“I come from the Heaven-Home, Lad-nar. I speak in the words of a God, for I am a God. A stronger God than the puny Essence-Stealer you fear!” As if to punctuate his words, a flash of lightning struck just outside the cave, filling the hollow with fury and light.

Kettridge continued, spilling the words faster and faster. “I can walk abroad in the storm, and the Essence-Stealer will not harm me. Let me go out and I will show you, Lad-nar.” He was playing a dangerous hand; at any moment the beast might leap. It might dare to venture that leap hoping Kettridge was speaking falsely, rather than incur the wrath of a God heknew was dangerous.

Kettridge continued talking.

“Let me out, Lad-nar. Let me walk from this cave. I will show you.” He edged toward the cave’s mouth, his hands in their metal-plastic gloves flat to the wall.

He knew the insulated suit would protect him from the viciousness outside.

Thought:stop!

“Why, Lad-nar? I can show you. I can show you how to walk in the night when the Essence-Stealer screams, and you can scream back at him and laugh at him, Lad-nar.” He didn’t know why he was talking, he could have thought it just as well but there was a reassurance in the sound of his voice in the cave.

The old man felt the weariness seeping through his body.Oh, if I was a younger man. If it wasn’t so late!

Thought:Lad-nar does not know what less age means, but why should let you go? You may have been sent by the Lord of the Heaven to see if I should lose my Essence. The Lord of the Heaven may be trying to take you back from me because I listened to your Unclean and Untrue sayings. Then I will have no feastings! Then I will lose my Essence!

Kettridge reminded himself that the beast was indeed clever. Not only did it fear the wrath of the Lord of the Heaven and his screaming death, but Lad-nar knew if he let the man go he would have nothing to eat during the coming cold days.

“Let me go, Lad-nar. I will bring you back a cat-litter for your feasting. I will show you that I can walk in the night and I will bring you food. I will bring back a cat-litter, Lad-nar!” He prayed, silently, it would work.

Thought:if you are a God, why do you speak to the Lord of the Heaven?

Kettridge bit his lip. He kept forgetting…

He stopped thinking. He blocked it off. He willed himself to stop thinking. He must let his instincts answer for him.

“Because I want the Lord of the Heaven to know that I am as great as he and not afraid of him and that my prayers to him are only to show that I am as great as he.” It was gibberish, but it was a deep gibberish, and if he kept talking, the beast would shuck off the thoughts rather than try to fathom them.

The Earthman knew he had one factor in his favor: Lad-nar had never heard anyone speak against the Gods, and so one who did it and did not get blastedmust be a God.

Kettridge hit him with the appeal again, before the animal had time to wonder.

“I’ll get you a cat-litter, Lad-nar. Let me go! Let me show you! Let me show you that you can walk in the storms as I do! I, too, am a great God!” There was so much at stake here, so little time, so deep a Hell waiting.

Thought:you will go away.

There was a petulance, a little child sound, to the objection, and Kettridge knew the first step had been achieved.

“No, Lad-nar. Here is a rope.” He drew a thin cord of tough metal-plastic from his utility belt. His hand jiggled against the service revolver on his tool belt and he laughed deep inside once more as he thought of how useless it was.

Useless. Only in his wits was there salvation.

He would not have used the gun in any case. There was more at stake here than just his life.

“Here is a rope,” he repeated, extending the coiled cord. “I will tie it about myself, like this…and…now! You take this end. Hold it tightly so that I can’t escape. It is long enough so that I may go out and seek a cat-litter and show you I can walk abroad.”

At first the native refused, eyeing the glistening, silvery cord with fear in his deeply-pooled eyes. But Kettridge spoke on two levels, and spoke, and spoke, and soon the beast touched the cord.

It drew back its seven-taloned hand quickly.

The third time it grasped the cord.

You have just lost your religion,Kettridge thought.

Lad-nar had “smelled” with his mind. He had sensed a cat-litter fairly close to the cave. But he did not know where.

Kettridge stepped out of the dark mouth of the cave, into the roaring maelstrom of a Blestonian electrical storm.

The sky was a tumult of heavy black clouds, steel and ebony and ripped dirty cloth. The clouds tumbled over themselves and died split apart as a bolt crashed through. The very air was charged, and blast after blast of lightning sheared away the atmosphere in zig-zagged streamers.

Kettridge stood with legs apart, body tilted forward against the pull of the cord, hands shading his eyes against the glare, the almost continuous glare, of lightning eruptions.

He was a small, thin man, and had it not been for the cord, he might easily have been swept away by the winds and rain that sandpapered the rocky ledge.

Streamers, branches, forks-the illumination of the arcing bolts was something magnificent and terrible. The old man stood there with the pelting rain washing over him, obscuring his vision through the hood, leaving only the glare of the storm for him.

He took a step, two, three.

The bolt slashed at him through a rift in the mountains. It roared over the precipice and streaked at him. It materialized out of nowhere and everywhere, splintering the stones at his feet. The rock flew up in planed, smoothed slivers, shooting in every direction. Kettridge fell flat and the crack of thunder rolled in on him. He realized it had come with the lightning, that he had been listening to it for almost a minute, before he realized what it was.

The effect on his body was sudden.

Immediately he went deaf. His skin began to prickle with the feel of a million tiny threads pushed into the flesh. His legs and hips were numb, his eyes reflected coruscating pinwheels of brilliance. He could see nothing but light on light inside light over light light light light…

There was a paralysis of his bladder.

Thought:Gad! You are no God! The Essence-Stealer has screamed and you have fallen!

The rope tightened and Kettridge felt himself being dragged back into the cave.

“No!” he screamed hurriedly. The pressure eased. “No, Lad-nar. That was the Essence-Stealer’s scream. Now I shall have mine. Iam a God, I tell you! Let me show you, Lad-nar!”

Then he seized on the lightning blast for his own purpose. “See, Lad-nar! The Essence-Stealer has struck me, but I am still whole. I will rise and walk again. You will see!”

Everywhere the lightning burned and crashed. The whole world was filled with the noise of frothing air and ripping jungle and screaming elements.

He clawed himself to his knees. His legs were weak and numb. The prickling was still there, but lessened. His eyes were starting to unglare and focus again. He still could hear nothing. He half-rose, sank back to one knee, rose again.

His head felt terribly heavy and unanchored.

Then he stood erect.

And he walked.

The storm raged about him. Lightning struck and struck again. Near him, to the side of him, behind him. One bolt sizzled down and struck him directly. The metal insulating suit served its purpose a second time. The bolt slashed, hit, and side-flashed off, exploding a small, wizened tree growing up through a crack in the rocks. The tree flew into the air, one whole side charred and burned, the other unscarred.

It fell with a crash directly across Kettridge’s path.

The symptoms of lightning-stroke were multiplied many times in Kettridge, but there was no answering thought of scorn from Lad-nar. Obviously the beast had withdrawn from his mind, in fear.

And he walked.

Soon he came back to the cave.

Thought:you are a God! This I believe. But the Lord of the Heaven has sent his Essence-Stealers. They, too, are mighty, and Lad-nar will lose his Essence if he walks there.

“No, Lad-nar. I will show you how to protect yourself.” The old man was sweating and white from his walk, and the numbness extended through his body. He could hear nothing, but the words came clearly to him.

He began to unseal the form-fitting suit.

The storm had already lowered the temperature enough so that he knew he would not fry.

In a few minutes he had the suit off, and it had shrunk back to a pocket-sized replica of the full-sized garment.

Kettridge felt ill. He felt old and tired and used. It was time to go home, time to quit. It was all over. He had won.

“Lad-nar, take this. Here, give me your hand.”

The beast looked at him with huge, uncomprehending eyes. The old man felt closer, somehow, to this strange creature than to anyone he had ever known. Kettridge pulled his glove on tighter and reached for Lad-nar’s seven-taloned hand. He pulled at the arm of the form-fit suit, and it elastically expanded.

After much stretching and fitting, the beast was encased in the insulating metal-plastic.

Kettridge wanted to laugh at the bunched fur and awkward stance of the massive animal. But again, the laughter would not come.

“Now, Lad-nar, put on the gloves. Never take them off, except when the storms are gone. Always put this God-suit on when the Essence-Stealers scream, and you will be safe.”

Thought:now I can walk in the night?

“Yes. Come.” He moved toward the cave’s mouth. “Now you can get a cat-litter for yourself. I did not bring one because I knew you would believe me and get your own. Come, Lad-nar.” He motioned the beast to follow him out onto the rocks.

Thought:how will you walk without the God-suit?

Kettridge ran a seamed hand through his white hair. He was glad Lad-nar had thought the question. The multiple flashes of a many-stroked blast filled the air with glare and noise.

Kettridge could not hear the noise.

“I have God-brothers who wait for me in the Great House From Across the Skies that will take me back to the Heaven Home. They will hurry to me and they will protect me.”

He did not bother to tell the great beast that his search time was almost up and that theJeremy Bentham’s flitter would home in on his suit beam. It would have been useless homing, had he not secured time.

“Go! Walk, Lad-nar!” he said, throwing his arms out as he felt a God would. “And tell your brothers you have screamed at the Essence-Stealers!”

Thought:I have done this.

The great animal stepped cautiously toward the rocky ledge, fearful and hesitant. Then it bunched its huge muscles and leaped out into the full agony of the storm which crashed in futility about his massive form.

“One day Man will come and make friends with you, Lad-nar,” said the old man, softly. “One day they will come down out of the sky and show you how to live on this world of yours so that you don’t have to hide.”

Kettridge sank down against the inner wall of the cave, suddenly too exhausted to stand.

He had won. He had redeemed himself. If only in his own mind. He had helped take some life from a race, yet he had given life to another race.

He closed his eyes peacefully. Even the great blasts of blind lightning did not bother him as he rested. He knew Lad-nar had told his brothers.

He knew the ship was coming for him.

Lad-nar came up the incline and saw the flitter streaking down, lightning playing along its sides in phosphorescent glimmers.

Thought:God! God! Your God-brothers come for you!

He bounded across the scarred and seared rocks, toward the cave.

Kettridge rose and stepped out into the rain and wind.

He ran a few steps, waving his arms in signal. The flitter altered course and headed for the old man.

The lightning struck.

It seemed as though the bolt knew its target. It raced the flitter, sizzling and burning as it came. In a roar of light and dark and screamings it tore at the old man, lifting him high into the air, charring and burning and ripping.

The body landed just outside the cave, blistered and bleeding. The old man was still alive…

Thought:God! God! You have fallen! Rise, rise, rise! The Essence-Stealers…

The thoughts were hysterical, tearful, tom and wanting. Had the beast been able to shed tears, Kettridge knew it would have done so. The old man lay sightless, eyes gone, senses altogether torn from him. The Essence ebbed.

He thought:

Lad-nar. There will come other Gods. They will come to you and you must think to them. You must think these words, Lad-nar. Think to them,Show me a star.Do you hear me, Lad-nar? Do you…

Even as the great beast watched, the Essence flickered and died. In the animal’s mind there was a lack, a space of emptiness. Yet there was a contentment. A peace, and Lad-nar knew the Essence of the God Who Walked In The Light was soft and unafraid at Ending.

The aborigine stood on the rocks below the cave and watched the flitter sink to the stone ledge. He watched as the other Gods From the Skies emerged and ran to the charred hulk lying on the stones.

Through his head, like the blind lightning, streaking everywhere, lightning, lightning, lightning, the words remained, and repeated…

Thought:

Show me a star.

All the Sounds of Fear

“GIVE ME SOME LIGHT!”

Cry: tormented, half-moan half-chant, cast out against a whispering darkness: a man wound in white, arms upflung to roistering shadows, sooty sockets where eyes had been, pleading, demanding, anger and hopelessness, anguish from the soul into the world. He stumbled, a step, two, faltering, weak, the man returned to the child, trying to find some exit from the washing sea of darkness in which he trembled.

“Give me some light!”

Around him a Greek chorus of sussurating voices. Plucking at his garments he staggered toward an intimation of sound, a resting place, a goal. The man in pain, the figure ofall pain, all desperation, and nowhere in that circle of painful light was there release from his torment. Sandaled feet stepping, each one above an abyss, no hope and no safety; what can it mean to be so eternally blind?

Again, “Give me some light!”

The last tortured ripping of the words from a throat raw with the hopelessness of salvation. Then the man sank to the shadows that moved in on him. The face half-hidden in chiaroscuro, sharp black, blanched white, down and down into the grayness about his feet, the circle of blazing-white light pinpointing him, a creature impaled on a shard of brilliance, till closing, closing, closing it swallowed him, all gone to black, darkness within and without, black even deeper, nothing, finis, end; silence.

Richard Becker, Oedipus, had played his first role. Twenty-four years later, he would play it again, as his last. But before that final performance’s curtain could be rung, twenty-four years of greatness would have to strut across stages of life and theater and emotion.

Time, passing.

When they had decided to cast the paranoid beggar inSweet Miracles, Richard Becker had gone to the Salvation Army retail store and bought a set of rags that even the sanctimonious charity workers staffing the shop tried to throw out as unsaleable and foul. He bought a pair of cracked and soleless shoes that were a size too large. He bought a hat that had seen so many autumns of rain its brim had bowed and withered under the onslaught. He bought a no-color vest from a suit long since destroyed and a pair of pants whose seat sagged raggedly and a shirt with three buttons gone and a jacket that seemed to typify every derelict who had ever cadged an hour’s sleep in an alley.

He bought these things over the protests of the kindly, white-haired women who weredoing their bit for charity, and he asked if he might step into the toilet for a few moments to try them on; and when he emerged, his good tweed jacket and dark slacks over his arm, he was another man entirely. As though magically, coarse stubble had sprouted on his sagging jowls. (It may well have been there when he came into the shop, but who would have noticed? He was too nice-looking a young man to go around unshaved.) The hair had grown limp and off-gray under the squashed hat. The face was lined and planed with the depravities and deprivations of a lifetime lived in gutters and saloons. The hands were caked with filth, the eyes lusterless and devoid of personality, the body grotesquely slumped by the burden of mere existence. This old man, this skid from the Bowery, how had he gotten into the toilet, and where was the nice young man who had gone in wearing that jacket and those slacks? Had thiscreature somehow overpowered him (what foul weapon had this feeble old man used to subdue a vital, strong youth like that) ? The white-haired Good Women of Charity were frozen with distress as they imagined the strong-faced, attractive youth, lying in the bathroom, his skull crushed by a length of pipe.

The old bum extended the jacket, the pants, and the rest of the clothing the young man had been wearing, and in a voice that was thirty years younger than the body from which it spoke, he explained, “I won’t be needing these, ladies. Sell them to someone who can make good use of them.” The voice of the young man, from this husk.

And he paid for the rags he wore. They watched him as he limped and rolled through the front door into the filthy streets, another tramp gone to join the tide of lost souls that would inevitably become a stream and a river and an ocean of wastrels, washing finally into a drunk tank or a doorway or a park bench.

Richard Becker spent six weeks living on the Bowery; in fleabags, abandoned warehouses, cellars, gutters, and on tenement rooftops; he shared and wallowed in the nature and filth and degradation of the empty men of his times.

For six weeks hewas a tramp, a thoroughly washed-out hopeless rumdum, with rheumy eyes and palsied hands and a weak bladder.

One by one the weeks mounted to six, and on the first day of casting forSweet Miracles, the Monday of the seventh week, Richard Becker arrived at the Martin Theatre, where he auditioned for the part in the clothes he had worn for the past six weeks.

The play ran for five hundred and eighteen performances, and Richard Becker won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award as the finest male performer of the year. He also won the Circle Award as the most promising newcomer of the year.

He was twenty-two years old at the time.

The following season, afterSweet Miracles had gone on the road, Richard Becker was apprised, through the pages ofVariety, that John Foresman & T. H. Searle were about to begin casting forHouse of Infidels, the posthumous script by Odets, the last he ever wrote. Through friends in the Foresman & Searle offices, he obtained a copy of the script, and selected a part he considered massive in its potentialities.

The role of an introspective and tormented artist, depressed by the level of commercialism to which his work had sunk, resolved to regain an innocence of childhood or nature he had lost, by working with his hands in a foundry.

When the first-night critics called Richard Becker’s conception of Tresk, the artist, “a pinnacle of thespic intuition” and noted, “His authority in the part led members of the audience to ask one another how such a sensitive actor could grasp the rough unsubtle life of a foundry worker,” they had no idea that Richard Becker had worked for nearly two months in a steel stamping plant and foundry in Pittsburgh. But the makeup man onHouse of Infidels suspected Richard Becker had once been in a terrible fire, for his hands were marked by the ravages of great heat.

After two successes, two conquests of Broadway, two characterizations that were immediately ranked with the most brilliant Shubert Alley had ever witnessed, Richard Becker’s reputation began to build a legend.

The Man Who IS The “Method,”they called him, in perceptive articles and interviews. Lee Strasberg of the Actors’ Studio, when questioned, remarked that Becker had never been a student, but had the occasion arisen, he might well have paidhim to attend. In any event, Richard Becker’s command of the Stanislavski theory of total immersion in a part became a working example of the validity of the concept. No mere scratcher and stammerer, Richard Beckerwas the man he pretended to be, on a stage.

Of his private life little was known, for he let it be known that if he was to be totally convincing in a characterization, he wanted no intrusive shadow of himself to stand between the audience and the image he offered.

Hollywood’s offers of stardom were refused, for asTheatre Arts commented in a brief feature on Richard Becker:

The gestalt that Becker projects across a row of footlights would be dimmed and turned two-dimensional on the Hollywood screen. Becker’s art is an ultimate distillation of truth and metamorphosis that requires the reality of stage production to retain its purity. It might even be noted that Richard Becker acts infour dimensions, as opposed to the merely craftsmanlike three of his contemporaries. Surely no one could truly argue with the fact that watching a Becker performance is almost a religious experience. We can only congratulate Richard Becker on his perceptiveness in turning down studio bids.

The years of building a backlog of definitive parts (effectively ruining them for other actors who were condemned to play them after Becker had said all there was to say) passed, as Richard Becker became, in turn, a Hamlet that cast new lights on the Freudian implications of Shakespeare…a fiery Southern segregationist whose wife reveals her octaroon background…a fast-talking salesman come to grips with futility and cowardice…a many-faceted Marco Polo…a dissolute and totally amoral pimp, driven by a loathing for women, to sell his own sister into evil…a ruthless politician, dying of cancer and senility…

And the most challenging part he had ever undertaken, the recreation, in the play by Tennessee Williams, of the deranged religious zealot, trapped by his own warring emotions, into the hammer-murder of an innocent girl.

When they found him, in the model’s apartment off Gramercy Place, they were unable to get a coherent story of why he had done the disgusting act, for he had lapsed into a stentorian tone of Biblical fervor, pontificating about the blood of the Iamb and the curse of Jezebel and the eternal fires of Perdition. The men from Homicide numbered among their ranks a rookie, fresh to the squad, who became desperately ill at the sight of the fouled walls and the crumpled form wedged into the tiny kitchenette; he became violently ill, and was taken from the apartment a few minutes before Richard Becker was led away.

The trial was a manifest sadness to all who had seen him onstage, and the jury did not even have to be sent out to agree on a verdict of insanity.

After all, whoever the fanatic was that the defense put on the stands, he was not sane, and was certainly no longer Richard Becker, the actor.

For Dr. Charles Tedrow, the patient in restraining room 16 was a constant involvement. He was unable to divorce himself from the memory of a night three years before, when he had sat in an orchestra seat at the Henry Miller Theatre and seen Richard Becker, light and adroit, as the comical Tosspot in that season’s hit comedy,Never A Rascal.

He was unable to separate his thoughts from the shape and form of the actor who had so immersed himself in The Method that for a time, in three acts, hewas a blundering, maundering, larcenous alcoholic with a penchant for pomegranates and (as Becker had mouthed it onstage) “barratry on the low seas!” Separate them from this weird and many-faceted creature that lived its many lives in the padded cell numbered 16? Impossible.

At first, there had been reporters, who had come to interview the Good Doctor in charge of Becker’s case; and to the last of these (for Dr. Tedrow had instituted restrictions on this sort of publicity) he had said, “To a man like Richard Becker, the world was very important. He was very much a man of his times; he had no real personality of his own, with the exception of that one overwhelming faculty and need to reflect the world around him. He was an actor in the purest sense of the word. The world gave him his personality, his attitudes, his reason and his facade for existence. Take those away from him, clap him up in a padded cell-as we’ve been forced to do-and he begins to lose touch with reality.”

“I understand,” the reporter had inquired carefully, “that Becker is reliving his roles, one after another. Is that true, Dr. Tedrow?”

Charles Tedrow was, above all else, a compassionate man, and his fury at this remark, revealing as it did a leak in the sanitarium’s security policy, was manifest. “Richard Becker is undergoing what might be called, in psychiatric terms, `induced hallucinatory regression.’ In his search for some reality, there in that room, he has fastened onto the method of assuming characters’ moods he had played onstage. From what I’ve been able to piece together from reviews of his shows, he is going back from the most recent to the next and the next and so on.”

The reporter had asked more questions, more superficial and phantasmagoric assumptions, until Dr. Charles Tedrow had concluded the interview rudely.

But even now, as he sat across from Richard Becker in the quiet office, he knew that almost nothing the reporter had conceived, could rival what Becker had done to himself.

“Tell me, Doctor,” the florid, bombastic traveling salesman who was Richard Becker asked, “what the hell’s new down the line?”

“It’s really very quiet, these days, Ted,” the physician replied. Becker had been this way for two months now: submerged in the part of Ted Rogat, the loudmouth philandering protagonist of Chayefsky’sThe Wanderer. For six months before that he had been Marco Polo, and before that the nervous, slack-jawed and incestuous son ofThe Glass of Sadness.

“Hell, I remember one little chippie in, where was it, oh yeah, hell yes! It was K.C. good old K.C. man, she was agoodie! You ever been to K.C., Doc? I was a drummer in nylons when I worked K.C. Jeezus, lemme tell ya-“

It was difficult to believe the man who sat on the other side of the table was an actor. He looked the part, he spoke the part, hewas Ted Rogat, and Dr. Tedrow could catch himself from time to time contemplating the release of this total stranger who had wandered into Richard Becker’s cell.

He sat and listened to the story of the flame-hipped harlot in Kansas City that Ted Rogat had picked up in an Armenian restaurant and seduced with promises of nylons. He listened to it, and knew that whatever else was true of Richard Becker, this creature of many faces and many lives, he was no saner than the day he had killed that girl. After eighteen months in the sanitarium, he was going back, back, back through his acting career, and replaying the roles, but never once coming to grips with reality.

In the plight and disease of Richard Becker, Dr. Charles Tedrow saw a bit of himself, of all men of his times, and the thousand illnesses to which they were heir.

He returned Richard Becker, as well as Ted Rogat, to the security and tiny world of Room 16.

Two months later he brought him back, and spent a highly interesting three hours discussing group therapy with Herr Doktor Ernst Loebisch, credentials from the Munich Academy of Medicine and the Vienna Psychiatric Clinic. Four months after that, Dr. Tedrow got to know the surly and insipid Jackie Bishoff, juvenile delinquent and hero ofStreets of Night.

And almost a year later, to the day, Dr. Tedrow sat in his office with a bum, a derelict, a rheumy-eyed and dissipated vagabond who could only be the skid fromSweet Miracles, Richard Becker’s first triumph, twenty-four years before.

What Richard Becker might look like, without camouflage, in his own shell, Tedrow had no idea. He was, now, to all intents and purposes, the seedy old tramp with the dirt caked into the sagged folds of his face.

“Mr. Becker, I want to talk to you.”

Hopelessness shined out of the old bum’s eyes. There was no answer.

“Listen to me, Becker. Please listen to me, if you’re in there somewhere, if you can hear me. I want you to understand what I’m about to say; it’s very important.”

A croak, cracked and forced, came from the bum’s lips, and he mumbled, “I need’a drink, yuh go’ uh drink fuh me, huh…”

Tedrow leaned across, his hand shaking as he took the old bum’s chin in his palm, and held it fixed, staring into this stranger’s eyes. “Now listen to me, Becker. You’ve got to hear me. I’ve gone through the files, and as far as I can tell, this was the first part you ever played. I don’t know what will happen! I don’t know what form this syndrome will take after you’ve used up all your other lives. But if you can hear me, you’ve got to understand that you may be approaching a critical period in your-in your life.”

The old bum licked cracked lips.

“Listen!I’m here, I want to help you, I want todo something for you, Becker. If you’ll come out for an instant, just a second, we can establish contact. It’s got to be now or-“

He left it hanging. He had no way of knowingif-what. And as he lapsed into silence, as he released the bum’s chin, a strange alteration of facial muscles began, and the derelict’s countenance shifted, subtly ran like hot lead, and for a second he saw a face he recognized. From the eyes that were no longer red-rimmed and bloodshot, Dr. Charles Tedrow saw intelligence peering out.

“It sounds like fear, Doctor,” he said.

And, “Goodbye, once more.”

Then the light died, the face shifted finally, and the physician was again staring at the empty face of a gutter-bred derelict.

He sent the old man back to Room 16. Later that day, he had one of the male nurses take in an 89› bottle of muscatel.

Fear crackled across the telephone wires.

“Speak up, man! What in the name of God is going on out there?”

“I-I can’t explain it, Dr. Tedrow, but you better-you better get out here right away. It’s-it’s oh Jee-zus!”

“Whatis it? Stop crying, Wilson, and tell me what the hell iswrong!”

“It’s, it’s number sixteen…it’s…”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Keep everyone away from that room. Do you understand? Wilson! Do you understand me?”

“Yessir, yessir. I’ll-oh Christ-hurry up Doc…”

He could feel his pajama pants bunched around his knees, under his slacks, as he floored the pedal of the ranch wagon. The midnight roads were jerky in the windshield, and the murk through which he raced was almost too ominous to be a fact of nature.

When he slewed the car into the drive, the gatekeeper threw the iron barrier back almost spastically. The ranch wagon chewed gravel, sending debris back in a wide fan, as Tedrow plunged ahead. When he screeched to a halt in front of the sanitarium, the doors burst open and the Senior Attendant, Wilson, raced down the steps.

“This way, th-this way, Doctor Te-“

“Get out of my way, you idiot, I know which direction!” He shoved Wilson aside, and strode up the steps and into the building.

“It started about an hour ago…we didn’t know what was happ-“

“And you didn’t call me immediately? Ass!”

“We just thought, we just thought it was another one of his stages,you know how he is…”

Tedrow snorted in disgust and threw off his topcoat as he made his way rapidly down the corridor to the section of the sanitarium that housed the restraining rooms.

As they came into the annex, through the heavy glass-portaled door, he heard the scream for the first time.

In that scream, in that tormented, pleading, demanding and hopelessly lost tremor there were all the sounds of fear he had ever heard. In that voice he heard even his own voice, his own soul, crying out for something.

For an unnameable something, as the scream came again. “Give me some light!”

Another world, another voice, another life. Some evil and empty beseeching from a corner of a dust-strewn universe. Hanging there timelessly, vibrant in colorless agony. A million tired and blind stolen voices all wrapped into that one howl, all the eternal sadnesses and losses and pains ever known to man. It was all there, as the good in the world was sliced open and left to bleed its golden fluid away in the dirt. It was a lone animal being eaten by a bird of prey. It was a hundred children crushed beneath iron treads. It was one good man with his entrails in his blood-soaked hands. It was the soul and the pain and the very vital fiber of life, draining away, without light, without hope, without succor.

“Give me some light!”

Tedrow flung himself at the door, and threw back the bolt on the observation window. He stared for a long and silent moment as the scream trembled once more on the air, weightlessly, transparently, tingling off into emptiness. He stared, and felt the impact of a massive horror stifle his own cry of disbelief and terror.

Then he spun away from the window and hung there, sweat-drenched back flat to the wall, with the last sight of Richard Becker he would ever hope to see, burned forever behind his eyes.

The sound of his soft sobs in the corridor held the others back. They stared silently, still hearing that never-spoken echo reverberating down and down and down the corridors of their minds:

Give me some light!

Fumbling beside him, Tedrow slammed the observation window shut, and then his arm sank back to his side.

While inside Room 16, lying up against the far wall, his back against the soft passive padding, Richard Becker looked out at the door, at the corridor, at the world, forever.

Looked out as he had come, purely and simply.

Without a face. From his hairline to his chin, a blank, empty, featureless expanse. Empty. Silent. Devoid of sight or smell or sound. Blank and faceless, a creature God had never deigned to bless with a mirror to the world. His Method now was gone.

Richard Becker, actor, had played his last part, and had gone away, taking with him Richard Becker, a man who had known all the sounds, all the sights, all the life of fear.

The Silver Corridor

“WE CAN’T BE RESPONSIBLE for death or disfigurement, you know,” reminded the Duelmaster.

He toyed with the Company emblem on his ceremonial robe absently, waiting Marmorth’s answer. Behind him, across the onyx and crystal expanse of the preparation chamber, the gaping maw of the Silver Corridor opened into blackness.

“Yes, yes, I know all that,” snapped Marmorth impatiently. “Has Krane entered his end?” he asked, casting a glance at the dilation-segment leading to the adjoining preparation room. There was fear and apprehension in the look, only thinly hidden.

“Not quite yet,” the Duelmaster told him. “By now he has signed the release, and they are briefing him, as I’m about to brief you, if you’ll kindly sign yours.” He indicated the printed form in the trough, and the stylus on the desk.

Marmorth licked his lips, mumbled something half-heard, and flourished his signature on the blank line. The signing was done hurriedly, as though he was afraid he might forget his name, should he hesitate.

The Duelmaster glanced quickly at the signature, then pressed the stud on the desk top. The blank slipped out of sight in the trough. He carefully took the stylus from Marmorth’s unfeeling fingers, placed it in his pouch. They waited patiently for a minute. A soft clucking came up through a slot in the side of the desk, and a second later a punched plastic plate dropped into a basket beneath it.

“This is your variation-range card,” explained the Duelmaster, lifting the plate from the basket. “With this we can gauge the extent of your imagination, set up the illusions, send you through the Corridor at your own mental pace.”

“I understand perfectly, Duelsman,” snapped Marmorth. “Do you mind getting me in there! I’m freezing in this breechclout!”

“Mr. Marmorth, I realize this is annoying, but we are required both by statute of law and rule of the Company to explain thoroughly the entire sequence, before entrance.” He stood up behind the desk, reached into a cabinet that dilated at the approach of his hand.

“Here,” he said, handing Marmorth a wraparound, “put this on till we’ve finished here.”

Marmorth let breath whistle between his teeth in irritation, but donned the robe and sat back down in front of the desk. Marmorth was a man of medium height, hair graying slightly at the temples and forelock, a middle-aged stomach bulge. He had dark, notquite-piercing eyes, and straight plain features. An undistinguished man, yet one who seemed to have a touch of authority and determination about him. An undistinguished man, a middle-aged man, a man about to enter a duel.

“As you know-” began the Duelmaster.

“Yes, yes, confound it!I know, I know! Why must you people prolong the agony of this thing?” Marmorth cut him off, rising again.

“Mr. Marmorth,” resumed the Duelmaster patiently but doggedly, “if you don’t settle yourself, we will call this Affair off. Do you understand?”

Marmorth chuckled ruefully, deep in his throat. ” After the tolls Krane and I laid out? You won’t cancel.”

“We will if you aren’t prepared for combat. It’s for your own survival, Mr. Marmorth. Now if you’ll be silent a minute, I’ll brief you and you can enter the Corridor.”

Marmorth waved his hand negligently, grudging the Duelsman his explanation. He stared in boredom at the high crystal ceiling of the preparation chamber.

“The Corridor,as you know, ” went on the Duelsman, adding the last phrase with sarcasm, “is a supersensitive receptor. When you enter it, seven billion scanning elements pick up your thoughts, down to the very subconscious, filter them through the banks, correlating them with your variation-range card, and feed back illusions. These illusions are matched with those of your opponent, as checked withhis variation-range card. The illusion is always the same for both of you.

“Since you are in the field of the Corridor, these are substantial illusions, and they affect you as though they were real. In other words, to illustrate the extreme-you can die at any moment. They are not dreams, I assure you. All too often combatants find an illusion so strange they feel it must be unreal. May I caution you, Mr. Marmorth, that is the quickest way to lose an Affair. Take everything you see at face value.It is real!”

He paused for a moment, wiping his forehead. He had begun to perspire freely. Marmorth wondered at this, but remained silent.

“Your handicap,” the Duelmaster resumed, “is that when an illusion is formed from a larger segment of your opponent’s imagination than from yours, he will be more familiar with it, and will be more able to get to you. The same holds true for him, of course.

“The illusions will strengthen for the combatant who is dominating. In other words, if Krane’s outlook is firmer than yours, he will have a more familiar illusion. If you begin to dominate him, the illusion will change to one more of your making.

“Do you understand?”

Marmorth had found himself listening more intently than he had thought he would. Now he had questions.

“Aren’t there any weapons we begin with? I’d always thought we could choose our dueling weapons.”

The Duelmaster shook his head. “No. There will be sufficient weapons in your illusions. Anything else would be superfluous.”

“How can an illusion kill me?”

“You are in the Corridor’s field. Through a process of-well, actually, Mr. Marmorth, that is a Company secret, and I doubt if it could be explained in lay terms so that you would know any more now than you did before. Just accept that the Corridor converts your thought-impressions into tangibles.”

“How long will we be in there?”

“Time is subjective in the Corridor. You may be there for an hour or a month or a year. Out here the time will seem as an instant. You will go in, both of you, then a moment later-one of you will come out.”

Marmorth licked his lips again. “Have there been duels where a stalemate was reached; where both combatants came back?” He was nervous, and the question trembled as if it was made with metallic filaments.

“We’ve never had one that I can recall,” answered the Duelmaster simply.

“Oh,” said Marmorth quietly, looking down at his hands.

“Are you ready now?”

Marmorth nodded. He slipped out of the wraparound and laid it across the back of the chair. Together they walked toward the Silver Corridor. “Remember,” said the Duelmaster, “the combatant who has the strongest convictions will win. This is a constant, and your only real weapon.”

The Duelmaster stepped to the end of the Corridor, removing a thin tube from his pouch. A beam of light flashed thinly from the end, and he shone it at an aperture in the wall next to the Corridor’s opening.

The light flashed twice, then he said, “I’ve signaled the Duelsman on the other side. Krane has been placed inside.”

The Duelmaster slipped the variation-range card into a slot in the blank wall, then indicated Marmorth should step into the Corridor.

The middle-aged duelist stepped forward, smoothing the short breechclout against his thighs as he walked.

He took one step, two, three. The perfectly round mouth of the Silver Corridor gaped before him, black and impenetrable.

He stepped forward once more. His bare foot touched the edge of the metal, and he drew back hesitantly. He looked back over his shoulder at the Duelsman. “Couldn’t I-“

“Step in, Mr. Marmorth,” said the Duelmaster firmly. There was a granite tone in his voice.

Marmorth walked forward into the darkness. It closed over his head and seeped behind his eyes. He felt nothing! Marmorth…

…blinked twice. The first time he saw the throne room and the tier-mounted pages, long-stemmed trumpets at their sides. He saw the assembled nobles bowing low before him, their ermine capes sweeping the floor. The floor was a rich, inlaid mosaic, the walls dripped color and rich tapestry, the ceiling was high-arched and studded with crystal chandeliers.

The second time he opened them, hoping his senses had cleared, he saw precisely the same thing. Then he saw Krane-High Lord Krane-in the front ranks.

The man’s hair had been swept back to form a tight knot at the base of his skull. It was the knot of the triumphant warrior. The garb was different-tight suit of chain-mail in blued-steel, ornamental decorations across the breastplate, a ruby-hilted sword in a scabbard at his waist, full, flowing cape of blood-red velvet-but the face was no different from the one Marmorth had seen in the Council Chamber, before they had agreed to duel.

The face was thin; a V that swept past a high, white forehead and thick, black brows, past the high cheekbones and needle-thin nose, down to the slash mouth and pointed black beard. A study in coal and chalk.

Marmorth’s blood churned at sight of the despised Krane! If he hadn’t challenged Marmorth’s Theorem in the Council Chamber, with his duel-inciting slanders, neither of them would be here.

Here!

Marmorth stiffened. He sat more erect. The knowledge swept away his momentary forgetfulness; this was the Silver Corridor. This was illusion. Theywere dueling-now, at this instant! He had to kill Krane.

But whose illusion was this? His own, or the dark-bearded scoundrel’s before him? It might be suicide to attempt killing Krane in his own illusion. He would have to wait a bit and gauge what the situation represented in his own mind.

Whatever it was, he seemed to be of higher rank than Krane, who bowed before him.

Almost magically, before he realized the words were emerging from his mouth, he heard himself saying, “Lord Krane, rise!”

Krane stood up, and the other nobles followed suit, the precedent having been set. By choosing Krane to rise first, Marmorth the King had chosen whom he wanted to speak first in the Star Chamber.

“May it please your Illustriousness,” boomed Krane, extending his arms in salute, “I have a disposition on the prisoners from Quorth. I should beg your Eminence’s verdict on my proposal.”

He bowed his head and waited Marmorth’s reply.

Had there been a tone of mockery in the man’s voice? Marmorth could not be sure. But he now knew that it was his own illusion. If Krane was coming tohim for disposition, then he must be in the ascendant in this creation.

“What is your proposal, High Lord Krane?” asked Marmorth.

Krane took a step forward, bringing him to the bottom of the dais upon which Marmorth’s throne rested.

“Thesethings are of a totally alien culture, Your Highness,” began Krane. “How can we, as humans, even tolerate their existence in our way of life? The very sight of them makes the gorge rise! They are evil-smelling and accursedly-formed! They must all be destroyed, Your Highness! We must ignore the guileful offers of a prisoner-for-prisoner exchange! We will have our fleet in Quorth City within months, then we can rescue our own captured without submitting to the demands of foul monsters! In the meantime, why feed these beasts of another world?

“I say, destroy them! Launch all-out attack now! Rescue our people from the alien’s slave camps on Quorth and Fetsa!”

He had been speaking smoothly and forcefully. The nods of assent and agreement from the assembled nobles made Marmorth wary. A complete knowledge of the Quorth-Human war was in his mind, and the plan of Krane sounded clear and fine. Yet superimposed over it, was his knowledge that this was all merely illusion and that somewhere in the illusion was a chink in which his errors might lodge. The plan sounded good, but…

“No, Krane!” he decided, thinking quietly. “This would be what the aliens want! Theywant us to destroy our prisoners. That would whip their people at home into such a frenzy of patriotism-we would be engulfed in a month!

“We will consider the alien proposal of prisoner-for-prisoner exchange.” The rumbles from the massed nobles rose into the cavern of the Star Chamber. There was unrest here.

He had to demonstrate that he was right. “Let them bring in the chain of aliens!” he commanded, clapping his hands. A page went out to summon them.

While the hall waited, Marmorth thought quickly: had he made the proper decision? There seemed to be a correlation between Krane’s challenging of his Theorem of Government in the Council-back in the world outside the Corridor-and this proposal he had just defeated.

Therewas a correlation! He saw it suddenly!

Both his proposal of the Theorem in the Council and his decision here in the illusion had been based on his personal concept of government. Krane’s refutation out there and his proposal here were the opposite. Once again they had clashed.

And this time Marmorth had won!

But had he?

Even as he let the thought After, the chained aliens were dragged between the massed nobles and cast on their triple-jointed knees before Marmorth’s dais. “Here are the loathsome beings!” cried Krane, flinging his arms high and apart.

It had been a grandstand gesture, and the frog-faced, many-footed beings on the Star Chamber’s floor realized it.

Suddenly, almost as though they were made of paper, the chains that had joined the aliens snapped, and they leaped on the nobles.

Marmorth caught the smile on Krane’s lips.He had been behind this; probably had the chains weakened in the corridor outside by his loyal personal guard.

Hardly with thought, Marmorth was off his throne and down the stepped dais, his sword free from its scabbard, and arcing viciously.

A hideously warted alien face rose before him and he thrust with all his might! The blade pierced between the double-lidded eyes, and thick ochre blood spurted across his tunic. He yanked the blade free, kicking the dead but still quivering alien from its length. He leaped into the horde, howling a battlecry from his youth.

Even as he leaped, he saw Krane’s slash-mouthed smile, and the Lord’s sword swinging toward him!

So ithadn’t been his illusion! It had been Krane’s! He hadn’t chosen the proper course. Krane’s belief at the moment was stronger than his own.

He fended off a double-handed smash from the black-bearded noble and fell back. They parried and countered, thrust and slashed all around the dais. The other nobles were too deeply involved fighting off the screaming aliens to witness this battle between their King and his Lord.

Krane beat Marmorth back, back!

Why did I choose as I did?Marmorth wailed mentally, berating himself.

Suddenly he slipped, toppling backward onto the steps. The sword flew from his hand as it cracked against the edge of a step. He saw Krane bearing down on him, the sword double-fisted as his opponent raised it like a stake above his head.

In desperation, Marmorth summed up all his belief.”]t wasthe right decision!” screamed Marmorth with the conviction of a man about to die. He saw the sword plunge toward his breast as…

…he gathered the light about him, sweeping his hands through the dripping colors, making them shift and flow for him. He saw the figure of Krane, standing haughtily in the bank of yellow, and he gathered the blue to himself in a coruscating ball.

Fearsomely he bellowed his challenge, “This ismy illusion, Krane, and watch as I kill you!”

He balled the blue in his hand and sent it flying, dripping spark and color as it shot toward the black-bearded man.

They both stood tall and spraddle-legged in the immensity of they knew-not-where. The colors dripped from the air, making weird patterns as they mixed and ran.

The blue ball struck in front of Krane and exploded, cascading a rich flood of chromatic brilliance into the air. Krane laughed at the failure.

He gathered the black to him, wadding it in strong and supple fingers. He wound up, almost as though it was a sport, and flung the wadded black at Marmorth.

The older man knew he had not enough belief yet built to withstand this onslaught. Marmorth knew if the black enfolded him he would die in the never-ending limbo of nothingness.

He thrust hands up before his face to stop the onrush of the black, but it struck him and he fell, clutching feebly at a washy stringer of white.

He fell into the black as it surrounded him, and in a moment knew he was in the limbo.

This was not his illusion! It could not be, for he was vanquished! Yet he was not dead, as he had felt sure he would be. He lay there, thinking.

He remembered all the effort he had put in on the Political Theorem. The Theorem he had proposed in the Council. It had represented years of work-the culmination of all his adult thought and effort; and, he had to admit it, the Theorem was soundly based on his own view of the Universe.

Then the presumptuous Krane had offended him by restating the Theorem. Before the very faces of the Council!

Krane had, of course, twisted it to his own evil and malicious ends-basing it anew onhis conception of the All.

Oh, there had been a verbal battle. There had been the accusations, the clanging of the electric gavel, the remonstrances of the Compjudge, the shocked expressions of the other Councilors! Till finally Marmorth had been goaded by the younger man into the Duel. Then into the Silver Corridor.

From which only one of them would emerge. The one who did would force his Theorem on the Council. To be accepted, of course. The Theorem was so basic, the view would be recognized and accepted.

It all revolved, then, around whose view of the Universe, whose Theorem, was the right one. It could be either Krane’s or Marmorth’s.

Marmorth struck out at the black!Mine, mine, mine ! He shouted soundlessly. He lashed into the nothingness. My Theorem is the proper one! I believe it! I do!

Then he saw the stringer of white in his hand. So this was Krane in the ascendant, was it! Now came the moment of retaliation.

He whipped the stringer around his invisible head, swaying as he was, there in the depthless black. The stringer thickened. He cupped it to him, washing it with his hands, strengthening it, shaping and molding it.

In a moment it had grown. In a moment more the white had burst forth like a ripe blossom and flooded all. Revealing Krane standing there, in his breechclout, massaging the plae pink between his fingers.

“Mine, Krane,mine! ” he screamed, flinging the orange-green!

Krane blanched and tried to duck. The orange-green came on like a sliver of Forever, streaking and burning as it rode currents that did not exist. Then the light shattered, and fired, and spat. As Marmorth realized they had nullified each other again, that the illusion was dissolving around them, he heard Krane bellow, even as loud ashe had, “Mine, Marmorth,mine!”

Then the colors ran. They flowed, they merged, they sucked at his body, while he…

…shrank up against the glass wall next to Krane. They both stared in fascinated horror as the huge, ichor-dripping spider-thing advanced on them, mandibles clicking.

“My God in Heaven!” Marmorth heard Krane bellow. “What is it?” Krane scrabbled at the glass wall behind them, trying to get out. They were trapped.

The glass walls circled them, wide; just the spider-thing and each other, trapped in the tiny tomb!

Marmorth was petrified. He could neither move nor speak -he could hardly sense anything but terror. Spiders were his personal fear. He found his legs were quivering at the knees, though he had not sensed it a moment before. The very sight of the hairy beasts had always sent shudders through him. Now he knew this was his illusion.He was in the ascendant!

But how hideously in the ascendant.

The spider-thing advanced on them, the soft plush pads of its hundred feet leaving dampness where it stopped.

Krane fell to his knees, moaning and scratching at the glass floor. “Out, out, out, out..,” he mumbled, froth dripping from his lips.

Marmorth knew this was his chance. This fear was a product of his own mind; he had lived with it all his life. He knew it more familiarly than Krane-he could not cancel it, certainly, but he could utilize it more easily than the other.

Here was where he killed Krane. He pulled himself tightly to the wall, sweating palms flat to the glass, the valley of his backbone against the cool surface. “I’m right! The Theorem as I stated it i-is c-correct!” He said it triumphantly, though the note of terror quavered undisguised in his voice.

The spider-thing paused in its march, swung its clicking, ghastly head about as though confused, and altered direction by an inch. Away from Marmorth. It descended on Krane.

The black-bearded man looked up, saw it coming toward him, heard Marmorth’s words. Even on the floor, half-sunk in shock, he shouted, pounding his fists against the floor of glass, “Wrong, wrong, wrong! You’re wrong! I can provemy Theorem is correct! The basic formation of the Judiciary should be planned in an ever-decreasing system of-“

Marmorth didn’t even listen. He knew it was drivel! He knew the man was wrong! But the spider-thing had stopped once more. Now it paused between the two of them, its bulk shivering as though caught in a draft.

Krane saw the hesitation on the monster’s part, and rose, the old confidence and impudence regained. He wiped his balled fists across his eyes, clearing them of tears. He continued speaking, steadily, and to Marmorth’s ears, in the voice of a fanatic. The man just couldnot recognize that he was wrong.

“You’re insane, man!” Marmorth interjected, waving his hands with fervor. “The setup must be balanced between a code of fair practices with a Guild system blocking efforts on the part of the Genres to rise into control of the gross planetary product!” He went on and on, outlining the Theorem.

Krane, too, shouted and gesticulated, both of them suddenly oblivious to the monstrous, black spider-thing which had stopped completely between them, vacillating.

When Marmorth stopped for an instant to regain his breath, the beast twisted its neckless head toward him. Marmorth then speeded up his speech, spewing out detail upon detail, and the beast slowly sank back into uncertainty.

It was obviously a battle of belief. Whichever combatant had more conviction-that one would win.

They stood and shouted, screamed, outlined, explained and delineated for what seemed hours. Finally, as though in exasperation, the spider-thing began to turn. They both watched it, their mouths working, words pouring forth in twin streams of absolute sincere belief.

They watched even though…

…the starships fired at each other mercilessly. Blast after blast exploded soundlessly into the vault of space. Marmorth found his fingers twisted in the epaulet at his right shoulder.

As he watched Krane’sMagnificent-class destroyer wheel in the control-room screens, a half-naked, blood-soaked and perspiring crewman burst into the cabin’s entrance-well.

“Captain! Captain, sir!”

Marmorth looked over the plastic rail, down into the well.

“What?” His voice snapped with brittleness.

“Cap’n, the port side is riddled! We’re losing pressure from thirteen compartments. The Reclamation Mile is completely lost! The engineers’ group was in one of the compartments along that mile, Cap’n! They’re all bloated and blue and dead in there! We can see them floating around without any…”

“Get the Hell out of here!”Marmorth turned, lifting a spacetant from his chart-board, and flinging it with all his strength at the crewman. The man ducked and the spacetant bounced off the bulkhead, snapping pieces from its intricate bulk.

“You maniac!” he yowled, leaping back out of the well, through the exit port, as Marmorth reached for another missile.

Marmorth shut his eyes tight, blanking out the shuddering ship, space, the screens, everything.

“Right, right, right, right, right! I’m right!” he shouted, lifting clenched fists.

The explosion came in two parts, as though two torpedoes had been struck almost simultaneously. The ship rocked and heeled. Bits of metal sheared through the outer bulkheads, crashed against the opposite wall.

As the lights went dead, and the screams drove into his brain, Marmorth shouted his credo once more, with all the force of his conviction, with all the power of his lungs, with all the strength in his gasping body.

“I’m right! May God strike me dead if I’m not right! I know I’m right, I made an inexhaustible…”

…check!” he finished, opening his eyes and looking back down at the chessboard. The pieces, happily, had not moved. He still had Krane blocked off.

“I say check,” he repeated, smiling, steepling his fingers.

Krane’s black-bearded face broke into a wry grimace.

“Most clever, my dear Marmorth,” he congratulated the other with sarcasm. “You have forced me to touch a pawn.”

Marmorth watched as Krane, with trembling fingers, reached down to the jet pawn. It was carved from stone; carved with such care and intricacy that its edges were precisely as they had been desired by the master craftsman. They were razor sharp.

The pieces were all cut the same. Both the blanched alabaster pieces before Marmorth, and the ebony-stone players under Krane’s hand. The game had been constructed for men who played more than a “gentleman’s game.” There was death in each move.

Marmorth knew he was in the ascendant. Each of them had had two illusions-that remembrance was sharp-and this was Marmorth’s. How did he know? The older man looked down at the intricately carved chess pieces. He was white, Krane was black. As clear as it could be.

“Uh, have you moved?” Marmorth inquired, his voice unctuous with casualness. He knew the other had not yet touched his players. “I believe you still lie in check.” He was enjoying toying with his once-arrogant foe.

He thought he heard a muted, “Damn you!” under Krane’s breath, but could not be certain.

Slowly Krane touched the player, carefully sliding the fingers of his hand across the razor-thin, razor-sharp facets. The piece almost slid from his grasp, so loosely was he holding it, but the move was made in an instant.

Marmorth cursed mentally. Krane had calculated beautifully! Not only was his King blocked out from Marmorth’s Rook-Marmorth’s check-piece-but in another two moves (so clearly obvious as Krane had desired it) his own Queen would be in danger. In his mind he could hear Krane savoring the words:”Garde! I say garde, my dear Marmorth!”

He had to move the Queen out of position.

He had to touch the Queen!

The most deadly piece on the board!

“No!” he gasped.

“I beg your pardon?” said Krane, the slash-mouth opening in a violent grin.

“N-nothing, nothing!” snapped Marmorth. He concentrated. Deadly poison, instant-acting, lay filmed on those razor edges.

There was little chance he could maneuver that thousand-keen-edged Queen without poisoning himself for his trouble. Lord! It was an insoluble, a double-edged, dilemma. If he did not move, Krane would win. If he won, it was obvious Marmorth would die. He had seen the deadly dirk’s hilt protruding slightly from Krane’s cummerbund when the other had sat down. If hedid move, he would convulse to death before Krane’s taunting eyes.

You shall never have that pleasure!he thought, the bitter determination of a man who will not be defeated rising in him.

He approached the Queen, with hand, with eye.

The base was faceted, like a diamond. Each facet ended in a cutting edge so sensitive he knew it would sever the finger that touched it. The shape of the upper segments was involved, gorgeously-made. A woman, arms raised above her head, stretching in tension. Beautiful-and untouchable.

Then the thought struck him: Isthis the only move?

Deep within his mind he calculated. He could not possibly recognize the levels on which his intellect was working. In with his chess theory, in with his mental agility, in with his desire to win, his Theorem rearranged itself, fitting its logic to this situation. How could the Theorem be applied to the game? What other paths, through the infallible truth of the Theorem-in which he believed, now, more strongly than ever before-what other paths could he take.

Then the alternative move became clear. He could escape a route, escape thegarde, escape the taunting smile of Krane by moving a relatively safe Bishop. It was not a completely foolproof action, since the Bishop, too, was a razored piece of death, but he had found a way around the certain success of Krane’s maneuverings.

“Ha!” A terrible smile burst upon his face. His eyes bored across to the other’s. Krane turned white as Marmorth reached out, touched the one piece he had been desperately hoping the older man would not consider.

He felt the uncontrollable tightening in his throat as he realized the game would go on, and on, and on and…

…he unclenched his fist as the volcano leaped up around them.

It was more than the inside of a volcanic cone, however. The Corridor was there, too. The dung-brown walls of smooth rock shivered ever so slightly, and both men knew the Silver Corridor was just beyond their vision. They could see it glimmering with unreality.

It was almost as though they were looking at a double exposure; an extinct volcano superimposed over the shining tube of the Silver Corridor.

It isn’t far away,thought Marmorth.This must be the last illusion! Is there a certain pattern to these things? Then he felt, with a blissed release of nervous tension,Someone is going to win soon.

He stared up at the faint patch of gray sky, visible through the roundly jagged opening at the cone’s top. The walls sloped down in a fluid concavity. Here and there across the rough floor of the cavern, stalagmites rose up in sharp spikes.

And there-over and through the walls of the dead formations-the Corridor hung faintly. A ghostly, shivering, notquite-real shadow, inside the substance of their illusion.

They stood and stared at each other. Each knowing he was not really in the heart of a volcano, but in a metal corridor. Each knowing he could die as easily by this illusion as he could at the other’s hands.

Was this the end? Were there a limited number of illusions to each Affair? Who had won? Could therebe a winner?

They stared at each other, across the dusky interior of the extinct volcano.

“I’m right,” said Krane, hesitantly.

“You’re wrong,” answered Marmorth quickly.”I’m the one who’s right!”

In a moment they were at it again, each screaming till his lungs were raw with the effort, and red patches had appeared in Marmorth’s cheeks. They paused for an instant, gathering air for another tirade, Krane looking about for a weapon.

They were both as they had begun. Naked save the breechclouts which clung to their buttocks.

They resumed their shouting, the sound reverberating hollowly in the dim interior of the volcano. The sounds hit them, bounced across the stone walls, reverberated again. The fury had been built to a peak and pitch they both knew could not be exceeded. They had strained every last vestige of belief and conviction in their minds.

As Marmorth realized he was at the pinnacle of his belief, he saw the same conviction come over Krane’s face. He knew that from here on in, it would be a physical thing, with both of them stalemated in illusory power.

Then the womanthing appeared.

She grazed into being between them. She wasn’t human. There was no question about that. Marmorth took a halting step backward. Krane remained rooted, though his pale face had blanched an even more deadly shade. A strangled, “My God, whatis it?” slipped past Marmorth’s lips.

It was less than human, yet more than mortal; it was a travesty of a human being. A mad nightmare of a vision! Like some fearsome god of an ancient cult, it paused with long legs apart, hands on hips.

The woman’s body was lush. Full, high breasts, trim stomach, exciting legs. Gorgeously proportioned and exciting, the torso and legs, the chest and arms, were normal-even exaggeratedly normal.

But there all resemblance to a woman ceased.

The head was a strangely lizardlike thing, with elongated snout, wattles, huge glowing eyes set atop the skull. Looking out through flesh-sockets thick and deep-little hummocks atop the face-the eyes were small, crimson and cruel.

The nose was almost nonexistent. Two breather-spaces pulsed, one on either side of a small rise in the yellowed, pocked flesh of the head.

The mouth was a wide, gaping, triangular orifice, with triple rows of shark teeth in the upper and lower jaws. The womanthing looked like a gorgeous female-with the wierdly altered head of a crocodile.

The ebony, leathery, bat’s wings rising from the shoulder blades-quivering-completed the frightening picture.

Wisps of smoky, filmy garments were draped over the womanthing’s shoulders, around her waist. She stood unmoving.

Then she spoke to them. It was not mental.

It actually sounded; but not from the body before them. They knew it was-her?-but it did not come from her at all. The fearful mouth remained almost shut, propped slightly open on the sharp tiers of teeth.

The voice issued from the walls, from the tips of the stalagmites, from the high, arching roof of the volcano; it boomed from the rocky floor-it even floated down the length of the infinitely-stretching Corridor.

The voice spoke in thunder, yet softly.

Well, Gentlemen?

Krane stared for a second at the womanthing; then he looked about wildly, trying to find the source of the voice. His head swung back and forth as though it was manipulated by strings from above. “Well,what?” he shouted to no one.

Have you realized the truth yet?

“What truth? What are you talking about? Who is that? Is it you?” chimed in Marmorth, bathed in sudden fear. He pointed an accusing finger at the womanthing.

The Corridor shimmered oddly. It lived just behind the stone walls of the volcano.

I’m a voice, Gentlemen. A voice and an illusion. Just an illusion, that’s all, Gentlemen. Just an illusion from both of your minds. Made of equal portions of your minds. For you are one as strong as the other.

There was a pause. Then:

But tell me, have you realized what you should have known before you were foolish enough to enter the Corridor?

Krane looked at Marmorth with suspicion. For the first time it occurred to him that perhaps this was a trick on the other’s part. Marmorth, recognizing the glance, shrugged his shoulders eloquently. “No! Tell us, then!What should we have known?”

The only real answer as to who is right; which Theorem is the correct one!

“Tell me, tell me!” they shouted, almost together.

There was silence for a moment. The womanthing ran a scarlet-tipped hand across the hideous lizard snout, as though searching for a way to phrase what was coming. Then the single word sounded in the heart of the volcano.

Neither.

Krane and Marmorth stared past the womanthing, stared at each other in confusion. “N-neither?” shouted Marmorth incredulously. ” Are you mad! Of course one of us is right! Me!” He was shaking fists at the gruesome being before him. Illusion, perhaps; but an illusion that was goading him.

“Prove it! Prove it!” screamed Krane, stepping forward, flat-footedly, as though seeking to strike the womanthing. Then the voice gave them the solution and the proof that neither could contest, for both knew it to be true on a level that defied mere conviction.

You are both egomaniacs. You could not possibly be convinced of the other’s viewpoint. Not in a hundred million years. The message dies between you. You are both too tightly ensnared in yourselves!

The womanthing suddenly began to shimmer. She became indistinct, and there were many shadow-forms of her, surrounding her body like halos. Abruptly, she disappeared from between them. Leaving them alone in the quickening darkness of the volcano’s throat.

Alone. Staring at each other with dawning comprehension, dawning belief.

They both realized it at the same moment. They both had the conviction of their cause, yet they both knew the womanthing had been right.

“Krane,” said Marmorth, starting toward the black-bearded man, “she’s right, you know. Perhaps we can get together and figure…”

The other had started toward the older man as he had spoken. “Yes, perhaps there’s something in what you say. Perhaps there’s a…”

At the instant they both realized it-the instant they considered the other’s viewpoint-the illusion barriers shattered, of course, and the red-hot lava poured in on them, engulfing both men in a blistering inferno.

“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman

THERE ARE ALWAYS THOSE WHO ASK, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know “where it’s at,” this:

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others-as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders-serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, andmen, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Civil Disobedience

That is the heart of it. Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.

But because it was the very world it was, the very world they had allowed it tobecome, for months his activities did not come to the alarmed attention of The Ones Who Kept The Machine Functioning Smoothly, the ones who poured the very best butter over the cams and mainsprings of the culture. Not until it had become obvious that somehow, someway, he had become a notoriety, a celebrity, perhaps even a hero for (what Officialdom inescapably tagged) “an emotionally disturbed segment of the populace,” did they turn it over to the Ticktockman and his legal machinery. But by then, because it was the very world it was, and they had no way to predict he would happen-possibly a strain of disease long-defunct, now, suddenly, reborn in a system where immunity had been forgotten, had lapsed-he had been allowed to become too real. Now he had form and substance.

He had become apersonality, something they had filtered out of the system many decades before. But there it was, and therehe was, a very definitely imposing personality. In certain circles-middle-class circles-it was thought disgusting. Vulgar ostentation. Anarchistic. Shameful. In others, there was only snickering, those strata where thought is subjugated to form and ritual, niceties, proprieties. But down below, ah, down below, where the people always needed their saints and sinners, their bread and circuses, their heroes and villains, he was considered a Bolivar; a Napoleon; a Robin Hood; a Dick Bong (Ace of Aces) ; a Jesus; a Jomo Kenyatta.

And at the top-where, like socially attuned Shipwreck Kellys, every tremor and vibration threatening to dislodge the wealthy, powerful and titled from their flagpoles-he was considered a menace; a heretic; a rebel; a disgrace; a peril. He was known down the line, to the very heartmeat core, but the important reactions were high above and far below. At the very top, at the very bottom.

So his file was turned over, along with his time card and his cardioplate, to the office of the Ticktockman.

The Ticktockman: very much over six feet tall, often silent, a soft purring man when things went timewise. The Ticktockman.

Even in the cubicles of the hierarchy, where fear was generated, seldom suffered, he was called the Ticktockman. But no one called him that to his mask.

You don’t call a man a hated name, not when that man, behind his mask, is capable of revoking the minutes, the hours, the days and nights, the years of your life. He was called the Master Timekeeper to his mask. It was safer that way.

“This iswhat he is,” said the Ticktockman with genuine softness, “but notwho he is. This time-card I’m holding in my left hand has a name on it, but it is the name ofwhat he is, notwho he is. The cardioplate here in my right hand is also named, but not whom named, merely what named. Before I can exercise proper revocation, I have to know who this what is.”

To his staff, all the ferrets, all the loggers, all the finks, all the commex, even the mineez, he said, “Who is this Harlequin?”

He was not purring smoothly. Timewise, it was jangle.

However, itwas the longest single speech they had ever heard him utter at one time, the staff, the ferrets, the loggers, the finks, the commex, but not the mineez, who usually weren’t around to know, in any case. But even they scurried to find out

Who is the Harlequin?

High above the third level of the city, he crouched on the humming aluminum-frame platform of the airboat (foof! airboat, indeed, swizzleskid is what it was, with a tow-rack jerry-rigged) and stared down at the neat Mondrian arrangement of the buildings.

Somewhere nearby, he could hear the metronomic left-right-left of the 2:47 P.M. shift, entering the Timkin rollerbearing plant, in their sneakers. A minute later, precisely, he heard the softer right-left-right of the 5:00 A.M. formation, going home.

An elfin grin spread across his tanned features, and his dimples appeared for a moment. Then, scratching at his thatch of auburn hair, he shrugged within his motley, as though girding himself for what came next, and threw the joystick forward, and bent into the wind as the airboat dropped. He skimmed over a slidewalk, purposely dropping a few feet to crease the tassels of the ladies of fashion, and-inserting thumbs in large ears-he stuck out his tongue, rolled his eyes and went wugga-wugga-wugga. It was a minor diversion. One pedestrian skittered and tumbled, sending parcels everywhichway, another wet herself, a third keeled slantwise and the walk was stopped automatically by the servitors till she could be resuscitated. It was a minor diversion.

Then he swirled away on a vagrant breeze, and was gone. Hi-ho.

As he rounded the cornice of the Time-Motion Study Building, he saw the shift, just boarding the slidewalk. With practiced motion and an absolute conservation of movement, they sidestepped up onto the slowstrip and (in a chorus line reminiscent of a Busby Berkeley film of the antideluvian 1930’s) advanced across the strips ostrich-walking till they were lined up on the expresstrip.

Once more, in anticipation, the elfin grin spread, and there was a tooth missing back there on the left side. He dipped, skimmed, and swooped over them; and then, scrunching about on the airboat, he released the holding pins that fastened shut the ends of the homemade pouring troughs that kept his cargo from dumping prematurely. And as he pulled the trough-pins, the airboat slid over the factory workers and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jelly beans cascaded down on the expresstrip.

Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin workers, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and ruling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness. Jelly beans!

The shift workers howled and laughed and were pelted, and broke ranks, and the jelly beans managed to work their way into the mechanism of the slidewalks after which there was a hideous scraping as the sound of a million fingernails rasp down a quarter of a million blackboards, followed by a coughing and a sputtering, and then the slidewalks all stopped and everyone was summarily dumped thisawayandthataway in a jackstraw tumble, still laughing and popping little jelly bean eggs of childish color into their mouths. It was a holiday, and a jollity, an absolute insanity, a giggle. But…

The shift was delayed seven minutes.

They did not get home for seven minutes.

The master schedule was thrown off by seven minutes.

Quotas were delayed by inoperative slidewalks for seven minutes.

He had tapped the first domino in the line, and one after another, like chik chik chik, the others had fallen.

The System had been seven minutes worth of disrupted. It was a tiny matter, one hardly worthy of note, but in a society where the single driving force was order and unity and promptness and clocklike precision and attention to the clock, reverence of the gods of the passage of time, it was a disaster of major importance.

So he was ordered to appear before the Ticktockman. It was broadcast across every channel of the communications web. He was ordered to bethere at 7:00 dammit on time. And they waited, and they waited, but he didn’t show up till almost ten-thirty, at which time he merely sang a little song about moonlight in a place no one had ever heard of, called Vermont, and vanished again. But they had all been waiting since seven, and it wreckedhell with their schedules. So the question remained: Who is the Harlequin?

But theunasked question (more important of the two) was : How did we getinto this position, where a laughing, irresponsible japer of jabberwocky and jive could disrupt our entire economic and cultural life with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jelly beans…

Jellyfor God’s sakebeans! This is madness! Where did he get the money to buy a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jelly beans? (They knew it would have cost that much, because they had a team of Situation Analysts pulled off another assignment, and rushed to the slidewalk scene to sweep up and count the candies, and produce findings, which disruptedtheir schedules and threw their entire branch at least a day behind.) Jelly beans! Jelly…beans?Now wait a seconda second accounted for-no one has manufactured jelly beans for over a hundred years. Where did he get jelly beans?

That’s another good question. More than likely it will never be answered to your complete satisfaction. But then, how many questions ever are?

The middle you know. Here is the beginning. How it starts:

A desk pad. Day for day, and turn each day. 9:00-open the mail. 9 :45-appointment with planning commission board. 10:30-discuss installation progress charts with J.L. 11:15 pray for rain. 12:00-lunch.And so it goes.

“I’m sorry, Miss Grant, but the time for interviews was set at 2:30, and it’s almost five now. I’m sorry you’re late, but those are the rules. You’ll have to wait till next year to submit application for this college again.”And so it goes.

The 10: 10 local stops at Cresthaven, Galesville, Tonawanda Junction, Selby and Farnhurst, but not at Indiana City, Lucasville and Colton, except on Sunday. The 10:35 express stops at Galesville, Selby and Indiana City, except on Sundays & Holidays, at which time it stops at…and so it goes.

“I couldn’t wait, Fred. I had to be at Pierre Cartain’s by 3 :00, and you said you’d meet me under the clock in the terminal at 2:45, and you weren’t there, so I had to go on. You’re always late, Fred. If you’d been there, we could have sewed it up together, but as it was, well, I took the order alone…”And so it goes.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Atterley: In reference to your son Gerald’s constant tardiness, I am afraid we will have to suspend him from school unless some more reliable method can be instituted guaranteeing he will arrive at his classes on time. Granted he is an exemplary student, and his marks are high, his constant flouting of the schedules of this school make it impractical to maintain him in a system where the other children seem capable of getting where they are supposed to be on timeand so it goes.

YOU CANNOT VOTE UNLESS YOU APPEAR AT 8:45 A.M.

“I don’t care if the script isgood. I need it Thursday!”

CHECK-OUT TIME IS 2:00 P.M.

“You got here late. The job’s taken. Sorry.”

YOUR SALARY HAS BEEN DOCKED FOR TWENTY MINUTES TIME LOST.

“God, what time is it, I’ve gotta run!”

And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshippers of the sun’s passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don’t keep the schedule tight.

Until it becomes more than a minor inconvenience to be late. It becomes a sin. Then a crime. Then a crime punishable by this:

EFFECTIVE 15 JULY 2389, 12:00:00 midnight, the office of the Master Timekeeper will require all citizens to submit their time-cards and cardioplates for processing. In accordance with Statute 5557-SGH-999 governing the revocation of time per capita, all cardioplates will be keyed to the individual holder and

What they had done was devise a method of curtailing the amount of life a person could have. If he was ten minutes late, he lost ten minutes of his life. An hour was proportionately worth more revocation. If someone was consistently tardy, he might find himself, on a Sunday night, receiving a communiqu‚ from the Master Timekeeper that his time had run out, and he would be “turned off” at high noon on Monday, please straighten your affairs, sir.

And so, by this simple scientific expedient (utilizing a scientific process held dearly secret by the Ticktockman’s office) the System was maintained. It was the only expedient thing to do. It was, after all, patriotic. The schedules had to be met. After all, therewas a war on!

But, wasn’t there always?

“Now that is really disgusting,” the Harlequin said, when pretty Alice showed him the wanted poster. “Disgusting andhighly improbable. After all, this isn’t the day of the desperado. Awanted poster!”

“You know,” Alice noted, “you speak with a great deal of inflection.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Harlequin, humbly.

“No need to be sorry. You’re always saying `I’m sorry.’ You have such massive guilt, Everett, it’s really very sad.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, then pursed his lips so the dimples appeared momentarily. He hadn’t wanted to say that at all. “I have to go out again. I have todo something.”

Alice slammed her coffee-bulb down on the counter. “Oh for God’ssake, Everett, can’t you stay home justone night! Must you always be out in that ghastly clown suit, running around annoying people?”

“I’m-” he stopped, and clapped the jester’s hat onto his auburn thatch with a tiny tingling of bells. He rose, rinsed out his coffee-bulb at the tap, and put it into the drier for a moment. “I have to go.”

She didn’t answer. The faxbox was purring, and she pulled a sheet out, read it, threw it toward him on the counter. “It’s about you. Of course. You’re ridiculous.”

He read it quickly. It said the Ticktockman was trying to locate him. He didn’t care, he was going out to be late again. At the door, dredging for an exit line, he hurled back petulantly, “Well,you speak with inflection,too!”

Alice rolled her pretty eyes heavenward. “You’re ridiculous.” The Harlequin stalked out, slamming the door, which sighed shut softly, and locked itself.

There was a gentle knock, and Alice got up with an exhalation of exasperated breath, and opened the door. He stood there. “I’ll be back about ten-thirty, okay?”

She pulled a rueful face. “Why do you tell me that? Why? Youknow you’ll be late! Youknow it! You’realways late, so why do you tell me these dumb things?” She closed the door.

On the other side, the Harlequin nodded to himself.She’s right. She’s always right. I’ll be late. I’m always late. Why doI tell her these dumb things?

He shrugged again, and went off to be late once more.

He had fired off the firecracker rockets that said: I will attend the 115th annual International Medical Association Invocation at 6:00 P.M. precisely. I do hope you will all be able to join me.

The words had burned in the sky, and of course the authorities were there, lying in wait for him. They assumed, naturally, that he would be late. He arrived twenty minutes early, while they were setting up the spiderwebs to trap and hold him, and blowing a large bullhorn, he frightened and unnerved them so, their own moisturized encirclement webs sucked closed, and they were hauled up, kicking and shrieking, high above the amphitheater’s floor. The Harlequin laughed and laughed, and apologized profusely. The physicians, gathered in solemn conclave, roared with laughter, and accepted the Harlequin’s apologies with exaggerated bowing and posturing, and a merry time was had by all, who thought the Harlequin was a regular foofaraw in fancy pants; all, that is, but the authorities, who had been sent out by the office of the Ticktockman, who hung there like so much dockside cargo, hauled up above the floor of the amphitheater in a most unseemly fashion.

(In another part of the same city where the Harlequin carried on his “activities,” totally unrelated in every way to what concerns us here, save that it illustrates the Ticktockman’s power and import, a man named Marshall Delahanty received his turn-off notice from the Ticktockman’s office. His wife received the notification from the gray-suited minee who delivered it, with the traditional “look of sorrow” plastered hideously across his face. She knew what it was, even without unsealing it. It was a billet-doux of immediate recognition to everyone these days. She gasped, and held it as though it was a glass slide tinged with botulism, and prayed it was not for her. Let it be for Marsh, she thought, brutally, realistically, or one of the kids, but not for me, please dear God, not for me. And then she opened it, and itwas for Marsh, and she was at one and the same time horrified and relieved. The next trooper in the line had caught the bullet. “Marshall,” she screamed, “Marshall! Termination, Marshall! OhmiGod, Marshall, whattl we do, whattl we do, Marshall, omigodmarshall…” and in their home that night was the sound of tearing paper and fear, and the stink of madness went up the flue and there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could do about it.

(But Marshall Delahanty tried to run. And early the next day, when turn-off time came, he was deep in the forest two hundred miles away, and the office of the Ticktockman blanked his cardioplate, and Marshall Delahanty keeled over, running, and his heart stopped, and the blood dried up on its way to his brain, and he was dead that’s all. One light went out on his sector map in the office of the Master Timekeeper, while notification was entered for fax reproduction, and Georgette Delahanty’s name was entered on the dole roles till she could remarry. Which is the end of the footnote, and all the point that need be made, except don’t laugh, because that is what would happen to the Harlequin if ever the Ticktockman found out his real name. It isn’t funny.)

The shopping level of the city was thronged with the Thursday-colors of the buyers. Women in canary yellow chitons and men in pseudo-Tyrolean outfits that were jade and leather and fit very tightly, save for the balloon pants.

When the Harlequin appeared on the still-being-constructed shell of the new Efficiency Shopping Center, his bullhorn to his elfishly-laughing lips, everyone pointed and stared, and he berated them:

“Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don’t be slaves of time, it’s a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees…down with the Ticktockman!”

Who’s the nut? most of the shoppers wanted to know. Who’s the nut oh wow I’m gonna be late I gotta run…

And the construction gang on the Shopping Center received an urgent order from the office of the Master Timekeeper that the dangerous criminal known as the Harlequin was atop their spire, and their aid was urgently needed in apprehending him. The work crew said no, they would lose time on their construction schedule, but the Ticktockman managed to pull the proper threads of governmental webbing, and they were told to cease work and catch that nitwit up there on the spire with the bullhorn. So a dozen and more burly workers began climbing into their construction platforms, releasing the a-grav plates, and rising toward the Harlequin.

After the debacle (in which, through the Harlequin’s attention to personal safety, no one was seriously injured), the workers tried to reassemble and assault him again, but it was too late. He had vanished. It had attracted quite a crowd, however, and the shopping cycle was thrown off by hours, simply hours. The purchasing needs of the system were therefore falling behind, and so measures were taken to accelerate the cycle for the rest of the day, but it got bogged down and speeded up and they sold too many floatvalves and not nearly enough wagglers, which meant that the popli ratio was off, which made it necessary to rush cases and cases of spoiling Smash-O to stores that usually needed a case only every three or four hours. The shipments were bollixed, the trans-shipments were misrouted, and in the end, even the swizzleskid industries felt it.

“Don’t come back till you have him!” the Ticktockman said, very quietly, very sincerely, extremely dangerously.

They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardioplate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stiktytes. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search&seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentive. They used fingerprints. They used Bertillon. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul Mitgong, but he didn’t help much. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology.

And what the hell : they caught him.

After all, his name was Everett C. Marm, and he wasn’t much to begin with, except a man who had no sense of time.

“Repent, Harlequin”` said the Ticktockman.

“Get stuffed”` the Harlequin replied, sneering.

“You’ve been late a total of sixty-three years, five months, three weeks, two days, twelve hours, forty-one minutes, fifty-nine seconds, point oh three six one one one microseconds. You’ve used up everything you can, and more. I’m going to turn you off.”

“Scare someone else. I’d rather be dead than live in a dumb world with a bogey man like you.”

“It’s my job.”

“You’re full of it. You’re a tyrant. You have no right to order people around and kill them if they show up late.”

“You can’t adjust. You can’t fit in.”

“Unstrap me, and I’ll fit my fist into your mouth.”

“You’re a nonconformist.”

“That didn’t used to be a felony.”

“It is now. Live in the world around you.”

“I hate it. It’s a terrible world.”

“Not everyone thinks so. Most people enjoy order.”

“I don’t, and most of the people I know don’t.”

“That’s not true. How do you think we caught you?”

“I’m not interested.”

“A girl named pretty Alice told us who you were.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s true. You unnerve her. She wants to belong, she wants to conform, I’m going to turn you off.”

“Then do it already, and stop arguing with me.”

“I’m not going to turn you off.”

“You’re an idiot!”

“Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman.

“Get stuffed.”

So they sent him to Coventry. And in Coventry they worked him over. It was just like what they did to Winston Smith in 1984, which was a book none of them knew about, but the techniques are really quite ancient, and so they did it to Everett C. Marm, and one day quite a long time later, the Harlequin appeared on the communications web, appearing elfish and dimpled and bright-eyed, and not at all brainwashed, and he said he had been wrong, that it was a good, a very good thing indeed, to belong, and be right on time hip-ho and away we go, and everyone stared up at him on the public screens that covered an entire city block, and they said to themselves, well, you see, he was just a nut after all, and if that’s the way the system is run, then let’s do it that way, because it doesn’t pay to fight city hall, or in this case, the Ticktockman. So Everett C. Marm was destroyed, which was a loss, because of what Thoreau said earlier, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and in every revolution, a few die who shouldn’t, but they have to, because that’s the way it happens, and if you make only a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile. Or, to make the point lucidly:

“Uh, excuse me, sir, I, uh, don’t know how to uh, to uh, tell you this, but you were three minutes late. The schedule is a little, uh, bit off.”

He grinned sheepishly.

“That’s ridiculous!” murmured the Ticktockman behind his mask: “Check your watch.” And then he went into his office, going mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee.

Bright Eyes

FEET WITHOUT TOES. Softly padded feet, furred. Footsteps sounded gently, padding furry, down ink-chill corridors of the place. A place Bright Eyes had inhabited since before time had substance. Since before places had names. A dark place, a shadowed place, only a blot against the eternally nightened skies. No stars chip-ice twittered insanely against that night; for in truth the night was mad enough.

Night was a condition Bright Eyes understood. And he knew about day…

He knew about almost everything.

The worms. The moles. The trunks of dead trees. The whites of eggs. Music. And random sounds. The sound fish make in the deep. The flares of the sun. The scratch of unbleached cloth against flesh. The hounds that roamed the tundra. The way those who have hair see it go pale and stiff with age. Clocks and what they do. Ice cream. Wax seals on parchment dedications. Grass and leaves. Metal and wood. Up and down. Here and most of there. Bright Eyes knew it all.

And that was the reason his padding, acoustically-sussurating footsteps hissed high in the dark, beamed, silent corridors of the place. And why he would now, forever at last, make that long journey.

The giant rat, whose name was Thomas, lay curled, fetid, sleeping, near the great wooden gate; and as Bright Eyes approached, it stirred. Then, like a mastiff, it lifted its bullet-shaped head, and the bright crimson eyes flickered artful awareness. The massive head stiffened on the neckless neck, and it shambled to its feet. The wire tail swished across hand-inset cobblestones, making scratching sounds in the silent night.

“It’s time,” Bright Eyes murmured. “Here, Thomas.” The great gray creature jogged to him, nuzzling Bright Eyes’ leg. It sniffed at the net filled with old skulls, and its whiskers twitched like cilia for a moment.

Bright Eyes swung the great wooden gate open with difficulty, dislodging caked dirt and cold-hardened clots of stray matter. The heavy metal ring clanged as he dropped it against the portal. Then Bright Eyes swung to the back of the rat, and without reins or prompting, the rat whose name was Thomas, paced steadily through the opening, leaving behind the only home Bright Eyes had ever known, which he would never see again. There was mist on the land.

Strange and terrible portents had caused Bright Eyes to leave the place. Unwilling to believe what they implied, at first, Bright Eyes pursued the gentle patterns of his days-like all the other days he had ever known, alone. But finally, when the blood-red and gray colors washed in unholy mixture down the skies, he knew what had happened, and that it was his obligation to return to a place he had never seen, had only heard about from others, centuries before, and do what had to be done. The others were long-since dead: had been dead since before Christ took Barabbas’ place on the cross. The place to which Bright Eyes must return had not even been known, had not even existed, when the others left the world. Yet it was Bright Eyes’ place, by default, and his obligation to all the others who had passed before. Since he was the last of his kind, a race that had no name, and had dwelled in the castle-place for millennia, he only dimly understood what was demanded of him. Yet this he knew: the call had been made, the portents cast into the night to be seen by him; and he must go.

It was a journey whose length even Bright Eyes could not surmise. The mist seemed to cover the world in a soft shroud that promised little good luck on this mission.

And, inexplicably, to Bright Eyes, there was a crushing sadness in him. A sadness he did not fathom, could not plumb, dared not examine. His glowing sight pierced through the mist, as steadily and stately, Thomas moved toward Bright Eyes’ final destination. And it would remain unknown, till he reached it.

Out of the mist the giant rat swung jauntily. They had passed among softly-rounded hills with water that dripped from above. Then the shoulders had become black rock, and gleaming pinpoints of diamond brilliance had shone in the rock, and Bright Eyes had realized they were in caves. But had they come from the land, inside…or had they come from some resting-land deep in the bowels of the Earth, into these less hidden caverns; and would they continue to another outside?

Far ahead, a dim light pulsed and glowed, and Bright Eyes spurred Thomas forward. The dim light grew more bold, more orange and yellow and menacing with sudden soft roars of bubbling thunder. And as they rounded the passage, the floor of the cave was gone, and in their path lay a boiling scar in the stone. A lava pit torn up out of the solid stone, hissing and bubbling fiercely with demonic abandon. The light burned at Bright Eyes, and the heat was gagging. The sour stench of sulphur bit at his senses, and he made to turn aside.

The giant rat suddenly bolted in panic, arching back, more like caterpillar than rodent, and Bright Eyes was tossed to the floor of the cave, his net of skulls rolling away from him. Thomas chittered in fear, and took steps away, then paused and returned to his master. Bright Eyes rose and patted the terrified beast several times. Thomas fell into quivering silence.

Bright Eyes retrieved the skulls. All but one, that had rolled across the stone floor and disappeared with a vagrant hiss into the flame-pit. The giant rat sniffed at the walls, first one, then the other, and settled against the far one. Bright Eyes contemplated the gash in the stone floor. It stretched completely across, and as far as he could tell, forward. Thomas chittered.

Bright Eyes looked away from the flames, into the fear-streaked eyes of the beast. “Well, Thomas?” he asked. The rat’s snout twitched, and it hunkered closer to the wall. It looked up at Bright Eyes imploringly. Bright Eyes came to the rat, crouched down, stroked its neat, tight fur. Bright Eyes brushed the wall. It was not hot. It was cool.

The rat knew.

Bright Eyes rose, walked back along the passage. He found the parallel corridor half a mile back in the direction they had come. Without turning, he knew Thomas had silently followed, and leading the way, he moved down the parallel corridor, in coolness. Even the Earth could not keep Bright Eyes from what had to be done.

They followed the corridor for a very long time, till the rock walls leaned inward, and the littered floor tilted toward the stalactite-spiked ceiling. Bright Eyes dismounted, and walked beside the giant rat. There were strange, soft murmurings beneath them. Thomas chittered every time the Earth rattled. Further on, the passage puckered narrower and narrower…and Bright Eyes was forced to bend, then stoop, then crawl. Thomas slithered belly-tight behind him, more frightened to be left behind than to struggle forward.

A whisper of chill, clean air passed them.

They moved ahead, only the glow of Bright Eyes marking a passage.

Abruptly, the cave mouth opened onto darkness, and cold, and the world Bright Eyes had never seen, the world his dim ancestors had left, millennia before.

No one could ever set down what that first sight meant to Bright Eyes. But…

…the chill he felt, was not child of the night wind.

The countryside was a murmuring silence. The sky was so black, not even the stars seemed at home. Frightened, lonely and alienated from the universe they populated, the silver specks drifted down the night like chalk dust. And through the strangeness, Bright Eyes rode Thomas, neither seeing nor caring. Behind him a village passed over the horizon line, and he never knew he had been through it.

No shouts of halt were hurled on the wind. No one came to darkened windows to see Bright Eyes pass through. He was approaching there and gone, all in an instant of time that may have been forever and may have been never. He was a wraith on the mist-bottomed silence. And Thomas, moved stately through valley and village, only paced, nothing more. From now on, it was Bright Eyes’ problem.

Far out on the plains, the wind opened up suddenly. It spun down out of the northwest and drove at Bright Eyes’ back. And on the trembling coolness, the alien sounds of wild dogs came snapping across the emptiness. Bright Eyes looked up, and Thomas’ neck hair bristled with fear. Bright Eyes stroked a round, palpitating ear and the great rat came under control.

Then, almost without sound that was tied to them-for the sound of dogs came from a distance, from far away-the insane beasts were upon them. A slavering band of crimson-eyed mongrels, some still wearing dog collars and clinking tags, hair grown shaggy and matted with filth. Noses with large nostrils, as though they had had to learn to forage the land all at once, rather than from birth. These were the dogs of the people, driven out onto the wind, to live or die or eat each other as best they could.

The first few leaped from ten feet away, high and flat in trajectories that brought them down on Thomas’ back, almost into Bright Eyes’ lap, their yellow teeth scraping and clattering like dice on cement, lunacy bubbling out of them as froth and stench and spastic claw-scrabblings. Thomas reared and Bright Eyes slid off without losing balance, using the bag of skulls as a mace to ward off the first of the vicious assaults. One great Doberman had its teeth set for a strike into Thomas’ belly, but the great rat-with incredible ferocity and skill-snapped its head down in a scythelike movement, and rent the gray-brown beast from jowl to chest, and it fell away, bleeding, moaning piteously.

And the rest of the pack materialized from the darkness. Dozens of them, circling warily now that one of their number lay in a trembling-wet garbage heap of its own innards.

Bright Eyes whistled Thomas to him with a soft sound. They stood together, facing the horde, and Bright Eyes called up a talent his race had not been forced to use in uncounted centuries.

The great white eyes glowed, deep and bubbling as cauldrons of lava, and a hollow moaning came from a place deep in Bright Eyes’ throat. A sound of torment, a sound of fear, an evocation of gods that were dust before the Earth began to gather moisture to itself in the senseless cosmos, before the Moon had cooled, before the patterns of magnetism had settled the planets of the Solar System in their sockets.

Out of that sound, the basic fiber of emotion, like some great machine phasing toward top-point efficiency, Bright Eyes drew himself tight and unleashed the blast of pure power at the dogs.

Buried deep in his mind, the key to pure fear as a weapon was depressed, and in a blinding fan of sweeping brilliance, the emotion washed out toward the horde, a comber of undiluted, unbuffered terror. For the first time in centuries, that immense power was unleashed. Bright Eyesthought them terrified, and the air stank with fear.

The dogs, bulge-eyed and hysterical, fled in a wave of yipping, trembling, tuck-tailed quivering.

As if the night could no longer contain the immensity of it, the shimmering sound of terror bulged and grew, seeking release in perhaps another dimension, some higher threshold of audibility, and finding none-it wisped away in darkness and was gone.

Bright Eyes stood trembling uncontrollably, every fiber of his body spasming. His pineal gland throbbed. An intracranial tumor-whose presence in a human brain would have meant death-absolutely imperative for Bright Eyes’ coordinated thought processes, which had swollen to five times its size as he concentrated, till his left temple had bulged with the pressing growth of it-now shrank, subsided, sucked itself back down into the gray brain matter, the gliomas itself. And slowly, as the banked fires of his eyes softened once more, Bright Eyes came back to full possession of himself.

“It has been a very long time since that was needed,” he said gently, and dwelt for a moment on the powers his race had possessed, powers long-since gone to forgetfulness.

Now that it was over, the giant rat settled to the ground, licking at its fur, at a slash in the flesh where one of the mad things had ripped and found meat.

Bright Eyes went to him. “They are the saddest creatures of all. They are alone.” Thomas continued licking at his wounds.

Days later, but closer to their final destination, they came to the edge of a great river. At one time it had been a swiftly-moving stream, whipping itself high in a pounding torrent filled with colors and sounds; but now it flushed itself to the sea wearily, riding low in its own tide-trough, and hampered by the log-jam. The log-jam was made of corpses.

Bodies, hideously bloated and maggot-white puffed out of human shapes, lay across one another, from the near shore to the opposite bank. Thousands of bodies, uncountable thousands, twisted and piled and washed together till it would have been possible to cross the river on the top layer of naked men’s faces, bleached women’s backs, twisted children’s hands crinkled as if left too long in water. For they had been.

As far upstream as Bright Eyes could see, and as far downstream as the bend of the banks permitted, it was the same. No movement, save the very seldom jiggle of a corpse as the water passed through. For they were packed so deeply and so tightly that in truth only water at its most sluggish could wanly press through. Yet the water gurgled and twittered among them, stealing slowly downstream-caressing rotting flesh in obscene parody: water, cleansing steppingstones; polishing and smoothing and drenching them senselessly as it marks its passage only by what is left behind.

That was the ultimate horror of this river of dead: that the tide-no matter how held-back now-continued unheeding as it had since the world was born. For the world went on. And did not care.

Bright Eyes stood silently. At the bottom of the short slope that ended with shoreline, bodies were strewn in a careless tumble. He breathed very deeply, fighting for air, and the shivering started again. As it grew more pronounced, there was movement in the dry-moist river bed. Bodies abruptly began to move. They trembled as though roiling in a stream growing turbulent. Then, one by one, they rearranged themselves. All up and down the length of the river, the bodies shifted and moved and lifted without aid from their original positions, and far off, where their movement to neatness could not be seen, there came the roar of dammed-up water breaking free, surging forward, freed from its restraining walls of once-human flesh.

As Bright Eyes trembled, power surging through his slight frame, his eyes seeming to wax and wane with currents of electricity, the river of corpses freed itself from its log-jam, and was open once more.

The water poured in a great frothing wave down and down the corpse-bordered trough of the river. It broke out of a box-canyon to Bright Eyes’ left, like a wild creature penned too long and at last set free on the wind. It came bubbling, boiling, thrashing forward, passed the spot where he stood, and hurled itself away around the bend in the shoreline.

As Bright Eyes felt the trembling pass, the river rose, and rose, and gently now, rose. Covering the ghastly residue of humanity that now lay submerged beneath the mud-blackened waters.

The eyes of the trembling creature, the eyes of the giant rat, the eyes of the uncaring day were blessedly relieved of the sight of decay and death.

Emotions washed quickly, one after another, down his features; washed as quickly as the river had concealed its sad wealth; colors of sadness, imprinted in a manner no human being could ever have conceived, for the face that supported these emotions was of a race that had vanished before man had walked the Earth.

Then Bright Eyes turned, and with the rat, walked upstream. Toward the morning.

When the bleeding birds went over, the sun darkened. Great irregular, hard-edged clouds of them, all species, all wingspreads-but silent. Passing across the broad, gray brow of the sky, heading absolutely nowhere, they turned off the sun. It was suddenly chill as a crypt. Heading east. Not toward warmth, or instinct, or destination…just anywhere, nowhere. Until they wearied, expired, dropped. Not manna, garbage. Live garbage that fell in hundredclots from the beat-winged flights.

Many dropped, fluttering idly as if too weary to fight the air currents any longer. As though what tiny instinctual brain substance they had possessed, were now baked, turned to jelly, squashed by an unnameable force into an ichorous juice that ran out through their eyes. As though they no longer cared to live, much less to continue this senseless flight east to nowhere…

…and they bled.

A rain of bird’s blood, sick and discolored. It misted down, beading Bright Eyes, and the stiff rat fur, and the trees, and the still, silent, dark land.

Only the dead, flat no-sound of millions of wings metronomic ally beating, beating, beating…

Bright Eyes shuddered, turned his face from the sight above, and finding himself unable to look, yet unable to end the horror as he had the mad dogs or the water of corpses, sought surcease in his own personal vision.

And this, which had driven him forth, was his vision:

Sleeping, deep in that place where he had lived so long, Bright Eyes had felt the subtle altering of tempo in the air around him. It was nothing as obvious as machinery beginning to whirr, trembling the walls around him; nor as complex as a shift in dimensional orientation. It was, rather, a soft sliding in the molecules of everything except Bright Eyes. For an instant everything went just slightly out of synch, a little fuzzy, and Bright Eyes came awake sharply. Thething that had occurred, was something his race had pre-set eons before. It was triggered to activate itself-whatever “itself” was-after certain events hadpossibly happened.

The fact that this shifting had occurred, made Bright Eyes grow cold and wary. He had expected to die without its ever having come. But now, this was the time, and ithad happened, and he waited for the next phase.

It came quickly. The vision.

The air before him grew even more indistinct, more roiled, like a pool of quicksilver smoke tumbling in and in on itself. And from that cloudiness the image of the last of the Castellans took shape. (Was it image, or reality, or thought within his head? He did not really know, for Bright Eyes was merely the last of his kind, no specially-trained adept, and much of what his race had been, and knew, was lost to him, beyond him.)

The Castellan was a fifth-degree adept, and surely the last remaining one of Bright Eyes’ race to-go. He wore the purple and blue of royalty, from a House Bright Eyes did not recognize, but the cut of the robe was shorter than styles Bright Eyes recalled as having been current-then. And the Castellan’s cowl was up, revealing a face that was bleak with sorrow and even a hint of cruelty. Such was not present, of course, for the Castellans merely performed their duties, but Bright Eyes was certainthis adept had been against the decision to-go. Yet he had been chosen to bring the message to Bright Eyes.

He stood, booted and silent, in the soft-washed blue and white lightness of Bright Eyes’ sleeping chamber. Bright Eyes was given time to come to full wakefulness, and then the Castellan spoke.

“What you see has been gone for ten centuries. I am the last, save you. They have set me the task, and this twist of my being, of telling you what you must do. If the proper portents trigger my twist to appear before you-pray it never happens-then you must go to the city of the ones with hair, the ones who come after us, the ones who inherit the Earth, the men. Go to their city, with a bag of skulls of our race. You will know what to do with them.

“Know this, Bright Eyes: we go voluntarily. Some of us-and I am one of them-more reluctantly than most. It is a decision that seems only proper. Those who come after us, Men, will have their chance for the stars. This was the only gift of birth we could offer. No other gift can have meaning between us. They must have our chance, so we have gone to the place where you now lie. By the time I appear to you-if ever I do-we will be gone. This is the way of it, a sad and an inescapable way. You will be the last. And now I will show you a thing.”

The Castellan raised his hands before his face, and as though they were growing transparent, they glowed with an inner fire. The Visioning power. The Castellan’s face suffused with flames as it conjured up the proper vision for Bright Eyes.

It appeared out of lines of blossoming crimson force, in the very air beside the Castellan. A vision of terror and destruction. Flames man-made and devastating, incredible in their hellfire. Like some great arachnid of pure force, the demon flames of the destruction swept and washed across the vision, and when it faded, Bright Eyes lay shaken by what he had seen.

“If this that I have showed you ever comes to pass, then my twist will appear to you. And if you ever hear me as you hear me now, then go, with the bag of skulls of our people. And do not doubt your feelings.

“For if I appear to you, it will all have been in vain, and those of us who were less pure in our motivations, will have been proved right.”

Shimmering substance, coalescing nothingness, air that trembled and twittered in reforming, and the Castellan was gone. Bright Eyes rose, and gathered the skulls from the crypt. Then:

Feet without toes. Softly-padded feet, furred. Footsteps sounded gently, padding furry, down ink-chill corridors of the place. A place Bright Eyes had inhabited since before time had substance. He walked through night, out of the place.

Night was a condition Bright Eyes understood. And he knew about day…

The bleeding birds were long since gone. Bright Eyes moved through the days, and onward. At one point he passed through a sector of trembling mountains that heaved up great slabs of rock and hurled them away like epileptics ridding themselves of clothes. The ground trembled and burst and screamed and the very earth went insane to tunes of destruction it had never written.

There was a plain of dead grass, sere and wasted with great heaps of dessicated insects heaped here, there. They had flocked together to the last resting-place, and the plain of dead grass was poor tapestry indeed to hold the imprisoned pigments of their dead flesh, the acrid and bittersweet pervasive odor of formic acid that lingered like hot breath of a mad giant across the silent windless emptiness. Yet, how faint, a sound of weeping…?

Finally, Bright Eyes came to the city.

Thomas would not enter. The twisted rope-pillars of smoke that still climbed relentlessly to the dark sky; the terrible sounds of steel cracking and masonry falling into empty streets; the charnel house odor. Thomas would not go in.

But Bright Eyes was compelled to enter. Into that last debacle of all. From where it had begun.

The dead were everywhere, sighing soundlessly with milkwhite eyes at a tomorrow that had never come. And each fallen one soundlessly spoke the question of why. Bright Eyes walked with the burden of chaos pulsing in him. This. This is what it had come to.

For this, his race had gone away. That the ones with hair, the Men they had been called, they had called themselves, could stride the Earth. How cheap they had left it all. How cheap, how thin, how sordid. This was the last of it, the last of the race of men. Dust and dead.

Down a street, woman pleading out of death for mercy.

Through what had been a park, old men humped crazily in rigorous failure to escape.

Past a structure, building front ripped away as if fingernails had shorn it clean. Children’s arms, pocked and burned, dangling. Tiny hands.

To another place. Not like the place from which Bright Eyes had come, but the place to which he had journeyed. No special marker, just…a place. Sufficient.

And then it was, that Bright Eyes sank to his knees, crying. Tears that had not been seen since before Man had come from caves, tears that Bright Eyes had never known. Infinite sadness. Cried. Cried for the ghosts of the creatures with hair, cried for Men. For Man. Each Man. The Man who had done away with himself so absurdly, so completely. Bright Eyes, on his knees, sorrowing for the ones who had lived here, and were gone, leaving him to the night, and the silence, and eternity. A melody never to be heard again.

He placed the skulls. Down in the soft white ash. Unresponsive, dying Earth, receiving its burden testament.

Bright Eyes, last of a race that had condemned itself to extinction, had condemnedhim to living in darkness forever, and had had only the saving wistful knowledge that the race coming after would live in the world. But now, gone, all of them, taking the world with them, leaving instead-no fair exchange-charnel house.

And Bright Eyes; alone.

Not onlytheir race had been destroyed, in vain, buthis, centuries turned to mud and diamonds in their markerless graves, had passed in futility. It had all, all of it, been for nothing.

So Bright Eyes-never Man-was the last man on Earth. Keeper of a silent graveyard; echoless tomb monument to the foolishness, the absurdity, of nobility.

My name is Harlan Jay Ellison.

To the United States Army I was US51403352. To the Diners Club I am2435-0853-8.To anyone trying to reach me by phone I am 213-271-9636.If you try to send me a letter I’m 91403.When a cop stops me for a U-turn I’m M271 930.If I want to cash a check I’m 1223-1400-02139-02622.Though I’ve never collected one in my life, if I wanted some unemployment compensation, I’d be 280-30-8327.The mortgage to my home is registered to 5537-J6361. The Literary Guild of America doesn’t know I write books, but it looks on me fondly as 022-041396LG.

First they steal your name, then they go after your individuality, and finally-as with the protagonist of the next story-they cop your face and form. Alienation? Well, I suppose it means when the Book-Of-The-Month Club overbills you five hundred dollars, and you complain, all you hear is the hollow laughter of the computer in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. I suppose it means that we give in too easily to letting every major and minor corporation from 3M to Nate `n’ Al’s Delicatessen “convenience themselves” at our expense.

Sure its convenient. For them. They get their billing done quickly and efficiently-for them. But if you have your mortgage with a bank that’s computerized, and they make a mistake, before the big machine can clear its throat and set things right, you can be a DP. So we fight back, some of us. In small ways, because there aren’t enough of you yet who’ll risk the wrath of the machine. We fight back by overpaying our phone bill73›a month, which costs the phone company about fifty dollars to trace the error and clear the records properly. We fight back by spindling, folding and mutilating. And we often yell-

Are You Listening?

THERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS I wanted to start telling this :

First, I was going to begin it:

I began to lose my existence on a Tuesday morning. But then I thought about it and:

This is my horror story.

Seemed like a better way to begin. But after thinking it over (I’ve had a devil of a lot of time to think it over, you can believeme), I realized both of those were pretty melodramatic, and if I wanted to instill trust and faith and ah that from the outset, I had just better begin the way it happened, and tell it through to now, and then make my offer, and well, let you decide for yourself.

Are you listening?

Perhaps it ah began with my genes. Or my chromosomes. Whichever or whatever combination made me a Casper Milquetoast prototype, that or those are to blame, I’m sure. I woke up a year ago on a Tuesday morning in March, and knew I was the same as I had been for hundreds of other mornings past. I was forty-seven years old, I was balding, my eyes were good-and the glasses I used only for reading. I slept in a separate room from my wife Alma, and I wore long underwear; chiefly because I’ve always picked up a chill quickly.

The only thing that might possibly be considered out-of-the-ordinary about me is that my name is Winsocki.

Albert Winsocki.

You know, like the song…

“Buckle down Winsocki, you can win Winsocki if you’ll only buckle down…” Very early in life I was teased about that, but my mild nature kept me from taking offense, and instead of growing to loathe it, I adopted it as a sort of personal anthem. Whenever I find myself whistling something, it is usually that.

However-

I woke up that morning, and got dressed quickly. It was too cold to take a shower, so I just daubed water on my wrists and face, and dressed quickly. As I started down the stairs, Zasu, my wife’s Persian, swept past between my legs. Zasu is a pretty stable cat, and I had never been quite snubbed before, though the animalhad taken to ignoring me with great skill. But this morning of which I speak, she just swarmed past, and not even a meowrll or a spit. It was unusual, but not remarkable.

But just an indication of what was to come.

I came into the living room, and saw that Alma had laid out my paper on the arm of the sofa, just as she had done for twenty-seven years. I picked it up in passing. and came into the dinette.

My orange juice was set out, and I could hear Alma in the kitchen beyond. She was muttering to herself as usual. That is one of my wife’s unpleasant habits, I’m afraid. At heart she is a sweet, dear woman, but when she gets annoyed, she murmurs. Nothing obscene, for goodness sake, but just at the bare threshold of audibility, so that it niggles and naggles and bothers. Sheknew it bothered me, or perhaps she didn’t, I’m not sure. I don’t think Alma was aware that I reallyhad any likes or dislikes of any real strength.

At any rate. there she was, muttering and murmuring, so I just called out, “I’m down, dear. Good morning.” Then I turned to the paper, and the juice. Acidic.

The paper was full of the same sort of stuff, and what else could orange juice be but orange juice?

However, as the minutes passed, Alma’s mutters did not pass away. In fact, they got louder, more angry, more annoyed. “Whereis that man? Heknows I despise waiting breakfast! Now look…the eggs are hard. Oh, whereis he?”

This kept up for some time, though I repeatedly yelled in to her, “Alma,please stop, I’m here. I’m down, can’t you understand?”

Finally, she came storming past, and went through into the living room. I could hear her at the foot of the stairs-hand on banister, one foot flat on the first step-yelling up to no one at all, ” Albert!Will you come down? Are you in the bathroom again? Are you having trouble with your kidneys? Shall I come up?”

Well, that was too much, so I laid aside my napkin, and got up. I walked up behind her and said, just as politely as I could,,. Alma. What is the matter with you, dear? I’m right here.”

It made no impression.

She continued howling, and a few moments later stalked upstairs. I sat down on the steps, because I was sure Alma had lost her mind, or her hearing had gone, or something. After twenty-seven happily married years, my wife was dreadfully ill.

I didn’t know what to do. I was totally at a loss. I decided it would be best to call Dr. Hairshaw. So I went over and dialed him, and his phone rang three times before he picked it up and said, “Hello?”

I always felt guilty calling him, no matter what time of the day it was-he hadsuch an intimidating tone-but I felt evenmore selfconscious this time, because there was a decidedly muggy value to his voice. As though he had just gotten out of bed.

“Sorry to wake you at this hour, Doctor,” I said quickly. “This is Albert Winso-“

He cut me off with, “Hello? Hello?”

I repeated, “Hello, Doctor? This is Al-“

“Hello there? Anyone there?”

I didn’t know what to say. It was probably a bad connection, so I screamed as loud as I could, “Doctor, this is-“

“Oh,hell!” he yelled, and jammed down the receiver. I stood there for a second with the handpiece gripped tightly and I’m dreadfully afraid an expression of utter bewilderment came over my face. Had everyone gone deaf, today? I was about to re-dial, when Alma came down the stairs, talking out loud to herself.

“Nowwhere on Earth can that man have gone? Don’t tell me he got up and went out without any breakfast? Oh well, that’s less work for me today.”

And she went right smack past me, staring rightthrough me, and into the kitchen. I plonked down the receiver and started after her. This wastoo much! During the past few years Alma had lessened her attentions to me, even at times seemed to ignore me; I would speak and she would not hear, I would touch her and she would not respond. There had been increasingly more of these occasions, but this was too much!

I went into the kitchen and walked up behind her. She did not turn, just continued scouring the eggs out of the pan with steel wool. I screamed her name. She did not turn, did not even break the chain of humming.

I grabbed the pan from her hands and banged it as hard as I could on the stove-top (something remarkably violent for me, but I’m sure you can understand that this was a remarkable situation). She did not even start at the noise. She went over to the icebox and took out the cube trays. She began to defrost the box.

That was the last straw. I slammed the pan to the floor and stalked out of the room. I was on the verge of swearing, I was so mad. What kind of gamewas this? All right, so she didn’t want to make my breakfast; so that was just one more little ignoring factor I had to put up with. All right, so why didn’t she justsay so. But this folderol was too much!

I put on my hat and coat and left the house-slamming the door as hard as I could.

I glanced at my pocket-watch, and saw the time had long since passed for me to catch my bus to the office. I decided to take a taxi, though I wasn’t quite sure my budget could afford the added strain. But it was a necessity, so I walked past the bus stop, and hailed a cab as it went past. Went past is correct. It zipped by me without even slowing. I had seen it was empty, so why didn’t the cabbie stop? Had he been going off duty? I supposed that was it, but after eight others had whizzed by, I was certain something was wrong.

But I could not discern what the trouble might be. I decided, since I saw it coming, to take the bus anyhow. A young girl in a tight skirt and funny little hat was now waiting at the stop, and I looked at her rather sheepishly, saying, “I just can’t figure out these cabmen, can you?”

She ignored me. I mean, she didn’t turn away as she would to some masher, nor did she give me a cursory glance and not reply. I mean, she didn’t know I was there.

I didn’t have any more time to think about it, because the bus stopped, and the girl got on. I started up the steps, and barely made it, for the bus driver slammed the doors with a wheeze, catching the tail of my coat.

“Hey, I’m caught!” I yelled, but he paid no attention. He watched in his rear view mirror as the girl swayingly strode to a seat, and he started to whistle. The bus was crowded, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, so I reached out and pulled his pants leg. Still, he didn’t respond.

That was when the idea started to form.

I yanked my coattail loose, and I was so mad, I decided to make himask for his fare. I walked back, expecting any moment to hear him say, “Hey, you. Mister. You forgot to pay your fare.” Then I was going to respond, “I’ll pay my fare, but I’ll report you to your company, too!”

But even that tiny bit of satisfaction was denied me, because he continued to drive, and his head did not turn. I think that made me angrier than if he had insulted me; what the hell was going on? Oh, excuse me, but that was what I was thinking, and I hope you’ll pardon the profanity, but I want to get this across just as it happened.

Are you listening?

Though I shoved between an apoplectic man in a Tyrolean hat and a gaggle of high school girls, when disembarking, though I nudged and elbowed and shoved them, just desperatelyfighting to be recognized, no one paid me the slightest heed. I even-I’m so ashamed now that I think of it-I slapped one of the girls on her, uh, her behind, so to speak. But she went right on talking about some fellow who was far out of it, or something like that.

It was most frustrating, you can imagine.

The elevator operator in my building was asleep-well, notquite, but Wolfgang (that’s his name, and he’s not even German, isn’t that annoying?) alwayslooked as though he was sleeping-in his cage. I prodded him, and capered about him, and as a final resort cuffed him on the ear but he continued to lie there against the wall, with his eyes shut, perched on his little pulldown seat. Finally, in annoyance, I took the elevator up myself, after booting him out onto the lobby tiles. By then I had realized, of course, that whatever strange malady had befallen me, I was to all intents and purposes, invisible. It seemed impossible that even if I were invisible, that people should not notice their backsides being slapped, or their bodies being kicked onto the tiles, or their elevators being stolen, but apparently such was precisely the case.

I was so confused by then-but oddly enough, not in the slightest terrified-I was half belligerent, and half pixilated with my own limitless abilities. Visions of movie stars and great wealth danced before my eyes.

And disappeared as rapidly.

For what good were women or wealth if there was no one to share it with you. Even the women. So the thoughts of being the greatest bank robber in history passed from me, and I resigned myself to getting out-if out was the proper term-getting out of this predicament.

I left the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor, and walked down the hall to the office door. It read the same as it had read for twenty-seven years :

Rames&Klaus Diamond

Appraisers Jewelry Experts

I shoved open the door, and for a second my heart leaped in my throat that perhaps till now it had all been a colossal hoax. For Fritz Klaus-big, red-faced Fritz with the small mole beside his mouth-was screaming at me.

“Winsocki! you dolt! How many times have I told you when they go back in the pinch-bags, pull tight the cords! A hundred thousand dollars on the floor for the scrubwoman! Winsocki! You imbecile!”

But he was not screaming at me. He was screaming, that was all. But really, it was no surprise. Klaus and George Rames never actually talked to me…or even bothered to shout at me. They knew I did my job-had, in fact, been doing it for twenty-seven years-with method and attentiveness, and so they took me for granted. The shouting was all part of the office.

Klaus just had to scream. But he was directing his screams at the air, not at me. After all, howcould he be screaming at me? I wasn’t even there.

He went down on his knees, and began picking up the little uncut rough diamonds he had spilled, and when he had them all, he went down further on his stomach, so his vest was dirtied by the floor, and looked under my bench.

When he was satisfied, he got up and brushed himself off…and walked away. As far as he knew, I was working. Or in his view of the world, was I just eliminated? It was a puzzler, but no matter…I was not there. I was gone.

I turned around and went back down the hall.

The elevator was gone.

I had to wait a long time till I could get to the lobby.

No cars would stop for my ring.

I had to wait till someone else on that floor wanted down.

That was when the real horror of it all hit me.

How strange…

I had been quiet all my life; I had married quietly and lived quietly and now, I had not even the one single pleasure of dying with a bang. Even that had been taken from me. I had just sort of snuffed out like a candle. How or why or when was no matter. I had been robbed of that one noise I had thought was mine, inevitable as taxes. But even that had been deprived me. I was a shadow…a ghost in a real world. And for the first time in my life, all the bottled-up frustrations I had never even known were banked inside me, burst forth. I was shocked through and down with horror, but instead of crying, I did not cry.

I hit someone. I hit him as hard as I could. In the elevator there. I hit him full in the face, and I felt his nose skew over, and blood ran darkly on his face, and my knuckles hurt, and I hit him again, so my hand would slide in the blood, because I was Albert Winsocki and they had taken away my dying. They had made me quieter still. I had never bothered anyone, and I was hardly noticed, and when I would finally have had someone mourn for me, and notice me, and think about me as myself alone…I had been robbed!

I hit him a third time, and his nose broke.

He never noticed.

He left the elevator, covered with blood, and never even flinched.

ThenI cried.

For a long time. The elevator kept going up and down with me in it, and no one heard me crying.

Finally, I got out and walked the streets till it was dark.

Two weeks can be a short time.

If you are in love. If you are wealthy and seek adventure. If you have no cares and only pleasures. If you are healthy, and the world is fine and live and beckoning. Two weeks can be a short time.

Two weeks.

Those next two weeks were the longest in my life. For they were hell. Alone. Completely, agonizingly alone, in the midst of crowds. In the neoned heart of town I stood in the center of the street and shrieked at the passing throngs. I was nearly run down.

Two weeks of wandering, sleeping where I wanted to sleep -park benches, the honeymoon suite at the Waldorf, my own bed at home-and eating where I wanted to eat-I took what I wanted; it wasn’t stealing, precisely; if I hadn’t eaten, I would have starved-yet it was all emptiness.

I went home several times, but Alma was carrying on just nicely without me. Carrying on was the word. I would never have thought Alma could do it, particularly with the weight she had put on the past few years…but there he was.

George Rames. My boss. I corrected myself…my exboss.

So I felt no real duty to home and wife.

Alma had the house and she had Zasu. And, it appeared, she had George Rames. That fat oaf!

By the end of two weeks, I was a wreck. I was unshaved, and dirty, but who cared? Who could see me…or would have cared had they been able to!

My original belligerence had turned into a more concrete antagonism toward everyone. Unsuspecting people in the streets were pummeled by me as I passed, should the inclination strike me. I kicked women and slapped children…I was indifferent to the moans and cries of those I struck. What was their pain compared tomy pain-especially when none of them cried. It was all in my mind. I actuallycraved a scream or whine from one of them. For such an evidence of pain would have been a reminder that I was in their ken, that at least I existed.

But no such sound came.

Two weeks? Hell! Paradise Lost!

It was a little over two weeks from the day Zasu had snubbed me, and I had more or less made my home in the lobby of theSt. Moritz-On-The-Park. I was lying there on a couch, with a hat I had borrowed from a passer-by over my eyes, when that animal urge to strike out overcame me. I swung my legs down, and shoved the hat back on my head. I saw a man in a trenchcoat leaning against the cigar counter, reading a newspaper and chuckling to himself. That cruddy dog, I thought, what the hell ishe laughing about?

It so infuriated me, I got up and lunged at him. He saw me coming, and sidestepped. I, of course, expected him to go right on reading, even when I swung on him, and his movement took me by surprise. I went into the cigar case and it caught me in the stomach, knocking the wind from me.

“Ah-ah, buddy,” the man in the trenchcoat chastised me, waggling a lean finger in my face, “now that isn’t polite at all, is it? To hit a man who can’t even see you.”

He took me by the collar and the seat of my pants and threw me across the lobby. I went flailing through a rack of picture postcards, and landed on my stomach. I slid across the polished floor and brought up against the revolving door.

I didn’t even feel the pain. I sat up, there on the floor, and looked at him. He stood there with his hands on his hips, laughing uproariously at me. I stared, and my mouth dropped open. I was speechless.

“Catching flies, buddy?”

I was so amazed, I left my mouth open.

“Y-you, you cansee me!” I caroled. “You cansee me!”

He gave a rueful little snort, and turned away. “Of course I can.” He started to walk away, then stopped and tossed over his shoulder, “You don’t think I’m one ofthem, do you?” He crooked his thumb at the people rushing about in the lobby.

It had never dawned on me.

I had thought I was alone in this thing.

But here was another, just like me!

Not for a second did I consider the possibility that he could see me where the others could not, and still be a part of their world. It was apparent from the moment he threw me across the lobby that he was in the same predicamentI was. But somehow, he seemed more at ease about it all. As though this was one great party, and he the host.

He started to walk away.

I scrambled to my feet as he was pressing the button for the elevator, wondering why he was doing that. The elevator couldn’t stop for him if it was human-operated, as I’d seen it was.

“Uh, hey! Wait a minute there-“

The elevator came down, and an old man with baggy pants was running it. “I was on six, Mr. Jim. Heard it and come right down.”

The old man smiled at the man in the trenchcoat-Jim it was-and Jim clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Denny. I’d like to go up to my room.”

I started after them, but Jim gave Denny a nudge, and inclined his head in my direction, with a disgusted expression on his face. “Up, Denny,” he said.

The elevator doors started to close. I ran up.

“Hey! Wait a second. My name is Winsocki. Albert Winsocki, like in the song,you know, buckle down Win-“

The doors almost closed on my nose.

I was frantic. The only other person(persons, I realized with a start) who could see me, and they were going away… I might search and never find them.

I wasso frantic, in fact, I almost missed the easiest way to trace them. I looked up and the floor indicator arrow was going up, up, up to stop at the tenth floor. I waited till another elevator came down, with the ones who could not see me in it, and tossed out the operator…and took it up myself.

I had to search all through the corridors of the tenth floor till I heard his voice through a door, talking to the old man.

He was saying, “One of the newer ones, Denny. A boor, a completely obnoxious lower form of life.”

And Denny replied, “Chee, Mr. Jim, I just like to sit an’ hear ya talk. Wit’ all them college words. I was real unhappy till you come along, ya know?”

“Yes, Denny, I know.” It was a condescending tone of voice if ever I’d heard one.

I knew he’d never open the door, so I went looking for the maid from that floor. She had her ring of keys in her apron, and never even noticed me taking them. I started back for the room, and stopped.

I thought a moment, and ran back to the elevator. I went downstairs, and climbed into the booth where the bills were paid, where all the cash was stored. I found what I was after in one of the till drawers. I shoved it into my coat pocket, and went back upstairs.

At the door I hesitated. Yes, I could still hear them babbling. I used the master key to get inside.

When I threw open the door, the man named Jim leaped from the bed and glared at me. “What are you doing in here? Get out at once, or I shallthrow you out!”

He started toward me.

I pulled what I had gotten from the till drawer from my pocket, and pointed it at him. “Now just settle back, Mr. Jim, and there won’t be any trouble.”

He raised his hands very melodramatically, and shuffled backward till his knee-backs caught the edge of the bed and he sat down with a plop.

“Oh, take down your hands,” I said. “You look like a bad western movie.” His hands came down selfconsciously.

Denny looked at me. “What’s he doin’, Mr. Jim?”

“I don’t know, Denny; I don’t know,” Jim said slowly, with thought. His eyes were trained on the barrel of the snub-nosed revolver I held. His eyes were frightened.

I found myself shaking. I tried to hold the revolver steady, but it wavered in my hand as though I was inside the eye of a tornado. “I’m nervous, fellow,” I said, partly to let him note it, as if he hadn’t already, and half to reassure myself that I was master of the situation. “Don’t make me any worse than I am right now.”

He sat very still, his lowered hands folded in his lap.

“For two weeks now, I’ve been close to going insane. My wife couldn’t see or hear or feel me. No one in the street could. No one for two weeks. It’s like I’m dead…and today I found you two. You’re the only ones like me! Now I want to know what this is all about. What’s happened to me?”

Denny looked at Mr. Jim, and then at me.

“Hey is he cuckoo, Mr. Jim? You want I should slug him, Mr. Jim?”

The old man would never have made it.

Jim saw that much, to his credit.

“No, Denny. Sit where you are. The man wants some information. I think it’s only fair I give it to him.” He looked at me. His face was soft, like a sponge.

“My name is Trempson, Mr.-ah-Mr. what-did-you-say-your-name-was…?”

“I didn’t, but it’s Winsocki. Albert Winsocki. Like in the song.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Winsocki. Well,” his poise and sneering manner were returning as he saw he at least had the edge on me in information. “The reason for your current state of non-noticeability-you aren’t really insubstantial, you know… that gun could kill me…a truck could run us down and we’d be dead-is very complex. I’m afraid I can’t give you any scientific explanations, and I’m not even sure there are any. Let’s put it this way…”

He crossed his legs, and I steadied the gun on him. He went on. “There are forces in the world today, Mr. Winsocki, that are invisibly working to make us all carbon copies of one another. Forces that crush us into molds of each other. You walk down the street and never see anyone’s face, really. You sit faceless in a movie, or hidden from sight in a dreary living room watching television. When you pay bills, or car fares or talk to people, they see the job they’re doing, but never you.

“With some of us, this is carried even further. We are so unnoticeable about it-wallflowers, you might say-all through our lives, that when these forces that crush us into one mold work enough to get us where they want us, we just-poof! disappear to all those around us. Do you understand?”

I stared at him.

I knew what he was talking about, of course. Who could fail to notice it in this great machined world we’d made for ourselves. So that was it. I had been made like everyone else, but had been so negative a personality to begin with, it had completely blanked me out to everyone. It was like a filter on a camera. Put a red filter on and everything red was there-but not there. That was the way with me. The cameras in everyone had been filtered against me. And Mr. Jim, and Denny, and

“Are there more like us?”

Mr. Jim spread his hands. “Why, there are dozens, Winsocki. Dozens. Soon there will be hundreds, and then thousands. With things going the way they are…with people buying in supermarkets and eating in drive-ins and this new subliminal TV advertising…why, I’d say we could be expecting more company all the time.

“But not me,” he added.

I looked at him, and then at Denny. Denny was blank, so I looked back at Trempson. “What do you mean?”

“Mr. Winsocki,” he explained patiently, but condescendingly, “I was a college professor. Nothing really brilliant, mind you, in fact I suppose I was dull to my students. But I knew my subject. Phoenician Art, it was. But my students came in and went out and never saw me. The faculty never had cause to reprimand me, and so after a while I started to fade out. Then I was gone, like you.

“I wandered around, as you must still be doing, but soon I realized what a fine life it was. No responsibility, no taxes, no struggling for existence. Just live the way I wish, and take what I want. I even have Denny here-he was a handyman no one paid attention to-as my friend and manservant. I like this life, Mr. Winsocki. That was why I was not too anxious to make your acquaintance. I dislike seeing thestatus quo upset.”

I realized I was listening to a madman.

Mr. Jim Trempson had been a poor teacher, and had suffered my fate. But where I had been turned-as I now realized-from a Milquetoasted hum-drummer to a man cunning enough to find a revolver, and adventurous enough to use it, he had been turned into a monomaniac.

This was his kingdom.

But there were others.

Finally, I saw there was no point talking to him. The forces that had cupped us and crushed us till we were so small the rest of the world could not see us, had done their work all too well on him. He was lost. He was satisfied with being unseen, unheard, unknown.

So was Denny. They were complacent. More than that… they were overjoyed. And during this past year I have found many like them. All the same. But I am not like that. I want out of here. I want you to see me again.

I’m trying desperately, the only way I know how.

It may sound stupid, but when people are day-dreaming, or unfocused on life, so to speak, they may catch sight of me. I’m working on that. I keep whistling and humming. Have you ever heard me? The song is “Buckle Down Winsocki.”

Have you ever caught sight of me, just out of the corner of your eye, and thought it was a trick of your imagination?

Have you ever thought you heard a radio or TV playing that song, and there was no radio or TV?

Please! I’m begging you! Listen for me. I’m right here, and I’m humming in your ear so you’ll hear me and help me.

“Buckle Down Winsocki,” that’s the tune. Can you hear it?

Are you listening?

Try a Dull Knife

IT WASparchanga night at The Cave. Three spik bands all going at once, each with a fat momma shaking her meat and screamingVaya! The sound was something visible, an assault in silver lame and screamhorn. Sound hung dense as a smog-cloud, redolent as skunk-scent from a thousand roaches of the best shit, no stems or seeds. Darkness shot through with the quicksilver flashes of mouths open to show gold bridgework and dirty words. Eddie Burma staggered in, leaned against a wall and felt the sickness as thick as cotton wool in his throat.

The deep scar-burn of pain was bleeding slowly down his right side. The blood had started coagulating, his shirt stuck to his flesh, but he dug it: it wasn’t pumping anymore. But he was in trouble, that was the righteous truth. Nobody can get cut the way Eddie Burma’d been cut and not be in deep trouble.

And somewhere back out there, in the night, they were moving toward him, coming for him. He had to get through to-who? Somebody. Somebody who could help him; because only now, after fifteen years of what had been happening to him, did Eddie Burma finally know what it was he had been through, what had been done to him…what wasbeing done to him…what they would certainly do to him.

He stumbled down the short flight of steps into The Cave and was instantly lost in the smoke and smell and twisting shadows. Ethnic smoke, Puerto Rican smells, lush shadows from another land. He dug it; even with his strength ebbing, he dug it.

That was Eddie Burma’s problem. He was an empath. He felt. Deep inside himself, on a level most people never even know exists he felt for the world. Involvement was what motivated him. Even here, in this slum nightclub where intensity of enjoyment substituted for the shallow glamour and gaucherie of the uptownboŒtes, here where no one knew him and therefore could not harm him, he felt the pulse of the world’s life surging through him. And the blood started pumping again.

He pressed his way back through the crowd, looking for a phone booth, looking for a toilet, looking for an empty booth where he could hide, looking for the person or persons unknown who could save him from the dark night of the soul slipping toward him inexorably.

He caromed off a waiter, Pancho Villa mustache, dirty white apron, tray of draft beers. “Hey, where’s thegabinetto?” he slurred the request. His words were slipping in their own blood.

The Puerto Rican waiter stared at him. Uncomprehending.”Perd¢n?”

“The toilet, thepissoire, the can, the head, the crapper. I’m bleeding to death, where’s the potty?”

“Ohhh!” meaning dawned on the waiter,”Excusado…atavio!” He pointed. Eddie Burma patted him on the arm and slumped past, almost falling into a booth where a man and two women were groping one another darkly.

He found the door to the toilet and pushed it open. A reject from a Cuban Superman film was slicking back his long, oiled hair in an elaborate pompadour before the foggy mirror. He gave Eddie Burma a passing glance and went back to the topography of his coiffure. Burma moved past him in the tiny room and slipped into the first stall.

Once inside, he bolted the door, and sat down heavily on the lidless toilet. He pulled his shirt up out of his pants, and unbuttoned it. It stuck to his skin. He pulled, gently, and it came away with the sound of mud squished underfoot. The knife wound ran from just below the right nipple to the middle of his waist. It was deep. He was in trouble.

He stood up, hanging the shirt on the hook behind the door, and pulled hanks of toilet paper from the gray, crackly roll. He dipped the paper in a wad, into the toilet bowl, and swabbed at the wound. Oh, God,really deep.

Then nausea washed over him, and he sat down again. Strange thoughts came to him, and he let them work him over:

This morning, when I stepped out the front door, there were yellow roses growing on the bushes. It surprised me; I’d neglected to cut them back last fall, and I was certain the gnurled, blighted knobs at the ends of the branches-still there, silently dead in reproach of my negligence-would stunt any further beauty. But when I stepped out to pick up the newspaper, there they were. Full and light yellow, barely a canary-yellow. Breathing moistly, softly. It made me smile, and I went down the steps to the first landing, to get the paper. The parking lot had filled with leaves from the Eucalyptus again, but somehow, particularlythismorning, it gave the private little area surrounding and below my secluded house in the hills a more lived-in, festive look. For the second time, for no sensible reason, I found myself smiling. It was going to be a good day, and I had the feeling that all the problems I’d taken on-all the social cases I took unto myself-Alice and Burt and Linda down the hill-all the emotional cripples who came to me for succor-would shape up, and we’d all be smiling by end of day. And if not today, then certainly by Monday. Friday, the latest.

I picked up the paper and snapped the rubber band off it. I dropped the rubber band into the big metal trash basket at the foot of the stairs, and started climbing back up to the house, smelling the orange blossoms and the fine, chill morning air. I opened the paper as I climbed, and with all the suddenness of a freeway collision, the morning calm vanished from around me. I was stopped in midstep, one leg raised for the next riser, and my eyes felt suddenly grainy, as though I hadn’t had enough sleep the night before. But I had.

The headline read: EDWARD BURMA FOUND MURDERED

But…Iwas Eddie Burma.

He came back from memories of yellow roses and twisted metal on freeways to find himself slumped against the side of the toilet stall, his head pressed to the wooden wall, his arms hanging down, the blood running into his pants top. His head throbbed, and the pain in his side was beating, hammering, pounding with a regularity that made him shiver with fear. He could not sit there, and wait.

Wait to die, or wait for them to find him.

He knew they would find him. He knew it.

The phone. He could call…

He didn’t know whom he could call. But there had to be someone. Someone out there who would understand, who would come quickly and save him. Someone who wouldn’t take what was left of him, the way the others would.

They didn’t need knives.

How strange thatthat one, the little blonde with the Raggedy-Ann shoebutton eyes, had not known that. Or perhaps she had. But perhaps the hungered frenzy of the moment had overcome her, and she could not simply feed leisurely as the others did. She had cut him. Had done what they all did, but directly, without subtlety.

Her blade had been sharp. The others used much more devious weapons, subtler weapons. He wanted to say to her, “Try a dull knife.” But she was too needing, too eager. She would not have heard him.

He struggled to his feet, and put on his shirt. It hurt to do it. The shirt was stained the color of teak with his blood. He could barely stand now.

Pulling foot after foot, he left the toilet, and wandered out into The Cave. The sound of “Mamacita Lisa” beat at him like gloved hands on a plate glass window. He leaned against the wall, and saw only shapes moving moving moving in the darkness. Were they out there? No, not yet; they would never look here first. He wasn’t known here. And his essence was weaker now, weaker as he died, so no one in the crowd would come to him with a quivering need. No one would feel it possible to drink from this weak man, lying up against a wall.

He saw a pay phone, near the entrance to the kitchen, and he struggled toward it. A girl with long dark hair and haunted eyes stared at him as he passed, started to say something, then he summoned up strength to hurry past her before she could tell him she was pregnant and didn’t know who the father was, or she was in pain from emphysema and didn’t have doctor money, or she missed her mother who was still in San Juan. He could handle no more pains, could absorb no more anguish, could let no others drink from him. He didn’t have that much left for his own survival.

My fingertips(he thought, moving)are covered with the scars of people I’ve touched. The flesh remembers those touches. Sometimes I feel as though I am wearing heavy woolen gloves, so thick are the memories of all those touches. It seems to insulate me, to separate me from mankind. Not mankind from me,God knows, for they get through without pause or difficulty-but me,from mankind. I very often refrain from washing my hands for days and days, just to preserve whatever layers of touches might be washed away by the soap.

Faces and voices and smells of people I’ve known have passed away, but still my hands carry the memories on them. Layer after layer of the laying-on of hands. Is that altogether sane? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it for a very long time, when I have the time.

If I ever have the time.

He reached the pay phone; after a very long minute he was able to bring a coin up out of his pocket. It was a quarter. All he needed was a dime. He could not go back down there, he might not make it back again. He used the quarter, and dialed the number of a man he could trust, a man who could help him. He remembered the man now, knew the man was his only salvation.

He remembered seeing him in Georgia, at a revival meeting, a rural stump religion circus of screaming and Hallelujahs that sounded like !H!A!L!L!E!L!U!J!A!H! with dark black faces or red necks all straining toward the seat of God on the platform. He remembered the man in his white shirtsleeves, exhorting the crowd, and he heard again the man’s spirit message.

“Get right with the Lord, beforehe gets right withyou! Suffer your silent sins no longer! Take out your truth, carry it in your hands, give it to me, all the ugliness and cesspool filth of your souls! I’ll wash you clean in the blood of the Iamb, in the blood of the Lord, in the blood of the truth of the word! There’s no other way, there’s no great day coming without purging yourself, without cleansing your spirit! I can handle all the pain you’ve got boiling around down in the black lightless pit of your souls! Hear me, dear God hear me…I am your mouth, your tongue, your throat, the horn that will proclaim your deliverance to the Heavens above! Evil and good and worry and sorrow, all of it is mine, I can carry it, I can handle it. I can lift it from out of your mind and your soul and your body! The place is here, the place is me, give me your woe! Christ knew it, God knows it,I know it, and nowyou have to know it! Mortar and trowel and brick and cement make the wall of your need! Let me tear down that wall, let me hear all of it, let me into your mind and let me take your burdens! I’m the strength, I’m the watering place…come drink from my strength!”

And the people had rushed to him. Allover him, like ants feeding on a dead beast. And then the memory dissolved. The image of the tent revival meeting dissolved into images of wild animals tearing at meat, of hordes of carrion birds descending on fallen meat, of small fish leaping with sharp teeth at helpless meat, of hands and more hands, and teeth that sank into meat.

The number was busy.

It was busy again.

He had been dialing the same number for nearly an hour, and the number was always busy. Dancers with sweating faces had wanted to use the phone, but Eddie Burma had snarled at them that it was a matter of life and death that he reach the number he was calling, and the dancers had gone back to their partners with curses for him. But the line was still busy. Then he looked at the number on the pay phone, and knew he had been dialing himself all that time. That the line would alwaysalways be busy, and his furious hatred of the man on the other end who would not answer was hatred for the man who was calling. He was calling himself, and in that instant he remembered who the man had been at the revival meeting. He remembered leaping up out of the audience and taking the platform to beg all the stricken suffering ones to end their pain by drinking of his essence. He remembered, and the fear was greater than he could believe. He fled back to the toilet, to wait for them to find him.

Eddie Burma, hiding in the refuse room of a sightless dark spot in the netherworld of a universe that had singled him out for reality. Eddie Burma was an individual. He had substance. He had corporeality. In a world of walking shadows, of zombie breath and staring eyes like the cold dead flesh of the moon, Eddie Burma was a real person. He had been born with the ability to belong to his times; with the electricity of nature that some called charisma and others called warmth. He felt deeply; he moved through the world and touched; and was touched.

His was a doomed existence, because he was not only an extrovert and gregarious, but he was truly clever, vastly inventive, suffused with humor, and endowed with the power to listen. For these reasons he had passed through the stages of exhibitionism and praise-seeking to a state where his reality was assured. Was very much his own. When he came into a room, people knew it. He had a face. Not an image, or a substitute life that he could slip on when dealing with people, but a genuine reality. He was Eddie Burma, only Eddie Burma, and could not be confused with anyone else. He went his way, and he was identified as Eddie Burma in the eyes of anyone who ever met him. He was one of those memorable people. The kind other people who have no lives of their own talk about. He cropped up in conversations: “Do you know what Eddie said…?” or “Guess what happened to Eddie?” And there was never any confusion as to who was the subject under discussion.

Eddie Burma was a figure no larger than life, for life itself was large enough, in a world where most of those he met had no individuality, no personality, no reality, no existence of their own.

But the price he paid was the price of doom. For those who had nothing came to him and like creatures of darkness, amorally fed off him. They drank from him. They were the succubi, draining his psychic energies. And Eddie Burma always had more to give. Seemingly a bottomless well, the bottom had been reached. Finally. All the people whose woes he handled. all the losers whose lives he tried to organize, all the preying crawlers who slinked in through the ashes of their nonexistence to sup at his board, to slake the thirsts of their emptiness…all of them had taken their toll.

Now Eddie Burma stumbled through the last moments of his reality, with the wellsprings of himself almost totally drained. Waiting for them, for all his social cases, all his problem children. to come and finish him off.

I live in a hungry world,Eddie Burma now realized.

“Hey, man! C’mon outta th’ crapper!” The booming voice and the pounding on the stall door came as one.

Eddie trembled to his feet and unbolted the door, expecting it to be one of them. But it was only a dancer from The Cave, wanting to rid himself of cheap wine and cheap beer. Eddie stumbled out of the stall, almost falling into the man’s arms. When the beefy Puerto Rican saw the blood, saw the dead pale look of flesh and eyes, his manner softened.

“Hey…you okay, man?”

Eddie smiled at him, thanked him softly, and left the toilet. The nightclub was still high, still screaming, and Eddie suddenly knew he could not letthem find this good place, where all these good people were plugged into life and living. Because forthem it would be a godsend, and they would drain The Cave as they had drained him.

He found a rear exit, and emerged into the moonless city night, as alien as a cavern five miles down or the weird curvature of another dimension. This alley, this city, this night, could as easily have been Transylvania or the dark side of the moon or the bottom of the thrashing sea. He stumbled down the alley, thinking…

They have no lives of their own. Oh, this poisoned world I now see so clearly. They have only the shadowy images of other lives, and not evenrealother lives-the lives of movie stars, fictional heroes, cultural clich‚s. So they borrow from me, and never intend to pay back. They borrow, at the highest rate of interest. My life. They lap at me, and break of] pieces of me. I’m the mushroom that Alice found with the words EAT ME in blood-red on my id. They’re succubi, draining at me, draining my soul. Sometimes I feel I should go to some mystical well and get poured full of personality again. I’m tired. So tired.

There are people walking around this city who are running on Eddie Burma’s drained energies, Eddie Burma’s life-force. They’re putt-putting around with smiles just like mine, with thoughts I’ve second-handed like old clothes passed on to poor relatives, with hand-movements and expressions and little cute sayings that were mine, Scotch-taped over their own. I’m a jigsaw puzzle and they keep stealing little pieces. Now I make no scene at all, I’m incomplete, I’m unable to keep the picture coherent, they’ve taken so much already.

They had come to his party, all of the ones he knew. The ones he called his friends, and the ones who were merely acquaintances, and the ones who were using him as their wizard, as their guru, their psychiatrist, their wailing wall, their father confessor, their repository of personal ills and woes and inadequacies. Alice, who was afraid of men and found in Eddie Burma a last vestige of belief that males were not all beasts. Burt, the box-boy from the supermarket, who stuttered when he spoke, and felt rejected even before the rejection. Linda, from down the hill, who had seen in Eddie Burma an intellectual, one to whom she could relate all her theories of the universe. Sid, who was a failure, at fifty-three. Nancy, whose husband cheated on her. John, who wanted to be a lawyer, but would never make it because he thought too much about his clubfoot. And all the others. And the new ones they always seemed to bring with them. There were always so many new ones he never knew. Particularly the pretty little blonde with the Raggedy-Ann shoebutton eyes, who stared at him hungrily.

And from the first, earlier that night, he had known something was wrong. There were too many of them at the party. More than he could handle…and all listening to him tell a story of something that had happened to him when he had driven to New Orleans in 1960 with Tony in the Corvette and they’d both gotten pleurisy because the top hadn’t been bolted down properly and they’d passed through a snowstorm in Illinois.

All of them hung to his words, like drying wash on a line, like festoons of ivy. They sucked at each word and every expression like hungry things pulling at the marrow in beef bones. They laughed, and they watched, and their eyes glittered…

Eddie Burma had slowly felt the strength ebbing from him. He grew weary even as he spoke. It had happened before, at other parties, other gatherings, when he had held the attention of the group, and gone home later, feeling drained. He had never known what it was.

But tonight the strength did not come back. They kept watching him, seemed to befeeding at him, and it went on and on, till finally he’d said he had to go to sleep, and they should go home. But they had pleaded for one more anecdote, one more joke told with perfect dialect and elaborate gesticulation. Eddie Burma had begun to cry, quietly. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his body felt as though the bones and musculature had been removed, leaving only a soft rubbery coating that might at any moment cave in on itself.

He had tried to get up; to go and lie down; but they’d gotten more insistent, had demanded, had ordered, had grown nasty.

And then the blonde had come at him, and cut him, and the others were only a step behind. Somehow…in the thrashing tangle that had followed, with his friends and acquaintances now tearing at one another to get at him, he had escaped. He had fled, he did not know how-the pain of his knifed side crawling inside him. He had made it into the trees of the little glen where his house was hidden, and through the forest, over the watershed, down to the highway, where he had hailed a cab. Then into the city…

See me! Seeme,please! Just don’t always come and take. Don’t bathe in my reality and then go away feeling clean. Stay and let some of the dirt of you rub off on me. Ifeel like an invisible man, like a drinking trough, like a sideboard dripping with sweetmeats…Oh God, is this a play, and myself unwillingly the star? How the hell do Iget off stage? When do they ring down the curtain? Is there, please God, a man with a hook…?

I make my rounds, like a faith healer. Each dayIspend a little time with each one of them. With Alice and with Burt and with Linda down the hill,. and they take from me. They don’t leave anything in exchange, though. It’s not barter, it’s theft. And the worst part of it is Ialways needed that, Ialways letthem rob me. What sick need was it that gave them entrance to my soul? Even the pack rat leaves some worthless object when it steals a worthless object. l’d take anything from them: the smallest anecdote, the most used-up thought, the most stagnant concept, the puniest pun, the most obnoxious personal revelation…anything! But all they do is sit there and stare at me, their mouths open, their ears hearing me so completely they empty my words of color and scent…Ifeel as though they’re crawling into me. Ican’t stand any more…really Ican’t.

The mouth of the alley was blocked.

Shadows moved there.

Burt, the box-boy. Nancy and Alice and Linda. Sid, the failure. John, who walked with a rolling motion. And the doctor, the juke box repairman, the pizza cook, the used car salesman, the swinging couple who swapped partners, the babyfat discotheque dancer…all of them.

They came for him.

And for the first time he noticed their teeth.

The moment before they reached him stretched out as silent and timeless as the decay that ate at his world. He had no time for self-pity. It was not merely that Eddie Burma had been cannibalized every day of the year, every hour of the day, every minute of every hour of every day of the year. The awareness dawned unhappily-in that moment of timeless time -that he hadlet them do it to him. That he was no better than them, only different. They were the feeders-and he was the food. But no nobility could be attached to one or the other. Heneeded to have people worship and admire him. Heneeded the love and attention of the masses, the worship of monkeys. And for Eddie Burma that was a kind of beginning to death. It was the death of his unselfconsciousness; the slaughter of his innocence. From that moment forward, he had been aware of the clever things he said and did, on a cellular level below consciousness. He was aware. Aware, aware, aware!

And awareness brought them to him, where they fed. It led to selfconsciousness, petty pretensions, ostentation. And that was a thing devoid of substance, of reality. And if there was anything on which his acolytes could not nourish, it was a posturing, phony,empty human being.

They would drain him.

The moment came to a timeless climax, and they carried him down under their weight, and began to feed.

When it was over, they left him in the alley. They went to look elsewhere.

With the vessel drained, the vampires moved to other pulsing arteries.

In Lonely Lands

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring’d with the azure world he stands.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

PEDERSON KNEW NIGHT WAS FALLING over Syrtis Major; blind, still he knew the Martian night had arrived; the harp crickets had come out. The halo of sun’s warmth that had kept him golden through the long day had dissipated, and he could feel the chill of the darkness now. Despite his blindness there was an appreciablechanging in the shadows that lived where once, long ago, there had been sight.

“Pretrie,” he called into the hush, and the answering echoes from the moon valleys answered and answered,Pretrie, Pretrie, Pretrie, down and down, almost to the foot of the small mountain.

“I’m here, Pederson old man. What do you want of me?”

Pederson relaxed in the pneumorack. He had been tense for some time, waiting. Now he relaxed. “Have you been to the temple?”

“I was there. I prayed for many turnings, through three colors.”

It had been many years since Pederson had seen colors. But he knew the Martian’s religion was strong and stable because of colors. ” And what did the blessed Jilka foretell, Pretrie?”

“Tomorrow will be cupped in the memory of today. And other things.” The silken overtones of the alien’s voice were soothing. Though Pederson had never seen the tall, utterly ancient Jilkite, he had passed his arthritic, spatulate fingers over the alien’s hairless, teardrop head, had seen by feeling the deep round sockets where eyes glowed, the pug nose, the thin, lipless gash that was mouth. Pederson knew this face as he knew his own, with its wrinkles and sags and protuberances. He knew the Jilkite was so old no man could estimate it in Earth years.

“Do you hear the Gray Man coming yet?”

Pretrie sighed, a lung-deep sigh, and Pederson could hear the inevitable crackling of bones as the alien hunkered down beside the old man’s pneumorack.

“He comes but slowly, old man. But he comes. Have patience.”

“Patience,” Pederson chuckled ruminatively. “I got that, Pretrie. I got that and that’s about all. I used to have time, too, but now that’s about gone. You say he’s coming?”

“Coming, old man. Time. Just time.”

“How are the blue shadows, Pretrie?”

“Thick as fur in the moon valleys, old man. Night is coming.”

“Are the moons out?”

There was a breathing through wide nostrils-ritualistically slit nostrils-and the alien replied, “None yet this night. Tayseff and Teei are below the horizon. It grows dark swiftly. Perhaps this night, old man.”

“Perhaps,” Pederson agreed.

“Have patience.”

Pederson had not always had patience. As a young man, the blood warm in him, he had fought with his Presby-Baptist father, and taken to space. He had not believed in Heaven, Hell, and the accompanying rigors of the All-Church. Not then. Later, but not then.

To space he had gone, and the years had been good to him. He had aged slowly, healthily, as men do in the dark places between dirt. Yet he had seen the death, and the men who had died believing, the men who had died not believing. And with time had come the realization that he was alone, and that some day, one day, the Gray Man would come for him.

He was always alone, and in his loneliness, when the time came that he could no longer tool the great ships through the star-spaces, he went away.

He went away, searching for a home, and finally came full-circle to the first world he had known; came home to Mars, where he had been young, where his dreams had been born; Mars, for home is always where a man has been young and happy. Came home where the days were warm and the nights were mild. Came home where men had passed but somehow, miraculously, had not sunk their steel and concrete roots. Came home to a home that had changed not at all since he’d been young. And it was time. For blindness had found him, and the slowness that forewarned him of the Gray Man’s visit. Blindness from too many glasses of vik and Scotch, from too much hard radiation, from too many years of squinting into the vastness. Blind, and unable to earn his keep.

So alone, he had come home; as the bird finds the tree, as the winter-starved deer finds the last bit of bark, as the river finds the sea. He had come there to wait for the Gray Man, and it was there that the Jilkite Pretrie had found him.

They sat together, silently, on the porch with many things unsaid, yet passing between them.

“Pretrie?”

“Old man.”

“I never asked you what you get out of this. I mean-“

Pretrie reached and the sound of his claw tapping the formica tabletop came to Pederson. Then the alien was pressing a bulb of water-diluted vik into his hand. “I know what you mean, old man. I have been with you close on two harvestings. I am here. Does that not satisfy you?”

Two harvestings. Equivalent to four years Earthtime, Pederson knew. The Jilkite had come out of the dawn one day, and stayed to serve the old blind man. Pederson had never questioned it. One day he was struggling with the coffee pot (he dearly loved old-fashion brewed coffee and scorned the use of the coffee briquettes) and the heat controls on the hutch…the next he had an undemanding, unselfish manservant who catered with dignity and regard to his every desire. It had been a companionable relationship; he had made no great demands on Pretrie, and the alien had asked nothing in return.

He was in no position to wonder or question.

Though he could hear Pretrie’s brothers in the chest-high floss brakes at harvesting time, still the Jilkite never wandered far from the hutch.

Now, it was nearing its end.

“It has been easier with you. I-uh-thanks, Pretrie,” the old man felt the need to say it clearly, without embroidery.

A soft grunt of acknowledgment. “I thank you for allowing me to remain with you, old man, Pederson,” the Jilkite answered softly.

A spot of cool touched Pederson’s cheek. At first he thought it was rain, but no more came, and he asked, “What was that?”

The Jilkite shifted-with what Pederson took to be discomfort-and answered, ” A custom of my race.”

“What?” Pederson persisted.

“A tear, old man. A tear from my eye to your body.”

“Hey, look…” he began, trying to convey his feelings, and realizinglook was the wrong word. He stumbled on, an emotion coming to him he had long thought dead inside himself. “You don’t have to be-uh-you know, sad, Pretrie. I’ve lived a good life. The Gray Man doesn’t scare me.” His voice was brave, but it cracked with the age in the cords.

“My race does not know sadness, Pederson. We know gratitude and companionship and beauty. But not sadness. That is a serious lack, so you have told me, but we do not yearn after the dark and the lost. My tear is a thank you for your kindness.”

“Kindness?”

“For allowing me to remain with you.”

The old man subsided then, waiting. He did not understand. But the alien had found him, and the presence of Pretrie had made things easier for him in these last years. He was grateful, and wise enough to remain silent.

They sat there thinking their own thoughts, and Pederson’s mind winnowed the wheat of incidents from the chaff of life spent.

He recalled the days alone in the great ships, and how he had at first laughed to think of his father’s religion, his father’s words about loneliness: “No man walks the road without companionship, Will,” his father had said. He had laughed, declaring he was a loner, but now, with the unnamable warmth and presence of the alien here beside him, he knew the truth.

His father had been correct.

It was good to have a friend. Especially when the Gray Man was coming. Strange how he knew it with such calm certainty, but that was the way of it. He knew, and he waited placidly.

After a while, the chill came down off the hills, and Pretrie brought out the treated shawl. He laid it about the old man’s thin shoulders, where it clung with warmth, and hunkered down on his triple-jointed legs once more.

“I don’t know, Pretrie,” Pederson ruminated, later.

There was no answer. There had been no question.

“I just don’t know. Was it worth it all? The time aspace, the men I’ve known, the lonely ones who died and the dying ones who were never lonely.”

“All peoples know that ache, old man,” Pretrie philosophized. He drew a deep breath.

“I never thought I needed anyone. I’ve learned better, Pretrie.”

“One never knows.” Pederson had taught the alien little; Pretrie had come to him speaking English. It had been one more puzzling thing about the Jilkite, but again Pederson had not questioned it. There had been many spacers and missionaries on Mars.

“Everybody needs somebody,” Pederson went on.

“You will never know,” Pederson agreed in emphasis. Then added, “Perhaps you will.”

Then the alien stiffened, his claw upon the old man’s arm. “He comes, Pederson old man.”

A thrill of expectancy, and a shiver of near-fright came with it. Pederson’s gray head lifted, and despite the warmth of the shawl he felt cold. So near now. “He’s coming?”

“He is here.”

They both sensed it, for Pederson could feel the awareness in the Jilkite beside him; he had grown sensitive to the alien’s moods, even as the other had plumbed his own. “The Gray Man.” Pederson spoke the words softly on the night air, and the moon valleys did not respond.

“I’m ready,” said the old man, and he extended his left hand for the grasp. He set down the bulb of vik with his other hand.

The feel of hardening came stealing through him, and it was as though someone had taken his hand in return. Then, as he thought he was to go, alone, he said, “Goodbye to you, Pretrie, friend.”

But there was no goodbye from the alien beside him. Instead, the Jilkite’s voice came to him as through a fog softly descending.

“We go together, friend Pederson. The Gray Man comes to all races. Why do you expect me to go alone? Each need is a great one.

“I am here, Gray Man. Here. I am not alone.” Oddly, Pederson knew the Jilkite’s claw had been offered, and taken in the clasp.

He closed his blind eyes.

After a great while, the sound of the harp crickets thrummed high once more, and on the porch before the hutch, there was the silence of peace.

Night had come to the lonely lands; night, but not darkness.

Eyes of Dust

IT WAS INEVITABLE they should marry. She with the mole on her right cheek, he blind in the presence of light. There should have been no reason for tolerating them on Topaz; on a world dedicated to beauty, imperfection could not be endured. Yet, they lived, and were avoided, and mated. As it should have been. Beauty seeks its level, as does ugliness. As do pariahs.

So they married, and they managed to live, and soon, she was with child.

The terrible thing began.

The city of Light on the planet Topaz rose five thousand feet into the pearl sky. Its towers glowed with an aura imprisoned in the matter itself. All pastels: all blues and pinks and soft greens, that blended into one wonderful impression of flow and swirl. The towers were of three heights. Sweeping giants that rose five thousand feet to the fraction of an inch, medium-sized towers that were mere pauses at thirteen hundred feet, before the giants hurled past them, and midget towers, delicate and impertinent in their hundred-foot rise.

Glistening, shining, run out and diving, then rising and arching into a hold at another tower, the flying bridges and roadways were marvels of construction. At the various levels, clear layers of substance provided risers and dividers, giving the city the look of a fairy empire, set away from an ugly world, swathed in its own beauty.

And the people.

Each man, woman, child was a note in a great symphony of perfection. Both simplicity and flamboyance were there, but so intermingled and integrated that nothing coarse or crass could be discerned. Their faces were not blank, nor vapid, nor coarse. They held beauty in their eyes, and in the clearness of their complexions, and the rhythm of their stride.

There was nothing but beauty on Topaz. In the city of Light there was nothing but the glorious presentation of perfection and elegance. No sinking into racial senility, no nirvana, no ennui. This was a vital culture, rich in thought, complex in design, but dedicated to the beauty of life, and the reflection of that beauty in all things material.

The blind man and his wife, the moley woman, lived in the small units outside the city, where the farmers tilled their symmetrical fields with equipment that was handsome in its construction, efficient in its labors.

They lived in a split-level home that boasted all modem robotic conveniences. The lights dimmed or shone according to palmed instructions; heat radiated from those walls at the touch of a stud; food was prepared on elaborate and gorgeous robochefs; snits hummed from wall-cubbys to clean up instantly; and it was good there

In the machine cellar, where the servomechanisms were housed, where the nerve center of the house was located, the blind man and the moley woman had constructed an extra room, set off from the light, for a special purpose. In the room, soft walls shrouded sound, protected the inhabitant from outside distractions. In the room, no light penetrated, and the bed was a palette of downyness.

The inhabitant was a Person.

Person, for no other name had ever been dispensed. Not like the blind man, who was Broomall, or the moley woman, who was Ordak. They had names, for they went abroad onto Topaz occasionally, and had to deal with others. But no such intercourse was practiced by the Person. He never saw the light, and he never strolled, for the room was his home, and his parents had insured he would never venture from it.

In the machine cellar of the split-level out beyond the city of Light, the Person sat in stolid silence, hands folded delicately in lap, feet turned inward and at rest.

Eyes of dust turned to not-colors that moved.

For the Person could not have been endured on Topaz. On a world of beauty, all beauty, ugliness was a known but despised factor. Broomall and Ordak were malformed…a mole and blindness…but they had been in the community long, and they were intelligent enough to keep to themselves. But their offspring was another matter.

With eyes of dust, who could tolerate such a thing?

Broomall unpalmed the door, and entered.

“Father…” Person murmured, a tongue as sweet as brook water, with tones like butterflys’ wings.

“Yes. How are you today? Have you had another vision?”

The Person nodded, his gray sockets turning toward the blind man. “It came earlier, Father. Deepest black, with bright shoots of red thrusting up. It reminded me of the mouth of a volcano, Father.”

The blind man felt his way to the palette, lowered his body, and shook his head slowly. “But you have never seen a volcano, my son.”

Person took a step away from the wall, and his great hands hung loosely below his knees. “I know.”

“Then, how-“

“The way I saw the gulls dipping over the green spit of land. The way I saw the deep river of orange mud that bubbled its way to the swamp. It is all one, Father. I see.”

The blind man continued to nod and shake his head with bewilderment. There were answers here, to questions he had never asked.

“Where is Mother? She has not been to see me in several times.”

The blind man sighed. “She must work, son, if we wish to fill up our food bins. She has taken labor in the wafting center.”

“Ah.” The Person conjured up a vision of the sense centers, where smells and sounds and feelings of beauty were poured out on the air of Topaz, for the inhabitants to enjoy. “She must like it there. So near to the scent of orchids.”

“She says it’s a job.”

The Person nodded. His great head bowed slightly, and pits of shadow marked his eyes of grayness.

“Is there anything you want?”

The Person slid down the wall, into the cool darkness, and answered softly, for he knew his father was without sight; even devoid the sighthe possessed. “No, Father. I lack for nothing. I have my meal cakes and my ale. I have my shadows and my colors. And there is the smell of the time passing. I need nothing more.”

“How strange you are, my son,” the blind man said enigmatically, for it was no enigma at all. The Person gave off the soft musky chuckle of tender amusement.

“How strange I am indeed, Father.”

The blind man got slowly to his feet, the bones of his legs cracking faintly. “Soon, my son,” he said finally.

“Go sweetly, my Father,” the Person said, using the terms of the people of Topaz.

“Stay softly,” replied the father, traditionally.

Then he went out, carefully palmlocking the door, and setting it to a fresh combination. Caution could not be too deep in this matter. Twenty years had shown that. Twenty years, during which time their son had remained alive, to roam at will in his world of strange blind-sight.

The blind man climbed the ramp to the living floor, and sat cross-legged on his low platform, sending soft pipings flickering from a helix-shaped flute.

He played without break for some time, until the porter glowed pinkly, cast out a tremulous warning note, and Ordak took form in the bowl.

“Wheeew!” she stepped out of the bowl and sank onto a nest of foamettes. “What a day. If I never smell another orchid, it’ll be too soon. Good evening, dear. How was he today?”

The blind man laid aside his flute, and extended his arms to the woman. He took her into their enfolding circle and held her dark hair against his neck, so smooth, so warm. His answer was a grunt. She understood.

“How will it be, Broomall? Tell me,” she pleaded.

He put her from him gently, and sighed with deep contemplation. “Ordak, how can I say it’ll be good, when it gets worse each day? You know he can’t go out, and you know we must live here…they would never tolerate him outside, even to the spaceport and off. We’re trapped here, my darling.”

She stood up and smoothed down the front of her sweepspun tunic and skirt. Her hair was coiffed in such a way that the mole on her right cheek was covered. They knew of her deformity, of course, but not seeing it made it easier for them.

She was standing there, wondering what would come from the future, her blind husband at her feet, when the future dropped from the sky. It was as it was! Not the good thing, nor the bad, but merely the way of it. The unflinching trampling of life over its parts. The way of it, the truth of it.

As she stood there, silent, and wondering, the force-bead drive of a cross-continent copter ruptured-product of an imperfectly directed drive beam, cool and unnoticed-and the ponderous vehicle plunged down from its cruising level of twenty-five hundred feet. It fell two hundred yards from the split-level, demolishing the aboveground sections of the house without warning. Smashing the building to the ground, saving only the machine cellar by a fluke of impact; saved for the searchmecks and analyzers who came later, to estimate the damage, and to extricate those left alive.

Aboveground, no one was left alive. The last two known imperfects on Topaz had gone to a companionable rest; where beauty and non-beauty had no meaning. Where all was soft grays and the clinging warmth of the nearness of each other.

For such was the way it must be thought about.

But below ground…

There the terrible thing began in earnest. What had lain in wait for twenty years, now snarled, leaped, and threw itself at the throat of beauty on Topaz.

Meditating he was. They found him meditating.

They came down through the rubble with forcepak beams that melted the twisted metal and fused plastic into solid, attractive walls of pastel, between which they picked their delicate way. When they came to the secret room-whose door was not in the least pleasing to the eye-they stopped, perplexed, and considered what to do.

There were three of them. Handsome men, in the extreme. One was blond, with wide-set blue eyes and the air of an executive. He carried himself within his gold and copperthread tunic with the calmed assurance of a man who knows he is competent and handsome. In the extreme. The second was only a few inches shorter than the first man’s six feet, and his dark, tightly curled head of hair swooped down across a white, white forehead with the dexterity of a panther a-leap over lambs. His arms seemed shorter than they should be, but it was the trick of the plasurgeon, who had calculated the imperfection that makes for perfection-coupling the arms with a long torso and shorter legs-and who had brought it off resoundingly. The second man gave an immediate impression of Adonislike proportions.

The third man was the classic Greek ideal of virility and competence. His deep-set gray eyes snapped back and forth with authority and compassion. His walk was the walk of the legionnaire, his speech the measured pace of the wise man. He would never go bald, his smile did not fade.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, before,” said the curly haired analyzer, whose name was Roul.

“This isn’t standard in machine cellars, is it?” asked the leader, whose name was Prathe.

The third man, Hold, shook his head with wise and faintly tinged humor. “No, and I must admit it’s an unpleasant arrangement. Unsprayed. Crude.” He gave a soft, womanlike shudder. But it was in character, and neither of the companions noticed, despite its un-beautiful nature.

“Well, let’s open it,” suggested Prathe, hefting his forcepak.

The other two did not answer, and that was a perfect sign of agreement, so he applied the beam. A wide arc of delicious fruit-green streamed out and washed the door. In a few seconds it had fused along the sides, and run together in excellent symmetry. They stared through into the thrusting darkness.

Meditating he was. They found him meditating.

When first the light filtered through from behind them, they could not discern that it was human. It was a gray heap hulked close to the angle of floor and wall, its great head hung down, and hands turned into the lap.

Then, as the particulars became clear, each in turn drew a shocked breath. Prathe was first into the room, and his voice was an almost-unpleasantmixture of wonder and revulsion.

Roul followed, and as the form of the Person grew specific, he emitted a round, pear-shaped, long and boxlike then shattered cry of terror. “How vile!” and his face was unhandsome. In the extreme.

Hold shone his light down into the corner, and away as quickly. In its wild travels, the beam covered the room in its entirety: palette, bare walls, small dish with gruel still in it, and mat on the floor. Then back to the Person again, but this time, the pool of brilliance was directed at the floor and the edge of the Person’s buttocks, so the full light did not fall on that face, oh that face!

The great head with its high unkempt crown of nearly-white hair…spread out and in two huge tufts at either temple. The heavy-jowled face, with the mouth that was a wicked, slanting slash through the pale white flesh. The ears that hugged close and round to the head.

Then the eyes…

The eyes of dust…

Two deep-nestled pockets, where gray swirled. The gray of decaying bodies. The gray of storm clouds. The gray of feelings most unhappy, and of death. The eyes that seemed to see so deeply, yet could see nothing. Ugly eyes.

They raised their forcepaks, and the Person stirred, moved, and there was great agitation.

First there was light, and then there was no-light. First there was heat, and then there was no-heat. And-

First there was love, so deep it made a tiny whirlpool in his bowels, swirling and whipping and turning, like a woman in a warm bath. Savoring the being, enjoying the luxury of sliding down ever down into complacency and no pain at all. With deep thoughts; with thinking of wonders and everydays. Thoughts of how wide it was, and where it was, and how far might it stretch out to the farthest places. All that. Then there was no-love. But in its place did not come the absence of love, the emptiness that the going of light and heat had left. Another moved in to take its place.

In its place came

don’t come

must come

it came

Hate!

Much later, when the suns had set, and the moons had come up to mourn balefully in silence over the world of beauty, Topaz, others came. They found the three bodies, so ugly in death, so pitiful in crushed and battered death.

Then they took him. They took him out, saying, ” All this, all this.” And there was such reviling and such cursing. The hatred for him was there, too, and the knowing that he was anathema. Pariah. Terrible! He was ugliness amidst all this beauty and, “What will we do with him? How can we kill him?”

Then one came forward. A poet whose meters were correct, and whose images were gorgeous. He was slim and well-mannered and it fell to him to envision the right way of it. To create beauty from ugliness, good from evil.

So they rigged the well-holed pole, and it rose straight and true to the quartet of moons, and they tied him to it, and set the faggots about. And they lit him.

Watching him burn.

But it was the bad thing, once again.

For the Person had eyes of dust, and the eyes of dust saw what could not be seen, and the soul within was the sweet and sick soul of the visionary.

He had the audacity to weep and cry as he burned, wailing, “Oh don’t kill me. Oh don’t! There is so much for me to see, so much I don’t know.” He longed and pleaded and yearned for the knowledge and the visions he would never glimpse.

But they burned him, all the same.

And it was good. The fire. The beauty of it. It was beauty. If only he had been wise enough not to scream.

And when the ashes settled, they were melted, and it was a perfect pool of lustrous silver where the pole and the Person had been.

It was beauty, as all was beauty.

And there were none who could dispute it: everything was beauty on Topaz now. Beauty and peace.

But the night sky rang with the stifled and fading shrieks that would never entirely pass. And as the clouds passed before two of the moons, it was clear to one who was weak and would admit it: the eyes of dust were not gone.

Nothing for My Noon Meal

THERE WAS A PATCH of Flubs growing out beyond the spikes, and I tried to cultivate them, and bring them around, but somehow they weren’t drawing enough, and they died off before they could mature. I needed that air, too. My sac was nearly half-empty. My head was starting to hurt again. It had been night for three months at that time.

My world is a small one. Not large enough to hold an atmosphere any normal Earthman could breathe, not small enough to have none and be totally airless. My world is the sole planet of a red sun, and it has two moons, each one of which serves to eclipse my world’s sun for six of the eighteen months. I have light for six months, dark for twelve. I call my world Hell.

When I first came here, I had a name, and I had a face and I even had a wife. My wife died when the ship blew up, and my name died slowly over the ten years I have lived here, and my face-well, the less I remember that, the easier it is for me.

Oh, I don’t complain. It hasn’t been easy for me here, but I’ve managed, and what can I say? I’m here and I’m alive as best I can be here, and what there is, there is. But what there is not, is greater than mere complaining could bring back.

The first time I saw my world it was as a small egg of light in the plot tank on the ship I shared with my wife. “Do you think that has anything for us?” I asked her.

At first it was good to remember her; when I did, a sweetness came to me, burning away my tears and my hate. At first. “I don’t know, Tom, maybe.” That was what she said. “Maybe.” That was the sweet word, the way she said it. She always had a soft blonde way of saying maybe that made me want to wonder.

“The ore hold could do with something to chew on,” I said, and she smiled with her full lips and her teeth that gently nuzzled her lower lip. “Have to pay for these damn honeymoons of yours somehow.”

I kissed her playfully; we were often happy like that; simply happy, by being together. Together. What that meant to me, I never quite knew, happy as I was. Our enjoyment of one another was so uncomplicated, that it never struck me how it could be with her gone.

Then we passed through that fog of subatomic particles that float beyond the orbit of Firstmoon, and though they did not register on the tank, they were there and they were here and gone. Leaving in their wake a million tiny invisible punctures in the hull of the ship. The holes would not have leaked enough air in a month to cause my wife or myself any discomfort, but they had pierced the drive chambers, also. The particles were, not rock, but something else, perhaps even contra-terrene, and what they did to the drive chambers I will never know. For the ship lost power and slewed off toward this, my world, and miles above the surface it exploded.

My wife died, then, and I saw her body as I was whirled away in the safety section of the cab. I was safe, with great tanks of oxygen strapped to my hutch, and my wife was still there in the companionway between the metal walls. In the companionway between the galley and the cab, where she had gone to prepare my coffee.

She was still there, her arms outstretched to me, her skin quite blue-excuse me, it, it hurts stillas I was whirled away and down. I saw her that once.

My world is a harsh world. No clouds fleece its twelvemonth black skies. No water runs across its surface. But then, water is no problem for me. I have the circulator, which takes my refuse, and turns it into drinkable water. There is a strong ammonia taste to the recirculated water, but that doesn’t bother me too much.

It’s the air that I have trouble getting. At least that was the case before I discovered the Fluhs and what I needed. I’ll tell you about it, and about what has happened to my face; I’m frightened.

Of course I had to live.

Not at all because I wanted to live; when you’ve been a space bum as long as me, and nothing to moor you to one rock, and then along comes a woman who dips up life in her eyes and hands and does it all for you-and then she is taken away so quickly…

But I had to live. Simply because I had air in the cab, and a pressure-suit and food and the circulator. I could subsist on these for quite a while.

So I lived on Hell.

I woke and went through enough hours of nothingness to make me weary, and then I slept again, and woke when my dreams grew too crimson and too loud, repeating the tracks of the “day” before. Soon I grew bored with my life in the cab, close and solitary as it was, and decided to take a walk on the surface of this world.

I slipped into my airsuit, not bothering to put on the pressure shell. There was barely enough gravity on the planet to keep me comfortable, and occasionally I got stiff pains in my chest. But with the heating circuits printed into the material of the airsuit, I was in no real danger. I strapped the oxygen unit to my back, and slipped the bubble onto the yoke, dogging it down over my head with ease. Then I inserted the hose between oxygen unit and bubble and sealed it tightly with a wrench, so I would lose no air from leakage.

Then I went out.

It was twilight, as the sky dimmed on Hell. I had had three months of light already, since I had landed in the safety hutch, and I assumed perhaps two months of light had passed before I came. That left me with a month, roughly, before Secondmoon slipped completely across the face of the tiny red sun which I had not named. Even now, Secondmoon was coming across its disc, and I knew it would be darkness for a full six months by that moon, then another six from Firstmoon, then light again for a brief six.

It had not been difficult to chart orbits and eclipse periods during the past three months. What else had I to do?

I started walking. It was difficult, and I found that by taking long hops, I could cover distances three times as great as those possible.

The planet was nearly barren. No great forests, no streams or oceans, no plains with grain standing on them, no birds, and no other life but mine and

When I first saw them, I was certain they were trumpet flowers, for they had the characteristic bell-shaped perianth with delicate stamen projecting slightly from the cup. But as I drew nearer I realized nothing so Earthlike-even in outward appearance-could occur here. These were not flowers, and on the spot, in the muffled breathing of my helmet, I called them Fluhs.

They were a brilliant orange on the outside of the bell, fading down into a bluish-orange and then a simple marine blue on the stem. Inside the cups they seemed not so much orange as golden, and the blue of the pistils was topped by anthers of orange. Quite colorful they were, and pleasant to look upon.

There were perhaps a hundred of these plants, growing at the base of rock formations that were highly unnatural: tall and leaning at angles, and all smooth and sharp-edged, like spikes, flattened off at the tops. Not so much like rocks, but like the image of salt crystals or glass, under ultramagnification. The entire area was covered with these formations, and with an instant’s loss of reality, I seemed to see myself as a microscopic being, surrounded by great flat-edged, flat-topped crystals that were in reality merely dust or microspecks.

Then my perspective returned, and I stepped closer to the Flubs, to examine them more closely, for this was the only other life that had managed to exist on Hell, apparently, drawing sustenance from the thin, nitrogen-laden atmosphere.

I leaned over to stare deeper into the trumpet-blossoms, resting on one of the slanting pillars of pseudo-rock for support. That was one of my first mistakes, nearly fatal, and to color my life on Hell.

The pillar crashed-it was a semiporous volcanic formation, almost scorialike in composition-and loosened other rocks that had rested on it. I fell forward, directly atop the Flubs, and the last thing I felt was my oxygen helmet shattering about my head.

Then the blackness that was not as deep as space slid down over me.

I should have been dead. There was no reason why I should not have been dead. But I was living; I was…breathing! Can you understand that? I should have been with my wife, but I was alive.

My face was pressed into the Flubs.

I was drawing oxygen from them.

I had stumbled and fallen and cracked open my helmet, and should have died, but because of strange plants that sucked the nitrogen from the thin atmosphere, circulated it and cast it back out as oxygen, I was still alive. I cursed the Fluhs for depriving me of quick, unknowing surcease. I had come so close to joining her, and had lost the chance. I wanted to stagger away from the Fluhs-out into the open where they could not give me air-and gasp away my stolen life. But something stopped me. I was never a religious man, and I am not now. But there seemed to be something miraculous in what had happened. I can’t explain it. I justknew there was a Chance that had thrown me down into that patch of Flubs.

I lay there, breathing deeply.

There was a soft membrane around the base of the pistils that must have held in the oxygen, allowing it to leak out slowly. They were intricate and wonderful plants.

…and there was the smell of midnight.

I can’t describe it any more clearly. It was not a sweet smell, nor was it a sour smell. It was a tender, almost fragile odor that reminded me of one midnight when I had first married her, and we were living in Minnesota. Crisp, and pure and uplifting that midnight had been, when our love had transcended even the restrictions of marriage, when we first realized we were more in love than in love with love itself. Does that sound foolish or confused? No, to me it was perfectly clear. And so was the smell of midnight from the Flubs.

It was the smell perhaps, that made me go on living.

That, and the fact that my face had begun to drain.

As I lay there, I had time to think about what this meant: the bottleneck in oxygen-lack is the brain. After five minutes of oxygen starvation, the brain is irreversibly damaged. But with these Flubs, I could wander about my planet without a helmet-were I able to find them everywhere in such abundance.

As I lay there thinking, gathering strength for the run back to the ship, I felt my face draining. It was as though I had a great boil or pus-sac on my right cheek, and it was sucking blood down into it. I felt my cheek, and yes, even through the glove I could feel a swelling. I grew terrified then, and plucking a handful of Fluhs-close to the bottom of their stems-I thrust my face into them and ran frantically back to the ship.

Once inside, the Fluhs wilted and falling down over my fist, they shriveled. Their brilliant colors faded, and they turned gray as brain matter. I threw them from me and they lay on the deckplate for a few minutes, then they crumbled to a fine ash.

I pulled off my airsuit and my gloves, and ran to the recirculator that was constructed of burnished plasteel; my reflection lived there clearly. My right cheek was terribly inflamed. I gave a short, sharp squeal of terror and pawed at my face, but unlike a pimple or boil, there was no soreness, no pain. Just the constant draining feeling.

What was there to do? I waited.

In a week, the sac had taken shape almost completely. My face was like no human face, drawn down and puffed out on the right side so that my eye had been pulled into a mere slit of light shining through. It was like a gigantic goiter, a goiter that was not on the neck, but the face. The sac ended just at the jawbone, and it did not impair my breathing a bit. But my mouth had been dragged down with it, and when I opened it, I found I had a great cavernous maw instead of the firm lips that had formed my mouth. Otherwise, my face was completely normal. I was a half-beast. My left side was normal, and my right was grotesquely pulled into a drooping, rubbery parody of humanity. I could not bear to look at myself for more than an instant or two, each “day.” The flaming redness of it had gone away, as had the draining, and I did not understand it for many weeks.

Until I ventured once more onto the surface of Hell.

The helmet could not be repaired, of course, so I used the one that my wife had used when she was with me. That set me thinking again, and later, when I had steadied myself, and stopped crying, I went out.

It was inevitable that I should return to the spot where my deformity had first occurred. I reached the spikes-as I had now named the rock formations-without event, and sat down among a patch of Flubs. If I had drawn off their life-giving oxygen, they seemed no worse for it, for they had continued to grow in brilliance and were, if anything, even more beautiful.

I stared at them for a long time, trying to apply what smattering of knowledge I had about the physics and chemistry of botany to what had happened. One thing, at least, was obvious: I had undergone a fantastic mutation.

A mutation that was essentially impossible from what Man knew of life and its construction. What might, under exaggerated conditions, have turned out as a permanent mutation, through generations of special breeding, had happened to me almost overnight. I tried to reason it out:

Even on a molecular level, structure is inextricably related to function. I considered the structure of proteins, for in that direction, I felt, lay at least a partial answer to my deformity.

Finally, I removed the helmet, and bent down to the Fluhs once more. I sucked air from them, and this time felt a great light-headedness. I continued drawing, first from one flower and then the next, till I knew. My sac was full. It all became reasonably clear to me, then. The smell of midnight. There was more than just odor there. I had assimilated bacteria from the Fluhs; bacteria that had attacked the stabilizing enzymes in my breathing system. Viruses perhaps, or evenrickettsiae, that had-for want of a clearer term-softened my proteins and reshaped them to best allow me to make use of the Fluhs.

To allow me to oxygen-suck, as I had been doing, developing a bigger chest or larger lungs would have done me no good. But a balloon-like organ, capable of storing oxygen under pressure…thatwas something else again. When I sucked from the plants, oxygen bled slowly from the blood haemoglobin into the storage sac, and after a while I would be oxygen-full.

I could then proceed without air for short periods, even as a camel can go without water for periods of greater duration. Of course I would have to have an occasional suck to restore what I had used up in between; in an emergency, I could go without for a long while, but then I would need along suck to replace completely.

How it had occurred, down on the nucleoprotein level, I was not that much of a biochemist to understand. What I knew, I knew via hypno-courses I had taken many years before in Deimos University’s required classes. I knew these things, but had never studied enough to be able to analyze them. Given time and sufficient references, I was sure I could unravel the mystery; unlike Earth scientists, who discounted almost-instantaneous mutation as a fantasy, Ihad to believe…it had happened to me. I had only to feel my face, my puffed and now ballooned face, to know it was true. So I had more to work with than they did.

At that moment, I realized I had been standing erect for some minutes, my face nowhere near the Fluhs. Yet I was breathing comfortably.

Yes, I had something to work with, where they did not, for I was living the nightmare fantasy they said was impossible.

That was six months ago. Now it is well into night, and judging from the way the Flubs are dying, there will be nothing when light comes. Nothing left to breathe. Nothing for my noon meal.

It was so dark. The stars were too far off to care about Hell or what lived there. I should have known, of course. In the eternal darkness of twelve months’ night, the Flubs died. They didn’t gray-ash as did the ones I first picked. No, instead they retreated into the ground. They grew smaller and smaller, as though they were a motion picture being run backward. They got tinier and finally disappeared entirely. Whether they incysted themselves, or just died completely, I never knew, for the ground was much too hard to dig in, and what little I’d been able to scrape away, where the scorialike formations extended onto the ground, revealed nothing but small holes where the blossoms descended.

My head was starting to hurt again, and my sac was emptying out all the faster, because my breathing-which I had learned to draw shallowly-was deepening with effort. I started back toward the ship.

It was many miles around the planet, for I had been living in caves and subsisting on the rations brought with me, for the past three “days.” I had been trying to track down a thriving patch of Fluhs, not only to get oxygen to replenish my emptying sac, but to further study their strange metabolism. My oxygen supply in the hutch was fast diminishing; something had gone broke in the system when I had landed…or perhaps the same particles that had caused the ship’s reactors to explode, had caused invisible damage in the oxygen recirculator. I didn’t know. But I did know I had to learn to live on what Hell could give me…or die.

It had been a difficult decision. I had wanted very much to die.

I was standing in the open, with the heated cowl of my airsuit grotesquely drawn about my head and sac, when I saw the flickering in the deep. It burned steadily for an instant, then continued to flicker as it fell toward the tiny planet.

I realized almost at once that it was a ship. Unbelievable, unbelievable, but somehow, in some manner I could never understand, God had sent a ship to take me from this place. I started running, back toward my hutch, what was left of my ship.

I stumbled once, and fell, only to scramble along on all fours till I could get my balance. I continued running, and by the time I had reached the hutch, my sac was nearly empty, and my head was splitting. I got inside and dogged the lock, then leaned against it in exhaustion, drawing deeply, deeply for the air inside.

I turned toward the radio gear, even before the ache was gone from my head, and threw myself roughly into the plotseat. I had almost forgotten how valuable the set could be; lost out here, so far over the Edge, I had never even given serious consideration to the possibility of being found. Actually, had I stopped to consider, a visit was not so unbelievable after all; my ship had not exploded all that far off the trade routes. True, I was far out, but any number of circumstances could combine to bring another ship my way.

And they had.

And it had.

And it was.

I flipped on the beacon signal, and set it to all-bands, hearing the bdeep-bdeep-bdeep of it in the hutch, going out, I knew, to that ship circling the planet. That done, I turned slowly in the plot chair, hands on my knees-only to catch sight of myself in the burnished wall of the recirculator. I saw my sac, grotesque, monstrous, hideous, covered with a week’s growth of spikey beard stubble, my mouth drawn down in a gash. I was hardly human any longer.

When they came, I would not open the lock for them.

Finally, I allowed them in. There were three of them, young, clean-limbed, trying to hide their horror at what I had become. They came in and stripped out of their bulky pressure-suits. The hutch was crowded, but the girl and one of the men squatted on the floor and the other man perched on the plot tank’s edge.

“My name-” I didn’t know whether to say “is” or “was” so I slurred it, easily, “Tom Van Home. I’ve been here about four or five months, I’m not sure which.”

One of the young men-he was staring at me openly, he could not take his eyes off me, in fact-replied, “We belong to the Human Research Foundation. Expedition to evaluate some of the worlds out past the Edge for colonization. We-we-saw the other half of your ship. There was a worn-“

I stopped him. “I know. My wife.” They stared at the port, the deckplate, the bulkhead.

We talked for some time, and I could see they were interested in my theories of near-instantaneous mutation. It was their field, and soon the girl said, “Mr. Van Home, you have stumbled on something terribly vital to us all. Youmust come back with us and help us to get to the heart of-of-your, uh, your change.” She blushed, and it reminded me a little of my wife.

Then the other two started in. They used me as a buffer, asking questions and answering them, and making me warmer and warmer to the prospect of returning. I was caught up in a maelstrom of enthusiasm. A feeling of belonging stole over me, and I forgot. I forgot how the ship had gone out like a match; I forgot how she had stood there frozen in the companionway, blue and strange; I forgot all the years I had spent burning in space; I forgot the months here; and most of all I forgot the change.

They pleaded with me, and said we should go right now. I hesitated for an instant, not even knowing why, but unconsciously crying to myself not to listen. Then I relented, and got into my airsuit. When I pulled the heated cowl up about my sac, they all stared for a long moment, until the girl nudged one of the fellows, and the other broke into a nervous titter.

They jollied me, telling me how important my discovery would be to mankind. I listened; I was wanted. It was good, so good, after what seemed an eternity on Hell.

We left my hutch, and started across the short space between their ship and my life cubicle. I was pleased and surprised to see how shining their ship was; they were proud of it, they took good care of it. They were the new breed-the high-strung, intelligent scientists with the youthful ideas and the glory in them. They weren’t tired old folks like me. The ship was lighted by automatic floods that had come out on the hull, and the vessel shone in the night of Hell like a great glowing torch. It would be good to go to space once more.

We came up to the ship, and one of the men depressed a stud that started a humming inside the ship. A landing ramp slid down from far above as the outer lock opened, and I knew this was a more recent model than my ship had been. But then, that didn’t disturb me; I had been a poor space bum before I met her. She had been all the drive I’d ever needed.

I took a step forward, up the ramp, and two things happened, almost simultaneously:

I caught a glimpse of myself in the glowing shell of the ship. It was not a pretty picture. My ghoul’s mouth, drawn down and to the side like a knife wound. My eye, a mere slit of brightness, the sac so hideous and vein-streaked. I stopped on the ramp, with them directly behind me.

And the second thing happened.

I heard her.

Somewhere…far off…in a bright amber cavern hung down with scintillant stalactites…swathed in a shimmering aura of goodness and cleanliness and hope…younger than the next instant…radiantly beautiful and calling to me…calling with a voice of music that was the sound of suns flaring and stars twinkling and earth moving and grass growing and small things being happy…it was she!

I listened there for a moment that spanned forever.

My head tilted to the side, I listened, and I knew what she said was truth, so simple and so pure and so real, that I turned and edged past them on the ramp, and returned to Hell again.

Her voice stopped in the moment of my touching ground.

They stared at me, and for a short time they said nothing. Then one of the men-the short, blond fellow with alert blue eyes and hardly any neck-said, “What’s the matter?”

“I’m not going,” I said. The girl ran down the ramp to me. “But why?” She almost sounded tearful.

I couldn’t tell her, of course. But she was so small, so sweet, and she reminded me of my wife, when I had first met her, so I answered, “I’ve been here too long; I’m not very nice to look at-“

“Oh-” and she tried to stop me, but it was a sob, so it did not interfere.

“-and you may not understand this but I-I’ve been well, content here. It’s a hard world, and it’s dark, but she’s up there-” I looked toward the black sky of Hell, “-and I wouldn’t want to go away and leave her alone. Can you understand that?”

They nodded slowly, and one of the men said, “But this is more than just you, Van Horne. This is a discovery that means a great deal to everyone on Earth.

“It’s getting worse and worse there every year. With the new antiaging drugs people just aren’t dying, and they’ve still got the Catho-Presbyte Lobby to keep any really effective birth control laws from being enacted. The crowding is terrible; that’s one of the chief reasons we’re out here, to see how Man can adapt to these worlds. Your discovery can aid us tremendously.”

“And you said the Fluhs were gone,” the other man said. “Without them, you’ll die.” I smiled at them;she had said something, something important about the Flubs.

“I can still do some good,” I replied quickly. “Send me a few young people. Let them come here, and we’ll study together. I can show them what I’ve found, and they can experiment here. Laboratory conditions could never match what I’ve found on Hell.”

That seemed to do it. They looked at me sadly, and the girl agreed…the other two matched her agreement in a moment.

“And, and-I couldn’t leave her here alone,” I said again.

“Goodbye, Tom Van Home,” she said, and she pressed my hand between her mittened ones. It was a kiss on the cheek, but her helmet prevented it physically, so she clasped my hand.

Then they started up the ramp.

“What will you do for air, with the Fluhs gone?” one of the men asked, stopping halfway up.

“I’ll be all right, I promise you. I’ll be here when you return.” They looked at me with doubt, but I smiled, and patted my sac, and they looked uncomfortable, and started up the ramp again.

“We’ll be back. With others.” The girl looked down at me. I waved, and they went inside. Then I loped back to the hutch, and watched them as they shattered the night with their fire and fury. When they were gone, I went outside, and stared up at the dim, so-faraway points of the dead stars.

Where she circled, up there, somewhere.

And I knew I would have something for my noon meal, and all the meals thereafter. She had told me; I suppose I knew it all along, but it hadn’t registered, so she had told me: the Fluhs were not dead. They had merely gone down to replenish their own oxygen supply from the planet itself, from the caves and porous openings where the rock trapped the air. They would be back again, long before I needed them.

The Fluhs would return.

And someday I would find her again, and it would be an unbroken time.

This world I had named, I had not properly named. Not Hell.

Not Hell at all.

O Ye of Little Faith

NIVEN FELT for the rock wall behind him. His fingertips grazed the crumbling rocks. The wall curved. He prayed that it curved. Ithad to curve, to go around the bowl in which he was trapped, or he was dead. That simply: he was dead. The centaur advanced another few feet, pawing the red-dust earth with hooves of gold now dulled by a faint dusty crimson patina.

The creature’s small gimlet eyes were as red as the ground it stomped. Half-man, half-horse, something out of a child’s fable, it stepped carefully toward him, and he had the wildly incongruous thought that the beast’s face might have been a double for John Barrymore. Only the little red eyes destroyed the comparison. Red and angry; not merely with volcanic hatred, but with something else…something primeval, something saved from a time before men had walked the Earth, when the centaurs and their fellow-myths had ruled the world.

And now, somehow, in some inexplicable fashion, Nivena man with no particular talents-had been thrown crosswise and slantwise through universes into a place, a time, a continuum (an Earth?), where the centaur still roamed. Where the centaur could at last have his full revenge on the creatures that had replaced him. It was the day of reckoning forhomo sapiens.

Niven backed around the bowl, feeling the dirt of the wall crumbling in his fingers as he felt behind him; in his other hand he brandished the rough-wood club he had found underfoot as he ran from the beast. He let it droop in his hand a moment, the weight of it difficult to keep at the ready for very long. The centaur’s face of frenzy glowed with heat. It leaped. Niven swung the club with a bunching of muscles that sent him whirling half-around. The centaur dug its hooves in deeply, and ground to a snorting halt, two feet in front of the flat arc swing of the club. Niven spun around completely, and the club struck the wall, and shattered to splinters.

The centaur’s half-growl, half-snort bore traces of triumphant amusement as it exploded behind the dark-haired man, and Niven felt young sweat come to his back. The impact of the blow against the wall had sent a tremor through his entire body; his left arm was quite numb. Yet it had saved him. There was an opening in the wall, an opening in the rock-wall of the deep valley bowl, an opening he would not have seen backing around the wan. Now there was a scant hope of staying alive.

As the centaur gathered itself for a leap that would send its gigantic body plunging into Niven, the man slipped sidewise, and was inside the mountain.

He turned then, and ran. Behind him the light from that weird place-vaguely blue and light-mote laden-faded and was abruptly lost as he caromed around a sharp turn in the passage. It was dark now, pitch absolute dark, and all Niven could see was the scintillance of tiny sparks behind his eyes. Suddenly he found himself longing to see even that light behind him, that snippet of blue and cadaverous yellow in a sky that had never been roof of any worldhe had known.

And then he was falling…

Suddenly, and without any sense of having moved, between one step and the next, he plunged over a lip of stone, and was falling. Down and down, tumbling over and over, and the walls of moist slippery stone reeled around him, unseen but cold, as he tried to grab some small hold.

The tips of his fingers skinned away from friction, and the pain was excruciating, for a long moment, but was lost in an instant as the shriek tore from his throat and he plunged, hitting painfully with his shoulders and the back of his neck that threatened to snap his spine, down into a depth of water black and viscous and bottomless that closed over him, filled his mouth with foulness, blind, dragged into the grave-chill body of a moist lover terrible in her possessiveness, jealousy and need.

Vapors of night. Echoes of never. Niven thrashed in a whirlpool vortex of total unawareness. Memories-released from their crypt beneath his conscious mind-escaped, gibbering, rushed in a horde into his skull. He was back in the old soothsayer’s shop. Had it been just a few minutes before finding himself trapped by the centaur? Merely a few minutes when he had stood in the prognosticator’s shop in a Tijuana back alley, a tourist with a girl on his arm and a wisecrack on his lips? Had it been only that long ago, a matter of seconds, of a sometimelong ago, when darkness had parted and swallowed him-as he was now being swallowed by these stygian waters?

Huaraches,the sign had said, andSerapes.

Berta stared at him across her Tom Collins. He could not look at her. He toyed with the straw in his Cuba libre. He whistled soundlessly, then bit the inside of his lip absently. He looked off across the Avenida Revolucion. Tijuana throbbed with an undercurrent of immorality and availability. Anything you might want. A ten-year-old virgin-male or female. Authentic French perfume minus the tariff. Grass. Hash. Peyote caps. Bongo drums, hand-carved Don Quixotes, sandals, bullfights, jai-alai, horse races, tote-board betting or off-track betting, your photograph wearing a sombrero sitting astride a weary jackass. Jackass on jackass, a study in dung. Strip shows where the nitty-gritty consists of thepudenum fiat-out on the bar-top for convenient dining. Private shows with big dogs and tiny gentlemen and women with breasts as big as casaba melons. Divorces, marriages, tuck-and-roll auto seat covers. Or a quick abortion.

It had been lunacy for them to come down here. But they’d had to. Berta had needed the D&C, and now it was over, and she was feeling just fine thank you, just fine. So they had stopped for a drink. She should be resting in a motel halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles, but he knew she wanted to talk. There was so much to talkabout. So now they sat in the street cafe and he could not talk to her. He could not even look at her. He could not explain that he was a man trapped within himself. He knew she was aware of it, but like all women she needed him to come only far enough outside himself to let her share his fear. Just far enough that he could not make it. She needed him to verbalize it, to ask for-if not help, then-companionship through his country of mental terrors. But he could not give her what she wanted. He could not give her himself.

Their affair had been subject to the traditional rules. A lotta laughs, a lotta passion, and then she had gotten pregnant.

And in their mutual concern, something deeper had passed between them. There was a chance, for the first time in Niven’s life, that he might cleave to someone and find not disillusionment, derangement and disaster, but reality and a little peace.

She had arranged the abortion, he had paid for it, and now they were together here, as she waited for him to speak. Voiceless, imprisoned in his past and his sense of the reality of the world in which he had beenforced to live, Niven knew he was letting her slip away.

But could not help himself.

“Jerry.” He wanted to pretend she had not spoken, knowing she was trying to help him get started. But he found himself looking up. She wasn’t beautiful, but he liked the face very much. It was a face he could live with. She smiled. “Where are we going, Jerry?”

He knew what he had to answer to please her, to win her, but he said, “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means: there’s nothing artificial or unwanted holding us together any more.Or holding us apart. What do we do now?”

He knew what he had to answer to please her, to win her, but he said, “We do whatever we want to do. Don’t push on me too hard.”

Her eyes flashed for an instant. “I’m notpushing, Jerry, I’m inquiring. I’m thirty-five and I’m unattached and it’s getting frightening going to bed alone without a future. Does that seem rational to you?”

“Rational, but unnecessary. You’ve got a few good weeks left in you.”

“It isn’t funny for me, Jerry. I have to know. Have you got room in your world for me?”

He knew what he had to answer to please her, to win her, but he said, “There’s barely room enough in my world forme, baby. And if you knew what my world was like you wouldn’t want to come into it. You see before you the last of the cynics, the last of the misogynists, the last of the bitter men. I look out on a landscape littered with the refuse of a misspent youth. All my gods and goddesses had feet of shit, and there they lie, like Etruscan statuary, the noses bashed off. Believe me, Berta, you don’t want into my world.”

Her face was lined in resignation now. “Unraveling the charming syntax, what you’re telling me is: we had a good time and we made a small mistake, but it’s corrected now, so get lost.”

“No, I’m saying-“

But she was up from the curbside table and stalking across the street. He threw a bill down on the tablecloth and went after her.

She managed to keep ahead of him. Mostly because he wanted to give her time to cool off. As they passed a narrow side-alley he pulled abreast of her, and taking her arm gently she allowed him to draw her into its shadowed coolness. ” All it takes is believing, Jerry! Is that so much to ask?”

“Believe,” he snapped, the instant fury that always lay beneath the surface of his charm boiling up. “Believe. The same stupid mealy-mouth crap they tell the peckerwoods in the boondocks. Believe in this, and believe in that, and have faith, and holy holy you’ll get your ass saved. Well, Idon’t believe.”

“Then how can any woman believe inyou?”

It was more than anger that forced the words from him. It was a helplessness that translated itself into cynical ruthlessness. “I’d say that washerproblem.”

She pulled her arm free and turning without really seeing where she was going, she plunged down the alley. Down a flight of dim steps, and on again, a lower level of the same alley. “Berta!” he called after her.

Huaraches,the sign had said, andSerapes.

A shop in a dingy back alley in a seedy border town more noted for street-corner whores than for wrinkled and leathery tellers-of-the-future who soldHuarachesandSerapes in their spare time. But he had quickly followed her, trying to find a way out of his own inarticulateness, to settle the senseless quarrel they were having and salvage this one good thing from a past filled with broken glass. He wanted to tell her his need was not a temporary thing, not only a matter of good times, of transitory bodies reaching and never quite finding one another. He wanted to tell her that he had lost all belief in his world, a world that seemed incapable of bringing to him any richness, any meaning, any vitality. But his words-if they came at all-he knew would come with ill-restrained fury, with anger and sharpness, insulting her, forcing her to walk away as she now walked away.

He had followed her, down the alley.

And the old, wizened, papyrus-tough Mexican had limped out of his shop, bent almost double with age, like a blue-belly lizard, all alertness and cunning, and had offered to tell them of the future.

“No thanks,” Niven had said, catching up to her at that moment.

But she had tossed her head, defiance, and had entered the shop, leaving him standing in the alley. Niven had followed her, hoping she would turn in an instant, and come out again, and he would find the words. But she had gone deeper into the musky dimness of the shop, and the old prognosticator had begun casting the runes, had begun mixing the herbs and bits of offal and vileness he averred were necessary for truth and brightness in the visions. A bit of wild dog hair. A strip of flesh from the instep of a drowned child. Three drops of menstrual blood from a Macedonian whore. The circular sucker from the underside of a polyp’s tentacle. A conch shell that made…sounds. Other things. Unspeakable, nameless, foul-smelling, terrible.

And then, strangely, he had said he would not tell the future of Berta…but of Niven.

There in the fetid closeness of a shop whose dimensions were lost in dusk, the old Mexican said Niven was a man without belief, without faith, without trust, and so was damned; a man doomed and forsaken. He said all the dark and tongueless things Niven had never been able to say of himself. And Niven, in fury, in frenzy brought on by a hurricane of truth, smashed the old man, swung across the little round table with all the strength in his big body, clubbed the old man, and in the same movement swept the strange mixed ingredients from the filthy table, as Berta screamed-from someplace far away.

And in that instant, a silent explosion. A force and impact that had hurled him out of himself. In that timeless, breathless instant Niven had been there/not-there. He had somehow inexplicably been movedelsewhere. In a bowl, in a valley, in a land, in a time or place or somewhere facing a centaur. A creature of mythology, a creature from the past of man’s fables.

Huaraches,the sign had said, andSerapes.

Facing a live centaur just a moment ago. Facing the creature that had left the world before there had been a name to fit the man that Niven had become. A god without worshippers, this centaur. In a world that did not believe, facing a man who did not believe.

And in that instant-like the previous instant of truth-Niven wasall the men who had forsaken their gods. Who had allowed the world to tell them they were alone; and believed it. Now he had to face one of the lost gods. A god who now sought revenge on the race of Men who had devised machines that would banish them from the real world.

Down and down and down into the waters of nowhere Niven plunged, all thoughts simply one thought, all memories crashing and jarring, all merged and melded and impinging upon a dense tapestry of seaweed images.

His breath seemed to clog in his throat. His stomach bulged with the amount of water he had swallowed, with the pressure on his temples, with the blackness that deluged him behind his eyes. Niven felt memory depart and consciousness at once returning-and leaving. He was coming back from the past to awareness, only to let it slip away finally as he drowned.

He made feeble swimming motions, overhand movements of arms that had sensation only by recall, not by his own volition. He moved erratically in the water, as thick as gelatin, and his movement toward the bottomless bottom was arrested. He moved upward through the water now, and saw a dim light, far ahead and above him.

An eternity. There. Toward it he struggled, and when he thought it was ended, he reached a ledge. He pulled himself toward it, and the dark water seeped through him until he was limp and dying. Then his head broke water. He was in an underground cavern. He spewed out mouthfuls of warm, evil-tasting water.

For a very long time he lay half on the ledge, half in the water, till someone came and pulled him up. Niven lay there on his stomach, learning to live again, while the one who had saved him stood silently waiting. Niven tried to get to his feet, and he was helped. He could not see who the man was, though he could feel a long robe in the dimness, and there was a light, a sort of corona that seemed to come dimly from the man. Then together, with the man supporting him, Niven went away from there, and they climbed for a long while between walls of stone, to the world that was outside.

He stood in the light, and was tired and sad and blinded by things he did not believe. Then the man left him, and as he walked slowly away, Niven recognized the beard and the infinitely sad eyes and the way he was dressed, and even the light.

And Jesus left him, with a sad smile, and Niven stood alone, for another time that was long, and empty.

Once, late that night, he thought he heard the bull-ram horn of Odin, ringing across this dim, shadowed land, but he could not be sure. And once he heard a sound of something passing, and when he opened his eyes to look it was a cat-headed woman, and he thoughtBast, and she slipped smoothly away into the darkness without saying a word to him. And toward morning there was a light in the sky that seemed to be a burning chariot, Pha‰thon the charioteer, Helios’ burning chariot, but that was probably the effects of the drowning, the hunger, the sorrow. He could not be certain.

So he wandered. And time passed without ever moving, in the land without a name; andhis name was Niven, but it was no more important a name than Apollo or Vishnu or Baal, for it was not a name men believed in; it was only the name of a man who had not believed. And if gods cannot be called back, when their names have been known, then how can a man whose name wasnever known be called back.

For him, his god had been Berta, but he had not given her an opportunity to believe in him. He had prevented her from having faith in him, and so there were no believers for a man named Niven, as there were no true believers for Serapis or Perseus or Mummu.

Very late the next night, Niven realized he would always,always live in this terrible Coventry where old gods went to die; gods who would never speak to him; and with no hope of return.

For as he had believed in no god…

No god believed in him.

The Time of the Eye

IN THE THIRD year of my death, I met Piretta. Purely by chance, for she occupied a room on the second floor, while I was given free walk of the first floor and the sunny gardens. And it seemed so strange, that first and most important time, that we met at all, for she had been there since she had gone blind in 1958, while I was one of the old men with young faces who had dissolved after being in the Nam.

The Place wasn’t too unpleasant, of course, despite the high, flat-stone walls and the patronizing air of Mrs. Gondy, for I knew one day my fog would pass, and I would feel the need to speak to someone again, and then I could leave the Place.

But that was in the future.

I neither looked forward to that day, nor sought refuge in my stable life at the Place. I was in a limbo life between caring and exertion. I was sick; I had been told that; and no matter what I knew-I was dead. So what sense was there in caring?

But Piretta was something else.

Her delicate little face was porcelain, with eyes the flat blue of shallow waters, and hands that were quick to do nothing important.

I met her-as I say-by chance. She had grown restless, during what she called “the time of the eye,” and had managed to give her Miss Hazelet the slip.

I was walking with head bowed and hands locked behind my bathrobe, through the lower corridor, when she came down the great winding stairway.

On many an occasion I had stopped at that stairway, watching the drab-faced women who scrubbed down each level, each riser. It was like watching them go to hell. They started at the top, and washed their way down. Their hair was always white, always lank, always like old hay. They scrubbed with methodical ferocity, for this was the last occupation left to them before the grave, and they clung to it with soap and suds. And I had watched them go down to hell, step by step.

But this time there were no drudges on their knees.

I heard her walking close to the wall, her humble fingertips brushing the wainscotting as she descended, and I realized immediately that she was blind.

That blindness deeper than lack of sight.

There was something to her; something ephemeral that struck instantly to the dead heart in me. I watched her come down with stately slowness, as though she tripped to silent music, until I was drawn to her in spirit.

“May I be of service?” I heard myself politely inquiring, from a distance. She paused there and her head came up with field mouse awareness.

“No, thank you,” she said, most congenially. “I am quite able to care for myself, thank you. Something thatperson,” she twitched her head in the direction of upstairs, “cannot seem to fathom.”

She came the remainder of the steps to the napless winecolored rug. She stood there and exhaled deeply, as though she had just put a satisfactory finis to an immense project.

“My name is-” I began, but she cut me off with a sharp snort and, “Name’s the same.” She giggled prettily.

“Names ring of little consequence, don’t you agree?” and there was such conviction in her voice, I could hardly disagree.

So I said, “I suppose that’s so.”

She snickered softly and patted her auburn hair, bed-disarrayed. “Indeed,” she said with finality, “thatis so; very much so.”

This was most peculiar to me, for several reasons.

First, she was talking with a rather complicated incoherence that seemed perfectly rational at the time, and second, she was the first person I had spoken to since I had been admitted to the Place, two years and three months before.

I felt an affinity for this girl, and hastened to strengthen our flimsy tie

“And yet,” I ventured, “one must havesomething by which to know another person.” I became most bold and went on, “Besides-” gulping, “if one likes someone…”

She considered this for a long second, one hand still on the wall, the other at her white throat. “If you insist,” she replied, after deliberation, and added, “you may call me Piretta.”

“Is that your name?” I asked.

“No,” she answered, so I knew we were to be friends.

“Then you can call me Sidney Carton.” I released a secret desire of long sublimation.

“That is a fine name, should any name be considered fine,” she admitted, and I nodded. Then, realizing she could not hear a nod, I added a monosyllable to indicate her pleasure was also mine.

“Would you care to see the gardens?” I asked chivalrously.

“That would be most kind of you,” she said, adding with a touch of irony, “as you see…I’m quite blind.”

Since it was a game we were playing I said, “Oh, truly? I really hadn’t noticed.”

Then she took my arm, and we went down the corridor toward the garden French doors. I heard someone coming down the staircase, and she stiffened on my arm. “Miss Hazelet,” she gasped. “Oh, please!”

I knew what she was trying to say. Her attendant. I knew then that she was not allowed downstairs, that she was now being sought by her nurse. But I could not allow her to be returned to her room, after I had just found her.

“Trust me,” I whispered, leading her into a side corridor.

I found the mop closet, and gently ushered her before me, into its cool, dark recess. I closed the door softly and stood there, very close to her. I could hear her breathing, and it was shallow, quick. It made me remember those hours before dawn in Viet Nam, even when we were full asleep; when we sensed what was coming, with fear and trepidation. She was frightened. I held her close, without meaning to do so, and her arm went around my waist. We were very near, and for the first time in over two years I felt emotions stirring in me; how foolish of me to consider love. But I waited there with her, adrift in a sargasso of conflicting feelings, while her Miss Hazelet paced outside.

Finally, after what seemed a time too short, we heard those same precise steps mounting the stairs-annoyed, prissy, flustered.

“She’s gone. Now we can see the gardens,” I said, and wanted to bite my tongue. She couldsee nothing; but I did not rectify my error. Let her think I took her infirmity casually. It was far better that way.

I opened the door cautiously, and peered out. No one but old Bauer, shuffling along down the hall, his back to us. I led her out, and as though nothing had happened, she took my arm once more.

“How sweet of you,” she said, and squeezed my bicep.

We walked back to the French doors, and went outside.

The air was musky with the scent of fall, and the crackling of leaves underfoot seemed a proper thing. It was not too chilly, and yet she clung to me with a soft desperation more need than inclination. I didn’t think it was because of her blindness; I was certain she could walk through the garden without any help if she so desired.

We moved down the walk, winding out of sight of the Place in a few seconds, shielded and screened by the high, neatly pruned hedges. Oddly enough, for that time of day, no attendants were slithering through the chinaberry and hedges, no other “guests” were taking their blank-eyed pleasure on the turf or on the bypaths.

I glanced sidewise at her profile, and was pleased by her chiseled features. Her chin was a bit too sharp and thrust-forward, but it was offset by high cheekbones and long eyelashes that gave her a rather Asiatic expression. Her lips were full, and her nose was a classic yet short sweep.

I had the strangest feeling I had seen her somewhere before, though that was patently impossible.

Yet the feeling persisted.

I remembered another girl…but that had been before the Nam…before the sound of a metallic shriek down the night sky…and someone standing beside my bed at Walter Reed. That had been in another life, before I had died, and been sent to this Place.

“Is the sky dark?” she asked. I guided her to a bench, hidden within a box of hedges.

“Not very,” I replied. “There are a few clouds in the north, but they don’t look like rainclouds. I think it’ll be a nice day.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said resignedly. “The weather doesn’t really matter. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen sunlight through the trees?” Then she sighed, and laid her head back against the bench. “No. The weather doesn’t really matter. Not at this Time, anyhow.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t care, either.

There was a new life surging through me. I was surprised to hear it beating in my ears. I was surprised to find myself thinking minutes into the future. No one who has not experienced it can understand what it is to be dead, to no longer think of the future, and then to find something worthwhile and begin to live all over again. I don’t mean just hope, nothing that simple and uncomplicated. I mean to be dead, and then to be alive. It had come to be like that in just a few minutes since I had met Piretta. I had ignored the very next instant for the past two years and three months, and now suddenly, I was looking to the future. Not much at first, for it had become an atrophied ability in me, but I was expecting from minute to minute, caring, and I could feel my life ranging back to pick me up, to continue its journey.

I was looking ahead, and wasn’t that the first step to regaining my lost life?

“Why are you here?” she inquired, placing a cool, slim-fingered hand on my bare arm.

I placed my hand over it, and she started, so I withdrew it selfconsciously. Then she searched about, found it, and put it over hers again.

“I was in the War,” I explained. “There was a mortar and I was hit, and they sent me here. I-I didn’t want to-maybe I wasn’t able to-I don’t know-I didn’t want to talk to anyone for a long time.

“But I’m all right now,” I finished, abruptly at peace with myself.

“Yes,” she said, as though that decided it.

Then she went on speaking, in the strangest tone of voice : “Do you sense the Time of the Eye, too, or are you one ofthem?” She asked it with ruthlessness in her voice. I didn’t know what to answer.

“Who do you mean bythem?”

She let her full upper lip snarl, and said, “Those women who bedpan me. Those foul, crepuscular antiseptics!”

“If you mean the nurses and attendants,” I caught her line of thought, “no, I’m not one of them. I’m as annoyed by them as you seem to be. Didn’t I hide you?”

“Would you find me a stick?” she asked.

I looked around, and seeing none, broke a branch from the box hedge. “This?”

I handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said.

She began stripping it, plucking the leaves and twigs from it. I watched her dexterous hands flitting, and thoughtHow terrible for such a lovely and clever girl to be thrown in here with these sick people, these madmen.

“You probably wonder whatI’m doing here, don’t you?” she asked, peeling the thin, green bark from the stick. I didn’t answer her, because I didn’t want to know; I had found something, someone, and my life had begun again. There was no reason to kill it all at once.

“No, I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Well, I’m here becausethey know I’m aware of them.”

It struck a note of familiarity. There had been a man named Herbman, who had lived on the first floor during my second year at the Place. He had always talked about the great clique of men who were secretly trying to kill him, and how they would go to any extreme to get him, to silence him before he could reveal their dire machinations.

I hoped the same thing had not befallen her. She was so lovely.

“They?”

“Yes, of course. Yousaidyou weren’t one of them. Are you lying to me? Are you making fun of me, trying to confuse me?” Her hand slipped out from under mine.

I hastened to regain ground. “No, no, of course not; but don’t you see, I don’t understand? I just don’t know. I-I’ve been here so long.” I tried not to sound pathetic.

Somehow, this seemed to strike her logically. “You must forgive me. I sometimes forget everyone is not aware of the Time of the Eye as I am.”

She was pulling at the end of the stick, drawing off the bark, making a sharp little point there. “The Time of the Eye?” I asked. She had said it several times. “I don’t understand.”

Piretta turned to me, her dead blue eyes seeing directly over my right shoulder, and she put her legs close together. The stick was laid carelessly by her side, as though a toy it had been, but now the time for toys was gone. “I’ll tell you,” she said.