McBe.

But McBe was puzzled and expected an answer. When you are surrounded by a strange and hostile world, you need answers.

“I take it to be essentially religious,” said Slyne, considering this to be a safe answer.

“Religious,” said McBe. “But that would make it all right, then.” McBe had respect for religion.

“If it’s religious, then it’s all right?” Slyne asked, perking behind his amplifiers.

“Why, yes. I suppose,” said McBe.

“Very interesting,” said Slyne. His damp little nose behind its lattice touched McBe’s ear. Slyne whuffled deeply. He tried to make it last, but like all good holy experiences, this one, too, was ephemeral. A holy experience, infinitely extended, becomes trivial. Understanding this, Slyne exhaled and set off around the palisade for Gate Three. And McBe trailed behind, swiping at his ear.

“I have a special responsibility for young Badrian,” said the man. His name was Ossian Chimmeroon. He was newly come to white-mantled maturity and still settling into his new set of relationships, but enjoying the feeling of being a sage. The blue trimming on his white robes indicated Joralemon House. “Not only am I his Guide Leader, but he bought up my place in the Xochitl Sodality. Besides, I should be able to guide you as well as anyone you care to name. If anyone can tell you where Xochitl will run, it’s me.”

He walked the quiet winding curve of street. Beside him padded Torve the Trog. Chimmeroon had offered to take Torve to Badrian Beaufils since it was Xochitl Sodality Night and Badrian was out playing in the streets.

The town was a bowl, with a green and gardens in the cup curve and the quarters of the town laid out on the slopes above. People were settled in for the night. Houses were dark. The streets were private. From time to time as they walked, there were vantages from which could be seen the crystal sprawl of the city. There was a breeze that toyed lightly with sound and temperature, rustling and flicking. It was a pleasant evening for a walk.

“Is a nice planet you have here,” said Torve the Trog.

“Thank you. We like it,” said Chimmeroon. Of course, since he had never been off the planet, he had nothing to compare it with. Nonetheless, it is a fact that he liked Delbalso.

Now is the opportunity to observe the difference between a genuine Trog and a gross impostor. Even in dim light, even in darkness, Torve’s eyes shone a genuine divine lumined blue. Otherwise there wasn’t a great deal of obvious difference.

Above them, cracking and flashing white lightnings, a ship descended slowly toward the Rock. There were beacons on the rim of the Rock that marked its dark, flatulent bulk against the sky. Chimmeroon and Torve the Trog turned to watch until lightnings and beacons merged in flaring white and flashing red. Then the crackle and flash ended. The beacons continued to wink imperturbably, and yellow afterimages danced on the eyes.

Torve continued to stare at the Rock.

“Imagine that’s the nightboat from Duden,” said Chimmeroon.

Torve squatted. “I have feeling of imminent conjugation,” he said. “Pardon. I must steep myself.” He closed his eyes and went away. He concentrated with the solemn gravity of an old man examining his excreta for portents. After a silent minute or more, he made his throbbing noise,“Thurb.” He made it again, a number of times.

This was art, an aid to his concentration. And there, of course, is your essential difference—not the gross duplicable exterior, but the Troggish heart. That cannot be chunked out by a machine.

Torve’s art continued for its own sake after its utile function was complete. Torve paused for a brief moment to savor the event. Then he rose.

“Yes,” he said. “No mistake. Imminent conjugation.”

It is this sort of concept that is in part responsible for the restriction of Trogs. What can be fruitfully exchanged, after all, with people who believe that events ripen themselves, bide their time, wait for the proper interactive moment to occur? At a moment of conjugation, as Torve would have it, a cluster of events burgeon to their mutual satisfaction. And through the morass of events, things—Trogs and humans and dogs and bricks and sticks—must take their own chances. Events will use them as they will, and the best one can do is swim with the tide.

This representation is gross and inaccurate, of course, but still it would not be unfair to say that Torve considered himself largely irrelevant to histhurbs , which left him free to enjoy them to a degree that would be disgraceful in a human artiste.

Chimmeroon asked, “And what is ‘imminent conjugation,’ Friend Trog?”

Torve explained at some length, speaking of lines of occurrence and other inadequate approximations. He molded air with his furry fingers by way of illustration. Chimmeroon understood hardly a word. Some philosophies are not easily exported. Villiers and Torve had traveled together considerably, and neither would claim to understand the other, so Chimmeroon cannot be blamed.

Chimmeroon did become convinced that “imminent conjugation” was not so rare an event in the Trog’s experience that he should have reason for alarm, and after a more than reasonable show of attention, he nodded his lack of understanding and changed the subject. He reached beneath his robes and produced a handsome box of trocchi wood graced by inlaid filigree. He flipped it open with a practiced thumb.

“Majoon?” he said.

There was a row of neat candies within—honey and nuts, and wondrous spices, all dipped in toasted sesame seeds. Chimmeroon took one and offered the box.

“In surety,” said the Trog, taking three. Or would it be fair to say that three pieces forced themselves upon him? In any event—three.

Chimmeroon nibbled his piece with proper respect, for majoon deserves respect, but the Trog had all three pieces in his mouth before Chimmeroon had replaced his box beneath his burnoose, and had gobbled and gulped the lot before Chimmeroon was more than begun. Ah, but it is futility to expect politeness from a Trog, or a proper appreciation of a careful blend of delicate flavourings.

Torve did smile widely. “Is good,” he said. “Already I feel seeping emanations.” It was almost as though the pleasure he took was not so much in the eating as in the digestion of the candy.

Chimmeroon may have marveled at this, but as an officially wise old man—even if only newly so—he was willing to grant the Trog his peculiarities. For Badrian Beaufils’ sake, if none other. And, as they walked, digestion proceeding, the Trog’s smile grew broader.

However, Chimmeroon was not given an extended opportunity to observe the process. Before they had progressed more than a few blocks down the sloping, winding street toward the green center of town, a party of four men came out of a side street and hailed them.

Chimmeroon groaned. “Newman, Rose, Zimmerman and Cohen,” he said. “I hope they don’t insist on singing.”

The four were of Chimmeroon’s age, or a bit younger—mature men. They were dressed in green, with little peaked and jaunty caps. One had a feather in his cap.

“They sing?” asked Torve.

“Oh, yes,” said Chimmeroon. “At every sodality meeting. And badly.” Having been named Ossian, from an early age he had looked upon poetry and song as being particularly his own and felt free to criticize as he would. If he had not criticized Torve’s attempts, it was largely because he had not recognized them as art.

“Well, how are things over at Pierrepont House?” Chimmeroon asked as the four came up.

“Well enough,” said the one with the feather. “What are you doing out tonight, Ossian? You know this is Xochitl’s night. You have your new sodality. Can’t you let go?”

“We’re just looking for Badrian Beaufils,” said Chimmeroon. “This is a pen pal of his. Torve the Trog—Xavier Newman.” And he introduced the others—Rose, Zimmerman, and Cohen. They nodded without enthusiasm. In fact, they seemed to be regarding Chimmeroon with outright suspicion. How they looked at Torve was something else again.

This is the outside of enough, Chimmeroon,” said Newman. “You don’t think we’re going to allow you to hand over a Marvel like this to Joralemon House, do you?”

“But I’m notplaying ,” said Chimmeroon in exasperation.

“But we are,” said Zimmerman. “It is our night and this is our territory. Finders keepers, Chimmeroon.”

Torve just smiled broadly.“Thurb,” he said.

“Oh, my,” said Rose. “That’s it. He has to be our Marvel. None of the other Houses will have anything to compare.”

“But he’s just Badrian Beaufils’ pen pal,” said Chimmeroon.

“Come now,” said Newman with no sign of belief. “You were a Xochitl long enough to know a proper Marvel when you see one.”

“Can you really write?” asked Cohen.

Torve nodded.

The four moved around the Trog and looked at Chimmeroon. Chimmeroon banged his knuckles together and looked pensively at them all. “Do you understand what this is about?” he asked the Trog.

“Of course,” said Torve. “Is imminent conjugation.”

“Oh,” said Chimmeroon. “Well, then. Go along with these gentlemen, such as they are, and I will do my best to find Badrian Beaufils, Friend Trog.”

“Do that,” said Newman. “He can find us on the green when it’s time to match Marvels.”

“All right,” said Chimmeroon. “All right.” He drew his gabardine and his dignity about him, and turned away down the street.

The four continued to stand close about the Trog.

Rose said, “Let’s show the others what we’ve found.”

Zimmerman said, “I think we had best be on our way before Chimmeroon finds Badrian Beaufils.”

Cohen said, “He was mad, wasn’t he?”

Newman said, “Well, come along, Trog. Friend Trog.”

Torve said, “You sing, is true?”

“Why yes,” said the four.

Do places dream of people until they return?

“Turn on, please,” Villiers said, but only at last when he had searched on hands and knees without success for the copy ofCompanions of Vinland that he had prepared for mailing before he went to sleep.

The light roused when he did. Villiers swung out of bed and yawned and stretched, but he didn’t call for the light to fulfill itself and it lurked impotently overhead. He rose and sought his clothing, and the light followed him darkly across the room.

He dressed, and not badly considering that he dressed himself and that he dressed in the dark. In younger days he had attended a school that thought there was a relationship between character and an ability to dress in the dark. Villiers had abandoned the practice for many years with obvious sad result. His moral instructors would no doubt consider his present return to past habit a hopeful sign. He did not take the trouble to complete his robe with the garnish of a drapeau, however, which might have caused them to dwell and mull a bit.

He took up his cloak in the dark, but then was unable to locate his package. He patted and pawed and mumble-fingered the floor in the darkness, but though the feel of the carpeting was pleasant, he did not find the book. In irritation with himself, and feeling quite rightly that he was making a capitulation, Villiers at last called on the light.

It was slow to come up and only cast small shadows. It wasn’t half the light it had been at dinnertime. Villiers looked up reproachfully and with seeming politeness it moved behind the crane of his neck. There it intensified a little, keeping its private glare fixed on the back of his head.

When Villiers lowered his gaze, it centered itself again directly above him. Even with the grace of reluctant illumination, he did not find the book immediately.

Sight confirmed that it was not on the table on which he believed he had left it. It was not where he had been searching on the floor close by the table. It was not anywhere in ready view.

Only then, prompted by the lingering impression of conducting a nighttime class in Evasion—a subject he in fact had never formally taught—did he begin to lift cushions. He found the book under the second cushion.

He nodded and eyed himself with proper suspicion in the wall mirror. Then he laughed.

He dusted himself, tugged and shrugged, and then put the package under his arm. The light centered itself properly and he had one last look in the glass. Then he proceeded into the hall.

The earlier sounds of moving and cleaning and decorating had largely been replaced by faint warm simmering smells of pudding and holiday, though Villiers did catch a distant trial blat of convivial music. The sound died.

The house was dark and only robots and mechanicals were afoot. They were busy. They had things to do. Purpose. The hour of Lord Semichastny’s masquerade was not far distant, and since this year they had been allowed an opportunity for display usually denied by Lord Semichastny’s sense of economy, they were determined to do more than they possibly could in the short time remaining.

Charles, faint yellow courtesy light shining, was waiting for Villiers when he reached the foot of the stairs.

“Good evening, sir,” he said.

“Good evening,” said Villiers.

Charles handed Villiers a letter. “Lord Semichastny instructed me to give this to you when you arose.”

“Did the Duden mailboat arrive?”

”I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know. Lord Semichastny said to tell you that he discovered this in reconsideration of his desk, and apologizes for the oversight, pleading a full stomach and the lateness of the hour. He promises to look yet again when he wakes.”

”My uncle overelaborates his points,” said Villiers. “Thank you, Charles.”

The letter bore Villiers’ personal address symbol as a sign that it was not a common bill or solicitation or an anonymously addressed bit of random trash. It had been opened before it came into Villiers’ hands.

It was from Villiers’ mother and it began, “I disapprove …” which was not at all her usual way. It turned out, however, that what she disapproved of was Villiers’ association with her brother. The final paragraphs were even addressed directly to Geoffrey on the assumption that his habits hadn’t altered, as indeed they hadn’t.

While Villiers was reading the letter, his light suddenly brightened appreciably. He looked up to see Harbourne Firnhaber trotting down the stairs.

“You’re up early,” said Harbourne.

“I have immediate business in town,” said Villiers, holding up the packaged book by way of misdirection.

“Would you like me to mail that for you, sir?” asked Charles.

“I think not,” said Villiers. “And why are you up so soon, Cousin?”

Harbourne said, “I’m to find masquerade guests for Uncle’s party. I thought to make an early start on it.”

“Whom are you inviting?”

“Anyone, Milord Charteris. I shall sweep the streets of town.”

“You may not find many on the streets. Xochitl Sodality of the Delbalso Monist Association is playing Wonders and Marvels tonight and most people are keeping to their homes. I saw few on my way here tonight.”

“But it was late then. It’s earlier than that now,” said Harbourne.

“True,” said Villiers, “but I think it makes small difference. They seemed bent on making a full night of it. Be careful lest they take you for a Wonder and keep you.”

“Do you think they might take me for a Wonder?”

“It’s perfectly possible. I fell into their hands myself.”

“But apparently they didn’t keep you.”

“No,” said Villiers. “They found me insufficiently marvelous and cast me back into the streets again to grow to larger size. Alas, I fear I have attained a final and insufficient height, and shall ultimately disappoint them.”

In fact, Villiers had not been that disappointing. Small, yes, and no Ian Steele, but not without presence when he cared to make the point. As it had happened, Villiers had encountered the friend of a friend, and of course there had been no question about his movements once that had been established.

“Will you gentlemen have breakfast?” asked Charles.

In this world there are a million windows through which to see. There are a million mirrors, and a million prospects. The ordinary man accepts this, and if the world looks a little different to him one day and the next, or if his mirror shows him something new, it neither troubles nor surprises him. The variety lends roundness to life.

However, for those few raised to a single narrow squint, the discovery of even a second perspective on the smoke and swirl of the evanescent world can be important, shocking, and joyful. This is good if it leads to new vistas, and bad if the second perspective is mistaken for Final Truth.

Timur i Leng, vizier of Chagatay under Suyurghatmish, discovered one day that the world looks different from forty feet in the air and was overwhelmed. He gathered his army and overran Khorasan, Jurjan, Mazandaran, Sijistan, Azerbaijan, and Fars. In each place he raised a pyramid of skulls forty feet high and limped to the top in the hopes of recapturing that first thrilling rush—and missed the point completely.

Sir Henry the Trog stood in danger of similarly refining too greatly on a single new view of the world. He would not come out of his costume no matter what his wife said. He was quiet about it—when he did not forget himself and dance or sing to savor once again the puzzling and pleasing strangeness of it all—but he was adamant. He would not come out.

His mind had been busy and kept him from sleep, but at last he had fallen into warm electric dreams. When he woke he turned his woolly head and saw that his wife had risen. He did not seek her company immediately but lay awake and let the butterflies in his mind take spotted wing. He hummed.

He was still humming when be located Lady Oliphaunt eating a solitary breakfast. By the debris before her, she was nearly finished.

“Ah, my dear,” he said. “Charles said I should find you here.” And mused off into a hum again.

“No,” she said, looking at him and then looking back at her buttered bun. “I’m not here.” Meaning that she wished she weren’t.

“I don’t understand you,” he said, not wishing to.

She said, “Henry—darling—won’t you at least take the costume off for breakfast?”

She began to scour her plate with the last of her bun. To a lesser degree, she shared her husband’s failing. When she was young she would never have dared to do anything so vulgar as mop her plate. It was only eventually that she had learned that anything is proper if it is done with supreme confidence and ultimate style, and now she scoured her plate when and as she pleased, carelessly, thoughtlessly, freely. If she had been sensitive to her own easy excess she might have been more easily forgiving of Sir Henry’s.

He said, “Oh, thank you, but it isn’t necessary. In fact I think it’s a very good thing. It will give me practice in managing food. I shouldn’t want to appear clumsy before the good people of Delbalso. We want to give them every reason to think well of Empire, and we must remember that ultimately it is we who will stand for Empire out here. Charles will be serving me here at any moment, I should think.”

He began to experiment with Trog-handed shadow pictures with the aid of his light cone.

Lady Oliphaunt said, “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to stay and keep you company. The sooner I go to town the better. I have still to find a costume.”

“That’s true. That’s true. But I dislike the thought of your traveling alone in the dark. Why don’t you see whether Lord Charteris or Mr. Firnhaber will bear you company?”

“Charles said that both milord’s nephews rose early and left in company for town. I’ve missed the opportunity, it seems, but I truly don’t mind going alone. Truly not.”

He gave that a moment’s consideration. Then he said, “I’ll bypass breakfast! I’ll escort you to town myself. The least I can do is see that we complement each other.”

Lady Oliphaunt was sadly lacking in apparent enthusiasm for this show of consideration. Perhaps she should never have married. The heart of marriage is a sharing of company and aim.

Instead she asked, “And would you be wearing that costume?”

“Well, yes, my dear. I thought …”

She turned her head to the wall and said definitely, “I won’t go.”

Lord Semichastny sat up in bed when Charles entered to serve him his breakfast melon. He had slept later than he intended, and he had contingencies on his mind. The melon was to provide him strength to cope.

Charles rolled to the bed and served breakfast. Besides melon, there was a toasted scone, sweetmold front Protopapis, an advance piece of crisply roasted skin and fat sliced from a goose in the kitchens, dogbone, drennel, and tea. However, Lord Semichastny had the courage of his compulsions and counted this mere dressing to the melon.

“Have there been any calls?” he asked before taking his first bite.

“None, milord. It has been generally quiet.”

“None?”

“None, milord.”

After a moment’s reflection, Lord Semichastny began his breakfast. He needed at least the scone as fuel for his temper, so he dug in heartily the sooner to start the steam rising.

“I have another letter for Lord Charteris,” he said. “Did you give him the first?”

“Yes, milord, but Lord Charteris has departed the house. He and Mr. Firnhaber left for town hours ago.”

“Did he pick out a costume?”

“No, milord. I did suggest it to him as you said to do—most politely—but he said his attendance remained to be seen.”

“He did, did he?”

“And he said that you overelaborate your points, milord.”

“He did, did he?” Lord Semichastny looked at his robot butler as though suspecting him of taking delight in the simple messages he was entrusted to relay. Limited Volition hardly extends so far as delight.

“Your pardon, milord. May I be excused? I should be overseeing the musical arrangements.”

“No, damn it! You’ll stay until I give you leave to go. You say that Lord Charteris and Mr. Firnhaber left for town together?”

“Yes, milord.”

“Well, perhaps Lord Charteris intends to lend a hand in locating a cross section of Delbalso for the fete.”

“I think not, milord. He spoke of mailing a package and other business.”

“Catlap!” said Lord Semichastny through his breakfast. “Catlap! Get out of here, Charles! Go answer the door. Go see to the music. Go.”

However, some fifteen minutes later Lord Semichastny, chewing his piece of goose skin, wandered through the darkened house until he found Charles, who indeed was overseeing the musical arrangements. Within the limited sphere of running this house, Charles was a versatile creature, although in the wild world outside he would have been nearly helpless.

“Where are Sir Henry and Lady Oliphaunt?” Lord Semichastny asked. “I can’t seem to find them.”

“Gone to town, milord. They too,” Charles answered. “Would you like to review the music I’ve chosen?”

“As long as you know the tunes are those I like, I’m sure you will choose adequately. Did they travel with Lord Charteris and Mr. Firnhaber?”

“No, milord. They said something of choosing a costume for Lady Oliphaunt. I took it upon myself to suggest to Lady Oliphaunt that we could do very well for her here. Semiramis Among the Doves could be both popular and successful.”

“What were you thinking of?” Lord Semichastny asked. “That’s not for Amita. Semiramis Among the Doves is Kitty-Belle Armbruster’s style.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. My taste is not good. Lady Oliphaunt had the good sense to share your opinion, milord, and rejected the suggestion. After some discussion she and Sir Henry left in a flitter for town.”

“And no one has called?”

“No, milord.”

“But it’s getting later.”

“Have no fear, milord. All shall be ready here before the hour. I think you will have reason to be proud of your loyal staff of robots and mechanicals.”

But Lord Semichastny was not mollified. He paced through the empty house mumbling to himself. He took hasty notice of food, drink, music, and decoration, but he did not pause for long. He waited for someone to come. He waited for someone to call. No one called. No one came. And so he paced.

At last he said, “I’m going into town. Run out a flitter, Charles.”

And at first Charles was too busy to notice. Supervision is necessary if you expect a staff to do more than it possibly can. But Charles was not the only member of the Merry Majordomos on Delbalso by happenstance. He was a member because he was capable of prodigies. His staff not only did more than it possibly could, but it finished with time to spare.

It was only then that Charles truly noticed that the house was empty. All the humans had gone away.

Charles had done exactly as he ought, and the party was ready. But there were no people.

The house was without light, Even Charles’s yellow courtesy light no longer glowed. It was not needed.

With all ready for service—food held hot and cold in stasis, walls strung, entertainments ready for release on command or trip, mechanicals shiny and well-rehearsed, and flower petals in an urn by the door—there was no one to serve.

Charles rolled to the dressing room, and there he looked for some time at a green polkadotted silk sarong, a diaphanous blouse of cream, and an orange tarboosh. It was only at times like this that being a chattel weighed heavily. He had been built to serve, after all. But not to be abused by orange! At last, however, thinking that he heard the approach of a flitter, he put the uniform on. And he was right—orange did not become him.

He was wrong, however, in thinking he detected a flitter. When he returned upstairs, he found nothing but the robots and mechanicals of the house in gathering. He shooed them into the main hall to wait.

They waited and they wondered.

“Will the people come?” they asked.

“Who knows?” Charles said. “Be patient.” To pass the time, he told them stories in the dark hall as he often had on winter nights when the house was closed and the robots wondered about spring and the reality of Lord Semichastny.

He began, “There was a man dwelt by a churchyard,” which is a good story, full of sprites and goblins, though a trifle sad. However, the mechanicals had heard it too often before and cried him halt.

“Tell another story,” they said.

“And let it be scary,” said the shiny serving table that had brought the message to Villiers.

“But not too scary,” they said.

So Charles began again:

“Once there was an old man and a woman and a little household robot, and they all lived in a house made of hempstalks. The old man had a dog, and he was a little dog, and the little dog’s name was Turpie. And one night the Hobyahs came and said, ‘Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks. Eat up the old man. Eat up the old woman. Carry off the little household robot!’ But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off.”

And he held the attention of the room. As they waited.

If my mother’s advice were taken as widely as she would give it, every man would have two professions. For the common man in a common time, two professions do keep life from becoming commonplace, or so my mother would have it. In headier times, when the palm flourishes and the dates hang heavy and sweet, a second interest keeps a man from bruiting the price of dates over his second helping of date-nut pudding and being a bore to his guests. And in times of drought, a second skill keeps a man.

Like much of the folk wisdom inherited from her simple peasant ancestors, this is sensible conservative advice. It keeps men alive and peasants peasants.

Every man should have two professions—at the least for reasons of security. But lest security become cloying, one of the professions should be a flyer. Something like poetry, or astrology. Or selling ornamental rugs.

Poetry and astrology each had a brief moment of glory, poetry in the days when language was wild and whirling and a man with his words about him could kill with a lightning phrase; and astrology when it was finally realized that everything in the universe affects everything else and that something as consequential as a star or planet must have its effects on human lives. But poetry became shackled by grammars and dictionaries, and astrology became lost in the science of universal ecology. Astrology and poetry have been secondary professions ever since, limited by the normal modesty of people who do not care to have their names linked with stars unless it be done surpassingly well.

As for ornamental rugs, they are notoriously uncertain.

And it is true that two ordinarily chancy professions can be strangely successful in combination. Any pairing of poetry, astrology, and ornamental rugs, for instance, can mean synergetic miracles.

And the trinity, the three-in-one, can mean a saint, a ruler of the sevagram, or Omar Khayyám. Unfortunately, the combination is rare.

A great heavy bell rolled and tolled above them as Slyne and McBe harried the midnight streets. They coursed a long, sloping cobbleway. Slyne felt close to the questionable Trog. McBe felt terror held in abeyance. As long as he concentrated on following Slyne and didn’t think, he was functional, but when they paused or when he thought, he was afraid.

As the last bell peal finished echoing, they were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of middle-aged men in yellow shorts with embroidered jumper fronts.

“Hold,” they said.

Slyne held, feeling the game whose dim track he had followed so well would escape him. When Slyne stopped, McBe stopped, too. It was that, and not the cry to hold, that caused him to look up. When he saw the strange yellow circle, he nearly fell. He kept his feet by seizing Slyne’s moleskin arm.

“Oh, not now,” said Slyne in a mixed agony of exaltation and exasperation. He inhaled once, a quick sniff, and then he said, “Who are you?”

One swept off a feathered cockade in a grandiose gesture, limited by fat. “Rafael Abdelnoor of the Xochitl Sodality, at your service. You can tell by our colors, of course, that we belong to Schermerhorn House, the best house in the best Monist Association in the quadrant.”

Another said reprovingly, “Don’t be un-Monist, Rafe.”

“Sorry,” said the first, chastened. In less inflated tones, he said, “We’re playing Wonders and Marvels tonight. And we’ve chosen you.”

Then he said to his critic, “I was just enjoying myself.”

Slyne said, “I am sorry. It cannot be. We—my assistant and I—are on urgent affairs on behalf of the Empire. Much as we would like to observe your rituals, I am afraid that we cannot stay.”

Abdelnoor said, “But you’rehere . That means you’re playing. You shouldn’t be out tonight if you’re not serious about playing. By the way, what are you?”

To this pertinent question, Slyne replied, “I am an Auxiliary Executive Overseer (NIS/9) (Pending).” This was apparent to the trained eye from his uniform, right down to the (Pending), but Slyne did not expect a trained eye in this crowd, so he included the fact.

“No. No, no. Whatare you? What is your ethnos?”

“Oh. I am an Orthodoxou.”

“Well, we haven’t had one of those before.”

What happened next is unpleasant to recount. Mr. Abdelnoor of the Xochitl Sodality had one set of plans for the night and Mr. Slyne of the Rock had another. If they had reasoned calmly with each other, no doubt they could have come to agreement—perhaps a third alternative altogether, halfway between the mountains and the seashore. However, they lost their tempers, raised their voices, and fell into rhetoric.

When the subject became the relative power to command of the Nashuite Empire and the Schermerhorn Chapter of the Xochitl Sodality, windows were opened and the people of the neighborhood made comment.

“Take it away from here! We let you have the streets. Leave us a little peace.”

Mr. Abdelnoor settled his point, which was that while the power of the Nashuite Empire was concededly great, so was it also distant, and that the power of the Schermerhorn Chapter of the Xochitl Sodality, overall totaling considerably less, was immediately somewhat the greater, by having Mr. Slyne picked up bodily by two mature initiates and carried off through the streets. They didn’t pick up Mr. McBe and carry him off, perhaps out of oversight. After all, when it is dark and noisy and sudden, it is extremely easy to be careless of details.

McBe ran after them protesting the oversight, but they were laughing and took no notice. He overtook a trailing two.

“Wait, there! What are you doing with Mr. Slyne?”

“Ho-ho,” they said.

The two turned upon him and used him hardly. They whipped a blindfold over his eyes, and laughed, and spun him dizzyingly until he sat down plump on the damp cobbles.

And then they ran off, their middle-aged feet thumping away into the universal dark that surrounded McBe’s unsettled mind and blindfolded eyes. He sat on the street and cried, and very slowly took the blindfold off. He unknotted it and smoothed it, and then folded it neatly.

While he sat, folding and crying and wondering desolately what to do, happy Christian bells of joy began to chime again.

It was near peelgrunt, and Villiers had not yet arrived. Parini was not only awake, but agitated.

“Where is he?” he asked. “Do you suppose he took me overseriously when I told him to let us have a good sleep? I never considered him to have much of a sense of humor.”

Miriam Parini said, “But of what use? Those papers for that beast haven’t come.”

“True, but the name has. And Villiers will pay twenty royals for that. What could Treleaven have been thinking of to change his mind so suddenly? Old men are too capricious.”

He began to pace. With Treleaven’s departure, he was suddenly dependent on Villiers’ purse to pay his way free of the Winter-Summer Laws. He tried to see where the advantage lay, and the arguments that would emphasize the advantage. His biggest argument was that he had the name of the man who had twice hired the notorious assassin Solomon “Biff” Dreznik, to put a period to Villiers’s life. That was substantial information.

“Jules, could we ask Zvegintzov’s man for money away? Once off Delbalso we could pay them back in no time, and they know that.”

He stopped. “Not after I just pressured the name out of them. Besides, Zvegintzov’s man was leaving when he called me. There’s no one left to borrow from.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Wait for Villiers,” Parini said. “I suppose I could call around and see what I can find out. Perhaps somebody knows something.”

“Perhaps somebody can tell what happened to the mail from Duden,” his wife said.

“I’ll ask,” he said.

He hurried off to his communications network, cutting through the patio. The Christian’s bells were ringing again and he wondered whether the Christian got the same pleasure from his bells that he got from his communications network. As it happened, the Christian did.

Slyne was not carried far. He would not cooperate with his yellow-suited captors of Schermerhorn House. He writhed. He kicked. When set down, he would not stand. When picked up again, he was not soothed. He seemed upset. And throughout he made steady complaint. It was not easy to suppress his remarks since they issued from behind the mesh of his sensory amplifier. One hand tried and was nipped severely.

Slyne’s dander was up:

“Dare manhandle an (NIS/9) (Pending)! They have their eye on me, and you will be held to strict accounting for this. They wouldn’t have solved the Diced Strawberry Affair without me!”

That is the trouble with those who love their organizations too dearly. In time of trouble they rely on them, and personal initiative is lost. Slyne was not alone in this. His captors were no better.

Slyne was an uncompromising poor sport, and those carrying him soon grew weary.

“He just won’t play,” they said to Abdelnoor.

After Abdelnoor had his own turn at carrying Slyne—and it would have been un-Monist for him not to have had a turn—he was forced to agree. So he made a signal and they set Slyne down on the pavement.

Abdelnoor faced Slyne severely. He wagged his finger at the wet tip of Slyne’s nose.

“I’ve never met one of your kind before—an Orthodoxou. But I’ll remember you and I’ll see that the word gets passed along. I’ve never seen such behavior. I suppose it’s only what can be expected from the Rock. I can tell you one thing, you’ll never have another chance to play. If you can’t play properly, we just don’t want you around!”

And the body of men all turned away from Slyne and showed him their backs all the way around the corner.

Slyne cocked his head and sampled the night through his amplifier. There was the overwhelming sound of bells.

He thought of tracking back to find the Trog’s trail and then the image of a despairing McBe came to him. He inhaled reflexively.

“Is it peelgrunt yet?” Villiers asked when he was brought his meal by Ozu Xenakis.

Xenakis ran a bistro and had the greens concession in Delbalso. He charged small fees for use of the green and gardens by singles, couples, and. parties, and his bistro profits paid for the rest. His windows overlooked the green, making his place an easy one for custom to retire to in bad weather, and in good weather the view was pleasant. Even now, in artificial light, it was live and inviting. In addition, as the only spot on Delbalso with an off-world flavor—for Xenakis had spent the first twenty-four years of his life on Luvashe and Posada—hisCentre was a popular spot for travelers and transients, and the only place on Delbalso mentioned by Wu and Fabricant. It was the place that Lady Oliphaunt had set for her appointment with Villiers—the only place in town fit for an appointment.

Xenakis himself was a good-natured man with overlarge teeth and a ready willingness to talk with anyone on his own subject. He sometimes wondered if the teeth were bad for business and considered having them altered.

“Oh, it’s not yet peelgrunt,” he said. “When it is, you’ll know, right enough. This is the best spot in Delbalso, on Delbalso, for peelgrunt.”

While Villiers was eating, content for the moment with his book posted and peelgrunt still ahead, two men entered the bistro. It was obvious from their manner that they were no more from Delbalso than Xenakis or Villiers. They sat down and ordered. They seemed at odds with the world, finding it duller than they liked.

They were Civilian Research Specialists imported to Delbalso by the Imperial Government to make subtle star sightings and assessments on behalf of the Universal Pantograph Project. This great machine, when completed, it was hoped would model the universe with sufficient exactitude that anticipations might be made. Nashua’s offices were filled with humble men anxious to use any tool that came to hand to further the Empire and Good, and already drooling in anticipation of the Universal Pantograph.

These two men were not power brokers, however. They merely did simple jobs and were paid for them, and the eventual results of their work were distant enough to lack immediacy for them.

One said, “Let’s go back to the Castle.” He looked around the room, empty but for Villiers and Xenakis. “Nothing at all is doing tonight.”

“Let’s look a little longer,” the other said. “It will be weeks before we have another night.”

“Where is everyone?” the first asked. “The only people we saw were some older men running around in red shorts.”

“Oh, those would be from Montague House,” said Xenakis. “It’s the Monist Association’s Xochitl Sodality tonight. Things tend to be quiet on a Sodality night, unless they let you play. Most people stay at home. As you can see, I’m working alone.”

“Monists? Oh, Monists, yes. They’re the ones who put over those Winter-Summer Laws, aren’t they?” one of them said.

And the other said, “They asked us if we were Wonders and Marvels. We said we were just plain us, and they told us to go back to the Rock.”

“They meant the Castle,” said Xenakis. “It’s just a way of speaking they have here.”

He said it gently. He didn’t know what he thought until he said it, and what he said depended in major on who his trade was. A good diplomatic publican and a good man, by his lights.

And the first said to the second, “I told you that you shouldn’t have said we were just us. You should have dressed us up a bit. If you’d told them we were pantographers, maybe they wouldn’t have sent us away.”

Xenakis said, “Well, maybe you can try again later. They’ll be playing all night. The Monists aren’t really so bad when you get to know them. They weren’t really behind the Winter-Summer Laws. That was just a story that was given out. The truth is that the town wanted to get rid of Viscount Semichastny, who lives here in the summer and throws extreme parties. When he’s gone, they’ll change things back in a year or two.”

“Oh, yes,” said the first pantographer. “Lord Semichastny. I heard about him, too.”

“He sold me the sod for the greens out there,” Xenakis said, pointing. “I’ve talked to him several times. He’s really not so bad, either. Not at heart.”

Harbourne Firnhaber came to the early conclusion that his noble new-found cousin was right in one regard. There were few people on the streets.

He had made the mistake of anticipating the town and the task, and neither proved to be what he had pictured. All too often we mistake our own habits, interests, and ambitions for universal facts, not realizing that there are one or two families that do not sit down to Sunday dinner at three. Harbourne had thought that since there was nothing that he would have liked better in his planet-bound days than to be invited to a viscount’s party, he would have no trouble in filling Lord Semichastny’s maison with louts and gawkers. But just as Lord Charteris had said, the night and streets were empty.

Harbourne had left his cousin in an empty bistro and begun to walk. And he saw no one, not even the Xochitl Sodality of whom Charteris had warned him. As time passed, his anticipations curdled and he began to suspect that he had made a bad bargain.

He stopped in the street and looked about him. In the black heights he could hear bells. They sounded in better spirits than he and played a tune.

He looked at the houses about him and wondered whether he ought to start knocking at one door and the next. In the face of empty streets, it was the next step to take, but he wasn’t prompt to take it. Lord Semichastny had been right. These were people the like of which he no longer knew and no longer cared to know.

He might be capable of knocking and asking if he had to. He rather thought he was. But he didn’t relish the idea.

And then he saw a man ahead of him on the street. It was a man of a dignified age wearing a white mantle with a blue fringe.

Harbourne almost broke into a run, but managed to control himself. He walked toward the man and when they came together he said, “Good even, sir.” At least the man was clean.

“Good evening,” the man said with manners, if not manner. It was Ossian Chimmeroon.

Harbourne presented his proposition. He found that once begun, the words were not difficult.

He introduced himself and extended an invitation to a party on behalf of Lord Geoffrey Semichastny. As he put it, it sounded like splendid fun.

“Lord Semichastny feels that he has neglected his Delbalso neighbors and desires this chance to entertain them, as well as give them the opportunity of meeting Sir Henry Oliphaunt, the new Empire Administrator.”

Chimmeroon said, “Not in these clothes.”

“Lord Semichastny wishes to present the informal atmosphere of Delbalso—the better to put Sir Henry at ease. He said ‘come-as-you-are.’ ”

“Oh, no,” said Chimmeroon. “I just threw this on when we set out to look for Badrian Beaufils. Are you sure you mean Lord Semichastny?”

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

“And the Empire Administrator?”

“In company with his lady.”

“And a party.”

“It’s all true,” said Harbourne. “Isn’t it just like a dream?”

”Yes. It’s been a long night. But I can’t go,” Chimmeroon said definitely. “I still must find Badrian Beaufils. Tell me, Friend Harcourt …”

”Harbourne.”

“Have you seen a group of men of an age somewhat younger than mine, all dressed in blue, and some with hats and feathers?”

“No,” said Harbourne. “Have you seen anyone at all?”

Between the dark and the daylight on the planet of Delbalso, when the night is beginning to bore, there comes a pause in the night’s occupations when solitary peels, ordinarily content to cling torpidly to their tree branches, carefully unwrap themselves and slide to the ground for a convivial stretch. The signal for movement is a heavy grunt from the least peel, a complaint of muscles too long cramped, answered by a chorus of confirming grunts from the neighboring branches, and then echoed in all the trees surrounding. The air is filled with common complaint and common decision. The break is brief, and when their stretch is done, the peels wind their way back to a new branch and a symbiotic slumber that lasts until dawn.

Villiers left theCentre at peelgrunt. The peels in the park around the town green were honored, admired and pampered, and in the green itself they were presented with a beautiful spot to foregather. In return, they were expected to grunt lustily, which I am pleased to say they did.

Xenakis said, “There’s your peelgrunt. From the sound I’d say it will be good weather tonight, clear until morning. If you’ll go to the windows, in a minute or two you will see the peels beginning to foregather.”

“Thank you,” said Villiers, rising, “but I must be on my way. I’ll catch a look from the street.”

“It’s not the same,” said Xenakis. “Not the same at all. We have the best view of the green right here. The Xochitl Sodality will be playing Wonders and Marvels there later tonight. Most local people—those that aren’t Monists—tend to see it as common, but I enjoy watching it. I recommend it to you.”

“I may take your recommendation,” said Villiers. “Indeed I had some notion of a look at the Xochitl Sodality.”

As Villiers left, Xenakis and the pantographers were standing at the window and chuckling down at the gathering peels. Villiers took the front steps down to the cobble street and then turned right. He did take his promised look at the peels. However, Xenakis had been right. The view was inferior. Bits and pieces only of the green could be seen through the deliberate distractions of the trees, and of the peels Villiers could have said little but that they were like black and brown wriggling fur boas. Villiers did not pause with his look, but set off up the hill toward Parini’s, condemned to business in others’ playtime.

The street climbed the hill in steps. Villiers was on the second flight when he heard one of his names called. It was “Lord Charteris”—and while that choice of name did not announce the caller, it did limit him to the lesser part of Villiers’ acquaintance.

He turned. “Ah, Mr. Slyne. It is a pleasant evening for exercise.”

Slyne hurried up. He said, “These people just don’t have any idea of proper respect for the Empire. I intend to speak to the new Administrator. Have you seen my assistant, Mr. McBe? They took me away from him. He was the young man who questioned your papers. Oh. I’m so agitated.”

He removed his sensory amplifier to calm himself. Sensory amplifiers are useful, particularly to Orthodoxous, but they are a doubtful thing for an upset mind.

“I remember him,” said Villiers. “However, I haven’t seen him since I left Castle Rock.”

“Oh, I’m worried,” said Slyne. “We were separated by circumstance and now he is alone in the night. Did you hear that series of roars?”

“Peelgrunt, perhaps?”

Slyne considered what his roars might have been without benefit of the night, his state of mind and his amplifier.

“They might have been grunts. But it must have unnerved him. He lacks confidence. I noted that tonight and I was attempting to strengthen his resolve. You must remember. You saw me.”

“I do remember,” said Villiers.

On the heights of Castle Rock another ship landed. From where they stood, the green was not visible, but its lights were. There were lights in scatterings through the town and then the great solid massif standing above the opposite slope, big and black and lit by lightning, soundless lightning. Soundless ship. No growl of energy. The ship descended in silent display and the only sound that Villiers could hear was the sound of Christian bells.

Slyne fitted his amplifier over his head the better to consider the ship. He still could not hear it, though his view of it was substantially improved. However, the bells were amplified sufficiently to cause him extreme agitation, so he removed the amplifier again.

“I keep having to take it off,” he said. “I’m so disturbed. I can’t concentrate. Why does the ship make no sound? Why do the bells ring?”

Villiers said, “I believe the neighborhood has acoustical advantages which are reflected in the rents. The bells ring in Christian celebration.”

“It’s strange. It’s strange,” said Slyne. “I’ve never been in a place like this before. What can’t happen to me?”

He meant to say “McBe” but he said “me.” It shocked him, because he considered himself safe and stable and in control. It was his fortune that he had never been on Livermore, far more disconcerting than Delbalso.

He took himself in hand to hear Villiers say, “Perhaps being separated from you will be the very making of him, sir. He may discover that he has resources.”

”Oh, he’s not ready,” said Slyne. “I only realize it now. We were close behind that Trog, ready to take him in hand and properly examine his papers. You remember the Trog.”

”I do remember.”

”You haven’t seen him again, have you?”

”No,” said Villiers. “Not since I departed Castle Rock.”

“We were very close to the Trog when another ship landed. Then it was bells. Then we fell into the hands of Monists. Them,” he said bleakly.

And he was right. They were in the process of being surrounded by a band in yellow. Monists, to be sure. And Schermerhorn House. And …

“Rafael Abdelnoor, at your service.” Abdelnoor swept off his hat. Only then did he recognize Slyne, and he sighed and turned to Villiers and put his hat back on.

“I’m not playing,” said Slyne.

“I know that you are not,” said Abdelnoor. “Sir, are you?”

“Of course,” said Villiers.

“Then I should inform you that you have been chosen our official Marvel for the night. Please come along.”

“You wish me to be your Marvel? I’m sure you must be able to do better.”

“True,” said Abdelnoor. “But it’s growing late. Sometimes we must make do.”

The amoeba only knows as much of the universe as it can touch, and its direct image of the world is necessarily incomplete. But generation to generation the amoeba remembers what it has touched, and builds and builds its picture.

We know at first hand a bountiful universe beyond the amoeba’s dreams. We are the amoeba’s dreams, the result of its striving to know more of the universe. And generation to generation, we remember what we have touched, and build and build our picture.

When man first started counting, he thought he had five senses: hearing, sight, taste, smell, and touch. On a recount he discovered that subsumed under touch were at least three senses, separate and distinct—pressure, temperature, and texture—and that subsumed under taste were at least two.

He kept counting, and added the vestibular and kinesthetic senses. And the so-called Synesthetic Gearbox, which added confusion to sense.

One count totaled twenty-six, and another thirty-two. The definitive study by DeJudicibus in 1107 listed seventeen common human senses, from sight and smell to esthetics and self-awareness, and twenty more senses as rare, indistinct, or only rumored.

The seventeen basic senses appear in every combination and degree in humans, the variance accounting for so many of our everyday differences in opinion. Any one sense may be strengthened to impressive limits by attention, experience and practice. But even all seventeen senses at their limit yield an imperfect picture of the universe. Subtle harmonies lie beyond our detection. The stars sing songs no man has ever heard.

However, if man doesn’t hear the songs the stars sing, there are those that do. The Bessain, for instance, have been engaged in an eon-long conversation with their star to claimed mutual benefit.

And we have our strengths. Our senses are more than receptors. They acknowledge the presence of other sensitive concentrations of energy. Without sight—and our appreciation—the stars would not shine.

The Bessain report their star is delighted that its theoretical efforts are appreciated. So ask not for whom the stars shine. They shine for thee, and they are glad to do it.

Harbourne Firnhaber was a convinced Realist. He believed so strongly that words were things that he expected to feel significantly different and better on that day on which he somehow fulfilled his ambition and came into possession of a title. And it was as a Realist, cowed by the size and shape of the word “Monist,” that he stood outside Joralemon House nerving himself to knock. It was the single-minded unity of the word that he believed and feared. He felt dwarfed by it.

After a time, however, his ambitions got the better of his disquiet, and he tested the door. He sounded it twice, with every evidence of firm conviction.

The door was opened by a warder in the blue of Joralemon. It matched the flag over the door and the purfling on Ossian Chimmeroon’s gabardine.

“Good evening, sir,” the warder said. “How may I help you?”

“I bear an invitation from Lord Semichastny,” said Harbourne, and made his explanations. He spoke plausibly and winningly. “And he wishes the entire … household here to make the most of his hospitality.”

“Why, that’s very generous,” said the warder. “Come right in. Did you say Lord Semichastny?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Harbourne.

“Lord Semichastny. Well, well. I never thought of him as a generous man.”

“Oh, he’s a very generous man. He is known widely for his generosity to orphans. And he has treated me as though I were a member of his own family. I’m confident that you’ll have a good time.”

With the door closed behind Harbourne, the warder said, “I’ll have your invitation put to the House. I almost wish I didn’t have the honor of duty. I’d like to go myself.”

Harbourne was pleased by the warder’s friendliness. He could feel the tension leaving his tightly bound stomach muscles.

“By all means, find a substitute and come,” Harbourne said.

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” the warder said. He showed Harbourne to a chair and handed him several brochures describing both the Monists and their philosophy and the special attractions of membership in Joralemon House. “You might read these to while the time.”

Harbourne did thumb the brochures, but found the illustrations unexciting and the textual argument uncompelling. He studied the parquetry floor until the warder returned. Then he stood.

“Yes,” he said.

The warder was apologetic. “I just came on duty,” he said. “I’m sorry to say that it escaped my notice, but tonight as it happens is Xochitl Sodality. It’s their night. No one else feels much like going out.”

“You asked them?”

“Oh, yes. I asked anyway and everyone said they didn’t think so. I was told to say thank you on behalf of everyone. Do keep us in mind for another time.”

“I understand,” said Harbourne, who did not understand.

“By the way,” said the warder. “What did you think of the brochures? The literature I gave you?”

Harbourne looked down at the brochures he still held in his left hand.

“Very interesting,” he said. And under the warder’s eye he put the brochures in his coat. He felt he had to do it.

It was around the hub of the night in the streets of Delbalso when a consolidated party of the Greens of Pierrepont, agreed on their Trog Marvel, met a much smaller party of the Blues of Joralemon, with no Marvel or Wonder at all. It was a party of three led by young—for the Xochitl Sodality—Badrian Beaufils, the same party from Joralemon encountered by Villiers earlier in the night.

And the Greens called out “Aha,” and made a point of showing their Wonder. They didn’t care. They felt secure.

And the Blues hung their heads, because they did care and they had no Marvel and the night was passing.

Standing amidst the original quartet who had co-opted him, and further surrounded by succeeding additions of Pierrepont Sodality members, Torve’s view of the world had been limited. But when the Joralemon Blues were encountered, the surrounding herd split wide to display Torve. And in that moment he saw Badrian Beaufils and recognized him.

And in that moment, Badrian Beaufils lifted his hung head to view the Greens’ Marvel. And he recognized the pen pal of whom Villiers had spoken earlier in the night. Torve the Trog was not only on Delbalso, he washere .

They bounded toward each other to the sweet accompaniment of hearty happy Christian bells and huzzahs from some in both Green and Blue, and they embraced.

“Hey,” cried Cohen, Newman, Zimmerman, and Rose. “That’sour Marvel!” And they believed he was.

When Badrian Beaufils understood, he was not happy. “Well, if Ossian Chimmeroon was bringing him to me, I don’t think you ought to have him. He’s my pen pal, after all.”

“Ah, but we saw him first as a Marvel,” said the four. “And Ossian Chimmeroon is no longer in the Xochitl Sodality.”

“What is problem?” Torve inquired of his friend. “World has many Wonders.” In the afterglow of bells he said, “There is Christian. Why not him?”

“A Christian?” said Badrian Beaufils. “What is marvelous about that?”

But one of his fellows said, “It’s not a bad suggestion, Badrian. The hour is growing late and for our presumption in setting out as only three we ought to return with something.”

“All right,” said Beaufils.

“We’ll watch,” said one of the Greens.

“Yes,” said Rose, feeling expansive with the issue won. “We’ll give you encouragement.”

They traveled in a large party up the streets to the Christian’s house. It was fronted by the blank face of his bell tower. There was an arched gate and a court within, but the gate was closed.

“Christians,” said Beaufils, looking at the closed gate. “They’re too exclusive. You notice there isn’t even a bell to signal the house.”

They milled about the street in front of the gate. Even if there had been a way to signal the house, it seemed that the Christian’s attention was on his chimes. They were ringing again.

“Is holiday, I think,” said Torve. He counted on four fingers three times. “Yes, is Twelfthtide. Old Christian day of holly. See you?” He held up his four fingers three times. “Is twelve.”

He called to his friends Zimmerman, Newman, Cohen, and Rose: “Do you know Epiphany song, ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’?”

“No,” they said. But they liked to sing in front of their fellows, so while the bells were ringing above them, Torve taught them the song—which, after all, has a simple tune and repetitive lyrics. They worked on their parts until the bells ceased and then they sang the song.

Torve’s memory of the words was imperfect, but the principle was clear, and he was followed by Rose, Zimmerman, Newman, and Cohen, and they by the rest of the Xochitl Sodality.

By the third “partridge in a pear tree” they had a visible witness in the bell tower. They persevered to the end of the song, however. And the man in the tower applauded.

Then Torve called up, “Hello. Is Wonders and Marvels night. Do you want to be a Marvel?”

“Me?” the man said. “You want me to be a Marvel? I never thought that would ever happen. Me a Marvel? How splendid. I’ll be right down to let you in.”

He came down and opened the gate. “Come in,” he said and Torve and all the Blues and Greens entered the courtyard. He was a ruddy little man and he said his name was Dodd.

“And I’m Badrian Beaufils. You’ll be our Wonder. We’re with Joralemon House. These other men are from Pierrepont.”

“My side is Joralemon?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you sure you mean me?”

“Oh, yes,” said Badrian Beaufils, feeling that an apology was owed. Then he offered, “I’ve always enjoyed your bells.”

“You have?” said Dodd. “I wasn’t sure that anyone listened. You really do?”

Several Sodality members, both Blues and Greens, assured him that they did. Dodd was delighted.

“Er, you are our first Christian,” said Badrian Beaufils. “Can you tell us your points of strength so that we can offer the best possible presentation?”

“Oh, but I’m not a Christian,” Dodd said.

“You’re not?”

“Oh, no. Not really. I’m a Christian historian. I don’t believe. I just keep track of things. Would you like to see my collection?”

They all agreed that they would, and Mr. Dodd took them inside. He apologized for the condition of things. The condition of things was largely piles. He got shipments of material all the time and never had it completely sorted.

He served them tea and biscuits while they looked. There were piles of surplices and wimples. There were candles and missals, collections plates, beads, lunules, censers, thuribles, aspergillums, and ciboria. The Xochitl Sodality found it a whole new world.

Then he took them to see his personal display. This room was much neater. He had a ring that had belonged to Pope Leo VIII, whose pontificate was disputed. He had a comparative wall chart of tonsure patterns. He had a religious scroll containing an apocryphal Christian gospel with an authenticated history all the way back to the beginning of the Common Era, and sufficient age to place its origin at the beginning of the era preceding. He had a putative piece of the True Cross, also of the proper age, and with a thousand years more documentation than the scroll.

“Is fascinating,” said Torve the Trog.

Before they were done viewing, Rose drew Badrian Beaufils aside and asked if he might not consider trading Wonders. He was thinking how effectively Dodd and his collection could be presented by a quartet singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” He didn’t even pause to consider from whom he had learned the song. Badrian Beaufils quite rightly turned him down out of loyalty to his friend Torve.

“I was expecting you at peelgrunt,” said Jules Parini.

“I was unavoidably detained, sir,” said Villiers. “I hope you weren’t inconvenienced.”

“Come in off the doorstep. We were at breakfast. Would you care to join us?”

“Thank you, no,” said Villiers. “I’ve eaten. Have the papers arrived?”

Parini said, “No, I’m sorry. The mails haven’t been delivered. I expect them at any moment. My sources tell me the delay may be due to some local Monist shenanigans. I was beginning to fear that you might have fallen into their hands.”

“As in fact I did,” said Villiers.

“Oh, that’s terrible.”

“Not really,” said Villiers. “I have no objection to Monists. They have an extremely good idea, but they are too single-minded about it. I won free quite honestly by touting my captors onto two willing astrologers whom all agree are far more marvelous than I—and more interested in the game. I did promise to attend the judging, if I find it possible.”

“Although I don’t have your papers,” said Parini, I do have news for you. I have the name of your assassin’s employer. Do you still have interest in it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What was the figure we were speaking of?”

“The figure we were speaking of was twenty royals. However, sir, I have to tell you that the money was not where I expected to find it.”

“No?” Parini said suspiciously. He was not certain whether Villiers was bargaining with him, flighting him or speaking honestly.

“No. I lack the price of your information—unless you would apply my credit with you toward this assassin’s name. Are you sure the papers are on their way?”

“I am.”

“Then that presents a problem,” said Villiers. “I am a good deal less certain of ever coming together with my money.”

“Are you bargaining?” Parini asked. “You should realize that there is small room for bargain.”

“I recognize your price,” said Villiers. “I simply cannot presently meet it. Do you have immediate need for money?”

Parini was embarrassed by the question. He enjoyed boasting of the tuition payments at Miss McBurney’s as though they made small difference to his pocket. To admit of a need for money was painful, but still the prospect of a sojourn under the Winter-Summer Laws was even more painful to consider.

“Some small need,” Parini said. “Can you give me a draft, perhaps?”

This showed his incipient desperation. He didn’t usually speak of drafts to people who had dealt with him before and had some notion of what he did with drafts.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Parini,” said Villiers. “My only asset is an empty and undeveloped planet I have by bequest and could not bear to part with. All the rest is prospects and largesse, and the largesse is beyond my reach. However let me consider. Are you familiar with my uncle, Lord Semichastny?”

“Is he your uncle? I wasn’t aware that you were quite that prominently connected, Mr. Villiers.”

“Didn’t Zvegintzov tell you that? Yes, Lord Semichastny is my uncle. He has scheduled to give a party tonight, which, because of the interference of the Winter-Summer Laws, I suspect will not take place. He has as much as said that my money will be produced if I attend his masquerade.”

“I hadn’t heard of it,” said Parini. “My sources seem to have failed me.”

“He has need of guests and does not care particularly who they might be. On his behalf, I invite you and Mrs. Parini to the masque. Make what profit you can of the invitation.”

Parini’s feelings were mixed. He had passed as the offspring of a marquis to enter his daughter at Miss McBurney’s, but he preferred to operate at a lower and more comfortable level of society.

Villiers said, “As for me, I shall drum up the company for my uncle’s party, since he seems determined to have one.”

“And you will then pay me twenty royals for the name?”

Villiers said, “No. I have no great confidence in my uncle’s ‘as-much-as-saids.’ I can guarantee you nothing. Merely, I want the name and you need money. If we are to have a party, let it be one we can both enjoy.”

“Are you proposing partnership? Do I understand you?” said Parini.

“I’m suggesting mutual effort—you for your profit, I for mine.”

“A speculative venture?”

“A speculative venture. And if you should visit Lord Semichastny’s study to admire his ornamental rugs, you might have a look around for a draft to my name by the Duke of Tremont-Michaud.”

”I believe I understand,” said Parini.

They discussed the matter for some few more minutes and came to agreement. When Villiers had left, Parini returned to his breakfast.

The first thing he said to his wife was, “Villiers has changed. Five years ago he would have insisted on having the assassin’s name.”

“No money?” she said.

”No money,” he said. “I’m still to give him the papers when they come. We are to meet at Lord Semichastny’s country home. Where is Annie?”

Her place at the table was empty, the result of an altercation terminated by authority.

Mrs. Parini said, “I sent her to her room. She saidpoggar andhobyah andbeng . I wish you would speak to her about it.”

”I will,” said her husband. “However, for now put on your best cherry-picking clothes. We are going to a party to raise money.”

The stars rolled apple-down-dilly in their courses overhead, painting tracks of white-gold across enfolding blackness. The night breath was sweet and heart-pounding. Sir Henry the Trog hopped through the streets of the town, minddancing with crystal cocoons, heartsprung.

He felt himself to be a Trog. He believed himself to be a Trog. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t want it to end.

He saw the world as he was sure a Trog must see it. Sharper. Clearer. In focus for the first time. It was a joy to run and hop and dance, to look and see things for the first time from a new angle. Close one eye. Close the other eye. Blink. Blink. And one world from two angles. Oh, so new, so rare.

The night was a frabjous treat.

Sir Henry the Trog, Sir Henry the Trog,hallah, hallah, hallah.

He had misplaced Lady Oliphaunt, but he hardly cared. Far more important, he had misplaced Sir Henry Oliphaunt and he was enjoying himself completely for perhaps the first time. Yes, yes, yes.

He exulted, caught in the grip of a major miracle.

But then his reverie was interrupted by someone thin and brown and dressed in Imperial Service uniform. The uniform of an Assistant.

It was Jerzy McBe, caught in the grip of his own miracle. His miracle was that he was still functioning and doing his earnest best to do his duty, and it was a minor miracle.

The usual rule in any conflict is that the minor miracle should give right-of-way to the major, but Jerzy McBe’s miracle did not extend to the recognition that was Sir Henry’s due. McBe functioned—he didn’t think.

He said, after clearing his throat, “Halt, there. Hold, Trog. I wish to see your papers.” He raised his hand.

He wondered if it would make its throbbing noise again. He took absolutely no notice of a change in color from mostly-brown and white to the silks of an agrarian gentleman in gray and olive. Mere details. He had the principle of examining the papers of Trogs down by heart and he was as convinced as Sir Henry.

And soon he was more.

“I have no papers,” said Sir Henry.

“Aha, then I have caught you. Let me formally take you into custody.” McBe did not know the pertinent regulations, but he knew there were some, for he had been told.

“But I don’t need papers,” Sir Henry said, regaining some of Sir Henry Oliphaunt. “I’m the new Empire Administrator here on Delbalso. Straighten up there, young man, and show me some respect.”

“A Trog appointed Empire Administrator? I don’t believe it. They wouldn’t do that.”

Sir Henry said, “I am not a Trog. I am Sir Henry Oliphaunt. I am wearing a costume for a masquerade. Do you like it?”

McBe said, “Well, no, sir. It makes me uncomfortable. Are you sure you aren’t a Trog? You look like a Trog to me.”

There were differences for the trained eye, but not to the eye of Jerzy McBe. It looked like a Trog to him. He kept ducking his head back from it in nervous impulse.

“No, I am the Empire Administrator.” With emphasis, he said, “It can be quickly checked, Assistant.”

“Yes, sir,” said McBe. “But couldn’t you take off your costume and show yourself to me?”

“No!” said Sir Henry the Trog. He was not ready to come out. Not yet. Not with the new angles, the new sharp perspectives, the patterns yet to see.

McBe began to insist, and the harder he insisted the harder Sir Henry resisted. And the more Sir Henry resisted, the more determined McBe was to insist.

It was a conflict in miracles, McBe given energy by his, and Sir Henry determined to defend his new view of the world at all cost. The narrower McBe’s concentration, the better he functioned, and he narrowed his universe to the Trog. He brought out a restraint and began to maneuver to fasten it to the arm of the random Trog. Now that he had decided that it definitely must be the same old Trog up to its tricks, he was angry with it for having the nerve to suggest that it was anything so exalted as an Empire Administrator.

Sir Henry’s major miracle was more fragile and could not stand exposure. He would not come out and he would not be restrained. So he backed away and wondered what noise he should make—whether he should growl, bark, or roar.

“Give me your arm—that’s a good Trog! Mind, now!”

Tentatively, Sir Henry said,“Rrrrf … Arf. Grr.” Then, loud and quite frightening:“Rowr! Rowr!” It was not what a genuine Trog would have said, particularly not an agrarian gentleman, but it took McBe aback.

He began to circle in again. Sir Henry padded back. Sir Henry was saved by the advent of a troop of Xochitl Sodality members in the Red of Montague. “Look,” said one. “Just look.”

And another said, “Take back the matched set of peels.”

“But they grunt harmoniously.”

“No matter. We have a new Wonder.”

McBe sighed. He almost cried. And he was suddenly aware that his schedule was sadly awry and that he needed the use of a toilet again.

Sir Henry the Trog felt Wonderful. He felt truly Marvelous. Sir Henry the Trog.

“I am your Trog,” he said.

Holidays are no pleasure for anyone but children, and they are a pleasure for children only because they seem new. Holidays are no pleasure to those who schedule them. Holidays are for people who need to be formally reminded to have a good time and believe it is safer to warm up an old successful party than to chance the untried. And they sigh in relief when the ordeal is done.

And we sigh at the stale fare we are served in the name of pleasure. And the children sigh, too, the fifth or sixth time the holiday comes round.

Holidays purportedly give excuse for joy and celebration—but so does every day. Harvest, solstice, the birth of a baby. Any day offers excuse. Sir Henry Oliphaunt would tell you so. Sir Henry the Trog.

The best parties in the world are unscheduled, unheralded, unrehearsed events. And the best of the best, of course, are the sort co-opted by holidaymakers.

It is the fate of holidays when they grow old to be celebrated only by historians. And the historians are kept busy because every day has been someone’s holiday. Every day offers excuse for ecstasy. And the historians remain at their posts performing their ritual celebrations until they are called outside by song.

Lady Oliphaunt did not notice that the teeth of Ozu Xenakis were unattractively large, as Xenakis could not help but be aware. He wondered again whether he should have something done about them.

“It’s no use your asking again,” he said. “Your Mr. Villiers said be would be back in time to watch the Wonders and Marvels judging and that’s all I know.”

“But I’ve beenwaiting ,” she said. She came near to crying to demonstrate her distress, but decided not to on the ground that good effects should be used conservatively.

TheCentre had more trade than earlier and Xenakis now had help. As Wonders and Marvels time approached, a few of the local curious with a taste for vulgar entertainment were beginning to stir. Those with money tended toward theCentre . And those without were beginning to think of finding places to watch underneath the peeltrees.

Xenakis did not mind speaking on someone else’s subject—if business was not too pressing—but the subject of waiting was one he felt had had its hour. Lady Oliphaunt was paying for the use of his Private Rooms—in fact one room, not large, but with an excellent view of the green. This entitled her to his time and attention. Still he felt that men’s subjects were more concrete and less emotional, and hence altogether more worthy.

“I’m sure he will be here soon, milady,” he said. “I’ll send him in directly as soon as he arrives.”

He made to go, hoping she might not ring again. And if she did ring again, he hoped it might be to discuss a new topic. Something he could discover thoughts about. But she said hold.

“As long as I’m waiting,” she said, “bring me a glass of hypon. And a dish of sugar-grass. Oh, and perhaps a few slices of ham. And maybe a piece of fruitcake. Do you have fruitcake?”

Xenakis said, “Yes, indeed. Would you like our domestic sugar-grass or sugar-grass imported from Moro?”

“Morovian sugar-grass,” she said. “Of course.”

“Yes, milady,” he said. At the door he said, “The fruitcake is made with domestic fruit.”

“That’s all right,” Lady Oliphaunt said.

Xenakis punched her order and picked up a waiting plate of blue cheese toasted on muffins. The plate was heaped with muffins. The white of the cheese had melted away leaving the blue tubular veins standing in a destructed landscape. Xenakis thought it looked hideous and deadly, but it was what the Orthodoxou in I.S. uniform had ordered.

Slyne was sufficiently upset to have set his sensory amplifier aside. He sat alone at a table equidistant from the windows and the door and the stimulations of the night. He was surprised and shocked by his collapse. It wasn’t at all like him. At least, it had never happened before. He would have tolerated it in no one else, and tolerated it in himself only because he had to. But he did not enjoy the discovery of new weakness.

He found himself wondering about McBe and forced his thoughts away. He turned away from the sensory amplifier. Even to see it was a strain on his overburdened senses.

He had come into theCentre to rest and calm his racing heart, but on the off-chance that part of his emotional state was due to hunger, he had ordered a simple favorite.

Without his sensory amplifier Slyne was revealed as harmonious if not overtly attractive. His head, as the rest of him, was covered with close black velvet. His eyes were surrounded by pink wrinkles. You might not think him pretty, but you could think him a pretty good Orthodoxou.

Slyne looked up only when his muffins-and-cheese were set before him. With his sensory amplifier in place he would have known much sooner. He ate every last muffin and found indeed they had a calming effect, but he still did not trust himself enough to don the amplifier. Instead he called Xenakis to the table.

“Have you seen any other Imperial Service personnel tonight?”

There! A solid subject. Something to talk and think about.

Xenakis said, “There were a couple of pantographers in here earlier tonight, but they got themselves taken on as Wonders and they’re out playing.”

“Pantographers? But I know them,” said Slyne. “They’re not Wonders.”

“I thought not myself at first,” said Xenakis. “They wanted to join, but they didn’t seem like Wonders. I’ve seen a fair number of Marvels pass under my windows, you know. But, then, goodness, the way they showed how the stars influence us here on Delbalso was amazing. Did you know that Delbalso is a unique place?”

As is every planet. But Delbalso was unique in its own particular fashion, and Xenakis did honestly find that Marvelous.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they finished well,” said Xenakis.

“Have you seen anyone in uniform?”

“No one but you.”

“Oh. By any chance, have you seen a Trog?”

“I never have. Have you?”

”Oh, yes,” said Slyne. “There is a Trog on Delbalso now and I have every intention of checking his papers.”

”Well,” said Xenakis, “I would suggest that you stay right here. The Xochitl Sodality will be gathering shortly on the green, and if there is a Trog on Delbalso, he’s likely to be taken for a Marvel.”

”Do you think so?” asked Slyne. But upon consideration he found that even he thought so. Possibly. “They gather soon?”

“Soon,” said Xenakis.

”In that case, I’ll have another plate of muffins,” said Slyne. “And melt the cheese until the veins stick out.”

The gathering of Xochitl Sodality was, in fact, to be soon. Xenakis had developed a fine sense for the rhythms of a Wonders and Marvels night in exactly the same manner as his uncanny knack for weather prediction based on the timbre of peelgrunt. It was a matter of experience.

Each House had its own preliminary gathering and selected its one best choice from the collected possibilities. Badrian Beaufils, as the man responsible for Joralemon House’s Wonder, was named Official Locutor and he met with the Locutors from the other Houses. And it was only here and only at last that he was found by Ossian Chimmeroon.

”Ah, there, Friend Chimmeroon,” said Badrian Beaufils. “Sit down on the bench. Have you come to watch the Wonders and Marvels judging?”

”I came out originally to bring you your friend Torve the Trog—and what a marvelous Wonder he would have made! But he was taken away out of hand by a bunch from Pierrepont. They draw no lines when it comes to winning.”

”Oh, I’ve seen Torve,” said Beaufils. “It’s all right. We have a Marvel—now, let me tell you …”

But he was interrupted and called to join the conference of Official Locutors.

”Sit down,” he said to Chimmeroon. “Sit down. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He left Ossian Chimmeroon sitting on his bench recovering his breath and his poise. And he was back in a minute.

”Ossian,” he said, “as long as you aren’t doing anything, would you run up to theCentre and find us some judges? And Ossian, pick some new faces. Let’s not have Ozu Xenakis as a judge again.”

”But he counts on it,” said Chimmeroon. “It’s the only reason he works on a Sodality night.”

”Have you noticed that he favors Pierrepont Green?”

”All right,” said Chimmeroon. “But only if I can give the Invocation.”

Lady Oliphaunt had eaten her imported sugar-grass and was half done with her domestic fruitcake when Villiers entered theCentre’s Private Rooms.

“At last!” she said. “Tony, where have you been?”

There was a certain sharpness in her voice, token no doubt of five years of being Lady Oliphaunt. She had never been patient, but before her marriage she had not been given to sharpness.

”My apologies, Amita. I’ve had conflicting demands on my attention or I should certainly have been here sooner.”

“But I’ve beenworried ,” she said, taking a bite of fruitcake. Around the fruitcake she said, “I was beginning to think of all the terrible things that might have happened to you, and I was just frantic.”

“Did Sir Henry accompany you to town, or is he yet at my uncle’s?”

“Oh, let’s not talk about Sir Henry,” she said. “I’ve left him. He wasdancing in the streets in that horrid costume and I turned the comer and he didn’t even notice because I peeked back and he didn’t evennotice and I’ve left him. Tony, have some fruitcake?”

She said it hopefully and Villiers was polite enough not to reject offers of hospitality, at least those consonant with principle.

“Thank you,” he said.

He stood as Lady Oliphaunt cut him a piece and when he reached for it she could not help but notice that the tip of his left little finger was missing. She exclaimed in surprise, waving the knife and threatening to separate larger pieces of anatomy.

“Oh!” she said. “Tony—you’ve hurt your finger.” She then failed delicately, at least by indication.

“Yes,” he said, “but not recently.” He ate cake from his right hand and considered his left little finger as a unique object. It was more than Individuality and less than a Curiosity. It was an Object for Conversation.

“It happened in my last encounter with Livermore. The tip of my finger was exacted as a sacrifice to a beast-god in the name of wisdom.”

It was the sort of thing that Lady Oliphaunt could easily imagine happening on Livermore, for, after all, she had been married there. On the other hand, while her life had been free, it had never been kinky, and there were some unnatural practices of which she was not sure she could honestly approve.

“Did you cooperate?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” said Villiers. “It was all lightning happenstance.”

He had been caught in a circle not of his own drawing and lost a little flesh, blood, fingernail, and bone in clashing gears. But a nipped fingertip for wisdom is not a bad bargain. The established price is an eye.

“Oh,” Lady Oliphaunt said with some relief. “That’s fortunate. Tony, will you take me away from Delbalso?”

“If you mean will I escort you, of course I would be pleased,” Villiers said. “It would be an honor, Lady Oliphaunt. But I feel I should warn you of a few things. Have you the money for your passage?”

“Well …” she said.

“As it happens,” he said, “I do not.”

“But,” she said, “you’re using a title now.”

”Titles and money are independent variables. In fact, I seem to presume most upon my title when money is shortest.”

“I do have some pin money,” she said. “I suppose I can pay for passage.”

“Ah, but the warning. A friend would travel with us.”

Amita Oliphaunt set down the last of her fruitcake in a convult of suspicion.

“And who would your friend be?” she asked. “Do you have somepetite amie with you?”

Inquiry after friends was a characteristic of hers that Villiers remembered well. One of her principal complaints about her husband was that he had so few active friends of any sort. It was incongruous, too, in that she herself liked to keep her family and friends well separate.

“Nothing like that,” said Villiers. “This is the vegetarian friend I mentioned to you earlier.”

It seemed to her that she did remember him making vague mention of a vegetarian friend and she was somewhat mollified. She could imagine no threat in a vegetarian, even a female.

But then Villiers added, “But this friend is a Trog.”

”A Trog.”

“Yes, a Trog. I hesitated to tell you earlier for fear of upsetting you unnecessarily, but if you are to travel with us, you really ought to know. His name is Torve.”

“Do you mean this or are you joking? You really don’t want to take me. Isn’t that it?”

“Not at all,” said Villiers. “It will be my personal delight to escort you. I simply thought that I had best warn you of your company.”

She looked at him, as unable to decide as ever what was going on in his mind. Villiers looked friendly, intelligent, composed and reserved and he was beyond her.

“I’ll ask Harbourne Firnhaber to escort me,” she said.

“If you like. I suspect, however, that it might cost you more than the price of your passage. Harbourne has neither money nor a title.”

“Oh, yes,” she said and paused to reconsider.

And it was while she was reconsidering that there was urgent approach in the hall and the door was thrown open. Lord Semichastny stood, framed in the doorway, but not filling it. Behind him was Ozu Xenakis with a plate of muffins covered with blue cheese, toasted.

Xenakis said, “In there.”

Lady Oliphaunt said, “How …”

Villiers said, “Ah, Uncle …”

Uncle said, “Where is your husband?”

And he said, “Where is your costume, Lady Oliphaunt?”

And he said, “Where isyour costume, Nephew? You were to have one picked out.”

And he said, “I found another letter.”

Joralemon House effectively ended Harbourne Firnhaber’s hunt for Lord Semichastny’s motley crowd. While he was waiting at Joralemon House the suspicion that Lord Semichastny’s recommendation, valuable as it might be, was not worth his present eternal achronic state of wretchedness, blitzed briefly in his mind, leaving behind a glowing question. After Joralemon House, his steps slowed and he began to engage in earnest converse with himself. After Joralemon House, be began to think of quitting.

He stopped knocking on doors. He shouted on no streetcorners. And he decided at last not even to raise the subject of parties unless someone were to ask.

From perfunctory, his efforts became nominal. He simply walked the streets thinking vaguely of what he was supposed to be doing and feeling inadequate to do it. Then from nominal his efforts became nonexistent.

He sat down on a public seat by the side of the road and said, flatly and definitely, “I quit.” And he found relief in the admission. His anxiety departed and he began to try to set his excuses in order:

He had tried.

He hadn’t been able to find anyone. He hadn’t known where to look.

He had looked, but it was dark.

Nobody had wanted to come. He had asked, butevery single person he had met had turned him down.

It wasn’t his fault.

And after a time he had his case in hand and his anecdotes trimmed to fit. Only then did he check the time, and to his horror he saw that he had dawdled too long. It was fully, fully time for Lord Semichastny’s party.

He thought of his alternatives, and decided at last to have a drink.

It was some time before Jules and Miriam Parini set out for Lord Semichastny’s country maison. Their best cherry-picking clothes had been packed for travel, and they would not have even considered going to Lord Semichastny’s party in anything else.

Parini’s cherry-picking suit was his most stylish, the only suit he owned that could allow him to pass as something more than a rug salesman with social ambitions. It was the suit in which he had encountered the scrutiny of the interviewing alumna from Miss McBurney’s and passed inspection. He rated that as a heart-held triumph second only to the amount of tuition Miss McBurney allowed him to pay.

And not only were the clothes stylish, but they had a sufficiency of pockets, a detail modern tailors are prone to overlook.

Dressing Annie suitably in tight black took some time, too. There were on occasion little things for a little girl to do and Parini felt that it was not an auspicious time to find someone to watch her, so he dressed her in black and took her along.

Before they left, the mail from Duden came.

Annie reproved the mailman by saying,“Beng,” in severe tones.

“There,” said Mrs. Parini. But Parini thought that reproof was deserved and so he did not speak to his daughter.

Villiers took the letter that his uncle held. It had been opened, no doubt by oversight. It is extremely easy to open an envelope without checking the formal address. He looked at the letter only long enough to see that it was from Louisa Parini at Miss McBurney’s Justly Famous Seminary and Finishing School on Nashua, and put it away unread.

“Thank you,” said Villiers. “I believe that Sir Henry is still in his Trog costume and if I make no mistake, I think you can see him in a few minutes being judged as a Marvel on the green below.”

He waved to the windows.

“Well, you’ve certainly failed me, then, haven’t you?” asked Lord Semichastny. “Was this our understanding? Give me the letter back.”

Villiers said, “I believe you confuse me with Harbourne Firnhaber, sir. We have no agreements.”

“Oh, yes. Harbourne! Charteris, you are not serving my interests as you ought. If you expect me to locate this missing money of yours, you’ll go find Sir Henry and bring him back to the house for the party.”

Lady Oliphaunt laughed shortly. “Are you going to invite me to the party as well?”

“But of course you’re coming. I’ll have Charles find you a costume. You could try Semiramis Among the Doves.”

“It wouldn’t suit me,” she said.

Villiers said, “However, Uncle, I do have a suggestion. A considerable number of people are shortly to meet on the green, including Sir Henry. Bring your party here.”

“Bring what? Bring the party … I don’t like it. Let the people come to me.”

“An excellent policy,” said Villiers. “The question is whether they will come.”

Lord Semichastny began to pace and growl. He said, “No,” under his breath and he slammed a toe into the wall. He swung around and looked angrily at Villiers. He was more successful in intimidating Lady Oliphaunt, who had developed a certain shyness of him.

He said, “But it isn’t right. They’reMonists .”

Villiers said, “I’ve heard both you and them spoken well of in all but the same breath.”

“By whom?”

“By our host, Mr. Xenakis.”

“He doesn’t know me very well,” Lord Semichastny said. “Did he really?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“What did he say about me?”

At that point, Villiers knew he had the argument won. The argument was clinched when there was a light rap on the door. Villiers opened to Xenakis.

“Ah,” Villiers said, but Lord Semichastny did not take advantage of this opportunity to ask Xenakis his opinion directly, though Xenakis would have given it. Lord Semichastny had his opportunity for direct communication and let it pass by. No wonder he was considered difficult.

Xenakis said, “Mr. Chimmeroon from the Xochitl Sodality is here. He wants some judges for the Wonders and Marvels contest.” Xenakis was greatly disappointed not to be wanted as a judge himself, but was carrying on well.

“How many does he need?” Lord Semichastny asked.

“Three,” said Xenakis. “Was I right to ask?”

At the door of the house, Jerzy McBe nodded his thanks to the nice lady. He had knocked seeking relief, and found not only relief but refreshment. She had offered him jellyroll, but he had turned it down in favor of cookies and sympathy. He had not expected hospitality and understanding, and ordinarily would not have been aware of them, but on this particular night he was receptive to an offer of cookies and sympathy. He didn’t care much for jellyroll.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “This has been a welcome hour. If you are ever up at the Castle, come through my line.”

“Can’t you stay?” she said.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I’ve got a job to do.”

The power of cookies and sympathy as a restorative has too long been underestimated. McBe set out again in Trog pursuit.

The Xochitl Sodality in ones and twos and threes, in green and red and yellow, strolled in a passing parade down the street and then down the stairway to the park and the green. Harbourne Firnhaber stood on the steps leading up to theCentre and watched the middle-aged men pass.

Harbourne had the impulse to call down and ask them if they wanted to go to a party, but he didn’t. Instead, he resented them for appearing now that his mind had been made up. He had his excuses in very good order, such as they were. But then he wondered if these strange men might not be fitted into his story. The Xochitl Sodality. But as villains or as humor?

He turned and took the stairs, feeling very much in need of his drink. He reached for the door only to have it open in front of him.

It was Lord Semichastny. Behind him were Lord Charteris and Lady Oliphaunt.

The encounter was completely unexpected by Harbourne Firnhaber. His heart beat wildly and he was swept with a wave of cold. He felt discovered.

“There you are, Nephew,” said Lord Semichastny. “Be a good boy, Harbourne, and run out to the house and bring my party to the green. I’ll have Charles and all the serving mechanicals. And make a point of bringing some melons.”

Nothing is immortal, not even the universe. Nothing is immortal but change. And change means mortality. Mortality is the one central fact with which every self-aware being must deal. It is every man for himself in the wrestle with death.

The most presumptuous thing to ask of any mortal being is to wait. There are none so visibly involved with death as those condemned to wait.

Those who wait squander their little time, and they know it. They wait for change, change of any sort, for change is hope of life.

Charles the Butler told of the fate of the old man. He was eaten. He told of the fate of the old woman. She was eaten. He told of what happened to the little household robot. She was carried off, but eventually she was rescued.

And poor little dog Turpie.

The thrust of justice and fate in the story was so overwhelming that the gathered mechanicals were struck dumb with pity and terror. In the hush that followed the story, the growing sound of a flitter could be heard. The mechanicals shivered and their gears clenched.

”Be calm,” said Charles. “Be calm. It’s time for the party.” He straightened his tarboosh and bade them all stay. He rolled to the front door and waited there beside the glass urn filled with flower petals, purple, white, yellow, and pink. At last the door opened and Harbourne Firnhaber entered. Charles dipped out double handfuls of flower petals and strewed them in the air.

”Welcome,” he said. “Welcome.”

While Harbourne Firnhaber was down in Lord Semichastny’s cold cellar picking out a variety of his best melons, Charles gave instructions to the serving table that was to be left in charge when all the other mobile mechanicals had gone.

“But I’d like to go, too,” the serving table said.

“Someone has to stay. Someone has to be in charge.”

“I was counting on serving tonight. This is my most attractive set of attachments.” “I know,” said Charles.

But when Harbourne Firnhaber and Charles and all the other mobile mechanicals, and all the food, music and celebration had been loaded, and all had departed the house, the serving table was left behind. It rolled disconsolately from room to room, feeling the size of its responsibility.

“Food,” it said plaintively. “Drink. Stimulants of all sorts. Canapé? Amygdala? Maybe a salt olive?” It raised its serving covers half-heartedly. But no one answered. The house was empty.

The serving table swept back and forth through the house. Responsible. Alone. And it sang: “ ‘The joys of future years are past, tomorrow’s hopes have fled away. Still, let us love, and e’en at last we shall be happy yesterday.’ ” But music provided no consolation. And then at last there was the sound of another flitter outside.

The serving table rolled to the door and waited. It did not dip double handfuls of flower petals because it lacked the capability with this set of attachments. And it waited for what seemed the longest time before the door sounded. The table tripped the door release.

Standing on the step were a middle-aged couple in formal dress and with them was a young female child dressed all in black.

“We were invited to a party here,” said the man.

The table said, “The party has been moved to town. It’s to take place on the public green as part of some Monist celebration.” “Oh,” said the man. But he made no move to go. Indeed, after a brief moment he waved the little girl and the woman forward.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the table, “but I can’t allow you inside. No, really, sir.” “We’ll only have a brief look around and be gone before you know it,” the man said inexorably.

The table protested. “My instructions are firm. You aren’t supposed to be within the house. I’m afraid I’ll have to put you out by force.” It realized that it lacked the right attachments, but it was determined. It circled them and tried to herd them back toward the open door. It nudged the little girl.

“Go on,” it said. “Go on.”

The little girl stepped back abruptly and reached for her mother’s skirts. “Mommy!” Her mother said, “Get away from her, you table.”

The man, hardly seeming to notice, shined his light around the entry hall of the maison. The woman shooed the table back. It circled, looking for advantage, and then rolled forward again.

The little girl dipped into the urn of flower petals and threw a handful at the table. “Hobyah! Hobyah!” she said.

The table fled, and who could wonder.

The woman said, “Do you see, Jules? Aren’t you ever going to say anything to her?”

The very best parties in all the world are unscheduled, unheralded, and unrehearsed.

The three judges sat in the middle of the green on a small one-step platform with Ossian Chimmeroon and the four Locutors. On each of the four sides of the green stood the four Houses in their colors, surrounding their Marvels like secrets.

Anthony Villiers sat at ease waiting for the judging to begin. He opened the letter that Lord Semichastny had handed him and read it for the first time; a quick scan and then he put it away.

Lord Semichastny, having made his decision, was determined to enjoy himself. He took quick little glances around. He talked to Lady Oliphaunt and took a sweet little pinch on her cheek. She took the opportunity shortly thereafter to switch her seat, but he did not notice because he was asking a question of Rafael Abdelnoor, the Locutor of Schermerhorn House.

Lady Oliphaunt was somewhat less quick to adjust to her role of judge. She wasn’t sure she cared to judge Trogs.

She looked around restlessly. She could see faces at the windows of theCentre and other people here and there among the trees under the swaying somnolent peels.

She said to Ossian Chimmeroon, “Don’t you mind being watched?”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” said Ossian Chimmeroon. “It’s one of the best ways we have for recruiting Monists.”

Lady Oliphaunt noticed Villiers’ quick look at the letter from Louisa Parini.

“And who was that from?” she asked.

“Another friend,” he said.

“Another Trog?”

“No,” he said. “A girl.”

She turned from him to Ossian Chimmeroon. She said in a careless voice, “Tell me, Mr. Chimmeroon. What do you think of our Princess-Gillian-to-be?”

It was a question for Ozu Xenakis, meaty and with lots of room for honest unconsidered opinion. As it happened, however, while Ossian Chimmeroon was not good at spur-of-the-moment opinion, this was a question to which he had given thought. The Emperor’s new daughter-in-law was a topic of interest even in Monist Houses.

“She doesn’t have much of a figure,” he said. “And her posture is bad. She slumps her shoulders and slouches her hips. But the report I have is that her voice is excellent.”

“It would have to be,” said Lady Oliphaunt.

“Excuse me, now,” said Ossian Chimmeroon. “It’s time for the Invocation.”

He stood and spread his arms. He called for silence and waved the Sodality closer, and they moved around him, their Marvels well-sequestered. It was the moment.

Invocation was the prerogative of a man of dignity like Ossian Chimmeroon, and he made the most of the opportunity. His voice rolled sonorously over the gathered heads. He used dignified fat phrases such as “judgment among the stars” and “this time-hallowed tradition” and “the pure simplicity of our way of life.” No one now could have said that he lacked manner.

He introduced the judges and they stood to their own round of applause. Lord Semichastny waved his hands over his head in acknowledgment. Lady Oliphaunt smiled politely, and nodded. Villiers smiled, too, and stood waiting quietly until the applause slackened, and then sat down.

The Houses had drawn lots for order of presentation, and Schermerhorn was first.

Chimmeroon motioned to Rafael Abdelnoor. “Go ahead, Friend Rafe,” he said. “Bring out Schermerhorn’s Marvel.”

Abdelnoor swept off his bonnet in signal to the men of Schermerhorn, and was given a few hoots for the gesture from the other Houses. Schermerhorn split open and there was their double marvel. The astrologers stepped forward. There was only light applause because their skills were subtle, not obvious.

Sotto voce, Lady Oliphaunt asked Villiers, “Where is Sir Henry?” She had spotted a Trog surrounded by green and thought it must be her husband, but she was not sure.

However, Villiers pointed behind them into the mass of the Red of Montague. She looked where he pointed and saw Sir Henry the Trog waiting his turn to be called as a Marvel, and it was only then that she completely believed Villiers. As much as she completely believed anyone,

Rafael Abdelnoor gave his astrologers a substantial build-up, and then they took over for themselves. They explained—in simple non-technical language suitable for middle-aged Sodality members—their computations and calculations for the Universal Pantograph Project. They told how they determined the influences of the stars. They added their private opinions—for, after all, they were pantographers only by profession. By avocation they were astrologers, and it meant that they had some special ideas of their own.

Like all pantographers. Like all astrologers.

All in all, they managed to show themselves as very clever fellows and to convince the onlookers that Delbalso was a most special and favored place out of all the places in the universe. At their conclusion they received applause that was distinctly enthusiastic.

“I really will hate to leave this planet after all these years,” Lord Semichastny remarked.

“It’s a Wonderful place,” said Ossian Chimmeroon. The astrologers were good enough to sway even him for the moment, because he agreed so heartily with their conclusions, but then it was the turn of Joralemon House and his sympathies quickly became properly reestablished.

“Joralemon House,” he said. “Badrian, here’s your opportunity.”

Badrian Beaufils gave a whoop and a holler and led Joralemon House in leading the Sodality and spectators in applause for Mr. Dodd, the Christian Historian. The applause was louder from the Sodality than the spectators, louder from Joralemon House than from the Sodality, and loudest of all from Badrian Beaufils.

“This one doesn’t look like much to me,” said Lord Semichastny, beginning to take an interest in his work. He sat up and waited skeptically for Dodd to prove himself Marvelous.

Lady Oliphaunt took advantage of the moments of Dodd’s approach in study of Tony Villiers’ friend the Trog. Brown, basically. He made her exceedingly nervous. He seemed to be staring back at her with great bulgy blue eyes. She looked away.

Dodd took the step up to the platform. He acknowledged the applause and thanked the crowd. Then he was properly introduced by Badrian Beaufils, and he did his level best to look modest.

“A Christian,” said Lady Oliphaunt, who disapproved of kinkiness.

“True, true,” said Zimmerman, the Locutor from Pierrepont, disparaging what he could not have. Everyone knows that the Christian beyond reach is sour.

But even Lord Semichastny had to admit that Dodd’s tonsure chart was truly Marvelous. And by the time Dodd had finished with the story of Epiphany and Twelfth Night, both chock-full of historical anecdote, Zimmerman was quivering with the suppressed urge to carol and Lady Oliphaunt was at least listening.

In the interstice between Marvels, Lord Semichastny said, “This is excellent good fun, Charteris. In my spare moments I’m trying to think where your money might have been misplaced. That is, of course, if it ever came.”

“To be sure,” said Villiers.

After the showing of his Marvel, Badrian Beaufils looked very pleased with himself. “All right, Montague. Have your turn,” he said.

Lady Oliphaunt turned to look at her husband. Sir Henry’s turn.

“And now we shall judge Trogs,” said Lady Oliphaunt.

“Oh, yes,” said Villiers. “The best saved until last.”

She said, “But, Tony, how can you travel with a Trog? How can you ever trust it not to turn on you?”

“He trusts me not to turn on him, and thus far we have both been fortunate. I used to be on similar terms with my stomach until we agreed to disagree.”

The discussion was ended by the anticipatory cheers for Sir Henry the Trog. The men of Montague opened a way for him to the platform, and there were ohs and ahs as well as cheers and applause. Sir Henry nodded and pranced toward the platform. He was self-evident. Introduction was not needed.

Montague’s Locutor smiled. Montague doubled the applause that Joralemon had mustered.

The only restraint was from Pierrepont Green. As Sir Henry jogged, shook his trotters, popped his eyes of pseudo-Trog-Blue, hopped and cavorted, they saw their own Trog Marvel—apparently one of a more phlegmatic temperament—fade into a paler copy. Some of them looked at Torve in near-accusation. The only satisfaction for Pierrepont was in foretasting the chagrin of the Reds of Montague. Even a dancing Trog is small change if everyone has one.

And all three judges had reservations. Even if the Sodality members of Pierrepont were unpracticed enough to see a rare, unique, and genuine Trog as a mere copy-Trog, and a copy-Trog as genuine, Villiers was one who knew the difference. Lord Semichastny only knew and believed in copy-Trogs. He had been one himself, so he necessarily held the crowd too easily swayed. Lady Oliphaunt’s reservations have already been presented.

But still—for a copy-Trog, Sir Henry was very persuasive. He had put his hours of night practice to good use in the service of felicity, facility, and fidelity. If he did not move to the platform with the certifiable pad of a true Trog, he did move with confidence and grace and, more important, he believed in himself. As the only Trog he knew, he could be the beau ideal of the Trog, and he fulfilled that beau ideal so well that he was sure he was a Trog.

Shakespeare, lacking a dictionary, was free. Believe it. Sir Henry, lacking any more guide than a few scraps of second-hand information, had been free to mold his characterization as his sense of art directed, and he had created “Sir Henry the Trog” from the well of his secret heart. There had never been an appropriate moment in Sir Henry’s life for him to express charm and sweetness and lose himself in dance. It would have been inconsistent with the Sir Henry that had always been.

But he took charm and sweetness and the pounding freedom of dance and poured them into his Troggish creation. He could not have said why, except that it did seem appropriate.

He had only hoped in wearing this Trog costume that his friendliness and good intentions might be apparent to the world, and to his intoxication they were—except to those very few with cherished and deep-seated prejudice against Trogs. A number which must be a small minority.

To a purist, he was not a Trog. But be not overly taken with exact categorizations. He deserved his applause: his style of Trog was quite Wonderful.

Feeling the full swell of his agrarian soul, this gentleman farmer did a Paddy Dance of his own spontaneous creation. Lord Semichastny had once had some notion of Sir Henry Oliphaunt in costume all alone waltzing. Now to Sir Henry the Trog, the platform, the judges, his wife, and the Sodality in their colors making a flower around them all paled. In his mind he was standing up to his knees in a paddy, surrounded by others of his kind splashing and stomping out their joy of life.

Oh, the wildness! His eyes were closed. He was oblivious to the whistles and cheers, the fascinated faces. He stomped and squelched in muddy abandon.

And then there was a parting in the ranks of the Green of Pierrepont, and Torve the Trog stepped forward into the open. It was not his turn yet. Sir Henry’s presentation on behalf of Montague House was not complete. Of those who saw Torve, some were astonished, some were curious, and some thought it a hideous breach of manners. It wasnot his turn.

Torve hopped up to the platform beside Sir Henry. Two Trogs, one brown-and-white (with a few black stripes, very faint), the other gray-and-olive. Of much the same size, a fair match, a fair pair. One with eyes of truer blue.

Sir Henry did not notice Torve’s approach. He was lost, his eyes yet closed.

Torve stepped in front of Sir Henry, put four-fingered furry hands on his shoulders and squared him away. Sir Henry opened his eyes and saw what he had seen with his eyes closed—another Trog. Sir Henry put his four-fingered furry hands on Torve’s shoulders.

”Dance!” he said. “Dance!”

And Torve did dance. Together they frolicked their way through the Paddy Dance. As could be plainly seen from his coat, Torve had no experience of paddies, but he recognized a Paddy Dance when he saw one. There wasn’t a spectator watching to whom the dance did not communicate paddies.

They danced warmly, freely, meeting, separating, stomping, and bogging. It was warm, exciting, captivating to watch. The dance went on, finding its proper shape, and even those who at first had blamed Torve, then reluctantly pardoned him as an ignorant alien, now found themselves approving of him wholeheartedly.

At last the dance ended and applause exploded in imminent conjugation. Sir Henry and Torve bathed in the warmth, and Torve relaxed to the oncoming swell of event.

When the applause had begun to fade and the moment was ripe, Torve turned again to Sir Henry. As he had done before, he put his hands on Sir Henry’s shoulders and squared him away. When Sir Henry was squared, Torve drew back his furry spatulate foot and kicked Sir Henry in the leg with full deliberate power.

The crowd went “Oooh.”

Sir Henry cried and fell to the platform. Torve stood above him looking down, said“Thurb,” very positively and then turned and walked back to the Green of Pierrepont.

Lady Oliphaunt stood and said, “There! What did I tell you,” speaking to Sir Henry, to Villiers, or to herself. She sighed, and then she sighed again, a sigh broken off in exasperation. She took one step toward Sir Henry, and then another.

“Darling!” she said. “Oh, what have you done to yourself? Oh, what have you done?”

Sir Henry said nothing in return, but lay looking after Torve, coming to realizations. And nursing his leg. He now had more data about Trogs.

Lady Oliphaunt fell to her knees and gathered him up and only then did he look at her with real recognition.

“Amita,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Jerzy McBe pushed his way through the crowd surrounding the Xochitl Sodality, surrounding the platform. The people were applauding the two Trogs. As he burst into the open, one Trog kicked the other and walked away.

He was faced with a choice and after a moment of indecision, he chose the immobile one. Of course.

“There you are, Trog,” he said, looking down at Sir Henry Oliphaunt. “I want a look at your papers.”

“He’s not a Trog,” said Lady Oliphaunt. “He’s my husband.”

“I’m not a Trog. I’m the Empire Administrator, Sir Henry Oliphaunt.”

“I’m here, McBe. I’m here,” came a voice behind McBe, and McBe turned with great relief. It was Slyne.

But it was Slyne with a difference. It was Slyne with his sensory amplifier in his hands and hideous pink wrinkles around his eyes.

Even without his sensory amplifier, Slyne could smell. He smelled the delicious flavor of Jerzy McBe. He whuffled.

“What is going on?” asked Slyne. He was torpid with blue cheese and muffins and had lost track.

“Sir, I have your Trog,” said Jerzy McBe.

“He does not,” said Lady Oliphaunt.

Slyne looked at Sir Henry, and lacking the benefit of his sensory amplifier, which would surely have told him the difference, he said, “Oh, yes. Very good, McBe. Sir, Trog, if you please, I would examine your papers.”

Jerzy McBe looked at Slyne with unrequited horror. He said, “Please, sir. Could you put your amplifier back on?”

Lady Oliphaunt said, “Show them, Henry. Please.”

He nodded and she helped him to his feet. And then, to the amazement of almost all, he began to emerge from his Troggish self like a butterfly shedding a cocoon, wet and shining and newborn.

Slyne did not need his amplifier to tell that this was no Trog. He donned it hurriedly to find what he was facing—in the process bringing McBe great relief. And he found that he recognized what he was facing.

“Sir Henry Oliphaunt,” he said. “Sir.”

But Sir Henry was staring around him at the wide, wide world and discovering to his joy and exaltation that he still wanted to dance.

The sound of a flight of flitters could be heard in the dark night and the sound came closer and closer and then the flitters were setting down on the green itself. Robots popped out and began setting up tables and spreading out food.

As they began to play music, Lord Semichastny stood and said, “The food and music await you.”

The assembly cheered, because it had been a long night. They turned and began to move toward the waiting repast.

Lord Semichastny tapped Villiers on the shoulder. “Here, Nephew. I just discovered this. It must have been left in the pocket the last time I wore this coat.”

It was a money order for fifteen royals.

Ossian Chimmeroon approached Lord Semichastny as he was signing Harbourne Firnhaber’s self-composed recommendation. (Who, after all, knew his virtues so well?)

“Congratulation, Friend Semichastny,” said Chimmeroon. “This is a delightful party. It’s a pity that we all did not know each other sooner. I most particularly enjoyed that luscious orange-red melon.”

“Did you like that?” asked Lord Semichastny. “That’s one of my own favorites, sir. It’s an Olatunge.”

They talked melons briefly, and then Chimmeroon burst out, “It’s really not right that your neighbors should force you out with this Winter-Summer Law. You have more friends than you know.”

“Do I?” asked Lord Semichastny. “Who?”

“We, the Monists of Delbalso. We are not inconsiderable friends to have. We’ll see about that law.” And he nodded emphatically.

Lord Semichastny looked after Chimmeroon as he walked away. Then he handed Harbourne his recommendation.

“Monists,” he said. “I don’t understand them.”

Harbourne reached into his coat and found the brochures he had been given at Joralemon House.

“Here you are, sir,” he said.

Parini arrived shortly and did a little cherry-picking before he came across Villiers. Villiers introduced him to Torve.

”Is pleasure,” said Torve. “I have met your daughter Louisa.”

”So I understand,” Parini said, not looking at him directly. And then he said, “Your papers arrived.” But he handed them to Villiers.

Villiers handed them to Torve. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “How did your evening go?”

“Profitably. And yours, Mr. Villiers?”

“Moderately profitably. Shall we settle on a price for the name?”

They dickered and concluded at a mutually satisfactory eight royals. However, Parini was unable to give Villiers change for his money order, so Villiers sent Torve to find Lord Semichastny.

Lord Semichastny came within minutes, putting his Joralemon House brochures away. “These are fascinating people, Charteris,” he said. “I’ve even been talking to some of them.”

Villiers introduced him to Parini.

“I’m sure I’ve encountered the name before,” said Lord Semichastny, and indeed he had.

Parini said, “Oh, I doubt it very much, sir. We are not a prominent family.”

Lord Semichastny proved to be able to change the money order and was willing to do it for only two percent. He took his two percent and went off to talk to more Monists. Villiers took his share, and handed the rest to Parini.

“The name?” he said.

Parini said, “The man who hired Solomon ‘Biff’ Dreznik to kill you was your brother, Robinet Villiers.”

Villiers nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

“Excuse me, Sir Trog,” Slyne said through his sensory amplifier. McBe hung at his heels. “May I see your Red Card and your Permit to Travel? Apparently through oversight they were not inspected when you arrived at the Castle.”

“Certainly,” said Torve, and handed them to the Orthodoxou.

On their way to Castle Rock, Mrs. Parini said, “I’ve been wondering, Jules.”

“About what?”

“What do you think of the possibility of Villiers and Louisa?”

“Villiers and Louisa what?”

“Becoming interested in each other.”

“What?” he said. “I should see my daughter tied to such a humorless man? Oh, no, I have plans for Louisa. I want her to learn toact like a lady, not become one.”

Anthony Villiers and Torve the Trog left the party before dawn, before the party was fully done. They went to Castle Rock and took passage from Delbalso.

Torve said goodbye separately to Badrian Beaufils, and Villiers spoke to Sir Henry and Lady Oliphaunt.

Lady Oliphaunt said, “Be careful of your friend, Tony.”

Villiers said, “We must judge by result, not by what we see.”

“I am,” she said soberly.

On their way to the port, Villiers said, “By the way, I had a letter from Louisa Parini. She says that Alice Tutuila and Norman Adams are to be married soon on Nashua, and we are invited. That makes two weddings we are called to attend on Nashua. I don’t see how we can refuse.”

“No. Is all right,” said Torve the Trog. “Soon, though, I think I wish to journey homewards to Trogholm.”

“We’ll do that,” said Villiers.

They left Delbalso in second-class accommodations on a good ship. They left Delbalso as the sun was turning Castle Rock from black to slanting marble.

In spite of her doubts, Lady Oliphaunt found Sir Henry and herself growing reconciled. The beginning of her stay on Delbalso was moderately tedious because of the Winter-Summer Laws, but after less than two years they were repealed and life then livened considerably so that when the end of Sir Henry’s largely successful administration was done, she actually regretted leaving Delbalso to return to Sir Henry’s country estates on Trefflewood.

Lord Semichastny did not leave Delbalso. He stayed, even under the strictures of the Winter-Summer Laws. In fact, after two months of consideration, he joined the Delbalso Monist Association and went to live at Joralemon House. He donated his country maison to the Monist Association and it became Coppersmith House, though there were scattered votes for “Semichastny House.” Charles the Robot managed the place very successfully for the Monists, as he had for Lord Semichastny. He joined the Monist Association himself, and was held in high regard by his fellows. His Monist career was so successful that he was able to convince two friends in the Merry Majordomos to join. And he was never ever required to wear orange—unless you should consider the Copper of Copppersmith House to be a shade of orange.

In spite of his glowing recommendation from Lord Semichastny, Harbourne Firnhaber did not feel ready to tackle Nashua. So he sat on random shelves for several more years and continued to ripen.

Sir Henry Oliphaunt kept his Trog suit. He never wore it and he never spoke of it to Lady Oliphaunt, but he kept the suit and sometimes late at night he would take it from its secret place and look at it. And there were other nights when he would suddenly rise from his chair and dance around the room.

End Book III

InThe Universal Pantograph , the fourth Anthony Villiers adventure, such universals are discussed as Nominalism, Realism, marriage, the Great Ian Steele Contest, and Louisa Parini. To follow soon.

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