Lovecraft Lives! - [PDF Document] (2024)

Lovecraft Lives!-mainly because the stories hewrote and the concepts he inventedare too gripping to stop reading... or to stop writing. The rosterof writers who have carried onLovecraft's characters and ideas isa Who's Who of fantasy greatsAugust Derleth, Robert Bloch,Frank Belknap Long, Colin Wilson, Clark Ashton Smith, HenryKuttner.

Beagle's ARKHAM EDITIONSnow include works by theseauthors as well as HPL-and thismonth's offering is a prime pairfrom Derleth, The Mask of

Cthulhu and The Trail of Cthulhu-a story collection and a novel abouthapless mortals' involvement with the terrifying beings from between thedimensions-Cthulhu, Hastur the Unspeakable, Ying, the amorphous fluteplayer, and the Goat with the Thousand Young.And next month, we'll have what is probably Lovecraft's solidest novel,The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Goulartifice-a new noun, or Beaglism, to use as a labelfor Ron Goulart's acid zaniness and whatthe New York Times calls his "bleak butbracing humor." Death Cell is the firstnovel dealing with Jack Summer of Muckrake, the galactic newsmag-a first-rateGoulartifact.

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WORLDS OFSCIENCEFICTION

July-Augult, 1971Vol. 20, No. 12

llaue 155

ALL NEWSTORIES

Eiler Jalrobsson, Edi,or Les'er del.ey, 'ea'ure Edi'orJudy-L ynn aeniamin, Managing Edi'or 'ranc L• • oggeri, Ar' Direc'orJay Tunick, Circula,ion Direc'or L. C. Murphy, Subscrip'ion Direc'or

Jaclr Gaughan, Associa'e Ar' Direc'or

NOVELETTESOCCAM'S SCALPEL, Theodore Sturgeon •••••••••••••••••••••••• 4TO SEEK ANOTHER, James A. Gotaas •••••.•••••••.•••••••••••• 24

SERIAL (Conclusion)THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT, Philip Jose Farmer ••.••••122

NOVELLAARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE, Avram Davidson ••••••••••• 62

SHORTSTORrBOOME R FLATS, R.A. Lafferty..................................... 47

"'EATURESHUE AND CRY: Readers Write-and Wrong ••••••••••••••••••• 2READING ROOM, Lester del Rey ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••118SF CALENDAR ••.••••••.•••••••••••.•••.•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••176

Cover by GAUGHAN, suggested by TO SEEK ANOTHER

aernard Williams, Associate Pu'''isher

I F is published bimonthly by UPD PUblishing Corporation, a subsidiary of Universal Publishing & Distributing Corporation, Arnold E. Abramson, President. Main oHices: 235 East 45 Street, New York,N.Y. 10017. 75C per copy. 12-issue subscription: S9.00 In the United States, elsewhere S10.00. Secondclass postage paid at New York, N.Y. and additional mailing oHices. Copyright c 1971 by UPD Publishing Corporation under International, Universal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. All rightsreserved. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All stories printed in thismagazine are fiction and any similarity between characters and actual persons is coincidental. Titleregistered U.S. Patent OHice. Printed in U.S.A. The company also publishes Award Books, NovaBooks, Tandem Books (United Kingdom), Vocational Guidance Manuals, Golf MagaZine, Golfdom,Ski, Ski Business, Ski Area Management, Home Garden, The Family Handyman.

Mr. Jakobsson:Having only recently acquired and

read a complete Sherlock Holmes(Berkley), I was especially delighted by Slav'es of 'Silver in theMarch/April If. As I began the story,I thought" I dete~ted somethingfamiliar in Mr., Wolfe's fusty, latenineteenth-century style. Not untilStreet began dissuJing Dr.Westing's appearance and the im-plications thereof diq I really catchon, th~ugh. Once I was wise to whatMr. Wolfe was doing, however, Ifound it difficult to keep a straightface until I hadfinished the story.

Do you know ifany more such worksare ·or will be in the offing? I have aI~ays enjoyed Holmes and finding amodern Holmes quite excites me.

Eric C. SandersGrand Blank, Mich.

Are you there, Gene Wolfe?

Dear Mr. Jakobsson:I have just finished reading the two

stories by T. J. Boss iii your Nov-Decand Jan-Feb issues and I am overwhelmed. Who is he? I have been reading ,sci-fi for·years but haye never runacross him before. I hope you will

. .

have more'stories by him in the future.Incidentally, both Galaxy and If havebecome excellent· magazines and Ithank you for providing the intelligent SF reading public with consistently interesting and well-writtenstories. My one note of dissatisfaction is the exclusion of Vaughn Bodefrom Galaxy's pages. Why wos thirdone and is there any possibility that hemay be seen there once again?

Michael L. Charters7th Psychological Operations

Battalion, APO SF 96349

T. J. Bass is ayoung pathologist whowrote his If First in 1.968. Since then hehas appeared in both Galaxy and If,always briUiantly. In answer to your'last question: reader, reaction did notenCourage us to continue featuring acartoon strip.

Dear Mr. Jak0 bssoi.: .I feel that Mr. Zabel's definition of

science fiction os given in his letter(March-April '71) is merely an impersonalextention of the one Heinlein proposed in 1952. His definition I

.(th~n) was that sf is "fiction aboutthings that have not happened." This'is really a description of virtually allfiction from, Joyce on out. By inserting a qualifying factor on the"probability" of a story's event I liketo think I have, narrowed the scope toour,genre.

As to, your comment that a story~s

"probability" depe,nds on the writer'shandling of events-I can not agree.The handling ofstory events may "givethem a semblance of probability theydo not deserve-but an objective

Science Iicti"on is fiction that statesthat what did not happen yesterdaywill not .necessarily not happen tomorrow.

(Vogel says the foregoing is An unresolvable" triple negative which·is thesort ofthing he delights in.) "

. Take Voger~ two examples. FailSafe is about blown fuses which are asold as electric lights. Gentle Yulturesdeals with aliens which would be something new "in history. So by" my de-finition Gentle Vultures is science fiction and Fail Safe" is not.

You may print myfull address.Aloysius Cupay

1 Lloyd Manor Cr.London: Ontario

definition is, as fU"ual. an idea takenmuch too seriously with Heinlein,Panshin, with semantics -dragged intoshore up his ·position. I just read hislatest letter (Before he mQi'ed"it?~Ed) and I see he is going '0 expound his "philosophy" ofscience fic-tion to yoli. too. "

In the interest of balance (all usCan~cks aren't idiot geniuses) I~/I

throw in my definition. I believe it'sa paraphrase ofa Heinlein chtuacte~'s

definition of c~mmon sens~ and itgoes like this:

I agree~Fail Safe is about _"~hedangers·of a blown fuse. Please, guys,don't you two blow yours, both talking

Hail Jakobsson! at once. But let's hear more, even ~t

I see Vogel has found in your letter .the risk of overloading circuits.column a new outlet for his theses. His - -JAKOBSSON

analysis will reveal the actual likelihood of a plot: I believe that it is t~e

author's choice of events, and thisalone, that determines a story'stlfproba!JiliJy" (not ':plausi~/ity,"whichmeans ability to convince). For in-"stance. I don't "consider Fail Safe tobe sf because the· possibility of commitment to a nuclear war due to aburned-out. fuse is all too likely. Onthe other hand, an attempt by.aliens tocause a nuclear war by bombardmentfrom the moon (as in ISQQC Asimov's"Gentle Vultures) is a much" less "likelyevent and so is sf. There, of course, isthe essential weakness" 0/ my catchphrase-probability is relative. Still,I do not consider the poi,,, a fault-merely a weakness. -

As to what sfdoes. says or means, I"c~n only answer"for myself. I believethat any sf work can say whatever theauthor wishes it to, but what it does is

-explore change. Almost every piece ofsf from Ralph 124C41 + through TheHigh Crusade ·to ·Dune explores theone certainty-change-and its effect.on people and society. This. to me. iswha4 sfmeans-that change is certain.is occurring and is (he single grefltestfactor in our lives. However dimly. sfexplores the one truth that_,mainstream fiction ignores-that this too

"shall pass. _.Please print myfuJI address

pH Vogel1091 St. AnthollY

.London. Ont.Canada

J OE TRILLING had a funnyway of making a living. It was

a good living, but of course hedidn't make anything like the bundle he could have in the city. Onthe other hand he lived in themountains a half mile away froma picturesque village in clean airand piney-birchy \\'oods along withlots of mountain laurel and he washis own boss. There wasn't muchcompetition for what he did; hehad his wife and kids around all

the time and more orders than hecould fill. He was one of the nightpeople and after the family hadgone to bed he could work quietlyand uninterruptedly. He was happyas a clam.

One night-very early morning,really-he was interrupted. Bupbup, bup, bup. Knock at the window, two shorts, two longs, Hefroze, he whirled, for he knew thatknock. He hadn't heard it for yearsbut it had been a part of his lifesince he was born. He saw the faceoutside and filled his lungs for a

CA,

. \

CAL oELoTHEODORE STURGEON

,Conv;nc a w;nn r ,ha'he's a loser-and youmay save mClnlc;ndl

whoop that, would have rousedthem at the fire station on the vjJlage green, but then he saw the finger on the lips and let the air out.The finger beckoned and Joe Trilling whirled again, turned down aflame, read a gauge, made a note,threw a switch and joyfully but silently dove for the,' outside door.'He slid out, closed it carefully,peered into the dark.

4,liKarl?"HShh."There he was, edge of the woods.

Joe Trilling we_nt there and,

w Isperlng 6~ause Karl hadasked for it, they hit each other,cursed, called each other the filthiest possible names. It would not beeasy to explain this to an extra-terrestrial; it isn't necessarily ahuman thing to do. It's a culturalthing. It means, I want. to touchyou, it means I love you; but theywere men and brothers, so they hiteach other's arms and sho'uldersand swore despicable oaths andinsults, until at last even thosewords wouldn't do and they stoodin the shado,¥s, holding each

other's' biceps and grinni.ng anddrilling into each other w.ith eyes.Then Karl Trilling moved his headsidewards toward the road andthey walked away from the house.

"I' don't want, Hazel to hear ustalking," Karl said:. "I don't wanther or anyone to know I. was here.How is she?'" .

"Beaut.iful. Aren't you going tosee her'atall-or the kids?"

"Yes but not this· trip: There'sthe car. We can tal~ there. I reallyam afraid of that bastard." . .

uAh,"'said Joe. uHow is thegreat maa?~' .

"Po'ly,'.~ said Karl. UBut we'retalki'ng about two different bastards~ The. great m.aD.js.. only therichest m·an· in the 'world, but· I'mnot afraid of him, especially now.I'm talking about ClevelandWheeler."

"Who's Cleveland Wheeler?"

THEY got into the car. UIt's a. rental,'; said Karl. "Matter of

fact,it's the second rent~l. I' got outof the executive jet and took acomp'any car and rented another-and then this. Reasonablysure it's not bugged. That's. one

..k·ind· of answer to your question,who's Cleve Wheeler. Other an-swers would be t.he man behind thethrone. Next in line. Multifacetedgenius. Killer shark."

UNext ih line," said Joe,. responding to the Ol1ly clause that

made any se·n~e. "The old m~n issinkiog?" .

"Officially~ana an official 'secret-his' hemoglobin reading is-'four. That mean' anything to you,Doctor?". 'USure does, Doctor. Malnutri

tive anemia, if other rumors I bearare true. Richest man in theworld-dying of starva~ion."

uAnd old age-and stubbornness-an~ obsession. You want tohear about Wheeler?"

"Tell me.""Mister lucky. Born w.thevery~

thing. Greek coin profile. Michaelangelo Oluscles.. Discovered earlyby a bright-eyed elementary school

.principal, sent to a,private school,used to go straight to the teachers'lounge in the morning arid say whathe'd ·been reading or thinkingabout. Then they'd tell off a teacher to work with him or go out withhim or whatever. High 'school attwelve, yarsity. track, basketball,football and high-diving-three~etters-f6r each-=--y.es, he· graduated in three years, summa cum.Read all the textbooks at the beginning of each ·term, never crackedthem again. More than anythingelse .he had the habit of success.

UCollege, the same thing:. turnedsixteen in his first -semester', just ateeverything up. Very popular. Grad

.uated at the top again, of course."Joe Trilling, who had. 'slogged'

through college and medical. schoollike a hodcarrier, grunted envious-

"MISTER LUCKY, yeah.Listen. Wheeler became a

partnet" and he did his 'work and heknew, his stuff-everything hecould learn or understand'.Learning and 'understanding arenot eno'!gh to cope with somethings ~·ikegreed· or unexpectedstupid'ity or accident or sheer badbreaks. Two' of the other· partnersgot into a deal I won't bother you'with-a high-rise a'partment 'complex in the wrong place for thewrong residents and land ac-

ly~ "I've seen one o~ two like that. quired the wrong way. Wheeler sawEverybody marvels, nobody sees it coming~ called them in and'how easy it was for tbem.'1 talked it over. They said yes-yes

Karl shook his. head. "Wasn't and went right ahead an~ di~ what.quite like that with Cleve Wheeler. they wanted anyway-somethingIf anything. was easy for him it was that Wheeler never in the world exbecause of the nature of his pected. The one thing .high c~p~

equipment. He was like a four- ability and straight morals ~nd ahundred horsepower car moving good education doesn't give youin sixty-horsepower traffic. When is the end of innocence, Clevehis muscles were called on.he used Wheeler was an innocent.them, I mean really put it down to . "Well, it happened, the disasterthe floor. A very willing guy. that Cleve· had predicted~ but itWell~he had his choice of happened far worse. Things likejobs-hell, choice of careers. He that, when they surface, have a waywent into an architectural firm of exposi.ng a lot of other conthat could ·use 'his math,· cealed rot. The firm collapsed.adm·inistrative ability, public Cleve Wheeler had never failed at,pres~nce, knowledge of m.ate- anything in his whole life. It was·rials, art. Gravitated right to the the 9ne thing he had no practice intop, got a partnership. Pick~d up dealing· with. Anyone with thea doctorate on the 'side while he most rudim.entary intelligencewas doing it. Married extremely would have seen that this was 'thewell." . time to walk away-lie down, even.

"Mister Lucky," Joe said. Cut his losses. But I don't thinkthese things even ·occurred to him. ,~-

Karl Trilling .laughed suddenly."In one of Philip Wylie~s novels,isa tremendous description of a forest' ·fire and how the anim.als runaway from it, the foxes and the rabbits running' shoulder to shoulder,the owls flying in the daytime toget ahead of the flames. Thenthere's this beetle, lumberingalong on the ground. The beetlecomes to a burned patch, .the· edgeof twenty acres of hell. It stops, itwiggles its feelers, it turns to theside and begins to walk around the

OCCAM'S SCALPEL 7

fire-" He laughed again. "That'sthe special thing ClevelandWheeler has, you see, under allthat muscle and brain and bril-,liance. If he had to-and were abeetle-he wouldn't turn back andhe wouldn't quit. If all he could dowas walk around it, he'd startwalking."

"What happened?" asked Joe."He hung on. He used every

thing he had.. He used his brainsand his personality and his reputation and' all his worldly goods. Healso borrowed and promised-and he worked. Oh, heworked. Well, he kept the firm. Hecleaned out the rot and built it allup· again from the inside, strongand straight this time. But. it cost.

"It cost hi.m time-all the hoursof every day bu~ the four or so heused for sleeping. And just. aboutwhen he had it leveled off and starting up, it cost him his wife."

"You said he'd married· well.""He'd married what you marry

when you're a young block-busteron top of everything and goinghigher. She was a nice enough girl,I suppose, and maybe you can'tblame' her~ but she was no moreused to failure than he was. Onlyhe could walk around it. He couldrenf"a room and ride the bU$. SheJust didn't know how-and ofcourse with women like that there;s.always the" discarded swain somewhere in the wings."

uHow did he take that?"

"Hard. He'd married th~ way heplayed bailor took examinations=--with everything' he· ha<L Itdid something to him. All this didthings to him, i suppose, but thatwas the biggest chunk of it.

- "He didn't let it stop him. Hedidn't let anything stop him.' Hewent on until all the bills werepaid-every cent. All the interest.He kept at it until the net worthwas exactly what it had been be-:fore his ex-p'artners had begun toeat out, the' core. Then b~'gave itaway. -Gave it away! Sold .all,rightand title to his interest for a dollar."

."Finally cracked, hm?"Karl TrillJng looked ·at his broth

er scornfully. "Cracked. Matter ofdefinition, isn't it? Cleve Wheeler's ,goal was zero-can you understand that?' What is successanyhow? Isn't it making up yourmind 'what you're going to do andthen doing it, all the way?"

"In that case," .said his brotherquietly, "suicide is success. ,;

K ARL .g~ve him, a long penetrating look. "Right," he said,

and thought about'it a moment."Anyhow," Joe asked, "why

zero?" . '"I did a lot of research on Cleve

Wbeeler, but I could'o't get insid~his head. f don't know. But I canguess. He meant to owe no -mananything. I d~n't know how he feltabout the company he s~ved,but. I

can imagine.. The man· he became-was becoming-wouldn'twant to owe it one damned thing.I'd say he Just wanted out-but onhis o~n terms,' which includedleaving nothing behfnd to .workon him."

"Okay," said Joe.Karl- Trilling thought, The nice

thing about old, Joe is that he'llwait. All these years apart withhardly any communication beyond birthday cards-and not al~ays that-and here he is,just as ifwe were still together every day. Iwould,'.'t be,here if it weren't" im-portant,~ I wouldn't be telling him~I this unless he needed to know;he wouldn't need any of it unlesshe was going ·to help. All that unsaid-I don't t have to ask him a'damn thing. What am I interrupting in' his life? What am I going tointerrupt? I won't have to worryabout that. He'll take care ofit.

He said, "I'm glad I came here,Joe."

Joe' said, UThat's all ~ight,"

which meant all the things Karlhad. been thinking.! Karl grinnedand hit hiin on the shoulder andwent on talking.

"Wheeler dropped out. It's noteasy to map his trail for that period. It pops up all over. He lived inat least three communes-maybe'more, but those three were ·a messwhen he came and a model when heleft.· He started businesses-allthings ~hat 'had never happened

'OCCAM'S SCALPEL

before, H.ke a supermarket withno shelves, no canned ·music, nogames or stamps, just neat stacksof open cases, where the customertook what he wanted and markedit according to the card postedby the case, with a market hanging on a string. Eggs and frozenmeat arid fish and the like, andlocal produce were pric~ a flat~wo percent over wholesale..People were honest because. theycould never be sure the checkoutcounter didn't know the prices..ofeverything-besides, to cheat onthe prices listed would have beenjust' too embarrassing. 'Withnothing but a big empty ware-house for overhead and no employees spending thousands 'ofman, hours marking individualitem's, the prices l>eat any di~c()unt

house that ever lived. H~ sold thatone, tOQ, and moved on. He. started a line ot organic 'baby foodswithout preservatives, fI:anchised it and moved on agai.n.. Hedeveloped a plastic cont.ainert~at would burn ·without pollutingand patented it and sold thepatent."

"I've heard of that one. Haven'tseen it around, though."

"Maybe you will," Karl said in aguarded tone. "Maybe yo.u will.Anyway, he had a CPA in Pasadena-handling details, and justdid hiS thing all over. I never heardof a failure in anything he tried."

"Sounds like a junior edition of

the great man himself, your honored boss."

uYou're not the only one whor*alized that. The boss may be ading-a-liitg in many ways, but nobody ever faulted his businesssense. He has always h~d his tentacles out for wandering pieces ofvery special manpower. For all (know he had drawn a bead on"Cleveland Wheeler years back. (wouldn't doubt. that he'd made.of(ers from time to time, only duringthat period Cleve Wheeler wasn'tabout to" go to work for anyone.that big. His ·whole pattern is torun things his way, and you don'tdo that i.n an established empire."

"Heir apparent," said- Joe, reminding him of something he hadsaid earlier.

URight," nodded Karl. "( knewyou'd begin to get the idea before Iwas finished."

"But finish," said Joe.

"R.IGHTe Now what I'm go--ing to tell you, I just want

you to know. I don't expect you to~nderstand it or what it means orwhat it has all done to CleveWheeler. I need your help, and youcan't really help me unless youknow the whole story."

"Shoot."Karl Trilling shot: uWheel~r

found a girl. Her name was ~lara

Prieta and ber folks ca·me from Sonora. She was bright as hell-inher way, I suppose, as bright as

Cleve, though with a tenth of hisschooling-and pretty as well, andit \Vas Cleve she wanted, riot whathe might g"et for her. She fell forhim when he had nothing-whenhe really wanted nothing. Theywere a daily, hourly joy to eachother. I guess that was about thetime. he started" building this business and that, making somethingagain. He bought a little houseand it car. He bought. two cars, onefor her. I don't think she wantedit, .but he couldn't do enough-hewas aiways looking for morethings to 00 for her. They went outfor an evening to some -friends'house, she from shopping, he fromwhatever it was he was workingon then, so they had both cars. Hefollowed .her on the way home andhad to watch her lose control andspin out. She died in his arms."

"Oh, Jesus.""M·isterLucky. Listen: a week

l~ter he turned a corner downtown an~ found himself lookingat a bank robbery. He caught astray bullet-grazed the back ofhis neck. He had seven months tolie still and think about things.When he got out he was told hisbusiness manager had embezzledeverything and headed south withhis secretary. Everything."

"What did he do?""Went to work and paid his hos

pital bill."They sat in the car in the .dark

for a long time, until Joe said,

"Was he paralyzed, there in thehospital?"

uFor nearly five months."_....Wonder what he thought

about."Karl Trilling said, UI can imag-

ine what he thought about. What Ican't imagine is what he decided.What he concluded. What he determined to be. Damn it, there are noaccurate words for it. We all do"thebest we can with what we've got, ortry to. Or should. He did-andwith the best possible ·material tostart out with. He played itstraight; he worked hard; he washonest and l~wful and fair; he was.fit; he was bright. He came out ofthe hospital with those last twoqualities intact. God alone knowswhat's happened to the rest of it."

"So he went tQ work for the old·man." . '.

UHe did-and somehow thatfrightens me. It was as" if all· hisqualifications were n9t enough tosuit both of them until these things.happened to him-until ihey madehim become what he is."

uAnd 'what is that?"uTh.ere isn't a short answer to

that, Joe. The old man has becomea modern myth. Nobody ever seeshim. Nobody· can predict whathe's gO •.ng to do or why. Cleveland Wheeler stepped into hisshadow and. disappeared almostas completely ~s the· boss. There·are very few things you c·an say for;·certain. The bos$ has :always been.

'OCCAM/S SCALPEL

a recluse and in the ten .yearsCleve Wheeler has been with himhe has become more so. It's beenbusiness as usual with him, ofcourse-which means the constantly unusual-long periods ofquiet, and then these spectacularunexpected wheelings and dealings. You assume that the old man·4reams t~ese things up and somehigh-powered genius on his staffgets them done. But it could be thegenius -that instigates th~.

moves~who can know? Only thepeople closest to. him---':Wheeler,Ep~tein, me. And 1don~t know."

UBut Epstein died."Karl Trilling nodded in the darlt.

uEpstein died. Which leaves onlyWheeler to watch the store.]'m theold man's petsonat physician,' notWheel~r's, and there's no guarantee that I ever will be Wheeler's."

JOE Trilling recrosse~ ~is legsand .leaned back, lookulg ·out

into the whispering dark~ "It be.gins to take .shape," he· murmured.uThe old man's on the way out.you very well might be and there'snobody to take over' but thisWheeler."

uYes, and' ( don't know. what hei.s or what he'll do. ·1 do know hewill command more power thanany single human being on Earth.He'U have·so.. much that he'll beabove-any kind ofcupidity that x,ouor ·1 could imagine~-Y9uQr I can'tthink in' that order of magnitude-.

But you see, he's a man who, youmight say, has had it proved to him

. that being good and smart andstrong and honest doesn't par-·ticularl)' payoff. Where' will he $0with all this? And hypothesizingthat he's been making more and.more of the decisions lately, andextrapolating from that-whereIS he going? All you can be sure of.is that he will succeed in anythinghe tries-. That is his habit." .

"What does "he ~ant? Isn't thatwhat you're trying to figure out?What WOUld. a man like that want,if he knew he could get it?" I

UI knew I'd come to .the rightplace," said, Karl almost happily."That's it exactly. As...for me, Ihave all I need now and there areplenty of other places I 'could go. Iwish Epstein were still around, buthe's dead and cremated." .

"Cremated?"UThat's right-you wouldn't

know about that. Old man'sinstrl!ctions. I handled it myself.You've heard' of the hot and coldptivate ~.wimming pools~but Ibet you never heard of a man with

_his own private crematorium inthe second sub-basem*nt."

Joe threw up his hands. UI guessIf you can reach into your pocketand pull out two billion rea] dollars, you can have anything you

.want. By the way-was that legal?'"uLike you said-if you have two

billion. ,Actually, the co.unty medical examiner w·as present and

12 .

signed the papers. And he'll bethere when the .old ":lan pushes' offtoo-it's all in the: final instructions. Hey--:..wa.it, I don't want tocast any aspersions on the M.E.He 'wasn't bought. He di~ a verycompetent examination on Ep..stein."

UOkay-we know what to expectwhen the time comes. It's afterwa'rd you're worried about."

URight. What has the old man~I'm speaking of the corporate oldman now~what has he been doingall along? What has he. been .doingin the last ten years,' since he gotWheeler-and is it any differentfrom what he was doing l;>efore?How much of this difference, ifany, is more Wheeler than boss?That's all we have to go on, Joe,and from it we have'to extrapolate what Wheeler's going to. dowith the Iliggest priv.ate economic force this world has everknown~~'

~'Let's talk about that," saidJoe, beginning to smile.

Karl Trilling knew the signs, sohe began to smile a little, too. Theytalked about it.

THE crematorium in the secondsub-basem*nt was pUJ:"ely func

tional, as if all ·concessions to sentiment. and ritual had', been madeelsewhere, or' canceled. The lattermost accurately described ~hat

had happe'ned when at last, at longlong last, the old man died~ Everything was done precisely accordingto his instructions immediately after he was certifiably dead ~nd before any .public announcementswere made-right up to and including the moment when thesquare mouth of the furnaceopened with a startling clang, ablare of heat, a flare of light~the

hue the old-time blacksmithscalled straw.col~r. The simple coffin slid rapidly in, small flames exploding into being on its corners,

" and the door ba'nged shut. It tooka moment for the eyes to adjust tothe bare room" the empty greasedtrack, the closed door. It took thesame moment for the conditionersto whisk away the sudden smell ofscorched soft pine.

The medical .examiner leaned'over the small table and signed hisnam'e twice. Karl Trilling 'andCleveland' Wheeler did' the sa~e.

The M.E. tore off copies and folded them and put t.hem away in hisbreast pocket. He looked at theclosed square iron door, opened hismouth, closed it again andshrugged. He held out his hand.

'''Good night, Doctor.""Good night, Doctor. Rugosi"s

outside-he'll show ydu out.'"The M.E. shook hands wordless

ly' with Cleveland Wheeler and ·left.'·1 know just what he's feeling,""

Karl said. "'~omethingQught to besaid. Something memorable-end

OCCAM'S SCALPEL

of an era. Like 'One smalJ step forman-' "

Cleveland Wheeler smiled thebright smlJe of the college hero, fifteen years after-a little less wide,a little less even, a grea~ deal less' inthe 'eyes. He said in the voice. thatcommanded, whatever he said,ulf you think you're ,quoting thefirst words from an astronaut onthe moon, you'te not. What he saidwas from the ladder, when hepoked his boot down. He said, 'If'ssome kind 'of soft st\tff. I can kick itaround with my foot.' I've' alwaysliked that much better ~ It was real,it wasn't rehearsed or memorizedor# thought out and it had to do ~ittithat moment and the ne·xt. TheM.E. said good night and you told .bim the chauffeur was waitingoutside. I like that better thananything anyone could ~ay. Ithink he would, too," Wheeleradded, barely gesturing, with avery strong, slightly cleft chin" toward the hot black door.

UBut he wasn"t exactly human.""So they say."" Wheel~r half

smiled a~d, eve~ as he turnedaway" Karl' could sense himselftuned out. the room itself becomeof secon'dary importance-thenext thing Wheeler was to ,do, ,andthe next and the one after. becoming more real than the here andnow.

Karl put a fast end to that.He said levelly, UI meant what I

just said, Wheeler."

It couldn't have been the words,which by themselves might haveelicited another half-smile 'and aforgetting. It was the tone, andperhaps the "Wheeler."· There is aritual. about these things. To thosefew on his own level, an~ those onthe level below, he was Cleve. Below that he was mister to his faceand Wheeler \lehind his ·back. Noone of his peers would call himmister unless it w~~ meant as the

·.herald of an insult; no one of hispeers or immed.ate under.lingswould" call him" Wheeler at all,.ever~ Whatever the component,it removed Cleveland Wheeler'sh.and from the knob and turnedhim. His face was completel~ alertand interested. "You'd best tellme what you mean, Docto.r.~'

Karl said, "I'll do better thanthat. Come." Without gestures,sugg,estions or expl,anations he·walked to the left rear of the· room,leaving it up ~o Wheeler to decidewhether or ·not to follow. WheelerfQllowed.

I N THE corner Karl rou'oded onhim.· "If you eyer say anything

about this to anyon~-even mewhen we leave here, I'll just deny it.If you ever get in here again, youwon't find anything to .back upyour story." He took a complexfour-inch blade. of machined stainless steel froin his belt and :slid itbetween'the big masonry bfocks.~ilently, massively, the course of

14'

blocks in the corner beg~n tomove upward. Look,ing up. atthem in the dim light from the narrow corridor they revealed, anyone could see that they were realblocks and· that to get throughthem without that key and the precise knowledge of where to put ~t

.would be a long-term project.- Again Karl proceeded without

looking around, leaving go, no-goas a mat.ter for Wheeler to decide.Wheeler followed., Karl heard hisfootsteps behind him and noticedwith pleasure an.d something likeadmiration that when the heavybloc~s whooshed down and seatedthemselves solidly behind them,Wheeler may have looked over hisshoulder 'but did not pause.

uyou 've noticed we're alongside the furnace," Karl said, like aguided-tour bus driver. "And now,behind it."

He stood aside to let Wheelerpass him and see the small-room.

It was just large enough for thetracks which protruded from theback of the furnace and a littlestanding space on each- side. On thefar side was a small table with ablack suitcase standing on it. Onthe track stood the coffin, its cor-'ners carboned, its top and sides wetand slightly steaming.

uSorry to have to clo'se 'thatstone gate that w~y," Karl saidmatter-of-factly. "I don't expect,'anyone down here at all, lJut Iwouldn"t want to explain any of

th~s to. persons other than yourself."

Wheeler was staring at the coffin. He seemed perfectly composed, but it was a seeming. Karlwas quite aware of what it wascosting him.

Wheeler said, '401 wish you'd explain it to me." And he laughed. Itwas the first time Karl had everseen this man do anything badly.

HI will. I am." He clicked openthe suitcase and laid it open andflat on the little table. There was aglisten of chrome and steel andsmall vials in little pockets. 'Thefirst tool ,he removed was a screwdriver. UNo, need to 'use screwswhen you're cremating 'em," hesa,id cheerfully and placed the tipunder one corner of 'the lid. Hestruck the handle smartly with theheel of one hand and the lid poppedloose. '4oStand this up against thewall behind you, will you?"

Silently Cleveland ·Wheeler didas he was told. It ,gave him something to do with his muscles; it gavehim the chance to· turn his headaway for a moment; it gave him achance to think-and it gave Karlthe opportunity for a quick glanceat his steady countenance.

He's a mensch, Karl thought. Hereally is ...~

Wheeler set up the lid neatly andcarefully and they 'stood, one oneach side, looking down inro thec~ffin.

HHe-got a lot older," Wheeler

OCCAM'S SCALPEL

said at last.'4oYou haven't seen him recent

ly."'4oHere and in there,"· said the ex

ecutive, "'I've spent. more time inthe same room with him during thepast month than I have in the lasteight, nine years. Still, it was amatter of minutes, each time."

Karl nodded understandingly..HI'd heard that. Phone calls, ,anytime of the day or night, and thenthose long sile~ces /two days,three, not calling out, not havinganyonein-"

HAre you going to tell me aboutthe,phonyoven?"

HOven? Furnace? It's not aphony at all. When we've finishedhere it'll do the job, all right."

HThen why the theatricals?"HThat was for' the ·M.'E. Those

papers he signed are, in sort of anever-never country just now.When we slide this back in and turnon the heat they'll become as legalas he thinks they are."

"Then why-"

"BECAUSE there are somethings you have to know."

Karl reached into the coffin. andunfolded the gnarled· hands. They.came apart reluctantJy and hepressed them down at the sides ofthe body. He unbuttoned thejacket, laid it back, unbuttonedthe shirt, unzipped the trousers.When he had finished with this helooked up and found. Wheeler's

sharp gaze, not on the old ~an's

corpse, but on him.UI have the feeling," said Cl~v¢

land Wheeler, ~tthat I have neverseen you before."

Silently Karl Trilling responded:,But you do now. A~d, Thanks,Joey. You were dead. right. Joe hadknown the. answer to that oneplaguing question, How should Iact?, Talk just the way he talks, Joeh~d said. Be w~at he is, the wholetime...

Be what he is. A man withoutillusions (they don't work) andwithout hope (who needs· if?) 'whohas the unbreakable· habit of succeeding. And who calJ_S~Y it's- anice day in such a way that everyone around snaps to attention and~ays: Yes, SIR! .

"You've been' busy," Karl. responde~ shortly" He took off hisjacket, folded it and put it on thetable beside the kit. He put on sur.geon's gloves and slipped the ster-ile sleeve off a new scalpel'. uSomepeople scream and faint the firsttime they watch a dissection."

W~eeler smiled' thinly. UI don'tscreain and faint." But it was not

. lost on Karl Trifling that o~nly then,at the last possible moment, d.dWheeler actually view the. oldman's body. When he did heneither scream'ed nor fainted; heuttered an astonished grunt.

UThought that would surpriseyou," Karl sa~d easily. UI n case

you were wondering, though, hereally was a male. The speciesseems to be oviparous. Mammalstoo, but it has to ~e oviparous. I'dsure like a look at a female. Thatis.n't a vagin*. It's a cloaca."

U Until this moment," saidWheeler in~ a hypnotized voice, UIthought that 'not human' remarkof yours was a figure of speech/"

uNo, you didn't,"Karl respond-ed shortly. ~

Leaving the words to hang in theair, as words will if a speaker hasthe wit to isolate them with wedges.of silence, he deftly slit the corpsefrom the sternum to the pubic symphysis. For the first-time viewerthis was always the difficultmoment. It's .hard not to rea-li.ze

. viscerally that the cadaver doesn~t· feel anything and'will not protest. Nerve.;alive to .Wheeler, Karllooked for a gasp or a shudder;Wheeler merely held his breath.

UWe cO,uld spend'ho,urs-weeks,~ I imagine, going into the details,"Karl said, deftly making' a -transverse incision in the ensiformarea, almost around to· the trapezoid on each side, Ubut this is thething I wanted you to see." Orasping the flesh at the juncture of thecross he had cut, on the left side, hepulled upward a~d. to the left. Thecutaneous layers 'came awayeasily, with the fat under them.They were I)ot pinkish, but an offwhite lavendar shade.· Now themuscular striations over the -ribs

were in view. ulf you'd palpatedthe old man's chest," he said,demonstrating on the right side,uyou',d have felt what seemed to benormal human ribs. But look atthis."

With a few deft strokes he separated the muscle fibers from thebone on a mid-costal area aboutfour inches square, and scraped. Arib emerged and, a~,he wideJ..led thearea and scraped between it andthe next one, it became clear that.the ribs were joined by a thin flexible layer of bone or chitin.

4,4It's like baleen-whalebone,"said Karl. USee this?'-' He sectioned out a piece, flexed it.. HMy God."

III

"N0W look at this." Karltook surgical sheers from

the kit, snipped through the sternum• right up to the clavicle andthen across the. lower margin ofthe ribs. Slipping' his fingers underthem, he. pulled upward. With adull snap the e~tire ribcage openedlike a door, exposing the lung.

The lung was not pink, nor theliverish-browish-black of a smoker,but yellow-the clear bright yellow of pure sulfur.

u.His metabolism," Karl said,straightening up at last 'and flexingthe tension- 'out of his shoulders,uis fantastic. Or was. He lived onoxygen, same as us, but he broke it

OCC.AM'S SCALPEL

out of carbon ,monoxide, sulfurdioxide and trioxide and carbondiOXide mostly. I'm not sayinghe could-I mean he had to. Whenhe was forced to breathe what wecall clean air, he could take just somuch of it and then had to duck outand find a few breaths of his ownatmosphere. When he wa$ younger he could take it for hours at atime, but as the 'years went by heh'ad,to spend more and more timein the kind of smog h~ couldbreathe. ·Those long disappearances of his, and .that reclusiveness-they weren't as kinky as people supposed."

Wheeler. made a gesture towardthe corpse. UBut-what is he?Where-"

HI can't tell you. Except for agood deal of medical and biochemical details~, you now know asmuch as I do. Somehow, some~

wh~re, he arrived. He came, hesaw, he began to make his moves.Look at this."

He ope~ned the other side of thechest and then broke the sternumup and away. He pointed. The lungtissue was ,not in two discreet parts,but extended across 'the m.edian

.line. UOne lung, all-the way across,though it has these two lobes. Thekidneys and gonads show thesame right-left fusion."

"I'll take your word for it," saidWheeler a little hoarsely. UDamnit, what is it?"

H A featherless biped, as Plato

once desc'ribed hom*o sap. J d~n't

know what it is. I just know that itis-and I thought you ought toknow. That's all." .

HBut you'v~ seen one before.That's obvious."

uSure. Epstein."" Epst~in?"

"Sure. The old man had to havea go;.between-someone 'whocould, without suspicion, spendlong hours with him and hoursaway. The old man could do "a lotover the phone, but not ev~ry

thing. 'Epstein was, you might say,a right arm tJ:tat could hold itsbreath' a little longer tl\an he could.It got" to him in the encL though,and 'he-died of it."

"Why ,didn't you say something,long before this?"

"First of all, I value my ownskin. I could say reputation, butskin is the word. I signed a contract as his personal physician because he needed a personal physician-another bit of windowdressing. But I did precious littledoctoring-except over thephone---..and _nine-tenths of thatwas, I realized quite recently,purely diversionary~ Even a doctor, I suppose, can 'be a trustingsoul. One or the other would calland give a set 'of symptoms and I'dcautiously suggest and prescribe.Then I'd, get- another call that' thepatient was improving and thatwas that. Why, I even got specimens-blood, urine, stools-and

did the pathology on thein andnever realized that they were fromthe same source as what the medical examiner checked out andsigned for."

"What do you mean, samesource?"

Karl shrugged. "He. could getanything he wanted-=--anything."

"Then-what the M.E. exam,ined wasn't~" be waved a hand atthe casket.

"OF COURSE not. That's whythe crematorium has a back

door. There's a little pocketsleight-of-hand trick you can buyfor fifty cents that operates tilesame way: Thjs body here wasinside the furnace. The' ri~ger-alook-alike that came from Godknows where; I swear to you Idon't-was lying out there waitingfor the M.E. When the button'waspushed the fires started up and thatcoffin sli4 in-pushing this oneout and at the same time drenching it with water as it camethrough. While we've been in' here,the -human body is turning toashes. My personal- private secret instructions, both for Epsteinand for the boss, were to wait untilI was certain I. was alone and thencome in here after an h.our andpush the s:econd .button, whichwould slide this one ba~k into thefire. I was to do no investigations, ask no questions, make noreports. It came -through as logi-

cal but not reasonable, like somany of his orders." 'He laughedsuddenly. UDo you know why theold man-and Epstein too, forthat matter, in case you nevernoticed-wouldn't 'shake handswith anyone?"

HI presumed'it was because he.had an obsession with germs."

HIt was because his normal bodytemperature 'was a hundred andseven."

Wheeler touched one of his own'.hands with the other.and said·nothing.

When Karl felt that the wedge ofsilence was thick enough he askedlightly, uWell, boss, where' do wego from here?"

Cleveland Wheeler turned awayfrom the corpse and to Karl siowly, as if diverting his mind with aneffort.

HWhat did you call me?"HFigure of speech," said Karl

and smiled. "Actually, I'mworking -for the company-andthat's you. I'm under orders, whichhave been finally and completelydischarged when I push that button-I have no others. So. it reallyis up to you."

Wheeler's eyes' fell "again to the.corpse'. uYou mean abo'llt-o him?This? What we should do?'"

HThat, yes. Whether to burn itup and forget it-or call in topmanagement and an ~chelon ofscientists. Or scare the living hellout of everyone 'on ..Earth by phon-

OCCAM'S SCALPEL

ing the papers. Sure, that has to bedecided, but I waS thi~ing on amuch wider spectrum than that."

uSuch as-" .Karl gestured toward the box

with his head. uWhat was he doing.here, anyway? What has he ~one?

What was he trying to do?""You'd better go on," said

Wheeler; and for the very firsttime said something in a way thatsuggested diffidence. tr~You've hada while to think about all this,I~" and almost helplessly, .hespread his hands.

HI can understand that," Karlsaid gently. uUp to now' I've beencoming on like a hired lecturerand I know it. I'm not going toembarrass you with personalitiesexcept to say that you've ab~orbed.

all this -with less buckling. of theknees tllan anyone in the world Icould think of." ..

"RIGHT. Well, there's a sim-- pie technique you learn irielementary algebra. It has to dowith the construction of graphs.YoU'~'place 'a dot on the graphwhere known data Rut it. You getmore data, you put down anotherdot and then a third. With justthree dots~of'course, the morethe better, but it can wbC do~e withthree-you can connect them andestablish a curve. Thi~ curve hascertain characteristics and it'sfair to extend the curve a littlefarther with the assumpt10,n that

later data will bear YQu- out."UExtrapolation." ,u.Extrap(j~ation. X axis, ·the for

tunes of our late boss. Y axis, time.The curve is his fortunes-that is tosay, his influence."

UPretty tall graph."uOver thirty years."UStill pretty tall."uAli right," said' Karl. uNow;-·

over the same thirty years, anothercurve: change in the environment." He held up a hand. HI'mnot going·to read you a' treatise onecology. Lefs be more objectivethan that. Let's just say changes.Okay: a measurable rise in themean temperature because ofCO 2 and the greenhouse effect.Draw the curve. Incidence ofheavy metals~ mercury and .lith ...ium, in organic tissue. Draw acurve. Likewise chlorinated·hydrocarbons, hypertrophy ofalgae due to phosphates, incidence of coronaries ... All right,let's superimpose' all these curveson the same graph."

HI see what you're getting at.But you ha\te to be careful withthat kind of statistics game. Like.the increase of traffic fatalitiescoincides with the increased useof a'luminum cans and p'lastictipped baby pins."'. URight. I don't think rm falling'into that trap. I just want to findreasonable answers to a coupleof otherwise unreasonable situations. One is this: if the changes oc...

curring in our planet are the' re...suit of mere carelessness-a moreor less random thing, careless...ness':""-then how, come nobody isbeing careless in a way that benefits the environment? Strike that. Ipromised, no ecology lessons. R'ephrase: how come all these .carelessnesses promote a change andnot a preservation?

UNext question: W.~at is the di':'rection of the change'? Y9U·ve seenspeculative writj'ng about ·terra...forming' -altering other planets tomake them habitable by humans.Suppose an effort were being madeto change this planet to suit·someone else'? Suppose theywanteq more water and were will ...ing to melt the polar caps' by thegreenhouse effect'? Increase theoxides of sulfur, eliminate certain marine forms from planktonto whales? Reduce the populationby increases in lung cancer.emphysema, heart attacks andeven war'?'"

BOTH men found themselveslooking down at the sleeping

face ~n the coffin. Karl said softly,HLook' what he was into-petrochemic·als, fossil fuels. foodproc~ssing, advertising, all thethings that made the changes orhelped the changers-'"

··You·re. not blaming him for allof it.""

HCertainly not. He found willinghelpers by the million."

uyou don't think he was tryingto change a whole planet just so hecould be comfortable in it."

uNo'- I don't think so-andthat's the central point I have tomake. I don't know' if' there' areany more around like him and Epstein, but I can suppose this: if thechanges now going on keep onand accelerate-then we can expect them."

Wheele.r said, USo ,what wQuldyou like to do? Mobilize the worldagainst the invader?"

UNothing .like. that. I think I'dslowly and quiet~y reverse thechanges. I f this planet is I)ormallyunsuitable to them, then I'd keepit so. I don't think they'd have tobe driven back. I think they justwouldn't come." ,

uOr they'd try som~ other way."~~ I don't-think so," said Karl.

~4 Because they tried this one. Ifthey thought they could do it withfleets of spaceships and super-zapguns, ~hey'd be doing it. 'No-thisis their way and if it doesn't work,they can try somewhe~e,~lse."

Wheeler- began pulling thoughtfully at his lip. Karl said softly,~4AIl it would take is someone whoknew what he was doing, whocould command enough clout andw~o had the 'wit to make it pay.They might even arrange a man'slife-to get the kind of man -theyneed.".

And before Wheeler could answer, Karl took up his scalpel.

OCCAM'S SCALPEL

4~1 want you to do some~hing

for me," he said-sharply in a new,commanding tone-actually,Wheeler's own. UI want you t9 doit because I've done it and I'll bedamned if I ,want to, be the onlyman in the world who has."

Leaning over the head of thecasket, he made an incision alongthe hairline from temple to temple.Then, bracing his elbows againstthe edge of the box and steadyingone han4 with the other, he. drew'the scalpel straight down th~·center .of the forehead and down on tothe nose, splitti.ng it exactly in two.\Down he went through the upperlip and then the lower, around thepoint of the chin and under it tothe throat. Then he stood up.

Uput your hands on his cheeks,"he ordered. Wheeler frowned brief-~

ly (how long had it been since anyone had' spoken to him that way?),hesitated then did as he was told.

UNow press your hands togetherand down."

The incision widened slightlyunder the pressure, then abruptlythe flesh gave and' the entire skinof the face slipped off. The unexp,ected lack of resistance broughtWheeler's hal)ds to the bottom ofthe coffin and "he found 'himselfface to.-face, inches away, with thecorpse. '

Like the lungs and kidneys, theeyes-eye?-pass~d the median,very slightly reduced at the center.The pupil was oval, its long axis'

J OE TRILLI~G had a funnywayofmaking a living. It was a

good livi'ng, but of course he didn"tmak'e ~nything 'like' the bundle hecould have made in the city. Onthe oth~'r hand, he .lived in themountains a half-mile' away froma picturesque village" in clean airand piney-birchy woods along with

transv~rse. The skin was pale lav- lots of mountain laurel and he wasendar with yel'low vessels and in his 'own bo~s. There wasn't. muchplace of a nose' was a thread- competition for what he did.fringed hole. The mouth was cir- Wh·at· he did was to make simucular, the teeth 'not quite radially lacra of medical. specimeris, mostplaced; there was ~ittle chin. ly_ for the armed forces, although

Wjjhout moving, W,heeler he had plenty of orders from mediclosed his eyes, held. them shut for '. cal schools, film producers and anone second, two, and then courage- occasional. individual, no ques'tionsously opened them again.. Karl asked. He could make a model ofwhipped around the en~ of the cof- anything inside, affixed,to .or ~nefin and got an' arm around Wheel- trating a body or any part of it.er~s chest. Wheeler leaned on it He could make models to beheavily for a moment, then stood looked at, models to be felt,up quick~y· and brushed the arm smelled and palpated. He couldaway. give you gangrene that stunk or

UYou didn't have to do that." dewy thyroids with real dew on'uYes, I did," 'said Karl. uWould' them. He could make one-of-a

you want to be the omy man in the kind or he could set up a producworld who~d .gone through that- tion ,line. Dr. Joe Trilling was, towith nobody to tell it to?'· put it briefly, the best there was at

And after all, Wheeler could what he did.laugh. When he had. finished he uThe clincher," Karl told himsaid, upush that button." (in much more relaxed circum-

,uHal1d":me that cover." , stances than their previous one~;

Most obediently Cleveland daytime now, with beer), Ut,he realWheeler brought the coffin lid and clincher was the. face bit. God, Joe,they placed it. that was a beautiful piece of

Karl p'ushed the button and they work." - 'watched the coffin slide into the UJust nuts and bolts. The beauti-square of flame.'Then they left. ful part was your idea-his hands

on it."UHow do you mean'?""I've been thinking back to

that," Joe said. UI don't think youyourself realize how bri,lliant astroke that was. It's all very wellto set up a show for the guy, butto make him put his hands as wellas his:· ey~s, and brains on it-th~t

was the stroke of genius. It's likewell, I can' remember when I was akid coming home fr.om school andputting my hand on a fence railand. somebody had spat on it." Hedisplayed his .hand, shook it. uAllthese years I can remember howthat felt. All these years couldn'twear it away, all those scrubbingscouldn't wash it away... It's morethan a cerebral or psychic thing,Karl-more than the memory ofan episode. I thfnk there's a kindof memory mechanism in the cellsthemselves, especially on thehands, that can be' invoked. _WhatI'm getting to is that no matterhow long he lives, Cleve Wheeler .isgoing. to feel that skin slip underhis palms and that is going tobring him nose to· nOSe with thatface. No, you're the genius, notme."

uNa. You knew what you weredoing. I didn't."

uHell you didn't." Joe leaned'far back in his lawn chaise-so farhe could hold. up his ~beer and look"at the sun through it. from the underside. Watchi,ng the recedi~g

bubbles defy perspective (becausethey swell as they rise), he murmured, UKarl?"

"Yuh.""Ever hear of Occam's Razor?""Urn. Long time back. Philo-

sophicalprinciple. Or logic orsomething. Let's see. Given an effect and a choice of possiblecauses, .the simplest cause is al-

OCCAM'S SCALPEL

ways the one most likely to' betrue. Is that it?"

UNot too close,- but closeenough," said Joe Trilling lazily."Hm. Y-Ou're the one who used ,toproclaim that logic is sufficientunto itself and need have' nothingto do with truth."

"I still proclaim it.""Okay. Now, you and I know

that human greed and carelessness, are quite enough aHby themselves to wreck this planet. Wedidn't think that ~as enough forthe likes of Cleve Wheeler, whocan really d'o something about it,so we constructed him a smog-'breathing extra-terrestrial..' Imean, he hadn't done anythingabout saying· the world for ourreasons, so we gave_ him .a whiz~er

of a reason if his own. Right outof our heads.;'

"Dictated by all available factors. Yes. What are yo'u gettingat, Joe?" . .

UOh-just that our complicatedhoax is simple, really, in the sensethat it brought- everything down toa single ca.use. Occam's Razorslices things down to .simplest.causes. Single causes have a fairchance of being right."

Karl put down his beer with abump. UI never thought of that.I've been too busy to think of that.Suppose we were right?" ,

They looked at each other,shaken.

At last Karl said, "What do welook for. now, Joe-space ships?" •

TOSEEKANOTHERJAMES A. GOTAAS

rite secre' of 'he alien formwas ,It. 'error i, causedl

T HE village looked peacefulfrom the hill road, a scattering

of houses and" fields well within ~h~

congestion code limits. I knew itfairly we~l, merely as "a community l bad passed through on myrounds. It was typical of Sarus.Sarus is officially llLRe 42379IVa, which just means it's the

• fourth planet of a main sequencestar with planets, and that Sarus itself is moonless. But asi~e fromthat, enough like Old Terra tocause restless people to settlehere, despite our 1.08 gravity. Theextra .08 isn't much, of course, .butSarus was settled during the ThirdExpansion Wave out from OldTerra and they were choosy then." Anyway, in the n generat~onssince then, the Sarans had adaptedto the additional gravity, the" slightly .higher radiation backg~ound

and the "beautiful climate. I say n,

" 24

because nobody has reallybothered to count. They have beentoo busy building paradise. Andsucceeding at least as well as anyother human world. Within limitsthat must be kept.

Which is- why l'm-here. Funny,even though I was ·born onNovterra, I can almost look atSarus as home. Which is the properoutlook for a Seeker, if he doesn'tcarry it to emotional extremes.. 1don't. And when I do get carriedaway, some task comes up that requires a Seeker. And most of theseare still humanly' bad eno~gh togive me "back my perspective.

Such "as a murdered Warranter.I reined in before the stone tow

er with the .bright blue pennant,swung off my adjusted horse.Freida was riding my shoulder asusual, her tail curled up around myleft ear. The man who came out to

"greet me gave her a casual glance,then returned his gaze to my grayuniform.

~6Seeker?"

HOC. course," I responded.uHealer .MacDonald?" .

The other nodded. UI have beenwaiting for you. The Warranter'sbody is in stasis and I have performed ·the tasks you required ofme." He pursed his lips. uMurder,quite' definitely. With a huntthrower, left in. It was a cerem~ni

al thrower, an heirloom."uYou. recognize the pattern?""Yes. But there "is something else

I .I TO SEEK ANOTHER

I must t~ll you. The thrower belong~ to Freeman Delver. Anah " 'e-

o "What, Healer?" I could sensethe trouble he was having.

"He is dead. Suicide.""How long ago?" I demanded,

suddenl.y getting' that cold lumpspreading through the pit of mystom_ach, a pr~monition oftrouble to come.

"This morning. About two hou"rsafter the death of the' Warranter."

"You're sure it was suicide?"He nodded. "It was done with a

"neural massager. Set to overload.It was fused into his hand, and theactivation stud had his .pore patterns on it."

It was a suddenly different scenefrom the one "I'd· expected. "Youhave his body?" .

"Inside," the Healet answered,nodding. .

."Are you sure Delver murderedthe Warranter?"

"I am "now. We found the Warranter's' stock in his pouch." Hesounded sure of himself.

"I want to see it."He nodded, turned back in, wav

ing to_.me to follow.

A SEEKER isn't a detective,except by accident. He is just

a man trained to handle difficulties.And when a man is murdered mostvillages consider that a difficulty. II co'uld only recall one otherthat I'd.handled. A simpl~ crimeot

~assio-il. But this one was addingup to lunacy. Which is out of placein the order of paradise, even a hu-·man paradise.

We passed through the outer hallinto the Healer's tech chamber. Itwasn't comparable to a medcenter in ··a major city, but it wasadequate for the needs here andmore than an uninformell personmight expect to find in .a small village. The Heale.r wave~ some viewligh~s on, pointed out the stasisbeds that held the bodies of theWarranter and ·Freeman Delver.I looked at them, the Warranter'slanky form chid in blue, with astain of blood above the heart; thefreeman's :stocky body~- contortedwith the frozen after-effects ofneural overload..Not a· pleasantway to die.

"Any ideas, Healer? You knew.Delver." .• ~as groping, just tryingto gain time to compose myself. I ,',didn't s'ee death every day.

"Yes," and there was a curiouseagerness in his' voice. uDelverlonged to· visit the starports', goout from there to the stars. H·espoke of it often, revealed hislonging to -everyone." The othershook his head. "Longing'? N~y,

some called it lust. An indecentlust, Seeker."

, uHow much was taken?"uSix thousand credits. It is in the

pouch," he added, motioning at apurse that lay at the base of thestasis bed.

Freida jumped off my shoulder,padded over to the open pouch. Ilooked back at the Healer.

"Was that everything the War(anter had?"

The man shrugged. ""We wouldnot know. It was' th~ Warranter'sprivate affair."

Of course, that was natural. Awarranter ~ was officially a publics~rvant, authorized to make loans,issue travel and identificationdocuments and 'perform variousother minor tasks. He drew. hisfunds from the people of hisvillage, but it was part of the natuteof his impart~a1ity that none except he and his sector superior wereactually' aware of the total amounthe had available for his people.'But that amount, 6,000 credits, wasa bit large.

"Six thousand credits. in readyfu,nds? A. very prosperous community."

The Healer flushed., UWe payour tithes, Seeker," he' said snappishly.

I smil·ed. UNo criticism intended, Freeman MacDonald. Itwas rather a compliment." Henodded his acceptance of theapology. HAs for your theory, thatu enough to buy passage anywhere, with credits left over. Butwhy suicide then? The freemancould hardly have guessed that aSeeker would be so close."

MacDonald shrugged. "Repentance. He realized once the pas-

" IF

sion was past that he could ~ notaccept the future he had plotted.And with murder already done,his own death was the easiest way."

I nodded, not allowing my doubtto appear 0·0 the surface. Butpenance,. by suicide seemed unlikely on the part of someone whohad the capability to murder an innoc~nt Warranter in the firstpla~e..Freida mewed and I b:aned,down to allow her to regain herperch. -

UAye, six thousand," she whispered into my ear. Freida's alsoan adjusted animal. 'AIQ estimated at 'nearly 100. Vocalabilities also add'ed. Her tailpointed ,o-..t a lump of fur that layhuddled at the foot of the Warranter's stasis bed-. I stepped cioser,recognized it. An adjusted cat,similar to Freida. And stunnedwith somethi~g. I looked back atMacDonald.

"Is that cat the Warranter's?"UAye. It wouldn't leave his. form

and was setting up a racket. So Imercifully stunned it." If myhunch was right the merc'iful act,was directed more at the Healer'scomfort, but that was a minorfactor.

uCan you wake it?"uOf course. But why? It'll just

start the wail again."Smiling humorlessly, I said, UI'1l

suffer it, Healer., Now." Mypatience W,~s growing thin. 'Mumbling to himself, the Healer grab-

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.bed' a syringe, moved over to thecat. Jabbing the needle into theside gf the animal, he shot a dose ofdrugs into it. Aft~r" a few secondsit started to move slowly, abruptly'shaok itself and started to "howl.The Healer smiled 'Yith satis··faction.

I IGNORED him, sfooped downover the cat. Freida hissed some

thing at it and, the other animal,shut up. I gathered it into myhands, brought it near my face.uSpeecf!, little one?" I asked' gently. The cat stared back fearfuliy,but refused the offer. I nodded atFreida and she hissed ·some more,communicating in that strangetongue that is' neither humanlingua nor natural catspe~h, butthe mingling ,of both. It took a fewminutes and I realized the original conditioning had held well.The cat would not easily betray' itsmaster. But finall'y Freida convinced it.

UAye, milord?" it squeaked.UDid you see your master die?"

wondering as' I asked if the: cathad the intellect to h'andle, the concepts involved.

"Aye, to my· sorrow, milord.My life foritis, if I had the chance,milord. But no!" I c~uld recognizefrom ,long contact with Freida thatthe cat was close to hysteria. '

"Who, little on~?· The man wholies here beside your master?"

. The animaJ "-turned to stare, fi-

.27

nally trembled. "Aye, milord.u

I.switched tack. "Did you help.your master?'t.'t

....Aye; .. the cat responded eagerly. uMuch did Grayfur helpmaster. I was his memory.u

And that was the explanation for'a simple Warranter'ts owning anadjusted animal. The cat was abio-comp specialty't capable ofhandling all the Warranter'sbookkeeping in its special brain:But that also made things simpler.uGrayfur, how much did your.master have now?U

.... How much? Forbiddenr'The response was not entirely

dicta~ed by ·Ioyalty; the cat waspro~ably programed-·to- respond'to certain combinations of wordsthat I didn't know. But the a~~wer

) wanted could be reached withoutthem.

UNot to me," I said gently."How much, Grayfure?"

The cat seemed to ponder theidea and Freida hissed at ,it oncemore. Then, it all but nodded.

"'Fifteen thousand credits free,twenty thousand in storage." Thefig,ures rolled out of the cat, and )laughed at the .incongruity. Buttht;n it hit me.

~"Fifteen thousand credits freee?Is Grayfur suree?,'

The cat "seemed astonished.uGrayfur never failed master. Amright.u

I let the cat jump to ,the floor'tmotioned for Fr~ida to join it,

then turned to Ma~Donald. uWasthere any left at the Warranter'shouse?"

....No," he answered abruptly. Irealized he was· taken aback by theadjusted cat. He probably hadknown of them, but never dreamedthat one lived in his own village.Just like any other villager.

....Then are you sure Delver onlyhad six thousand credits?U

....yes," he answered nervously.....Why??'

I ~idn'tt answer him, merelylooked to Freida. uFreida, couldthe shock..have··disturbed Grayfur

,so that he forgot his numbers?"The other cat snarled at the in

sult, but Freida considered it carefully., Then her tail arched a careful negative. )' looked back atMacDonald.

"Healer, nine- thousand creditsare missing. Where could theyhave gone?"

The man seemed paralyzed."Stolen off Delver's body? Or

what?" I demanded.He must have thought I was ac

cusing him, for he turned pale.UNo, Seeker.. No one here wasalone with the body. That is, notuntil the money was counted. Ifcredits were stolen from Delver, itwas by sQme outsider.u

I stepped toward him, graspedhis shoulders, applied pressure."Healer, the truth. l'tll have it oneway or another."

1 read the answer in his eyes and

.~F

no words we(e necessary. He wastelling the truth as he kn~w it~ "Noone else had taken the money. But9~OOO credits were missing. Athought struck me and I lookedback at the cats. .

uGrayfur~ how 'much did thethieftake'r"

The cat hesitated.. then said~

....The ma"n took all of it. Fifteenthousand credits-and themaster~s travel kit and spare suits,,"·

I froze. It had, been a wildchance. Out of the mouths ofbabes, surely. But from the mouthsof cats? A travel kit and suits'?Why? Where wer~ they now? During that two hours between thedeaths.. something had happened.

AN OUTSIDE sound intruded.The buzzing of my communi

cator in the horse's pack drifted tome.,· A quick" glance \around tomake sure MacDonald stayed putand I ran out to my horse. Pullingout the com, I cut into the channel.

""Seeker Carver here. n

"·Dan.. this is a "general alert. Atamper wagon is on the loose.Picked it out in Grailey, aboutfifteen kilo'meters from where youare. Escaped me. It"s a job fromoutspace. Mech-assisted wagon.He ditched his horses, and justmoved out on hover., Headingyour way. Can you try for an intercept?n

The urgency of the present task

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caugh~ at me, but a t~mper wagonoverrode it by far. To have one ofthose loose in this area could disrupt every village in the sector andwreak havoc with planning.,

....Affirmative.. Harlan. Will try.Do you have a fix?U

....No tech fix" but I got a smellyon the wagon before he got out ofrange."!

....Right. I'm "riding. Warrior, sothat'll be enough. '''11 contact youafterward. Carver out.n I turnedback, saw the Healer staring at"me.

....What is it?....uTamper wagon. Amateur bio

architect. '''ve got to go after"him."

URut what about-this'?"....Itcan wait. '''11 be back."MacDonald shook' his head. UI

'still don't' u,nderstand. That wagon"was 'probably the one that camethrough here a few weeks ago. Ichecked him -out and .he wasn'tworking." "

I looked at him coldly. UA potential tamper wagon camethrough here" and you didn't repo_rtit'?"" -

UHe wasn't working. All hisequipment was torn down."

....Maybe. And maybe not. But'''11 handle you later'. I have tomove out now. Just be sure not- to"fool with anything here, eh'?" Imounted "Warrior and Freidacame out, joined me with a leap. •gave the' Heal~r one more stare,

wheeled "~arrior around and spedout of the village, moving throughthe·· c~owds that had gathe'red atthe commotion.

I leaned down over the horse'sear.. UAll 'right, Warrior, a smelly.Find it. And speed, -boy, speed."

He whinnied his understandingand -his nostrils flared as he soakedin the odors of the surroundingcou ntryside~ T.he smelly wouldpenetrate. for kilometers. AndWarrior would locate the scent, ofthe tiny bea$t at the range.Abruptly .he signaled his successand broke into his fastest gallop,twice as fast as any horse on OldTerra had ever run. ·The- adjustedanimals could top ~ny natural.Leaving the guidance to him, Ireached back into my pack, drewout the regulation weapon I'd beenissued so long ago. It was deadly,but-tamperers could be, too.

It was a long ride and a hardone. The wagon hadn't headed directly toward me, that was certain.But the tamperer couldn't suspectthat another Seeker was after him.And though he should have knownbetter from his trade, he probablyignored the capabilities of our ad-justed animals. Being from outspace. and with a mech-assistedwagon, he had to be one of thosearroga.nt ,_ roamers from a techoverrun world. He had chosen aneasy hit for a few months. And instead had found a trap closing on

.him. Sarus ·was ready for his kindof operation.

WARRIOR Qvertook the wag. on. from the. side, running si

lently, maneuvering in the bestoperations manner he. had mastered. The gene-runner was unsuspecting, loafing along. We drew towithin fifteen. meters before I issued a warning.. The owner's headpopped out of the~ control section,looking startled. He ducked back,started to .slow. Warrior continuedthe approach.

Then, abruptly" the tampererflung the wagon tow·ard us, tryingto run us down. But 'Warrior's re'flexes were too good. The horse.jumped out of rang~ of the first.attack. I 'forgot about warnings'and took careful aim from atopWarrior's heaving back. It cost"me two shots to m'angle thewagon's fancy hovergear and sen~

it crashing into the ground atthirty kilometers per hour. Ittumbl.ed over, righted itself andlay there, smoke beginning to driftout of the damaged hull.

I kept the laser out as I approached. Freida moved ahead toscout and signaled that the manwas out of action. I dismountedand moved int~ the slightlycrumpled vehicle. It was fancierthan it looked. There was nodang~r or' explosion-the automatic damage control systems had·taken over. l straightened out his

limp form in a chair, sat down myself. Freida brought the com and Iopened the channel as I watchedhim ..

"Harlan, come in. I've got him."·There was apause. Then Harl~nreplied.

"Have any trouble, Dan?"I looked at the unconscious

form; the disarrayed interior, andsmiled thinly. 440A little. He tried torun me down and failed. I had tostop his wagon with my laser."

There was concern in Harlan'svoice as he said, HI assume you'reall right. How about the wagon,was it destroyed?· And what aboutthe man?"

"His damage control managedto prevent any serious damage.Just a lazed hoverstructure. He'sunconscious, but no serious injuries. I'll 'hold him until you canget here."

URight. Wh~re are you?"I hesitated, looked out at the sur

rounding area. "About two kilometers away from Mount Grover.Almost straight ·out the mainvalley, just about to the river crossing. Good enough?"

"Yeah. We're not too far away.Be there in a half-hour, maybeless."

"Okay, out."I stuck the com into my belt,

looked at the tamperer once m,ore.He was still out, so I detailedFreida to watch hi"m, began tolook around the wagon.

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I 'M NO biotech, but a seeker istrained to recognize the equip

ment, just so he can catchoperators like this one. He had theusual run of equipment, mostfitted for disappearing into hul"1recesses to foil inquisitive people. I saw an electronscope, laserscalpel, standard diagnostic bankand a comp for handling genemanipulation and restructuring.Along 0!1e wall ran a few smallcompartments, translucent butobvious. I stepped over to thegrowth tanks, thumbed" the con-.trois of one. A side panel faded into transparency and I saw the developing form of a small cat, withsome obvious physi~al alterations. A novelty item~ I thoughtdisgustedly.

I thumbed it back to translucence, turned away. At the backof the wagon was a wall of booksand tapes, wit~ a viewer. I steppedover to it, scanned the shelves andfelt mildly impressed. 'He was noincompetent," even if he had takenthe route of the traveling tamperer".The texts were impressive,ranging far beyond the requisitesfor biotech alterations. Then a setof controls on. the viewer caughtmy eye. I looked closer, pressed"'aninconspicuous button. The wallbegan to slide apart u.ntil a largergrowth chamber stood revealed.Large enough for a man. An~

suddenly I realized this man hadstopped at nothing.

Freida his~ed a warning that wascut off by a yelp of pain. I whirled,my laser ready, found myself confronting the tamperer, who alsohe'd a pocket laser, aimed right atme.

uAll right, Seeker, drop it."I stared at him,. shook my head

sl'owly. uI'm not crazy. We've got adeadlock here. You fire, and you'redead. Same here." I' paused. uAfter all, the penalty for tamperingisn't death." 1 looked at him,studying.. ,his reaction. U Are youthat anxious to see me dead't'l

He frowned at me. Then thelaser clattered to the floor.

ULogical, Seeker. And correct.What will"you do'?'"

HEnough. Confiscate your wagon, depo'rt you to pJace of originand al.ert authorities ther~ of youroperations."

He laughed. uYes, just enough.,No grudges? No fanatical desireto see me punished severely?'I'

I shrugged. UTo what purpose'?We wouldn't accomplish anything. As"-Iong as you're not operati'ng here any more we'lre satisfied. What's your name?'" '

~'~Jailsen, jacob Jansen.''1 He'looked past me to the revealedgrowth chamber. HI see you'vefound my pride,andjoy."

I turned carefully to, look at thechamber once more. UArtificialgrowth?'t;

~·Of.course. But even better thanthat. Cloning, Seeker, with any de-

,-32

viations you want on the way.Care for' a liv'i~g robot that look.sjust Hke you? One that'll-obey anyorder and be your twin?'" Helaughed. UI c~n do it. Y0l,J know,I'm good, enough to set up legalpractice on some inner world." .

I gave him a frozen stare. "Thenwhy don't you?"

uNo thrill. l'tm not a researcher.Besides, they frown on cloningand cloning fascin'ates me. Towatch a man grow, become an artificial twin." Laughing again, he

-c~ntinued, uMakes me feel like agod."

I KEPT "my eyes on 'his wondering if he could re~d my. dislike.

I wasn't reacting only to his atti:-:tude, . but to something subtler.'There was an air of phoniness evenabout h·isconfess.ion of sin. Iwanted to step outside for, someclean air, but something about hiswords had caught in my mind, wasdemandi~g attention. Then Ihadjt.

~·Have y,ou Gone any humancloning around here?'"

UYes. Why, do you want to pickit up'?" He smiled. UI'll cooperate., It's at a village about six kilometers f'rom here. A ,-dull affair-but one guy there has almosta cosmopolitan view. 't'l. I heard the sound of horses~

knew Harlan had arrived. I kept\

my icy attention fixed, on thegenerunner.

uDoes the name Delver soundfamiliar?" ,, -

He frowned, searching his memory, then. nodded. UYes. I thinkthat was the man who contractedthe clone. He lived alone. I suppose he enjoyed 'the idea of a slavethat looked like. him. Why, ha,veyou got the clone already?"

I nodded woodenly. UI think wehave. It was found dead this morning, su'ppos~dly a suicide. Ofcourse~ they .assumed it was Freeman Delver himself, but now Ithink th~t's doubtful."

He nodded gleefully. "So that'swhat he had in mind .. Clever man.'Really fooled his neighbors, eh?What is he, a joker? Or did he justwant to go away secretly?"

Harlan ducked in. I ignored him.~'Yes, he wanted to get away se

cretly, Jansen. And y.ou"te introuble. Bad trouble."

UFor the death of a clone? Vhuh. That battle was fo~ght in.courts long ago. It may not be lega1to make them, but I can't be heldcriminally responsible for someone's killing one I made."

I shook my ~ead.uNot theclone. You're accessory to themurder of a -warranter and theft.y our "clon~ made it directly possible' for the murder to be, committed, because it gave Delverthe perfect escape.'.'

The tamperer was n.o longer

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smiling. Disbelief etched his face.UYou'~e joking, Seeker. Aren't

you?"UI wish I could laugh with you.

But Delver was clever. And 'he'took advantage of your helpfulness. That's the real danger of yourkind, Jansen. And that's why human cloning is generally outlawed." I looked af Harlan then,saw a'nother Seeker named Coreybehind him. UTake him, Harl.And be careful-he has something to ~scape from. Log him inas accessory to murder, for start-.ers." .

Harlan nodded, pulling out his·laser. Behind him, Corey -duplicated the action, moving aroundto get a clear view of Jansen.

Harl asked quic'kly, UWhatabout you?'·'

"I don't know. Any starships inGrailport?"

"Three, as far as I know. Twofreighters and a r~gular liner."

uScheduled liftoffs?~' I demanded.

UThe liner's sched~led for tomorrow night. One freighter fortwo days from now. The s~co~d

freighter's a freelance, with nQschedule."

UFor hir¢?" I asked. uIf a man's,willing to pay a few thousandcredits?"

Harlan nodded. "Probably.Why?"

"'I've got a fugitive Who wants to .get offplanet. Probably as fast as

possible. And he's got nine thousand credits on him, plus stolentravel papers. J:le'll probably tryfor' that freighter. He plannedwell, so I'll bc;t he's on his way tothe port now."

uThere's been no transportrouting to Grailport for the lasttwo days. He must be either on footor riding."

I nodded. UWith Warrior, itwould take about ten hours toreach Grailport. With a nor~al

.mount, maybe sixteen or twenty.OU1 man 'has had since some timeearly this morning, probably. I

That means he could be almostthere, if he had spares and discClrded the tired mounts.' 'A~nd fromthe way he's operated so far, I'dbet that's just what he did."

"You'd better contact headquarters in G,railport. They can atleast get a couple of monitors topick him up."

uyou reach them, eh, Harl? Theman's name is Delver. He'll looknormal, because he stole Warranter travel papers., Tell the people to be careful-I don't knowwhat this guy-is capable of."

T H.E genetunner grunted. I·.looked at him. uLook, Seeker..

I didn't know what this Delver wasgoing to try. I mean, a little funwith cloning, that I can understand. But murder, theft. Well-"

I swore at him. uYou"ve doneyour-damage."

He shook his head. "You don'tunderstand. I'm trying to help.There's something you shouldknow." .

"Get to the point if you haveone."

He reddened...·..Well, he askedfor a novelty item, too. And Ifound one he went wild over. ATavarean morphlizard." ,Hegulped. "A programed one, withalterations. I nput electrodesand a hand control unit. The unitshave preset limitations on shapechanges', but they can be' e1i~inated in a minute if you knowwhat YO'u're doing. This Delverhas a handbook on them. And totop it, the lizard is programed fortotal loyalty to the owner."

I froze~ shut my eyes and mindagainst a 'hurt that flared upabruptly.

I heard -Harlan through a haze,asking 'in a puzzled voice, UAmorphlizard? What is it?"

From somewhere I got thestrength, to overcome my reflexive reaction, looked, at him ,soberly. uThe dominant life form ofTavare, the second planet of Novterra's system. Through. someevolutionary q~irk the lizardsare capable of altering' theirshape, abilities. Outlawed on anyother planet becau,se of their dangerous potential. And this tamperer has given one to' Delver."

The tamperer broke in nervously: uLook, I did~'t know. I thought

he was just -another groundmucker, maybe a. little moresophisticated, but nothing much.A modified morphlizard wouldn'tbe that dangerous to one of thesemuckers. But .if he's the way youdescribe him, well-"

He let his voice trail away.I left the wagon, unable to stand

the sight of the fool any longer.Harlan followed. me out.

"Y0'1 leaving now?"I glanced at him, ·shivered. "No.

I'll have to contact HQ myself toalert them. Suddenly I'm the expert." I grabbed my com, dialedGrailport. .

The expert, I thought, a lonelyterror in my guts.

After..a moment of static a coolvoice came on: 6~Seeker headquarters, Grailport."

""Route me through to Frasier,quickest. This is Carver."

A·" hum came as the transfer waseffected, then" my local ~hief wason"the circuit.

"Sir, I'm working on a murder.Nothing simple. Involves a tamperer. The killer is on the loose,probable heading for Grailport."

"Is that all? You want monitorsto pick him up?"

UNot unless they can handlemorphlizards," I said, fightingto keep my voice even. "The tamperer fixed him up with Qne. Fullyadapted. There are controls on thelizard~s changes, but they can beeliminated-easily."

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~rasier swore softly. ~6No onehere has had any experience.'~

He was voicing something ]. already knew. The morphlizardswere rarely seen outsyster:n. .

Ignoring the yammering -fearthat came bubbling up out of mypast, I said in a v~ice drained ofemotion, "Then I think it's myjob."

"No. Not even if he's threatening to destroy Grailport. Youcan't risk it."

His voice held concern. He hadread my file, knew my background. He knew, 'in effect, why Iwas a Seeker on Sarus, why I hadleft Novterra. And he was goingto protect me if. I'd let him. Andfor a moment I wanted to screamyes, jump the first- ship outbound.But something caught in my gutand I knew I couldn't. '

"Sir; that other experience was along time ago. I'm di~ferent-eon

ditions have changed.' And you.can't send a totally unpreparedman against a morphlizard. At.least I'm. somewhat cued in-ifanyone is."

I listened to silence for seconds,as he weighed my decision againstavailable alternatives. When hesighed I knew he'd accepted myjudgment at least temporarily.

"As you wi.sb, Seeker. What aidcan I give you?" ~

"Put that s.tarport in stasis. Sealany ship In port and d9n't let anyone through. And send .3 flitter for

me. I'll have to get there quickest.""If your man knows what a:

morphlizard can do seals won'thold him forever.'"

'.61 know that. But he's not an expert-he may eve.n be harmless. Ican't be ·sure. In any case, thoseprecautions should hold him until I can get there.'" I hesitated.UAfter that it's up to me."

URight. The flitter·s on its wayand I'll have that port sealedtighter than a molectronic lock.Contact me when you reach.Grailport. I'll check the rest ofSarus for experienced men.'t't

"Check, sir. Carver out.'" I cutthe channel, left my beacon on toguide, the flitter to me:- ·Harlan wasstaring at me.

UWhat was that ail about?'t't

I WANTED to turn on my heel,walk away. But I forced myself

to answer-answer as best I could."I was once stationed in

Tavare," I said. '6 During thestandard labor draft period. I wa~ amaintaintenance tech at avirt",ally automated station. I wastaking'care of a small group of researchers working at the .station.There was a girl, Karin. We became quite close." I shut my eyes.started to relive the incident, as Ihad so many times before. "Oneday, without warning, there was arun of morphlizards. Thousands,some of them rather ancient.

36.

More than any man had ever seenbefore. They overran the station,br~aking through our externalsecurity screens as if they werepaper. It gave the science boys additional' clues to liz life cycleslater, but during that run we justretrea~ed to the security roomof the station and hid. We werete'rtified- from the very ,first.Something a'bout a reaction thelizards can evoke' in men. Anyway, after two ·days they even gotpast the heavy-duty screens .an~

started to trickle through'the security room. Half of us died fromphysical wounds and simple fear.Naked' fear. We still don't knowwhy it happened. like that, whatfates chose the doomed ones. Buthalf died and the rest of U$ -wereraving madmen by the time thelizards vanished." I laughed bitterly. uAnd that~s exactly whatthey did. Vanished, ahnost everylizard. Dispersed, back to wherethey came from, almost as if on asignal. They left behind awrecked station and shatteredpeople."

Harlan asked, ..A nd thegirl-Karin?" _

"She was one 'of the dead ones.Eventually, rescue teams arrivedfrom Novterra. They put the survivors in rehab and eventuallymost of us recovered. Sort of. Butwe had to get out of the system.The proximity of Tavare was a little too much." I looked at Harlan,

wondered if he really understood. UYou know the worst, Harl?What I just, told you is just wordsplugged into my memory bypsych technicians. Everythingthat. could flip me again has beencarefully filtered out of my mind.The words left don't mean anything-I don't have the equipmentleft to communicate the realityof what happened. I have no wayof transmitting my real feelingsto you. Just second-hand phrasespsych thinks are safe." I laughed."And sometimes I wonder if theydidn't leave too much."

uAnd now you're going to faceanother lizard?"

UNo choice, Harl.""I'll take your place, Dan. You

don't have to risk the contact."-I looked at him, wondering if he

actually realized what he was offering. And knew he didn't. Icouldn't tell him what it waslike-though I could have addedthat the scientists knew that thelizards could produce a fear reaction in men, transmitted by telepathy, or some 'other mechanismnobody yet understood. And thatwas beside their actual-. physicalcapabilities, which were incredible. But to say lnore would havebeen 'pointless; he still wouldn'thave c'omprehended the realityof the lizards. So I just smiled,shook my head.

~"I have to try, Harl," I said.uAnd not just because no one else

TOSEEK ANOTHER

knows what I know. See, I've beenrunning from them! The psych people said that was the only way Icould insure my sanity." I couldfeel myself trembling. UBut I'vemerely managed to block theinsanity off in a corner of mymind. And a man shouldn't . livelike that." I looked up al the starsthat were beginning to glowthrough as dusk settled over thecountryside. ~"We didn't get hereby pretending that dangers didn'texist, by ~iding from them. Menhave to face their fe,ars sooner orlater if they're going to keep onbeing men. It's part of our make-up."

"Are you taking the risk for apoint of philosophy? Just to prove'something?"

I looked at him. USort of. Toprove something to myself. Everybody's got to some time."

He nodded soberly. UI suppose.Good luck, Dan."

F EET scuffled behind us. Iturned to confront the tamper.

er, Jansen."Isthere something you want?"He nodded. uYes, something I'd

like to do. That morphlizard-well, I know how dangerousit can be. And maybe I could helpyou a little."

I looked at him more closely.His attitude seemed to havechanged and this one rang a littletruer than the previous fa~ade.

"How?""I've read the research reports

on th·em. It's possible to freezetheir polymorphic structuretempora·rily. There's an organicsubstance from Tavare that willdo so if it makes contact in sufficient quantity. I think it originates from ~ biological enemy ofthe morphlizards. It's the natural evolutionary reaction tofheir power. A balance. And Ithink -I can make so~e for you."

~ felt .sudden hope flare withinme, ..bated it. Overcoming th-eparalysis, I demanded, "Whatrange?"

uThe reaction depends onamount of contact. ,·.fOf example,most of a' dose of about tenmilliliters would have to hit thetarget squarely. And I'm afraid thestuff will have- to be thrown. Thesudden impact of its being firedfrom any. sort of projectileweapon would conceivably start adecomposition reaction."

Throw it. 'Witb human inaccu-·racy, you'd have to be close to besure. Well within t~e range of t~e

lizard's" fear-evoking ability. AllQf which meant it was stilt my job.I looked at him once more.

u'How"long will it take you toprepare it?"

He··shrugged. "'Maybe a half.hour.·J.. ~an do it right now, if you'll"Iet me."

I nodded. u.let~s go." I followed. him ,into .the wagor;l. He stepped

-38 .

toward the lab section, beganswinging equipment out into theopen. He grabbed a tape, insertedit into a small vie'wer. Frowning,he began to manipulate theequipment. It was mostly automatic, programing the additionof chemicals to a nutrient broth,maintaining a certain temperature and pressure, checking contaminants.

Abruptly he began to speak,without looking at me.

UActually, there are two cO"unterag.ents for the polymorQhicability_ The one I'm working on isthe venom of the guredu. Yo'u'veheard ofit?"

I nodded vaguely. U Ranksamong the most dominant specieson the planet. A reptile-and inpartial' competition with themorphtizards."

uEssentially correct. They spittheir venom accurately ~p to aboutfive meters. Rather astonishing.But that's the only reason they canexist in competition ·with thelizards. That's true for everycompeting species. For instance,there's a small mammal similar tothe Terran rodents. The lizardscan't. harm it. At first researcherssuspected some· .fort of scent, butexperiment eliminated that possibility. So now they're workingon a theory of telepathic defense.They think the rodent can freezethe lizard's changing ability bycontrolling its mind. The hypoth..

esis is borne out by examinationof the mammal's brain. It has certain structural peculiarities. Anyway, it goes that way all along theecological spectrum. WhatTavare's evolution produced, italso found defenses for." Hesmiled. UWe can duplicate thisvenom, but nowhere ne.ar as handily as the guredu makes it. Andthere's another agent we can'tquite duplicate. It's a glandularsecretion of the lizard. Right upto maturity this secretion is pres~

ent, preventing any polymorphism.But at maturity, the glands responsible start dying and the poly:.morphism comes in. In fact, onecan use that point to define matu'rity."

uyou don't sound like a tamperer," I said. "You sound' morelike a researcher:"

III

H E FINISHED a detail, spunto glare at me. uJ'm not. J

don't have the ability. J'found- thatout long ago. I can understandbut not create. So forget it!"

His. vehemence surprised me andI realized I had touched a sorepoint. I smiled, trying to soothehim. HAll right. But there's teaching, you know. The. more you say,the more I think you don't belonghere, tampering for fun."

He turned back. to his work.

TO SEEK ANOTHER

UThey don't use teachers any more.A computer makes a memoryscan of some great scientist, and areaction tape-then simulates hisform. It and others like it'do all theteaching, 'over vidcoms. There'sno place for humans in the pro,cesse"

J considered his words, then saidsoftly, HMaybe not on the centralworlds. But here we still use human teachers. And I can name adozen other worlds that do. Maybe not as advanced as your techplanets, but moving along nicely.Ahd if we're t~o, primitive" here~Novterra also uses men. There's aplace for a person who wants one."

He was concentrating on the labequipment. I wasn't'sure whetherhe'd heard me or not.. He finishedpunching out a progra~ing combination for his lab computer,then turned away. .

uThe rest is automatic." I followed him out of the wagon. Hestepped outside, looke'd around.He sp'oke to the countryside buthis words were directed' at me.HW'hat are' you, a psych-tech? Areyou just trying to .to·rture me?Damn it, I gave up fantasies toolong ago to start swallowing themnow."

HI meant what I said. Satus canuse intelligent men. Almost anyoutworld can." I paused. HAndyou might find that your creativityis better here. There's somethingabout the tech worlds, about their

" 39

crowdedness, their hectic pace,that bothers some men. It's as ifsome men adapted to the tech civilization as it developed-andothers didn't and have had to leaveit really to achieve. I'm not makingpromises. But if you're" not a tamperer at heart, consider the possibilities. A good word from aSeeker can do wonders."

He looked at me and his cynicism was gone.

H I ~ll think- about it, Seeker.Thanks for the offer."

He stepped off into 'the darkness. I should have followed a tam-

~ "

perer, made sure he didn't attemptto escape. But I didn't think th~s

one would. I turned. back to thewagon, found Harlan staring atme, a strange smile 01) his face.-' UDo you think I shQuld followhim?" I demanded.

He shook his 'head. UI think youfound a chink in his armor. Maybeyou should go into rehab work."

I laughed. UA Seeker is trainedto~handledifficulties, Harl."

, uOf course.' I wasn't criticizingyou, Dan. I wish I coold do asmuch for a tamperer. ICs sure better than just deporting them." Hefrowned. UAbout this morphlizard: Can it actually changeshape?" "

Oh, damn, can it! But I kept myvoice calm. ··Yeah·.. The researchers didn't believe 'it at first either.But there's documented proof."Besides my personal experience.

Ult can even increase its mass to acertain extent by absorbingorganic compounds and simplemolecules from the atmosphere."That's one 'reason for the intenseinterest in it. If we could dupli~

cate its synthesizing abilitieswe'd make a big jump over currenttechniques. But the secret is nothing solely" structural-somethingin the lizard's entire physiologi-.cal system enables it to change. Adead morphlizard is just a hunk ofdecaying protoplasm, with perhapsa greater percentage of undifferentiated cells than most creatures.It's a mystery that we can't solveyet." As usual, a question in theright area had triggered the drylecture; it was a means of psychological defense, the psych-techssaid. They were probably right.

uyou sound as if you remem-ber quite a bit about them."

UJust what th~ research .teamlearned before the incident," Isnapped at him. uOh, hell, Harl,I'm so.rry. But, I've completelyavoided the subject for some time..That w~s part of the intended rehab program."

u'Okay, Dan." After a "momenthe asked softly, uBefore that incident, what job were you headingfor?"

I shrugged. "Biological research.But they decided afterward that itwas better to dissociate myselfcOl11pletely from the previous .life.It was only by a narrow margin

that they decided it was safe to letme keep my memories."

uSo you became a Seeker onSarus?"

uThat's what my psych profileindicated was a· good alternative.And Sarus was far enough away tolet me forget. A1though sometimesI wish they had wiped my memories.

uAnd let you start over·? Whatwas that you gave me about menfacing their dangers, not hidingfrom them?"

.. I laughed bitterly. U Maybe itwas just hot air. I think most menwould rather erase a problem th~n

face it-if they could."U But· we don't evolve that way,

eh'?"He was goading me, and I recog

nized the fact. And I suddenly realized why.

HMaybe you should go into re':"hab," I commented dryly.

AN ALARM rang from withinthe wagon. Jansen appeared

out of the night and we entered thevehicle together. He took fourcubes from the apparatus, handedthem to me.

HOne'll do the job. Press the studand throw it. They're contact explosion cubes. W-hen they hit, thecube ·will shatter and spread theagent around. That way even anear miss might slow the lizarddown. Hopefully, with four you'llhave an adequate safety margin."

TO SEEK ANOTHER

(" stared at the cubes for a fewseconds, then dropped them into apocket. uOne cube will do thejob?"

"Yes. A full dose will freeze itspolymorphic ability and· ·paralyzeit."

.I thought of facing a lizard, depending on those four small cubes,and shuddered. 44Are you s~re

these will work?"He returned my glance. uThe

venom works, Seeker. If the synthesis is accurate it will freez~ thelizard. Otherwise I can't promiseanything. If you don't trust me-"he let it trail off, then smiled thinly.H( guess I can't blame you if youdon't. But I think the synthesis wasgood and that-the stuff will work."·

....That's good enough. After all,venom or not, ( have to face the lizard."

A shrill whine rose outside,growing louder until it culminatedin the thump of the flitter settingdown.. I stepped out, started towalk to it, paused to look back.

....Jansen, Want to come along?"He looked surprised. Then: .ul'd

like to."Harlan said, HI'1l come along,

too. Corey can handle the situationhere, wait for the pick-up van. Allright with you?"

I smiled. HSure, why nor? I canuse all the support I can get." .

I T ·wAS well into the night bythe time the flitter reached

Grailport. Patterns of light beckoned us to the ground below. Offto .one side of the city was a darkarea, one that usually was alivewith lights and activity. But thestarport had been sealed off, "'as Irequested. The flitter homed on thesignal that Frasier was casting forus-he'd gone into the field tohandle the coordination of thistask. We swooped down and Irecognized the warehouse areaoutside the perimeter of the port.As I stepped out of the flitter,Frasier w.alked up.

HHeUo, Carver."HHello, sir."HWe caught him coming into the

city. A couple of rt:l..Qnit_ors tci~d topick him up, against orders."

HWhat happened?"The chief shook his head. HOne

is dead and the other is under sedation-in the hands of the psychlads. The freeman knows how touse the lizard fully, it appears. We'managed to corner him in thiswarehouse when he couldn't getthrough the screens around theport. We've got him screened innow."

HIt's only a matter of time untilhe finds out what a lizard can do toa defensive screen. 'And thenthere'll be no choice. We'll have todestroy him and the lizard." Iswallowed quickly. uAnd the onlysure way is a nuke. Anything lessthe lizard will handle."

"You intend to go in there?"

"Yes, sir."He considered. Then: HI sup

pose it's worth the risk. But you'retaking a man in with you."

I looked at him, knew he was decided on this. But I had to try.uChief, it's too dangerous. Tothrow in a man who's had no·experience with a lizard is insane."

His eyes were hard, unyielding.HI'm not known for being insane,Carver," he rasped. "And I'm"notgoing to risk your going in therealone. What makes you think yourexperience gives you any immunity? I've thought it over-and I'vechecked with psych. And they sayjust the opposite will be true, ifanything~ How do you k.now youwon't freeze up, become a madman again at the first contact withthe lizard?"

I could feel myself flushing, but Ididn't know whether from anger orshame. I choked down an angry retort. U All right, if that's the wayyou feel. Who's going with me?"

uSince Harlan's here, he'll go."We both looked at him·, watched

the surprise flash across his face.Then grimness replaced it. .

uGood," he said. "I'll go in withyou."

He "was sorry, that much was obvious. But so was I. Anybody whohadn't felt the impact of a lizardcouldn't begin. to understand whatit was like. Not even the psychteams. It was impossible to communicate the reality. None of them

really understood what Harlanwould be walking into.

Then a monitor was standing before me, holding out a survival suit. 'The chief coughed. uTnese mightbe able t.o protect you from some ofthe physical danger."

W E BOTH knew the futility ofthe precaution. The lizard

could ~ome up with a transformation that .would cut through thesuit like plastic. And even thenthe physical da'oger was the lesserevil. i didn't .know exactly ,whateffect a single lizard would haveon a man, except that one monitor 'had been,. hurt mentally. Butany unc~rtainty didn't ,harborgood possibilities as far as I couldsee. I found my hand .drifting toward the blaste'r that hung at thebelt of the survival suit, jerked itaway. I looked at ,Harlan.',

uHarJ, no m'atter wha't, don't killDelver if tha~ lizard is still loose."

.UWhy not?'.' .UBecause at present ifs bonded

to him by implanted loyalty, ,restricting it. D~lver is: a limitingfactor. Without him the lizardcould be eve'n, ~~,orse." 'I turnedaway, glanced at the cbief. Ulf wedon't come out soon you'll knowwe failed. This~ll either be done fastor not at all." "

ul'know. And·Ca·rver-"-I ,looked back. " '"Don~t "you .~hink, you should

give halftho~e cubes to' Harlan?"

TO SEEK ANOTHER

I looked at him for an eternity,then nodded woodenly. I reachedinto my pocket, pulJed out thecubes and gave Harlan two. "Usethem carefully. They're the bestchance we've got."

"I know," 'he said.But did he really? Few men can

truly accept helplessness against an'animal when full precautions havebeen taken. I tu·rned away,'motioned for 'Harlan to follow me.

We'approached the wareho'use, atowering building .that stretchedfive 'stories into the ~ night· sky,'totally enclosed 'by the' protecti~escreens' Frasier had erected. l held:the blaster in my left hand, a c'ubein my right and signaled for the

~ Seekers' to cut the screens and letus enter. Frasier gave us a thumbsup aoda .faint odor of ozone came

"as.the"screens blinked off. We ranforward, through the open doorsto the ,warehouse, and felt thescreens snapping on behind us, asclosely timed as possible.

I ,glanced :at 'Harlan, sa,w ,himstudying the inrerior:~ ",:'

",Remember;" I cautioned him,"it's 'I)ot .a, standard'capt,ltre~ Tryfor paralysis:Qnty use the·blaster ifyou haveto. Take care." ,

"You, too, Dan." .The interior was'~dar.~, and I had

no idea where tb~"~oni'r()ls were, so1 switched onto "infrared SCannhlgwith the suit. Not ,as ,good" a~ ·visual, but better than "being blind.Containers were' stacked in rows

P ANIC started to rise in me. Ifelt myself freezing up, then I

saw the dark form -~rro~ing outof the upper reaches of the build-ing, resembling a Saran dart birdenlarged five times. Waves. offear rolled across me, set up sympathetic vibrations that shook meto the core.. I stood facing thenaked core of truth. I couldn'tfight the lizard!_ I forced my head around, saw

that Harlail was on his knees. Hisblaster lay forgotten on the floorand the cubes had vanished. Thestink of the terror within me triggered buried memories, scenesfrom the past. God, the scenes! Isaw Karin again, kneeling, falling,her face filled with madness~ I sawher die again, looking to .me· forhelp, saw her form .being rippedapart by the hordes of lizards thathad- overrun the station. She had

throughout Jhe warehouse. At the died ho\frs before-what they,center, the open space· extended were destroying was the mindlessto the ceiling, past levels of cargo hulk that remained. But still Istorage, with a cargo lift dimly shouted and cried. She was mine!visible at the top. .. They had no right! I. could feel the

I paused and decided to risk re- last vestige 'of reason being tornvealing our whereabouts; it would out of my soul, feel the pain: the

-take too long to search the entire cancerous fear e'ating at my gut.place. Nightmares?

uDelver," I called out. uCome Yes, nightmares! Shapes, all theon out and surrender. This isn't go- shapes of the Lord of Creationing t9 do you any good.'~ but all with the same soul. The soul

Nothing happened at first. Then .offear, the soul of the lizard!an eerie cry echoed through the Then the real/present lizardbuilding. struck, slicing through the

protective suit and tracing a cutalong my arm. The past vanishedand I saw the lizard/dart birdsweep up into the darkness oncemore. And suddenly I was enraged, maddened by the existe~e

of the creature that had taken.Kari"n away and driven me frommy home. No matter that thecreature was different; his soulwas the same. My rage fought myfear and overwhelmed it. I was notsane but I did not fea~-a weird,berseker state possessed me. Ilooked down, saw the blaster I'ddropped. Stooping, I gathered itinto my grasp once more.

I groped along the suit belt,pulled out a set of flares.Triggering them, I ·tossed themhigh into the air, where theyhovered on antigrav devices,spilling light into the darkness. Iswitched from 'infrared to visualand looked at Harlan for help, but

44 IF

he still kneeled on the floor. I dismissed him from my mind andlooked for the damned lizardagain. I caught sight of it, wheeling in great arcs above my head. Ikneeled, took careful aim, andfired the blaster. Energy cutthrough the air, searing at the lizard's form. With hnother enragedcry, it dropped toward me.

I fought to keep the blastertrained on it, and the bird startedto burn. I'd won the first' battle.T'he lizard shimmered, transformed itself into a form immuneto blaster fire. But the creaturewas not basically intelligent-and the new form could notfly. It plummeted. toward theground, still bathed in the blaster'sdischarge. At the last moment itadapted to tho dual threat andshimmered into a new form. Ithovered scant meters above theground, a large flying reptile withglistening scales. that shed blasterfire with little damage.

THEN it was on the ground andI cut off tlte blaster. It shim

mered into a new' form, a merefive meters away. Convulsively Itriggered a cube, threw it. The projectile hit the floor near the creature and exploded, scattering venom onto the lizard, which uttereda cry of pain and charged at me,shimme'ring again. The. transformation, took longer, seemedforced; the venom was taking er-

TOSEEKANOTHER'

feet. I recognized the new form;a Tavarean marsh lion, huge,muscled and full of claws. I threwmy second cube as it neared me; ithit the lizard squarely and thevenom splashed across it.Screaming again, it kept oncharging, moving clumsily. I firedat it and it started to shimmer,but more slowly still.

It was a bare two meters. awaywhen it finished and the lion wasstill there, but with gleaming,blaster-proof scales. It jumped atme, claws extended, and I sw~ng

away from it awkwardly. I dove atHarlan, knocking him over and'fighting to get his cubes'. I cameup with one. I spun around to facethe next charge and was bo~led

over and c3:rried past Harlan'sform by the beast. With savageglee, I grabbed to hang on, stuckmy hand down the gaping jaws andtriggered the cube. The teeth ripped my hand as' I started- to withdraw and then the venom took effect.

Gradually, almost comically, thelife went out of the lizard. It toppled over in slow.motion. I shovedit off me, stood up and felt the sear7ing heat of a blaster beam slice past·me. I fell, rolling aside and scrambling for my blaster. With one motion I had it, aimed it and' triggered it. Delver's hand vanished. asecond later, his weapon with it.

Somehow I ma'naged to keepfrom turning the beam onto his

head, totally destroying him. Instead, as he crumpled, I turned iton the lizard once more. Andbur~ed it, even against theprotection of the adapted scales.When I was through it was just aburning mass of dead _protoplasm, framed in a scorched pit int.be floor. I stared at it andstrangely felt somethi.ng missing.'My gaze wandered over to Har~

lan-he had lost consciousnessduring our brief struggle, butseemed intact. And then I realizedwhat was missing. Whe.n I hadt':lrned the blaster on the lizard,finishing it, I h'ad finishedburning the fear o~t of me, without realizing it...Ellen the core ofinsanity that had lingered over theyears was gone.

f thought.of Karin and felt pain.But,the pain I co~ld bear, with thecushion of the reality of thepresent. I dropped the blaster,looked back, at Delver, saw himlying on the floor. No bleeding;the blaster cauterized its. ownwound. Just a large part of his armmissing and he was in. shock. I feltno pity,jnstead a kind of joy that Iknew was alien to .the principlesof the Seekers. But it was good thatDelver lay there, and not some innocent clone of him~ like the onethat had died· to start this whole affair.

I tutne<i'away, stumbled toward.the door and signaled for theSeekers to open up the screens., I

46 .

faced Frasier with a slight grin onmy face, knew it was ridiculous. Iwalked into his arms.

"You were wrong. I got it, andDel.ver too. Harlan's in there, unconscious. I got the lizard. Yo.uwere wrong-and the psych boystoo. Wrong."

He didn't seem upset at his mistake-instead he looked quite joyful. I pondered on it as I collapsed·into his a'rms, facing the darknesswithout fear.

SOMEHOW it's -all over. Mycollapse was simply a combina

tion of the lizard's venom a-nd thepsychological after-effects of thebattle. I was out of medical careinside of a day. So was. Harlan.

Jansen was waiting too. Hedidn't mention it, bOut Iremembered our conversation. "I'mgoing to speak for him at the trialand he'll probably -get off 'lightly.As I said, we need teachers outhere.

And Seekers, too. Who aretrained to handle difficulties. In theend, even_ our own. ".

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~ '( : 00 ~ 7

BOOMEFLATS

"I N THE.. tracks of our spiritu-al father John Henderson we

may now have trailed a clutch ofABSMs to their lai~," the eminentscientist Arpad Arkabarana wassaying in his rattling voice. HAndthat lair may__ not be a mountainthicket or rain forest or swamp,but these scrimpy_red clay flats. Iwould give my life for the successof this quest, but it seems that suchsacrifice should have a more magnificent setting."

Ult looks like a wild goosechase," the eminent s~ientist Willy'

Wi......n wlto .r.no'wi••••• fi.d. mir.cIeno'••rad•.~ •• in •plac. ,It.t'. no "lac.'

McGilly commented. But no, Willy wa$ not downgrading their quest.He was referring 'to .the wild geesethat rose· about them from thesedges of the flats with clatter andwhistle and honk. This was a flightway, a chase of theirs. There were'hundreds of them if one had the

, fine eyes to pick them out from thebackground. uMud Geese," Willysaid. UWe don't see as many ofthem as when I was a boy."

UI do not, ~nd I am afraid that Iwill not, believe in the A.BSMs,"said the eminent scientist Dr. Veli-

the middle of -every town. They'rethe scru.bs, you know, for the bottoming of the breed." .

"What are you tal~ing about,Willy?" Arpad asked sharply.

What they. were all talking aboutwasABSMs.

kof Vonk, stroking his-(no hedidn't, he' didn't have one)-stroking his jaw, "and yet this is thething that I also have most desired,to find ,this missing link finally, andto refute all believers in the otherthing."

"We can't see the 'chain for thelinks," said Willy McGilly. "I nev- EVERY town in the south parter believed any of them were miss- of that county has a shadow

.ing. There have· always been too or' secondary. There is Meehan,many of them for the length of the and Meehan Corners; Perkins, andchain. That's the trouble." ... Perkins Corn~r; Boomer, and

"I've traveled a million miles in Boomer Flats. The three eminentsearch of therri~" said Arpad. "I've . scientists were· driving the threepretty well probed all the meager miles from Boo.mer to Boomerribs of the w'orld in that travel. My Flats looking for the bones andfear has always been that I'd miss hopefully even the living flesh of athem by a trick-or that in some legend. It was that of the missingunaccountable '-w'ay I. wouldn't 'link, of the Abominable Snow-.·know the~ when I found them. It man, the ABSM. It wasn't snowywould be ironic if we·did find them country there, but the so-calledin such a place as this-not a wild Snowm.en have been reported inplace, only a shabby and over- every sort of climate and country-looked place." side.

"My own fear has been that The local legend, recently un-when I finally gazed on one I would covered by Arpad, was that a nonwake with a start and find that I African non-Indian "people ofhad ·been looking in a mirror," color" was .living in the neighborsaid Velikof. "There must be some hood of Boomer Flats-between~symbolism here that I don't under- the sand-bush thickets and the rivstand. What is your own anticipa- ere It was said that they lived on

.tion .of them, Willy?" the very -red mudbanks. of the riv-"Oh, coming back to people I've er and that they lived a little. in the

always lik~d. The~e used to be a river itself. 'bunch of them on the edge of my Theri D~. Velikof Vonk hadhome town," Willy M'cGilly said. _ come onto a tape in. a bunch of"Come to think of it, there. used anthropological tapes, and theto be ..a bunch of them on the edge tape co.ntained ~equences like this:of every home town~ Now they're "What do they do wheh the riv-.more likely to be found right in er floods?" .

48 . IF

HAh, they close their noses andmouths and ea~s with mud andthey lie down with big rocks ontheir breasts and stay there till theflood has passed." _.

Hean they be taught?"HSome of the children go to

school, and they· learn. But whenthey are older then they stay athome, a.nd they forget."

HWhat sort of language do theytalk?" .

HAh, they don't 'seem to talkvery much. They keep to themselves. Sometimes when they talkit is just plain Cimarron ValleyEnglish."

UWhat do they eat?"UThey boil river water in mud

clay pots. They put in wild onionsand greenery. The pottage thickens-then, I don't know how. It getslumps of meat or clay in it, andthey eat that too. They· eat frogsand fish and owls and thicket filaments. But mostly they do·n't eatvery much of anything."

"It is said that they aren't all ofthe same appearance. -It is evensaid that they are born, ah, shape-·less, and that-ah-could you tellme anything about that?" .

HYeah. They're born withoutmuch shape. Most of them neverdo get much shape. When theyhave any, well actually their moth~ers lick them· into shape, give themtheir appearance."

"It's an old folk fale that bearsdo that."

"Maybe they learned it fro~ the

BOOMER FLATS

bears then, young fellow. There'squite a bit of bear mixture inthem, but the bears themselveshave nearly gone from the flatsand thickets now. More than Jikely the bears learned it from them.Sometimes the mothers lick. thecubs into the shape of regular people for a joke."

"That is the legend?""You keep saying t legend. I

don't know anything·about legend.I just tell you what 'you ask me.I'll tell you a funny one, though.One of the mothers who was getting ready to bear happened to gethold of an old movie magazinethat some fishers from 'Boomerhad left on the river edge. 'Therewas a picture' iri it of the prettiestgirl that anyone ever saw and itwas a picture' of all of that girl.This mother' was tickled by thatpicture. She bore a daughter andshe "licked her into the shape andappearance of the girl in the moviemagazine. And the girl gr~w upIQoking like that and she still·looks like that, pretty as a picture.I .don't believe the girl appreciatesthe joke. She is the prettiest of allthe people, though. Her name isCrayola Catfish." -

HAre you having me, old fellow? Have ·those creatures anyhumor?"

"Some of them tell, old jokes.John Salt tells old jokes. The Licorice Man tells really old jokes.And man, does the Comet ever tellold jokes!"

UAre the creatures long-lived?"ULong-lived as we want to be.

The elixir comes from these flats,you know. Some of us use it, someof us don't."

UAre you one of the creatures?"....Sure, I'm one of them. I like

to get out from it sometimesthough. 1 follow the harvests."

THIS tape (recorded by an anthropology student at State

University who; by the way, hassince busted Qut of anthropologyand is now taking hotel. and restaurant management) had greatlyexcited the eminent scientist Dr.Velikof Vonk when he had playedit, "along with several hundredother taPes' tharnad come in thatweek from the anthropology cir- .cuit. He scratched his-(no hedidn't, he didn't have one)-hescratched his jowl and he phonedthe eminent scie'ntists Arpad Arka-.baranan and Willy McGilly.

.... 1'11 go, I'll go, of course I'llgo." Arpad had' cried. UI've traveled a million miles in search of It,and should I refuse to'go sixty'?This won'tt be it, this can't be it,but I'll never give up. Yes, we'll go

. tomorrow."....Sure, I'll go,'" ~illy McGilly

had said..... I've been there. before,I kind of like "those folks on theFlats. 1 d~n't know about the biggest catfish in the world, but -thebiggest catfish stories in the world~ave been pulled out of the Cimarron 'River right about at Boomer

Flats. Sure, we'll go tomorrow...•UThis may be it," Veliko('had

said. UHow can we miss it? I canalmost reach out and scratch it onthe nose from here."

uyou'lI find yourself scratchingyou'r own nose, that's ho'w 'you'llmiss it. But i1's there and i1'sreal."

UI believe, Willy, that there is asort of amnesia which has prevented us finding them or remembering them accurately."

UNot that, Velikof. I1's just thatthey're always· too close to us tosee."

So the next day the three eminent scientists drove over from TTown to come to Boomer Flats.Willy McGilly knew where theplace was, but his pointing out ofthe way seemed improbable andVelikof was more inclined to trustthe information of people inBoomer.

There was a difficulty. Peoplekept saying, uThis is Boomer.There isn't exactly any place calledBoomer Flats." Boomer Flatswasn't on any map. It was toosmall.. even to have a post office.And the Boomer people were exasperating in not knowing about itor knowing the way to it.

uThree miles from here, andyou don't know whe~e it is?" Velikof asked one of them angrily.

UI don't even know that it is,'"the Boomer man had said in hisown near anger.....1 don't believethat there is such a place.."

Finally, however, other mentold 'the eminent scientists thatthere sort of was such a place,sort of a peace. Sort of a road go...ing to it too. They pointed out thesame improbable way that WillyMcGilly had pointed out.

The three eminents took. theroad. The flats hadn't floodedlately. The road was sand, but itcould be negotiated. They came tothe town, to the sort of town, in theragged river flats. There was sucha place. They went to the Cimarron Hotel which was like any hotelanywhere, only older. They wentinto the dining ~oom for it wasnoon.

It had tables, but it was morethan a dining room. It was a common room. It even had intimations of old elegance in blued piermirrors. There was a dingy bar.There was a pool table, and a hairyman was playing rotation withthe Comet on it. The Comet was along gray-bearded man (in fact,comet means a star with a beard)and small pieces were always falling off him. Clay-colored menwith their hats on were playingdominos at several of the tables,and half a dozen dogs were in theroom. Something a little queerand primordial ab9ut those dogs!Something a little queer and primordial about the whole place!

But, as if -set to serve asdistraction, a remarkably prettygirl was there. She might have beena waitress. She seemed to be wait-

BOOMER FLATS

iog, either listlessly or thoughtfully, for something.

Dr. Velikof Vonk twinkled hisdeep eyes in their orbital caves.Perhaps he cogitated his massivebrain behind his massive orbitalridges and he arrived, by sheermentality, at the next step.

"Have you a men1;l, younglady?" he asked.

"No,",she answered simply, butit wasn't simple at all. Her voicedidn't. go with her prettiness. Itwas much more intricate than herappearance, even in that one syflable. It, was powerful, not really.harsh, deep and resonant as caverns, full and time!ess. The girlwas big-boned beneath her prettiness,. with heavy brindled hair andcomplex eyes. .

UWe would like something toeat," Arpad Arkabaranan ventured~ "What do you have?"

"They're fixing it for you now;"the girl said. "I'll bring it after ~

while."There was a rich river smell

about the whole place, and theroom was badly lit. .

uHer voice is an odd one,"Arpad whispered in curiousadmiration. uLike rocks rolledaround by water, but it also has a·touch. of springtime in it, springtime of a very peculiar quality."

"Not just it springtime; it's aninterstadial time," Willy McGillystated accurately. UI've noticedthat -about them in other places.It's old green· season in their voices,

green season between the ice."The room w~s lit only by

hanging lamps. They had a flickerto them. They were not electric.

uThere9s a lot of the gaslight erain this place9H Arpad gave theopinion9""but the lights aren9t gaslights either."

"No, they're hanging oilla.mps9"Velikof said. "An amusing fancyjust went through my head thatthey might be old whale-oillamps."

uGirl, what do you burn in thehanging lamps?H Willy McGillyasked her.

UCatfish Oil,H she said in theresonant voice that had a touch ofthe green interstadial time in it.And catfish oil bufftS· with a claycolored flame.

"Can you bring us drinks whilewe wait?" Velikof of the massivehead asked.

UThey're fixing them for ·younow," the girl said. ul'll bring themafter a while."

,Meanwhile on the old pool tablethe Comet was beating the hairyman at rotation. Nobody couldbeat the Comet at rotation.

"We came here looking forstrange creatures," Arpad said' inthe direction of the girl. uDo youknow anything about strange creatures or people, or where they can

'be found?""You are the only strange people

who have come here lately," shetold them. Then she brought theirdrinks to them, three great slosh-

ing clay cups or bulbous steinsthat smelled strongly of river, perhaps of interstadial river. She setthem in front of the eminents withsomething like a twinkle in hereyes-'something like, but muchmore. It was laughing lightni,ngflashing from .un~er the ridges ofthat pretty head. She was waitingtheir reaction.

Velikof co*cked a big deep eye athis drink. This itself was a feat.Other men hadn't such eyes, orsuch brows above them, as hadVelikof Yonke They took a bit ofco*cking, and it wasn't done lightly. And Velikof grinned out ofdeep folk memory as he began todrink. Velikof was always strongon the folk memory bit. .

Arpad Arkabaranan screamed,rose backwards, toppled his chair,and stood aghast while pointing ashaking finger at his splashingclay cup. Arpad was disturbed.• Willy McGilly drank deeply

from his own stirring vessel.UWhy, it's Green Snake Snort

er!" he cried in amazement anddelight. "Oh, drink' 'of drinks,

. thou art pleasure beyond expectation! They used to serve it to usback home,- but I never even hopedto find it here. What great thinghave we done to deserve this?"

He drank again of the wonderfulsplashing liquor while 'the spray ofit filled the air. And .Velikof alsodrank with noisy pleasure. Thegirl righted Arpad's chair, putArpad into it again with strong

hands, and addressed him powerfully to his cresting breaker. ButArpad 'was scared of his livelydrink. uIt's alive, it's alive," was allthat he could jabber. Arpad Arkabaranan speci.alized in primitives, and primitives 'by definitionare prime stuff. But there wasn't,now in his moment of, weakness,enough prime st~ff in Arpad himself to face so pleasant and primitive a drink as this.

The liquid was sparkling with"'right action, was adequatelyalcoholic, something like bockbeer, and there was a·green snakein each cup. (Velikof in his note-.book states that they were greenworms of the species vermis ebriusviridis, but ,that is only a quibble.They were snake-like worms arid ofthe size of'small snakes, and wewill call them snakes.)

"Do get with it, Arpad," WillyMcGilly cried. UThe trick is todrink it up before the snake drinksit. I tell you though that the snakes'can discern when a mail is afraidof them. They'll fang the face off aman who's afraid of them."

"Ah, I don't believe that I wantthe drink," Arpad declared withsickish grace. ul'm not much of adrinking man."

So Arpad's green snake drankup his Green Snake S.norter, noisily and greedily. Then it expired-it breathed out its life andevaporated. That green snake wasgone.

uWhere did. he go?" Arpad

BOOMER FLATS

asked nervously. He was still uneasy about the business.

"Back .to the catfish," the girlsaid. "All the snakes are spirits ofcatfish just out for a little ramble."

Ulnteresting," Velikof said, andhe noted in his pocket notebookthat the vermis ebrius viridis is not'a discrete species of worm orsnake, but is rather spirit of catfish. It is out of sucli careful notation that science is built up.

"Is there anything' noteworthyabout Boomer FI·ats?" Velikofasked the girl then.' "Has it anyunique claim to fame?"

"Yes," the girl said. "This is theplace that the comets come backto."

UAh, but the moths have eatenthe comets," Willy McGilly quotedftom the old epic.

THE girl brought them. t~ree bigclay bowls heaped with fish

eggs, and these they were to eatwith three clay spoons. WillyMcGilly and Dr., Velikof'Vonk addressed themselves to the richmeal with pleasure, but ArpadArkabaranan refused.

"Why, it's all mixed with mudand sand and trash," he ebjected.

"Certainly, certainly, wonderful,wonderful," Willy McGillyslush~ out the happy words with amouth full of deli~ious g~oop. "Ialways thought that 'something'went out of the world when theycleaned up the old shantytow.n

dish of shad .roe. In some places But Arpad Arkabatanan didn'tthey cleaned it up-not every- hear or recognize the name,where. I maintain that roe at 'its though it had been on a tape thatbest must always have at least·a Dr. V~likof Vonk had played forslight tang of river sewage." them, the same tape that had really

But Arpad broke his clay spoon brought them to Boomer Flats.in disgust. And he would not eat.. Arpad had now closed his eyes andArpad had traveled amillion miles ears and heart to all of it.in search of it but he didn't know it The hairy man and the Comet'when 'he found it.' He hadn't any of were still shooting pool, but piecesit inside him, so he missed it. were stiU falling off the Comet.

One of the domino players at a "He's diminishing, he's break-near table (the three eminents had ing up," Velikof observed. UHenoticed this some time before but won't last another hundred years.hadnot -fully' realized it) .was a at that rate."bear. The bear was dressed as. a Then the eminents left board andshabby man. He wore a big bhick room and the Cimarron Hotel tohat on his head. He" played .,go'looking for ABSMs who weredominoes well; h~~~s winning." 'rumored to live in that area.. "How is it that the bear plays so ABSM is the code name for thewell?" Velikofasked. Abominable Snowman; for the

UHe doesn't play at all well," Hairy Woodman, for the WildWilly McGilly protested. HI Man of B.orneo, for the Sascould beat him. I could beat any of quatcb,· for .the ·8ooger~Man, for-them." the Ape-Man, for -the Bear-Man,

UHe isn't really a bear," the girl for the Mis~ing Link; for the ~ine

said. ··He is my cous'in. ·~.Our" tbot-tall Giant -things, for the livmothers,. who ,were sisters,. were' 'ing Nea:nde.rthals. ··It -is believed";clownish. His mother licked him by som~ that all of these beingsinto' the shape of a 'bear for fun. But are the sam.e., It. is believed by,·th~t is not~ing to"what my mother'~ most .that. these things are no thingdid 10 .me. She licked 'me ,into at all, nowhere,.·not in any form.pretty. face and pretty figure ..for a And 'it seemed as if the mostjOke~ ~nd now .1. ~m··stuck with it. I were· .right,· for the' three eminentsthink it is tOQ .much of ajoke. I'm 'could not fi.nd hide nor hair (rough.not really like this" but ·1 gu.ess.... .'hide and ..~opious hair were supmay as well laugh at 'me just as i><>se:d to ..bc~ marks ·by._which the·cve"rybodyelsedOes." . '.. ~BS,Ms'might be known) of theI .4040W~at .is. y~ur name?" Arpad._·, .queer folks ,anywhere along the,asked her without real Interest. "red .bank' of" 'the Cimarron River.. "Cray~la Catfi~.h.·' .'. Such <:reat.utes as they did en-

54 IF

counter were very like the shabbyand untalkative creatures theyhad already enc~untered inBoomer Flats. They weren't anugly people. They were plea~antly

mud-homely. They were civil andmost often they were silent. Theydressed something as people haddressed seventy-five years beforethat time-as the poor workingpeople had dressed then..Maybethey were poor, maybe not. Theydidn't seem to work very much.Sometimes a man or a womanseemed to be doing a little bit ofwork, very casually.

It may be that the red-mud riverwas full of fish. Something wassplashing and jumping there. Bigturtles waddled out of the water,caked with mud even around theireyes. The shores and flats we(.etreacherous, and sometimes aneminent would sink into the sandmud up to the hips. But the broadfooted people of the area didn'tseem to sink in.

There was plenty of greenery (orbrownery, for it had been thedusty weeks) along the shores.There were muskrats, there wereeven beavers, there were skunksand possums and badgers. Therewere wolf dens and coyote dens duginto the banks, and they had theirparticular smells about them.There were dog dens.' There werecoon trees. There were even beardens or caves. But no, that was nota bear smell either. What smell wasit?

BOOMER FLATS

'CWhat liv~s in these clay caves?"Vehk()f asked a woman who wasdigging river clamslo

"The Giants live in them," shesaid. Well, they were tall enough tobe giants' (!aves. A nine-footerneed hardly stoop to enter one ofthem.

"We have missed it," Arpadsaid. "There is nothing at all to befound here. I will travel farther,and I may find it in other places."

"Oh, I believe we are right in themiddle of it," Velikof gave theopinion.

HIt is all around us, Arpad,everything you wanted,'" WillyMcGilly iQsisted.

But 'Arpad Arkabatana'n wouldhave none of the muddy water,none of the red sand or the red sandcaves, nothing of anything here.The interest had all gone out ofhim. The three of them went· backto the Cimarron Hotel without,apparently, finding a primitivecreature or missing link at all.

They entered the common roomof the hotel again. Dominoes wereset before them. They played list-lessly. ~

uyou are sure that there are noodd creatures around this place?"Arpad again asked the girl CrayotaCatfish.

"John Salt is an odd creatureand he comes from this place,"Crayola told them. "The LicoriceMan is an odd creature, I suppose. So is Ape Woodman. Heused to be a big-time football

player. All three of them had regular-people blood in them. I suppose that's what made them odd.They were almost as odd as youthree creatures. And the Cometpl~ying pool there is 4n odd one. Idon't know what kind of blood hehas in him to make him odd."

"How long has he been aroundhere?" Velikof asked. -

"He returns every -eighty-sevenyears. He stays here about threeyears, and- he's already been heretwo of them. Then he goes off onanother circuit. He goes out pastthe planets and among the stars."

UOh? And how does he travel outthere'?" /Velikof asked with co*ckedtongue and eye.

HWith horse "and'· buggy, ofcourse." "

HOh there; Comet," WillyMcGilly called. HIs it true that youtravel out among the stars withhorse and.buggy?"

HAye, that I do," the long graybearded man named Comet calledback, Hwith °a horse named Peegosh and a buggy named Harma.It's a flop-eared horse and abroken buggy, but they take methere."

HTouch clay," said Crayola Catfish, ufor the lightning."

THEY touched clay. Everything. was of baked clay anyhow, even

the dominoes. And there had beenlightni.ng, fantastic lightningdashing itself through 0 every crackand cranny of the flimsy ho!el. It

was a lightning brighter than allthe catfish-oil lamps in the worldput together. And it continued.There was clattering sequencethunder, and there was a roaringbooming sound that came from afew miles west of the thunder.

The Giants .came in and stoodaround the edges of the room. They.were all very much alike, likebrothers. They were tall andsomber, shabby, black-bearded tothe eyes, and with black hats ontheir heads. Unkempt. All wereabout nine feet tall.. 0

uShall I sound like a simpletonif I ask if they are really giants?"Velikof questioned.

HAs your eyes tell you, they arethe giants," Crayola said. UTheystay here in "the out-~f-the-way

places even more than the rest ofus. Sometimes regular people se"ethem and do not understand thatthey are regular people °too. Forthat there is scandal. It was thescent of such a scandal, I believe,that brought the three of you here.But they are not apes or bears ormonsters. They are people too."

HThey are of your own ~in

dred?" Velikof asked.HOh, yes. They are the uncles,

the old bachelors. That's why theygrow tall and silent. That's whythey stand around the edges of theroom. And that is why they digthemselves caves into the banksand bluffs instead of living inhuts. The roofs of huts are too" lowfor them."

44( t ·would be possible to buildtaller huts," WHly McGilly suggested.

441 t would be possible for "you,yes," Crayola said. "It would notbe possible for them. They are setin their ways. They develop astoop and a gait because they feelthemselves so tall. Th,ey let their'hair grow and overflow, all overtheir faces and around their eyes,and all over their bodies also. Theyare the steers of the species. Having no chilqren or furniture, whatcan the~ do but grow tall and ungainly iike that?, This happensalso to the steers of cattle and bearsand apes, that they grow tall andgangling. They become bashful~

you see, so sometimes it is mistakenly believed that they arefierce. "

The roaring and booming fromwest of the thunder was becominglouder and nearer. The river wascoming ·dangerously alive. All' ofthe people in the room knew that itwas now dark outside, and it wasnot yet time to be night.

The Comet gave his pool cue toone of the bashful giants and cameand sat with. the eminents.

uyou are Magi?" he asked.HI am a magus, yes," Willy

McGilly said. UWe are called eminent scientists nowadays. Velikof here also remains a magus,but Atpad has lost it all this day."

uyou are not the same three Ifirst believed," the old Cometsaid. "Those three passed· me sev-

BOOMER.FLATS

eral of my cycles back. They hadhad word of an Evertt and th~y hadcome from a great distance assoon as they heard. But it tookthem near two thousand years tomake the trip ~nd they were wor-

. ried that myth had them as· already arriving long ago. Theywere worried that false Magi hadanticipated them and set up a preventing myth. And I believe thatis what did happen."

"And your own myths, old fellow, have they preceded you, orhave you really been here before?" Willy McGilly asked. "I seethat yo~ have a twisty tongue thatturns out some, really windingmyths."

"Thank you, for that is my intent. Myths are not merely thingsthat were made in times past.Myths are among the things thatmaintain the present '--in -bejng. - Iwish most strongly that the presentshould be maintained. I often livein it."

uT'ell us, old man, why isBoomer Flats·' a place that thecomets come back to?" Willy said.

"Oh, it's just .one of the post stations. where we change horses whenwe make our orbits. A lot of thecomets come to the Flats~Booger,

Donati,- En,cke, 1914c and Halley."UBut why-- to Boome~ Flats on

the little Cimarron River?" Willyinquired.

UThings are often more thanthey se.em. The Cimarron isn'treally so little a river as you would

imagine. Actually it is the rivernamed Ocean that runs around allthe worlds."

uOld Comet, old man with ·thepieces falling· off you," Dr. Velikof Vonk asked out of that bighead of his, Ucan you tell us justwho a're the under-people that wehave tracked all around the worldand have probably found here nomor~ than seventy miles from ourown ill'ustrious T-Town?"

UA phyz like you have on you,and you have to ,ask!" the oldComet twinkled at Velikof (a manwho twinkled like that had indeedbeen among the stars-he had theirdust on him). UYou're one of them,you know."

ul've suspected that--f6r~ a longtime," Velikof admitted. HButwho are they?' And who am I?"

HWise Willy here said itcorrectly to you last night. Theyare the scrubs who bottom thebreed. But do not demean thescrubs. They "are the foundation.They are human as all of us are human. They are a race that under-.lies the other several races of. man.When the bones and blood of themore manifest races grow toothin, then they sustain you withthe mixture of their stroftg kinship. The mixing always goes on,but in special eras it is more wide..spread. They are the link that isnever really missing, the Ii.nk between the clay and the blood."

UWhy are they, and I myself if1 were not well-kempt and em"i-

nent, sometimes taken to be animals?" Velikof asked. UWhy dothey always live in such outlandishplaces?"

UThey don't always. Sometimesthey live in very inlandish places.Even wise Willy understands that.But it is their function to. standapart and. grow in strength. Lookat the strong bone structure of thegirl there! It is their function to invent form-look at the form hermother invented for her. Theyhave a depth of mind, and theyhave it' particularly in thoseghostly areas wh~re the otherraces lack it. And they share andmingle it in those sudden motleyages of great ach.ievement andvigor. Consider the great ages ofAthens, of FJorence, of Los Angeles. And afterward, this peoplewill withdraw again to gather newstrength and bottom."

't.And why·are they centered herein a tumble-down hotel that is likea "series of old daguerrotypes?"Willy McGilly asked. uWill youtell us that- there is somethingcosmic about t~is little old hotel, asthere is about this little old river?"

UAye, of course there is, Willy.This is the hotel named Xenodocheion. This is the special center ofthese Xenoi, these strangers, andof all strangers everywhere. Itisn't smaiL You merely see but aportion of it at one time. Theycenter here to keep out of the way.Sometimes they live in areas andneighborhoods that regularized

humanity has abandoned 66To the human species, of(whether in inner city or boon- course, V,elikof. I belong to stilldock). Sometimes they live in eras another race of it, another raceand decades that regularized hu- that mixes sometimes and thenmanity has abandoned. For ,their withdraws again .to' .gather moreprofundity of mind in the more strength and depth. Some individghostly areas, they have come to uals of us withdraw for quite'longhave a cavalier way with time.. times..There are a num~r ofT8cesWhat is wrong with that? If regu- of us in the wide cousinship, 'yoular people are finished with those see, and it is a necessity that we bedays and times, why may not strangers to each o~her,for a goodothers use them?" part of the time."

The roaring and booming to the' UAre you a Saucer:i~~?'"

west of the ,thunde.r 'had become UOh Saucerian be d~mned, Veli-very'loud and very near now, and'in kort· :Hefma {means,. c~ario~ or itthe immediate outdoors there was. means buggy; ·jt ,does not,meao-heavy rain. ,saucer. We are .the".comets. And

"It is the time," the girl Crayola ',our ,own mingling' ~th the comCatfish cried out ',in her powerful monalty at pe~ple b'as ~ also" ha4'and intricate voice. UThe flash quite a bit to'do with those suddenflood is upon tis and it will smash incandescent eras. Say, I'd like toeverything. We will all- go and lie talk, with you fellows, again somedown in the river." time. I'll be br this way again in

All the Boomer Flats people about eighty-sevenyears~!'began to follow'her out:' the Gi- UMaybe'so," said ~Dr. Velikafants~ the eminents, eve,rybody. Yonke ,-' .

"Will, you' also lie down ,in the UMaybe so," said ·...Willy Me-river, Comet?" Willy McGilly Gilly. .asked. "Somehow, I don't .believeit of you.',' T'HE eminents f~ll(j~ed the

UNo, I will not'. That isn't 'my Boomer ,A,at~ ',people to theway. I will, take my" horse and . river. Ami'tbe.Comet, we suppose,buggy and ascend.~boveit." ,'.' ,took his ,horse an<J ,~~ggy and

uAh, but Comet, will it look like ascended o~t-,of it! Odd ,ol,d fellowa horse and buggy to us?" he was, pieces. falling off him,.

UNo, it will look quite, ·other,.if He'd hard,ly last ';~nQther hun-you do chance to see lt~" , dred years. ": ".:...

HAnd what are you ~eally, rhe red apd black· :river was inComet?" Velik~f asked as they surging ,flood"wiJ)l',a ,,'blood.;colleft him. "What species do Yt?" 'be-· ored crest ,~~ting dQwn.) And' tb,Clong to?" Flats-they 'were Just' 'too flat. 'Th~

BOOMER FLATS '59

flood would be a mile wide here inone minute and everywhere inthat width it would be deep enough"and swift enough to dro~n a man.It was near dark, near the'limit ofroaring sound. But there was apile of large rocks there in thedeepening shallows. Plenty ofrocks-at least one big heavy rockfor every person.

The Boomer Flats people understood what the rocks were for, andthe Giants among ~hem understood. Two of the eminents' understood. One of them,_. Arp~d,apP,\rently did not. Arpad wascarrying on in great fear about thedangers of death by drowning.

Quickly then, tQ-cram mud intothe eyes and ears and noses andmouths. There is. plenty of mud andall of it is good. Spirits of Catfishprotect us now'!-it will be onlyfor a few' hours, for two or threedays at the most.

Arpad alone panicked. He brokeand ran when 'Crayola Catfishtried to put mud in his mouth andnose to save him. He ran, andstumbled in the rising waters to 'hisdeath.

But all t.he others understood.They lay down in the red roaringriver, and one of the giants set aheavy rock on the breast of every.person of them to hold themdown. The last of the gian~s thenrolled the biggest of the rocks ontohis own 'breast.

So all were safe on the bottom ofthe surging torrent, safe in the old

mud-clay cradle. Nobody canstand against a surging flood likethat. The only way is to lie down onthe bottom and wait it out. And itwas a refreshing, a deepening, arenewing experience. There arepersons, both inside and outsidethe orders, who make religious retreats of three days every year fortheir renewal. This was very likesuch a retreat.

When the flood had subsided(this was three days later), they allrose again, rolling the big rockS"off their breasts. They cleared theireyes and ears and mouths of thepreserving mud. They resumedtheir ways and days.

For Velikof Vonk and for WillyMcGilly it had been an enrichingexperience. They had found thelink that was not really lost, leaving the other ninety-nine meanwhile. They had grown in cousinship a'nd wisdom. They said theywould return 'to the Flats everyyear at mud-duck season andturtle-egg season. They went backto T-Town e~larged and happy.

THERE is, however, a gap in.I. the Magi set, due to the foolish

dying of Arpad Arkabaranan. Itis 'not of Scripture that a set ofMagi should consist of only three.There have been sets of seven andnine and eleven. It is almost ofScripture, though, that a setshould not consist of less thanthree. In the Masulla Apocalypseit seems to be said that a set must

contain at the least a Comet, aCommoner and a Catfish. Themeaning of this is pretty m.uddy,and it may be a mistranslatio.n.

There is Dr. Velikof.Vonk withhis huge head, with his hea.vy orbital ridges, with the protrudingnear-muzzle on him that makesthe chin unnecessary and impossible, with the great back-brainand the great good humor. He is(and you had already guessed it ofhim) an ABSM,. a neo-Neanderthai, an unmissing' link, one ofthat branch of the human race thatlives closest to clay and catfISh.

There is Willy McGilly. whobelongs (and he himself has cometo the realization of this quite lately) to that race of mankind catledthe Comets. He is quite bright, andhe has his periods. He himself is ashort-orbit Comet, but for all thathe has been among the stars. Piecesfall off him. He leaves a wake. Buthe'11 last a while yet.

One more is .needed so that thisset of Magi may be formed again.The other two aspects being already covered, the third membercould well be a regularized person. An older person of ability, aneminent. Or a younger person ofability, a pre-eminent.

This person may be you. Putyour hand to it if you have thesurety, about you, if you are notafraid of green snakes in the cup(they'll fang the face off ,you ifyou're afraid. of them), or of claymud, or of comet dust, or of therollicking world between. •BOOME R FLATS

aAlION/TULANEWORKSHOP

•For .i. w.... this .ummer,

....innin. June 12, TulaneUnivenity in New Orl.an.wiI .ponsor an ·int....iv. science fiction writing worbhop,cORtinuin. the Clarion SFwork.hop founded and concluctecl ow.' the past four ,ean.., IDIIin~WIson.

The , ...... Worbhop wiI liecIiIectecI by Ja..... Salis, form• ...., of New Worlds, ......... has appeared in the Galax, pultlication., O,IJ;,,QuarIr and nu..............gi... Maclllilian has iu.t....t out a coIIedion of his

.short ......~ A few last Worels.

The Worbhop devotes threeto ,",r houn each. ......inl tolectures anel group critici.m,.... ....t. of the clay to writinganel consultation. Gu.st I~

turen incluel. Mr. Wilson,Samuel I. Del.." Hadan BiIOn, Damon Knight, Kat. WII-....m.

Tuition, inducing housing, is5250 and college credit is ,;w-.. (th semest... houn). Forinf.r ation and/or applica-tion, acIcI....:

JoInes ~is, Tulane Sf Writ·... W.....".,." , 0' En",.. (Arts-.dSdences)

, ...... u.wersity

New 0rfecMs, La. 10".61

I N THE darkness of his granduncle's medicine hut by the

tlickerflic'ker of the faint fire(whick the man was alII0 wed tohave, grudgingly, and at high tax,for preparing his simple witcheries)the boy recollected the "sound ofthe taptap beats on the tiny witchery-drum and the sight of the mandrakes lifting the lid of their barkbox house and coming out todance by the fire, tossing up theirsmall-small scrannel arms aocfstamping their tiny-tiny feet to thetoom-loom, toom-Ioom, toomloompetty-loom of the child-sizeddrum-then dancing backwardand closing the lid on themselvesas .the .last faint pulse beat diedaway.

A small man, his uncle orgranduncle (in those days the boydid not distinguish), with a skill insmall witcheries and small .magicsby which he sustained them. And

the boy felt proud of seeing what the woods, fear of the k~ng and theother boys did not see. . . tax-gathefs, fear of known magic

But most of his memories be- and of unknown even more. AndfQre the breakaway were ill ones. the boy who was small and sharpI W~en he grew big enough to and dark and shaggy produced anwander from the partly under- effect of strangeness which wasground medicine hut or the round like the subtle smell of fear-butthatched house where his uncle's was not strong enough to ward offsister sat mumbling as she the hates and wraths which thispounded bark or stirred the acorn caused-and besides-and begruel, the boy learned swiftly sides ....enough of how lit~le he had to The affair of the great roanpride himself in. If you are smaller mammont, the rogue mammont,by far than the smallest of any fear of fears and terror of terrors,born i.n your birth year, if they are brought all things to a head; butsmooth of skin and fair of hair before that, long-long before thatand you are dark and your day of blood and death, that dayswar~by skin is covered with a nap of the hill-that-moved, the treesor bloom of dark hair-are these that-walk, serpent-snout andthings to Qe proud of? If others spear-teeth and all the other nameshave fathers and brothers.who· re- u.sed when one dares not use theturn from the hunt to be greeted real name: mammont; long beforeby the singing of their women and then, when he was very small, thereif your only family connection was the token.with it all is when old uncle or old The token hung- on a thonguncle's sister comes stooping up from a peg in a post in his grandand waits for a bone or an offal mother's hut. For a while it wasto be tossed as to adog-is there above his head and he reached forpride in this? it often while the old one squatted,

To be sure, he was quicker of mumbling, inthe sun of the doorbody and sharper of mind than ·any front. He could~ not remember theof his birth year; sharp and quick first time he actually reached it,enough to learn that sharpness and standing on a stool (probably),quickness won praise only for oth- but he had a clear recollection ofers and in him were only to be re- one day scanning it and seeing itsented. That magic '~nd witchery and recognizing it.. It was carvedproduced fear and that. fear often of ~ood, roughly but forcefully,produced respect; but that small- in the form of a bear. It had thescale magic and witchery caused bear's head and one tooth clearlyonly small fear-suspicio~, rather in the crude snout; it had the-and hardly eve"r respect at all. bear's paws·and legs.For fear and fears hung over the But the legs ended in the feet oftown like "the smoke from the a man~

great central fire on lowering days.Fear that someone was working a pERHAPS at that time he hadwitchery, fear of the wild ones of not recognized this strangeness;

~ IF

it, as he might have enjoyed a newgrip noted in a dog-fight.

Hinna. So the old man sometimes addressed the old woman.Sometimes the old wom'an said it'as she pointed out the small bl:ueflowers of a plant o,ccasionallybrought back with other herbs androots or leaves and barks from the·woods by the old man. So: Hinnawas the old woman and hinna wasa flower, but he knew that this oldwoman was not thrown ·into a fitin order to ·mention either; he didnot know how he knew and wondered, !Jlildly, that he knew at all.Logic was here working scarcelyabove the level of intuition.

The old woman shrieked andbabbled of ~omething which wasUWoe!" but mostly her wordswere strange and, IfHinna-tenna!' ~she screamed. And, IfArn't! Arn'tArn't!"

And then the old uncle was.kneeling beside her, soothing her,calming her, arranging her tattereddress of pounded bark-lining, car...rying her-at last, when her voicewas a mere croon ·or -drone-tothe worn-almost-hairless haif ofdeerhide which covered her grassbed. And the old man got up andseemed at a loss as· he looked atthe boy. Who. sensed and instantlyseiled an opportunity. '.

Pointing to the token on thethong, UMy father," he said.

uYes," said the old man, unsurprised. Then he winced.

What made the boy say what henext said, still pointing? No knowing-unless it was unrealizedawareness of a connection betweenstrange things enclosed in 'a spaceof time-such as this moment

he ha<:l cert~inly never seen a bear,for it -, was not till later that TallRoke 'brought in the cub whichwas partly petted and partly tortured until it was abruptly killedand eaten. Likely at that childtime he did not know that a bearhas bear's feet and that althoughthey resemble a man's, yet theyare not. Nor was it yet clear tohim how subtly manlike. the carving was.

But he had the clear recollectionof scanning it. that one day and becoming aware that the old woman,gr~nduncle's sister and his owngrandmother, had com~ in andwas staring at him, on her blearand withered face a look odd evenfor her on whom odd looks werecommon. A look of fear and loveand awe and horror.

Sensing that she was in whatwas fOT her a lucid mood, he askedas he pointed, UThis~what?"

And she, promptly and matterof-factly, said, 'uYour father."And as promply thrust awry hersnaggle-snarl hair and screamedc;lnd rolled her rheumy eyes andtore open the bosom of her bark~

cloth dress and beat and scratchedher withered dugs and wailed andhowled and beat her head upon theearthen floor. HHinna!" shescreamed. UHinna! Hinna!" and,uHinna-tenna!"

Such fits and antics were not sorare as to alarm the hoy-for allhe knew, all grandmothers behavedso-just as, for all he knew·, allfathers 'were carved of wood andhung on leather thongs from posts.But this fit was uncommon severeand he appreciated, in fact, herather enjoyed th~ _new aspects of

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

which had just passed, or perhapsstill was passing..

Pointing to the token he asid,UArn't. Arn't." f

uArn," his uncle said, absentminded correction in his tone.

So. Arn was the token whichwas the bear which was his father

. and his father had .somehow,thrown the old woman into a fitin which Arn't was somehow different. And what else was in thefit which was familiar yet different-for something was.

Ah."Tenna," the boy said; imme

'diately correcting himself: " Hinna-tenna. "

·Without so much as a sigh andin the same flat, abstracted voicein which he would explain to a visitor at the medicine hut the careand feeding of mandrakes or theprice of a charm or the manner ofa charm (other men whose workwas witchery had ~the better senseto sink their voices and roll theireyes and make at least a few fearful gestures and· whisper at least afew words in a doleful whisper,lips to ear. Other witcherers commanded higher prices, too, gotamber-grains and goodly pelts,were not content with bones andoffals) his granduncle said to him,UHinna. is the cornflower and is also my sister's name. Your grandmother. Was her daughter's name.Your mother. Tenna is a word inthe Old Tongue, now archaic, usedchiefly for witchery. Spoken sometimes by such relics as myselfand sister. Tenna means 6daughter.'· Arn in the older tongue is6bear.' So, now I consider it,

,Arn't' may be applied to the tok-

en, for my sister's daughter saidshe had it of the bear. As she said,too, she had you. But she was never right in her wits after that andgrew worse and we found herdrowned." .

After a moment he .nodded onceor twice and left the house withoutmore word, confident, apparantly,that he had said everything therewas to be said. As, perhaps, hehad.

T HE boy realized, growing old-.er, that often he himself saw

sequences and c'onnections whereother boys saw none. But just ashe could see logic and they not,just so things that seeme~ sensibleto them were senseless an~ unprediatable to him. More than oncehe.had been stoned away from following hunters, yet t~day he had

.been asked-not allowed, askeduCome, honey~dripper, bring usgood luck!" And here he was withthe ·rest of them ··in the high grassand .the sun hot upon the earth andon them all so that he could smellit and them and the grass and other things not even seen.

Honey-dripper, with a guffaw.It was aname for him. Comb-robber was another. -Both meant bear,who stole the honeycomb from thehoney tree and ate it, dripping itsrichness, grubs and wax a'nd all.But comb-robber, applied to him,was merely an ill-name. Honeydripper was less so, was a laughingterm, and~somehow-referrednot exclusively to the bear but also had something ··to do with, menand the things men had with women. Tall Roke it was who'd saidhim this name this. day and asked

him to come; and Tall Ro.ke it or. bone for his weapons. All elsewas, when another had looked had had iron-had even had arrowblack and muttered, who had or spear-heads to spare, in case ofbriskly and blithely answered, breakage before a wandernain"Wl1at? For that some rough fel- (some called them ushamblenain,"low tumbled his mad mother and but not to their faces) would comegamed her, saying, 'I'm a bear!' trading new irons for old: amberWhat? A bigger fool than she or and peltries their fee: taking theyou I'd be to think the kid an ill- broken points with them back tobringer for that. Ah no, but that strange and distant Nainland tohis old uncle's witchery had maybe mend upon their witchery-forge,rubbed off on him a bit, and then an art which only the nains had:a-smells as wild as any beasty and As for bronze, that was only aso may cover our own man- memory, bronze had long since-stinks-" died of the green-sickness. As yet,

But as yet the boy could not out here, the deadly rust was movsmell the wild white horses they ing slowly, but move it did; somewere hunting-the swift, mane- thing w~s deadly wrong with iron,tossing, .clever-cunning, clever- and no nains came; grim was themad, mad-eyed, red-eyed, wild- .mood of the distant king, andeyed, wild, white horses-whom uHist, now," said Tall Roke.no man's mind or hand had ever uMind the plan, now. Drive awayyet thought to tame. Three days the young stallions and the maressince, some village stripling, gam- with stones, the colts will following about in. the meadows, had cut· off the great stallion, andfound a colt with its leg broken in whilst we three engage him froma mole hole, had ,Swiftly (but, be in front, you two cut his tendonssure, not without a swifter, fear- from behind." The great stallion,ful lookabout) cut its throat and with hamstrings severed on h.isborne it home. Perhaps one of its hind legs, would go down and nevmarrowbones was still stewing in a er rise. Deprived of leader, the othpot of spelt; the rest 'had sure been er steeds would nee.eaten. But the clever-mad horses Tall Roke hawked and spat andof the herd had tracked the lostling grunted. He needed not to point.down to its place ·of injury, had They had come to the edge of thes~en the blood, had traced the escarpment and in the near disdrips of blood as far to the village I tance of the wide, shallow valley,as even their mad courage cared they saw the horses like wee whiteto go. Since then they' had been clouds. floating in the blue-greenwaging war: trampling crops, at- sky of grass'. For a moment theytacking cultivators and wanderers gazed, the five or six full men, thewith hooves and teeth. So now the twice that many striplings and themenfolk were carrying the war un- boy who had no name. Then. theyto the horsefolk. spread ou.t widely and began the

Time was when only the poorest slow and cautious descent fromof the poor would bave had. stone the rim. Slow, for there. was no

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE 67

swift going down that uncertai~

slope; cautious, because they darednot give alarm to the horse herd.

The boy felt for the pouch withthe stones in it. The touch was reassuring. Nothing else was. Hisfirst hl!nt. His heart pounding. Ithad been agreed that 'any neededsignaling would take the form of aground squirrel's whistling, as this;would (at most) arouse the hungerof no creature larger than a foxor hawk. Tentatively the boyformed his mouth to make such asignal. But he never made it. Thewhile he had been keeping a sortof sketch of things in his head.Yonder was the sun. The cliff directly behind. The wind, so. Tothe right must be the horse herd.A little left of straight a~ad, were,though now not seen, a clump ofthick-boled trees. Beyond that, alow hillock of rusty scrub. Abrook. A wallow.

ALARM, alarm rose so swift in·his chest that it choked his

breath. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. He had gonethe wrong way-or-for he wasmuch too close to the hillock, hecould see it now, he could not seethe trees, which meant-and thencame the whistle, and the whistlewas to have come from Tall Rokeand Tall Roke should be that wayand the whistle was over this way-Vertigo took him, he -was onboth knees and one hand. Earthshake? For the hillock moved andhis eyes fled from it and his eyessaw trees walking and someonescreamed and screamed-it wasnot him, then it was him as it wasmany ,others, for by now all knew68

it was the hill-that-moves, thetrees-that-walk, all of them c'ouldsee the serpent snout that rose uphuge and hairy and drank thewind, all could see the flash ofspear teeth, all could hear the horrid trumpet scream of the mammont! mammont! 'mamont! as itstree-huge legs shook the .grassyground in its terrible charge, itstrunk sweeping down the grass before it as a scythe, bloody scythe,bloody grass, bloody spears,bloody teeth-

Fear and failing flesh and yetsenses still undimmed enough tohear Tall Roke's voice full strongas he shouted, uHold to the plan!Axe men to the rear whilst I engage t.o the front-" I and not we,he did not trust to any others'courage to face the huge redmammont from the front, ,but stillhad hopes th~t some might bravethe great beast's hind legs to strikeat the lower tendons. Onward themammoth beast had come, fast,fast, but faster yet ran Tall Roke,passing it-so swift he might haveescaped, 'had he run in another direction, had such been his intent-passing it, running backward before it, turning it, darting backand away from it, shouting andfeinting his spear at it-UStrike!Strike!" he shouted-

But no one was there,to strike.No one was there but Tall Roke.One man. One boy. Who shriekedwith all the fury of his unformedvoice and cast his stones with allthe power of his unformed arms.For one fell moment the mammont wavered, rage-reddened eyesdarting from man to boy.

uAnkles! ,Ankles! Ah! Strike!

Ankles!" hoarsely but still hopefully: Tall Roke's voice. But noone struck. And the one man'sspear hung in the air, it seemed notso much that he had cast it at themammont as that the mammonthad hurled itself upon the airbornespear: it lanced the line of the greatface from tusk-socket to eye-socket: the mammont screamed itspain and rage: again the spearhung in the air: and now-and thiswas so puzzling-Tall Roke himself hung in the air; his fair hair allin a mist about his face-the python trunk seel11ed to (ise slowly,slowly, slowly, and to descendslowly-slowly, slowly, arid towrap itself so slowly gently lovingly about the man's neck.

THERE were flowers in themeadow and bees in the air and

then there was a dripping comb ofhoney and he thrust his paws firstinto the comb and then into hismouth and its taste was 'of goldand sweet and strong and delightful beyond the taste of any foodtasted before and when it wasquite quite gone he licked his pawsand he licked the grass it haddripped on and then he went scampering off to where the busheshung heavy with the full ripe berries and he ate his wonder full ofthem and

THREE of them returned aliveto the village and Tall Roke

was found alive (though only barely) where the mammont had tossedand gored him but, unaccountably,not trampled him as it had theothers. But he, too, was soon dead.Another's head was found 'in the

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

branches of a tree. Something thatwas probably his body, for it couldbe nothing else, was smeared nearby.

The horses had vanished.That t.he great roan mammont

was a rogue, all agreed. Only arogue would travel alone, andthere was no sign at all of any other mammont-and, for that matter, of that one himself-any more.

A t first no one in the village saidanything but, It has happened.Since the starting of the red-rustsickness of all iron and the increasing wrath of the distant· and onceindifferent king, since the nains hadceased to visit and the tax exactions had begun to increase, rumors faint as whispers and whispers loud as shouts had beenspreading, spreading, spreading.Some great calamity impended.And now it had come. It had happened.

Next in the village they began toask, How did it happen?

By this time the boy thought heknew. And there was one otherwho, he thought, also thought he.k-new. And that meant there was athird who certainly knew.. The name of the second wasCorm, a lad perhaps a .year or twoolder., eyes gray ra'ther than thecommon blue, hair not blond andcurling but brown and lank, ~allowof skin; his father was one of thethree subchiefs of the townlet. IfCorm had not given the boy mailygood words, that was nothing, noone did that; but he had never given any ill ones at all. The third wasa whey-faced, slack-mouthed,slack-limbed sha'mbelton, with analmost perpetual eruption about

69'

the mouth at which he ever pickedand which generally bled; a liarand bully and boor, yet well connected-that is, connected to families of some small importancewho, by talking loud and often andbig, made that small seem greater.

It was one of those momentswhich seem to have been a part ofthe center of all things, lying inwait from the beginning. No hintof it before. Old Hinna's grandson~tanding idly watching. Whey-faceshambling along. The boy lookingat him. Looking up to see Cormwatching Whey-face as well. Hiseyes meeting Corm's. Instantly, asthough spoken words had passedbetween them: It was Whey-facewho gave that first, wrong whistle,which would have been done rightif Tall Roke had done ito at theright time if it should have beendone at all; it came from whereWhey-face was, and only he wouldhave been fool enough, cowardenough to have done it, done it incoward-fool hopes of a reassuringreturn of it: it was that whistle, ill-·done, wbich roused the °mammont-in another moment Tall Rokewould have seen it and managed toget us all safe away somehow,but-

Still that same second. Wheyface looking up as though called,catching their glance,- understanding, flushing, paling, and at oncereacting in his coward way-notcoward-foolish this time but coward-cunning. Pointing at the boy,shouting at the boy, attracting instantly every eye and mind voicingthe unvoiced and making clamorbecome instant fact: UIt was him!He brought the ill-fate, he brought

the mammont there! The bear'sbastard with the bear-stink on him!Bear's bastard! Nain's get! Madethe mammont come! Curse-bringer! Shag-skin! Killed our men andboys! Him! Him! Him!" And,stooping, he snatched up a piece ofdried filth, ran and flung it.

Then sticks, then stones. Nextwould-be arrows, axes, spears. Noneed to inquire, discuss, reason,weigh-instant, heart-warminghatred was qUick, easY:- HBear'sbastard! Curse-bringer! Menkilled! Bear-stink!" The mammont was gone, the boy remained.He saw Corm's mouth open butneither he nor any heard Corm'sword, drowned out in the bullvoiced clamor of all of Whey-face'skith and kin, believing o.r not ~e

Heving, belief beside the point, thepoint: Ours. Support him. Shoutloud. Throw something.

The boy ran. Terror runs swifterthan rage follows. Boys can gowhere big men cannot-holes, hollows, runways, dogpaths, shinnyup slender trees and" drop over pali~g~Th~re ~as h.iLQld unclecrouching by his slender fire. Itwas an instant. His grandmother'shut. oA packet thrust into hishands, the bark bag with the smallvictuals the old man took withhim when he hunted herbs. A hidelifted up to show an -opening theboy had never seen before. A burrow. wide enough fQ.r him~ _I\.patch of light. The village"palisad~s behind him. An echoingthat might have been the clamor ofthe mob. That might have been thebeating of, his blood~ Somethingclutched in his other hand. He ran.He ran.

I I

"GO, ARNTEN. Find yourfather," the old uncle had

said as he lifted the hide-flap. As itfell and all was dark, the boy heardhim say, '4 It is time." Then nothing but a· faint moment of one ofthe old man's chantings. Arnten.The word 'lodged like a grub in ahoneycomb cell. Arnten. But therewas rio sign, yet. A faint thought: itis my name. No time for furtherthought. Arnten. His name. Thatand escape. For now, enough. Alife. A name.

In the woods, however, nothingwas now asking his name..With aknowledge deeper than thought heavoided the hard-trodden dust ofthe common path and sank intothe thicket like a snake. Behind,he heard the clamor and. shoutingdescend into a single sound on asingle note and stay there, like thenoise of a swarm of bees hoveringand mrumming its one duH noteforever. Somehow it sounded inTfinitely more menacing than anycluster of mere words. Presentlythe humming-mrumming grewlouder. Then loud. The ear-

. pressed earth ~choed like a drumhead. The echo filled the ear andair. Suddenly it was gone and he,Arnten, realized that it had gone atime ago and that he was alone and

I that if any were still seeking him,they were Qot doing it here.

Slowly he rose up in .the thicketlike a mist. He gained the path. Hesnuffed up the breeze. He listened.He was gone.

A BI RD sang twit-twit-twit on abranch. A ground squirrel

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

hopped and scampered, sc~.m

pered and hopped, vanished fromview. There was a smell of wetness, of damp earth and the scentof the sweet green breath of plants.Arnten knew that there were timesto look up and times to look downand times to look straight ahead.He saw the bush, he saw throughthe bush and, a long, long way beyond the bush he saw the boles ofseveral trees but nothing in between. Softly, gently, he pushedthe shrubby branches aside. For amoment he paused, holding hisbreath, listening. There was not,had not been for long, sounds ofmob or pack or crowd. There hadbeen no man so"unds at all, save for

. his own. It was improbable thatany enemy of .his own blood wasnear. It was not impossible.

But he heard no new noise. Onlythe faint patter of the groundsquirrel. Only the same twit-twittwit of the bird on the branch.

He slipped past the handful ofbranches and let them make theirown return to their natural positions, only restraining themenough so that they should closewithout sound. He went on a bitand then he stopped and considered, there in the cool green corridor which for now meant safety.It had been used enough to create atrail, but little enough to allowthe bush's growing to obscure theentrance.. Perhaps small anddainty deer slipped along this tunnel through the trees. They wouldnot mind sharing it with him. Orperhaps white tiger, dire wolf,snowy leopard, used it in quest ofthe same small dainty deer.. Thisthought contracted and shook his

limbs in a long shudder. He feltand saw the nap of hairs quiver.upon his skin and stand up from thefearful flesh.

His mind leaped from thought tothought as a spark. of fire leapsfrom one twig to another. Another boy, conceiving the samethought, might find his mind working thought of danger-beastequals danger-beast equalspanic-run for your life, withouteven realizing the proeess. But hisown mind worked thought ofdanger-beast.equals think about danger-beast. And he stopped andthought.

Thethought is""ot the thing.And the thought told hinl that

the thing, the great ones among the-danger-beasts, were seldom ifeyer to be found in this·"art ofThule at this season of the year;they were to be found (or rather,avoid6d) farther to the north,where men had less thinned out thegame on which they chieflypreyed; winter snows, in which thehooved beasts would flounder andbe more easily tracked .andtrapped and killed, might indeedbring the great killers down.

But then again might not. _He felt the drum within his bos

om slow its clamor and then itsbeats receded to their normal slowstrokes, below the threshhold ofperception. He began to go on,but the trail was narrow and something .caught upon a branch andheld him. He looked do'wn and sawhe was stiP carrying withoutawareness the' two things hastilytaken in his flight from town. Thebark bag of food, the bear-tokenupon its leathern thong. It was this

last he now had to disengage. Itseemed somehow as natural tohang it around his neck as to loopthe grass cord of the food walletfrom shoulder to hip. So. He hadno weapon but he had food, itselfa sort of weapon-was not hungerthe chief enemy? He had a potencyin the form of the bear carving, atoken of whoever his fatherwas-a father contained in a pieceof weod on a thong was betterthan no father at all. Find yourfather, Arnten. 'What did he knowof how or where? Either his fatherwas or was not a bear. If not, thenhe knew and could know nothing.If so-then what? Where werebears? Anywhere, manywhere,where there were trees and streams.So. Avoid the grasslands, thegreat meadows. But he would havedone so in any case. There was thegame .he could not take, therewould be the great beasts, the danger-beasts he could not forfend.

Therefore, the forest. A treecreaked. It seemed a Yes.

WHEN the balls of boiled millet and scraps of dried meal'

and fish were gone from his barkbag he went a while without andhe hungered., Then there were berries and plants his old herb-unclehad shown him. He ate walkingand he slept little. He seemed toneed less 9f either. If the pathforked and one branch inclined to~

ward the plains of danger, he tookthe other. If there was still a choiceand a question, he held the .tokenin his hands and pointed it betw~en the paths. It moved. Sometimes slowly, slightly. But itmoved. It had one day not yet

stopped moving when he felt theeyes upon him and looked up.They were great, glowing, ambereyes-intelligent eyes, but far toostrange to be the eyes of any man.Nor were they.

The figure was squat of body andshag of skin, with" a brown main ofhair upon scalp and broad face.The extraordinarily long armswere folded across the extraordinarily thick chest. A kilt ofsoft leather girdled the loins.Short were the powerful legs. Overarms, hands and chest and belly thelong brown hair grew thickly. Theboy found himself looking at hisown body and limbs. Instantly,several thoughts-and one ofthem as an almost instant surprise: I am not afraid! And, another-

UNay, boy.'" The voice wasstrange in more than being unknown. It had odd tones andechoes, the final vowels nasalizedso that almost they sounded asnay'n, hoy'n. UNay, boy. It's isn'tme nurr any we who's is fatheredye 'n given 'e them warm hairs upon yurr's skin." So acutely did thestrange one discern his thoughts.And spoke a few words of no understanding, at first, to theboy-whose ear sped back andcaught on a word he knew.

HArn't. "He said, uThe bear-"Something flashed golden in the

amber eyes. More strange words.Then- UYe dow int .speak enwi~chery words-hey'n?" Arntenshook his head. HNay," murmured the stranger. Almost, itwas UNgayng." He said, "Wespeak it ever 't'the forge. Ye must's

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

ever speak en 't' Th' Old Tonguet'iron, furr ~ron 't's a witcherything. So we speak en it furr habit,ef we dow int think not to-"

UYou said-'Arn't'-"HEh. We speak 's'en it, too,

't'the bear, furr the bear dow "be awitchery-beast. All creaturr dowdie, but the bear dow come aliveagains. And the Star Bear dowgived we-folk the first fire." Theglowing eyes fixed his own. Theodd voice, strong and strange, butdevoid of harm for him, went on.HEn all of Thule's the wurrd goneround, 4 When the wolf dow meetthe bear: beware.' " There seemedsomething expectant in his tone,something expectant in his look.

But look and tone alike meantnothing to the boy, who said, asthough thinking aloud, HA nain."The nain stopped his head and hisshoulders. And' the boy said,HArnten, I am Arnten." And thistime the nain stooped his entirethick body to the waist:

Then, straightening, he extended an arm so long that its fingers almost touched Arnten'schest. HWe know en what place '1'is." The boy's eyes followed andsaw the thick and hairy fingers ofthe~ thick and hairy hand werepointing not to his body but to thetoken slung upon it.

HWhere? It is here."The nain grunted, held up a hand

straight from the wrist in the nainsign of negation. HNot this. Th'other this. Th'-th'-" He struggled to express himself, his manner rather like that of a man seeking a paraphrase for a thing hedoes not care to name precisely.HTh' other this. That!"

And he turned and walked away.Arnten followed.

A FTER a full seven-days' walkthey came to it. The place was

more of a hole or cleft than a cave,but it was dry. Part of the ceilinghad fallen in; boulders littered thefloor. The nain without hesitating or pausing put his chestagainst the largest and wound longarms around it. He moved thestone up and over and then back.uTake 'f up," he said. U'T's notfurr we to touch." It, clearly, wasnot the rock. A moment passed, inthe dim light before Arnten sawit. For a moment he thought it wasa piece of wood. Then, more by intuition than lineal recognition,he knew. that what he saw on theground where the rock--h-ad beenwas a witchery-bundle.·

That.It was perhaps the size of his

forearm and, with his forearm,after he had taken it outside inthe sunlight, he wiped at the dustyhide covering. It was certainly awitchery-bundle. There werewitchery signs upon it, some clear,some dim, some familiar, someunknown. Largest and mostdeeply etched were the .sun and thebear. The bear was almost certainly a replica of the one he wore.Or-was it the other way around?UThe sun," he said.

UEh'ng," the nain agreed. uThesun and the bear, they go together. For the sun dies and 't comesalive again. And the bear dow dieand dow come alive again. Thesun give fire and the bear, too~

Eh'ng," he said, after a moment,eyeing the hide-covered bundle,

and musing. UHow many snowtimes? Two hands? Surely two.But three? Surely not three. Bear,he telled a-we, Here dow be mytoken. Here dow by my," the naingestured, Uthat. Bear telled: 'Lookfor it. If you see him, manchildbearchild-if you see my tokenon'-t'him; show him where.' Andwe say'd him, Eh'ng-ah, Bear."

It was mystery, but it was goodmystery. Witchery, but he couldnot think it any but good witchery.It was a good moment. Why, then,did the flood of bad memory riseup in his lJlind, come spilling outof his mouth? UThey stoned me.They pelted me with filth. Theycalled me nain's get and bear's bastard and they tried to kill me."

The nain's amber-colored eyesglowed and darkened and in levelsunlight glowed like a beast's inthe night, glowed red, glowedlike an amber in the nighttime fire.

Words like distant thunderrolled in his vast chest and rumbled in his wide throat.

uWolf1s lice! Accursed smoothskins!" He spoke at last in thecommon tongue and continued todo . so, though occasionally dropping into naintalk or the archaiclanguage of witchery. ulf it ·werenot for us and our iron they wouldstill be eating of grubs and lizardsand roots. And what will they donow, as iton dies? Is there one ofthem, a single one even, with cunning and courage enough to feedthe wizards? Their king, ah, hemight have, when he was young,but he's gotten old now, he's gotten half-mad now, he looks in thewrong direction, he afflicts whereno affliction can help, the wind

blows cruel hard from the northbut he thinks it blows from thesouth! A nain's life is that it'sworth to try to persuade him-if anain wished it. As' for the rest of theslim race-" He caught his breath,part in a sigh, part in a sob. Thefiery glow in his eyes began to dieaway.

UNay, I'll say no more as regards that race and blood, 'tis partly yours. They may deny it, maydeny you-you may wish to denyit and them. But the blood cannotbe denied. Nay, nay. The bloodcannot be denied." Abruptly, gesturing to the' bundle, the nainsaid, HOpen it then."

The outer covering had been tiedtight with sinews, but his probingfingers found one loose enough toallow his teeth purchase. Hegnawed, felt the fibers' giveway-give until his teeth met witha click. Quickly his fingernailspulled the thread, tugged it frompierced hole, from the next andnext. Some sort of dried membrane-the bladder, perhaps, of alarge animal-was inside theouter covering, bound about withbark cord which ·did not long resistattack. Inside was a long pouchwith a drawstring -tied in tassels.Carefully he unfastened this,carefully he laid out the contentson the outer wrappings.

First, by size' alone, was a knifein a sheath of horn and leather,with a good bone handle carved inthe same likeness of a bear. Itwasentirely unaffected by the ironrot. It was ~ good knife.

There was also a dried andwithered beechnut.

There was also a greenstone.

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

There was also a bear's claw.. There was also, bent and doubled, but not yet broken, a riverreed.

There was nothing el~e.

He looked up to ask about these,but the nain was gone:

EVERY man had a witcherybundle; even children devised

them in imitation of their elders.Some had richly adorned ones, thecontents bought of high-pricedwitcherers for nuggets of amberand pelts of marten, sable,.. ermine;white tigers, snow leopards. Somehad but meager pouches containing perhaps a single item-abone, a dried this-or-that, a something seen in a dream and soughtfor and fo·und. A tooth pried froma dry skull. A fragment of something said to be a thunderstone.

Some had inherited.So had he.The knife alone would at any

time have been deemed a good inheritage, the more so now thatgO'od iron was hard to find andharder to keep. The 'more so forthe circ*mstances of its hidingand'" finding. But- what did theother me'an? A bear claw, nowthat. was easy to unders~and. Butthe reed? The greenstone? Arnten,find your father. Had he foundhim? Not yet., But now, havingfound this much, might he not finda source? For as long-no, longer-than he himself had lived, thenains had not seen his father. Hemight be dead. He might be faraway. He might be neither. Hemight be alive and very near.

Arnten carefully restored themagic items to their pouch-ex-

.75

cept for the knife, which he slungabout his waist-and started off.·Excitement and happiness hadmade him heedless and when heheard the low-voiced song in theclearing he had no thought but tosee who was singing it.

It was one of the -Painted Men,that was at once obvious-one ofthe Painted Men whom it wasdeath to see unpainted. By greatest good fort~ne, though, he hadjust finished painting himself,however-and what a curious pattern his skin did present! Almosthideous. Not till the .man, stillhumming his witchery-song, liftedhis brush and dipped it in a tiny potdid Arnten realize, cold with' horror, that what he was seeing wasthe man's naked skin!-that he hadonly then begun. .__ ~

The Painted (or unPainted) Man.swung about, panting with shameand rage. Arnten felt the club'lsfirst blow.

III

T HE. old nain stood stolidlywhere the uneasy soldiers had

bade him stand. He could withoutgr~at effort have broken the ribs ofall of them and the necks of mostbefore any of them could stop him-and perhaps it was this thatmade them uneasy. But perhapsnot. The king's camp and courtwas an uneasy place in generalthese days-not that the rest ofThule -lay at much ease either.Slots of sunlight carne through thesmoke hole in the top of the greattent. The king sat back on a peltpiled bench and the nain thought itseemed they lied who said the king

was age-wasted. Indeed, as the Orfas sat there, glaring, hands~lenched upon his knees, he seemed alltoo vigorous. Within himself theold nain sighed a slight sigh. Onlyto the extent that the smoothskinswere unpredictable were they predictable at all. Ah, eh. Seasonscome and seasons go and ever therace of nains would remain uponthe earth. Meanwhile, one endured.Heat, cold, toil, hunger, thirst, asavage beast, an unwise king.

A witchery queen.The soldiers, fumbling and.

breathing their unhappiness, finished shackling the old nain's horsehide fetters to one of the roofposts, were angrily waved outside,almost stumbled over; each otherin their eagerness to obey.

For a long moment the kingcontinued to glare. Then he said,slowly and with effort, but quitecorrectly, HUur-tenokh-tenokhguur."

So, this was·something. At leastthe king remembered the. nain'sproper name. Or had learned it. Asmall courtesy, perhaps. But acourtesy. He would return it. HOrfas," he said.

The king's head snapped up witha jerk. He was not angered, he wasnot pleased, his attention had beencalled to something forgotten.Probably it had been long since hehad been called by his own name inThe Old Tongue, called anything(perhaps) save King or Great BullMammont or some other licklegflattery such as the smoothskinsused. The old nain almost withoutthinking essayed more syllables inthe witchery language, but theking's swift gesture cut him off.

UMy store of that speech has old nain said aloud. In his mind herusted in my m.ind," Orfas said, said that in the brighter light theUas has my story of the iron you Orfas looked his full age indeed.have cursed." His head shifted, his Gray streaked the once yellow hair,eyes flashed. U Why have you now scanted. The smoothskin wascursed it?" . no longer quite so smooth of skin

"We have not. Do you .curse at. all: here wrinkled, there slack,your kingdom?" elsewhere puffed with fat where not

"You are the High Smith of the .hollowed. It was nonetheless well,nains. I have not had you brought this act. Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guurhere to bandy questions with me." sat and the king sat before him.

"You had not brought me here Would he eat?-Would he drink?at all, had I not thought you would the king asked. The nain grunted,keep your word." held his hand up. No. A silence fell.

Bluff and bluster. What? Not UListen," said the king at last.kept his word? How? UWhat will you naiDs do when the

uyou said I would not be barbar-folk invade?"bound." UI do not know that they will in-

A false and further look of out- vade. I do not believe that they willraged pride, falling into one of invade. Why do you think so?"faint regret and helplessness at The king restrained himself. Be-·having been stupidly misunder- neath his shag eyebrows his eyesstood. UI said that you would not looked at the nain like the watersbe bound with iron." of a wintry sea. "Why should they

UIs it by such cunning shift of not invade?· Are we now known towords that you hope to command them as the source of great wealth?either my respect or my assis- Amber and ivory and peltry-dotance?" The king flushed, either in .they not value these things? Isaffront or from sQme vestigial there not a proverb, When the preysense of shame. "Do you think me stumbles, the hunter sharpens hisan owl or a bat, unable to see in knife? They will invade to gain ourdaylight? I see that none of your wealth; they will invade because~aptives are bound in iron. It is not without iron, good iron for .weapout of any honor that I have been ons, we are weak before them; theybound in thongs of skin, but be- will invade because I tell you theycause you no longer trust iron." It intend to invade and it is in orderwas a statement, not a question, it to strengthen themselves by weakwent home. The king looked aside, ening us that they have cursed ourfor a moment at a loss. "I will give iron-"you an advice-" The king sat up. The old nain wheezed in the way"Sea-cow's skin is tougher by far that nains have and he said, "Soand far less risky to hunt." now it is the barbar-folk who have

The king growled and moved on cursed iron. And not the nains."his bench. Then he came forward Slant-glanced, Orfas looked atand, stooping, loosed the· High him. "All the witchery of iron isSmith's bounds. "It is well," the yours and you have kept it you'rs

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE 77

,and we have suffered you to keepit yours. Besides the one kept bytreaty at my court, there has beenno forge outside of Nainland. Ifany man had a broken spear orplowpoint, he had to wait in hopesof a wandernain coming by withunbroken spear or plowpoint totrade him old for new. plus a goodly gift- Nay, High Smith. I neverbegrudged the nainfee, myself paying highest of all. I f this is at thebottom of all, let it be said thenainfee will be raised, let it be

I doubled, tripled-" .UI t is not we."The king's teeth clenched upon a

strand of beard he had thrust intohis mouth.. "What has ever happened (0 iron without the nains'causing it to happen?"

"This is a new thing, King. Hadwe not asked you long before youasked we?"

The king's hand made a moveinent, the king's face made a movement. The king was not in an instant ·persuaded. "You asked inorder to cover' yourself. But youhave not covered yourself~ Do younot know that the king's ears arethe longest ears in Thule? I hearall things and I can, from what Ihear, teckon all things. Thus it isthat I know that iron is accursed,that the nainfolk have cursed itat whose behest and for what purpose? Your silence is useless.Speak, then."

The old nain sighed."If you hear all things, then al

ready you have h~ard of what thenains say among the nains in Nainland, namely that it is doubtless adevice of the neglected wizards ofWizardland in order to ensure that

they do not remain neglected: thiscurse, the death of iron. And iffrom what you. hear you can reckon all things, then you can reckonwhat needs be done."

Now it was the king who sighed.uyou speak to me as though we

were two old women poundingbark. You will speak differently ifI come upon Nainla~d with all mymen."

The old High Smith shook hismassive head. "It is all one, if youco~e upon Nainland with all yourmen or with but one or none ofyour men. The forges of Nainlandare cold, Orfas. The forges ofNainland are cold."

As HE stepped from the outerI to the inner of the two rooms

in which he was to be lodged-orconfined-he saw three great whiteflowers lying together upon a mat.He stopped still.

"I thought you might reme~

ber," a voice said. "I thought itmight please you." •

"Dame, I do remember," theold nain said. "And I am pleased."

He touched without bendingdown the flowers with his fingers.The blooms were scentless, but theroom contained the scent of somethat had never blossomed fn thenorthern land of Thule. He hadheard of the tiny horns and smallflasks carven. in strange designsupon strange stone, which contained the odorous essences of plantsfor which Thule had no name, delivered at intervals in trading vessels for great price and for theanointing and the pleasure of theOrfas Queen. He turned.

"Your face told me that you

had never seen them before andthat they pleased you; so I gavethem to you, the three of them,and presently yo.u ·gave me these-" She took from her" broad bejewled belt the ivory case containing the three small things so care-fully wrought: dirk and spoon andcomb. uOnly see," she said, sorrowfully. The red-rotted' metalcrumbled" at her slight fingertouch. Hean you not effect acure?'"

His broad stern face relaxed into something much like sorrow, heheld both his hands straight up atthe wrists. UThey are so ,small,"he said, musing. UAII the witcheryof iron known to the nains mightjust suffice to mend them. But theOrfas King would not believe that.If these could be cured, he wouldexpect, he would demand, he wouldrequire, that atl the rotting iron inhis realm be cured. And this cannot be done. I do not say it cannever be done. But it cannot bedone now. I do not know when.Perhaps never again ~n our livesDame-perhaps never in our lives

"A moment's silence. UI shall

leave them at the forge," she said.Again a moment's silence. Thenshe said and her beauty seemed noless than it had been that long agowhen Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur had

I been a wandernain and she the ladyof the Orfas Chief. He not yetking. She not yet queen. Sundrysayings Ooated in his mind. Onequeen is every queen, every queenis all queens. A beautiful woman,no doubt, and without questionwell versed in witchery, though heknew as little of queencraft as she

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

of naincraft. She spoke again andsaid, uWhat have you to teU" me ofone who waits to return fromacross the all-circling sea?" Helooked at her with pure unknowingand the certainty ebbed fromher face. Then she said, uOne whois not to be named, one who is theson of the'half-brother-"

Understanding seemed to comenot so much from his mind asfrom his broad and grizzled chest,whence a sigh of comprehensionwelled .. uAhhh. That one, who contested with- Nay, Dame, I haven'tseen that one for four handfuls ofseasons. Eh, must be full four. Norheard of that one in that time. Sayyou that he has passed the all-circling seas?"

She gazed at him, a line betweenher brows. uSay you not? I seeyou seem full ignorant of what Ihad thought every nain, as everyman, has heard: that one fled tothe barbar-Iands after fleeing court-when my Orfas gained the king..ship-and has conspired to cursethe iron so that, when he returnswith hordes of barbar-folk, thekingsmen shall be· a~ though unarmed. And say you that you knowthis not?"

He stretched forth both his· long,long arms and held up both histhick and calloused palmsstraight up-and he looked at herwith pure unknowing.

L ONG he sat there alone, mus..ing on what she had said, striv

ing to make sense of it. Long hesat there, reflecting on old conflicts long forgotten-thoughclearly not forgotten by the OrfasKing. Long he sat there, yearning

for the red fires and the· hot forgesand the lust. and joy of beating outthe good red iron. Old forge songsand sayings came to him and oldsayings not of the forge at all, suchas By three things only can a kingbe made: by strength, by magic,and byfortune.

Having set in the outercourt awatch of "mandrakes who wouldshriek beshrew if so much as unbidden shadow fell, Merreddelfen,the principal witcherer, and theking and queen sat in the Room ofSecret Counsel.

Said theiqueen, UWhat news?"Said the king, UWhat help?"Said the sage, uMuch news, lit-

tle help."In his mind he said, Little news,

no help. But one did not say suchdire words, doom wor4s,- to theking. uSlayer of SpearTeeth, thePainted Men report a spy in theforest. I have no fear; the spy isdead."

Said the king, UWhy dead? Whydead? From a dead spy no newscan be gotten."

Said the queen, UWhy not dead?A dead spy betrays no secrets."

Said the sage, HGreat DireWolf, a dream has been dreamedof All-Caller, the great fey horn.No doubt this portends great goodand who better to enjoy great goodthan thee, Great Dire Wolf?"

Said th.e king, uAh."Said the queen, "Oh."Said the sage, UWoe."Said the king and queen,

uWhat?"Said the sage quite swiftly,

U'Woe to the enemies of the Kingof Thule, ,the Slayer of Bull Mammonts, the Great Dire Wolf."

80·

Said the sage quite slowly,uWearing my Cloak 'of Night, Icrept to the mines; there I heardthe nain-thralls chanting in the OldLanguage, singing in the MagicTongue. Lord and Lady, they intoned a tale of Fireborn, a thing ofwitchery of which they said it willcut good iron. Good iron/-Lordand Lady! And if toe nainfolkmake words about" good iron, isthis not a sigh that the nains know.that iron will soon be as good asiron was before?"

Said the sage quite steadily,ULady,. you must use all your waysand wiles. Lady, you must prepare for many j,ourneyings. Lady,you must wear many masks."

Then they set their heads even(!loser together and they whisperedand nodded and bit their lips. Themandrakes muttered. And theshadows danced.

T HE breadth of the cavern was.one nain wide and the height

of the cavern was one nafn high.Soldier guards, kingsmen, wereobliged to stoop. More than oncewhen the nain-thralls had been ordered . to make the roof higherthey expressed a gruff unwillingness to do so, saying that the roofwould fall. So the guards were obliged to swing sideways ~he cudgelswith which they struck the nain~

thralls if the nains did not hacktheir stone-mattocks into thecrumbly ironrock swiftly enoughor if t~ey lingered or stumbledwhile carrying the baskets of oreup the I.ong incline and up the riskyladders set in shallow steps-up,up and up to· the open sky insidethe grim.stockade.

Not long ago the notion ofnain-thralls had only belonged tothe past-a subject for wintertales or summer-night songshow, in the days of bronze-whenno king reigned-the nain-thrallsdug the brazen-ore* and forgedthe brazen-tools, how the green-sickness came upon Thule and allbronze died and Chaos was king;how the nains discovered the secret witchery of iron and werefree men at all times after, onlypaying the nainfee to the manking who in subduing the chiefssucceeded them as Power.

Thralldom was still the subjectof song and story-.or rather,again. ..

But who cared what dirges thenains sang as they toiled or whataccounts they told as they lay ontheir beds of bracken in their imprisoned nights?

The swans fly overheadAnd the nains see them.

The moles tunnel through theearth

~nd the nains see them.Stockades do not wall the swans

A nd the nains see them.Fetters do not bind the moles

A nd the nains see them.

The baskets of ore were emptiedinto hand barrows and the thrallscarried the barrows to the forge.

Once the nains were free as swansAnd the nains see them.

Once ihe nains were free as molesA nd the nains see them.

* Ahhough the presence of bronze as acrude earth is very rare. it is not unknown.

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

The forge was a flat rock rising from deep under the ground.The fire burned upon a hearth ofother flat rocks, raised to a platform of the same height as the'forge. 1he lumps of ironstone(and the articles of sick iron) wereplaced in the fire and burned. Although the kingsmen walked toand fro in violation of the ancientcompact which excluded them as.it did all strangers, they learnednothing fro~ their observationsthat did them any good. All oreslooked alike to them; they did.not know which ones to discard.All fired' ironstones remainedmysteries still to them; .they knewnot, though the nains did, whichones to discard as too brittle andwhich to 'pull out with greenwoodtoolsticks to be pounded upon the"forg~ ..stone. Nor did they learn '(orvery much attempt to learn) _~he

art of smiting with the ·stout stonehammer, turning and beating,beating and turning-all the whileintoning in the Old Tongue:

Pound it, pound it, pound it well,·Poundiiwell,well,well, .

.Pound it well, pound it well, Pound it well, well, well . ..

because it was said, The sound ofthe voice is goodfor the iron . ..

P ERHAPS it was no longeras good as it once had been.

Nothing seemed to be. Day. afterday the nains toiled to make newiron, hacks and spears and knifeheads and arrow poi'nts. And dayafter day the -pr09uctions of-atfirst-the previous year were returned to them, rotten with rust,

flaking and powdering, to bemelted down and made new andwhole again. The previous yearat first. Then the irons of the previous half-year. Then the previous

.season. Then last week, monthlast fortnight.

One sweating nainsmith pausedand pointed to a red-sick lancehead and his chest, thick andthicketed as some woodland hill,swelled as he spoke. UNot aseven-night since I beat this outand now look how swift the ironill has afflicted it!" And he addedin the witchery-tongue: 44Thou artsick, thou art sick. Alas and woeto thee and us for thy very sickness"

And in his rumbling, echoingvoice he began to chant and wasjoined by his thrall-fellows:

Woe for the iron that is sick,A nil the nains see it.

Woe for the black stone whosered blood wastes,

A nd the nains see it.

He thrust the heap of rustedmetal into the wood fire, deep,deep, till red coals and red metals-met.

Woe for the king whose men takecaptive,

And the nains see it.They take captive upon the paths,

And the nains see it.They lead away in heavy ropes,

A nd the nains see i'.Captivity and toil lay waste the

heart,A nd the nains see it.

Captivity and toil lay waste theflesh,

• A nd the nains see it.The nain-thra/ls waste like iron,

The king's evil is like rust,The queen's lust is wasteful, evil,

Evil, evil, are these times,These days, cons.umed as though

by wolves.When will the wolfconfront the

bear,And the nains see it?

When wilfthe stars· throw downtheir spears?

A nd the nains see it?Confusion take these smooth of

- skinA nd the nains see it?

When will the wizards' mouthsbe/ed,

A nd the nains see it?

The nainsmith seized a lumpof iron and beat upon it with thestone hammer with great, resounding blows; and with eachblow they all shouted a word:

When! Will! This! King-! -dom!Ro.t! And! Rust!

And! The! Nains! See! It!

STRANGE sounds he heard ashe lay between earth and sky,

rising and sinking, turning overand over again. Strange calls uponstrange horns, strange voices,sounds. Pains, swift and passinglike flashes of lightning, shotthrough him, again and again,then less often. The Painted Menwere pursuing him; he hid fromthem; he hid in hollows beneaththe roots of trees, he hid in theforks of the branches of trees,perched upon the crests of rocks,

slid into the spaces between them.Always, always, saw the PaintedMen prance by, panting in rageand shame that he had seen theirnaked skin. Always, always hestayed quite still. And always, always, they passed him by. And always, always they paused, legs frozen in mid-stride.

And always they turned, sawhim; he felt the blows; all vanished.

Years went by.

as the inside of certain sea or rivershells.

The hand placed something onhis puffed eye, something cool anddamp and soothing.. . .. and without awareness of intent to do so, he put up his handand took. the other by the wrist an~sat up. Almost, he had not heldthe hand at all. Almost, it was asif his fingers were encirclingsomething which had dimensionwithout having substance-a delicate flower, as it might be, in theshape of a hand-and it slipped

W HEN he became aware that out from his grasp as simply as ahe was returning to the ev- sunbeam.

eryday world he said in his mind He had never seen a perry be-that he would be very cunning and fore. ·not reveal that he was no longer Something. slipped off his eyein the other world. He lay very he saw it was a'dressing of bruisedstill. Perhaps the Painted Men leaves and grasses, damp aswere uncertain if he were alive or though with. the morning's dew:dead and were lying in wait to the perry's delicate and almost insee. He could not, through his substantial hand took it andparted eyelids, observe anyone or placed it on the. swollen eye againanything at all, save for the green and the perry's other hand tooknetwork surrounding him and his hand, did not so much lift ~s

through which faint glints of sky guide it· to hold the co.mpress inwere visible. But he had a faint place.yet firm feeling that if he were to As the thin dew sparkling upon aroll his eyes just a bit to the right cobweb, so did the perry's gar- He did not; he was too canny ments glint and sparkle; as the shyfor that. fawn stands in the gladey under-

Besides, his right eye seemed brush, not quite trembling andswollen so much that- not quite looking at the intruder

And then a hand appeared, but poised for instant flight, sosmall as that of a large child, deli- did the perry stand at the entrancecate as that of a young woman, to the leafy bower. .yet not either:' in the dim green Arnten's body did not so muchlight and through only one and a still pain him as it echoed fainthalf eyes the hand seemed not reflections of remembered pain.entirely real, seemed almost trans- Dim outline~· of bruises he couldlucent, had something about the see here and there upon his skin.;bone structure, the nails-how he remembered enough lore ofmany joints were the~e-nacreous herbs and simples from his medi·'

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE 83

cine uncle to know that even themost puissant leaves or roots orgrasses had not by themselvesdone all this work of healing: butthe witchery of the perries, eitherintent or inherent or both, hadaided them. At first he had had afleeting thought that he might bein the hands of The Woman of theWoods, of whom many tales weretold. To be sure, he had never seenthe Woman of the Woods, just ashe had never seen a perry-buthis uncle had told him enough ofeach so that now he knew. Hisuncle who was his mother's uncle.His mother whom he had lost.

Arnten,find yourfather.His father whom he had never

had. The bear he could not find.The man, the mocker (had saidLong Roke) who hao-"gamed"his mother. The bogey for whomthe boys of the village had heldhim slightly in awe and so much inscprn. Because of whom he hadfled for very life. In which flighthe had all but lately lost his Jife.And now lay here, back from theedge of death, in the company ofa creature far more fey than anynain, who spoke no word andbarely l.ooked at him and barelysmiled yet had felt that deep concern for him and even now trembled between visibility and invisibility, substance and shadow,staying and leaving..

This gentle presence touchedthe cords .which· bound his pentmisery and long-contained sorrow and did that which heavy andbrutal blows- had not and couldnot have done, and he coveredhis face with his hands and brokeinto tears.

He wept long and without restraint and when he had stoppedat last, he knew it would be long,if ever, before he wept again. Hiseyes were wet and his chest ached,but these were slight shadowswhich would pass. All his bodyaches had gone. Something hadchanged in him forever. He driedhis eyes, including - the one n~

longer swollen--and- he was on hisknees and -rising when he realizedthat the perry was no longer there.

H E WAS aware of hunger andthirst, but more of thirst. He

was aware of, sOl1)ething else, asound that had been sighing in hisears for as long as he had been inthis shelter which somehow theperry had made for him. - Sometimes the sound was as faint as _ababy's breath; sometimes it grewalmost as loud as the wind whichcarried it and sometimes louder,the tider overbearing the steed.Somewhere not so very far awaywas a river and now, in this moment of his great thirst (waterperhaps needed to replenish thatshed by his uncommon tears),great was the sound of its rushing.

The perry' had stood upright,but Arnten found he was obligedto stoop, although certainly thegrasses and the light, light witheswould have yielded easily to hishead. And so, while at the curiously woven opening, stoopingslightly and about to go out, hebecame aware of-two things lyingalmost concealed by the fragrantgrasses of the shelter's floor. Onewas the witchery-bundle to whichboth bark basket and knife hadbeen tied by deft and curious per-

ry-knots; the other reappeared tohim as though out of his dreamworld between the time the PaintedMan had ·beaten him to theground an~ the .time of his reawakening.

He recalled it now. When hehad felt (and doubtless had indicated) thirst, something hadglowed and glittered in the air before him, touched his lips and hehad drunk. He had in his semithoughts believed it a fragment ofa rainbow conveying the coolingrainwater to his lips; or a gigantically distended drop, suffusedwith multicolored lights, distillinginto water on his lips and tongue.Now he saw it to be, less fantastically but not much less wondrously, a flask of some substance unfamiliar to him. Lightpassed into it and through it andhe voiced wordless surprise onobserving that he could seethrough it! What he saw was subject to a gros's distortion. Theflask was iridescent as the finger-nails of the perry or the interiorof .certain shells, shining with amultitude of colors which shiftedand changed. And it weighedmuch less than a vessel of earthenware of the same bulk. He marveled, but did not stop for long todo so; he placed it in the basketalong with the witchery-bundle(knife again by hip); he. consideredwhat its name might be. For present identification alone h~ deemedto call it perryware.

And then he stepped outside,ready to seek his stream.

The sound of the river was quitestrong outside the small grassshelter, shelter so slight that seem-

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

ingly a· fawn could have crushedit by rolling over, now that theprotecting presence of the perrywas withdrawn. He saw no tracesof a fawn, but pausing a momentand wondering what. had croppedthe small measure of meadow,greenery and flowery, he saw thepellet droppings of the wild ramsand-his eyes now opened-here ashred and there a fluff of theirwool. His uncle had at one timeamassed a small heap of theirhooves (begged, doubtless, fromhunters) which lay·a long while ina corner, oily and :strong-smelling.Once a nain .had come to tradenew iron for old and the rams'hooves had vanished-but forwhat consideration and for whatpurpose he had never asked andnever learned.

The wind brought the riv.ersound stronger, nearer, to hisears; the wind brought a scentof flowers, too. He was on adownward slope and in a moment,following the land contours~ hefound himself wading through theblossoms-first they were underhis feet, then around his ankles;then they touched the calves of hislegs, his _knee~and he brushedthem away from his face. Glancing at his hands, he saw.blood.

Astonished, he looked around.Each clump of "flowers grew froma flashy green pod. Pod? Paw?There had been a wild catton inthe village·' once, though not forlong. Taking amiss being proddedwith a stick as it lay stretchingwith paws outthrust, out fromthose pa~s it thrust its claws andstruck-once-twice-at its tormentor. Who in one moment

more "had crushed its skull with arock. So, now: even as he halfhalted his movements he saw acluster of flowers dip down towardhim, thrust out a sheaf of thornsand rake his chest with them. Andthen another. And then another.His arms, his legs, his back-hecried out, looked back, was struckagain, flung his arms up beforehis eyes and staggered forward,raked with thorns and racked withpain. Then vin.el~ts wrapped'around his ankles ...

And then, for a long moment,nothing.

CAUTIOUSLY he opened hiseyes. At once his ears seemed.

to open,' too. There was a deep,intent humming in the air. Hesaw the thorn-paws of-the thicketssway and waver~ He saw themdroap. He saw a swarm of beesspread out, circle; saw, one byone, the thorns draw back intotheir pods; saw the flowers openwider. Saw each bee select itsfirst flower, mount and enter,heard the bumbledrone alter inpitch and quicken. Saw each plantstretch itself taut, then begin aslow undulant motion.

Saw himself utterly forgottenand ignored.

Once again had the wary feeling of being watched.

Saw'nothing.Made his way unvexed to the

water, kneeled and drank.Here the water rushed noisily

over the 'rocks, there it eddied andcircled silently into pools,. outfarther it glided with a joyfulclamor along its main channel;then paused and murmured

thoughtfully among the reeds.Everywhere it sparkled-in hiscupped hands as he lifted it to hismouth, as it fell in droplets fromhis face, spun around sunken logs,made the reeds rustle. Somethingwas trying to tell him-what? Thereeds nodded.

Reeds.With a movement so quick and

unstudied that he sank one foot into water, he stood up, spun aroundand unslung his witchery-bundle-or, more exactly, the witchery-bundle supposedly left by hisfather-and spread out its contentsin the sunshine. Fingers trembling,he unsheathed the knife and cut afresh reed and laid it down besidethe one in the bundle. Except thatone' was dry and one was fresh',they were identical.

Surely it was a's.ign.The medicine objects restored to

their coverings, he considered longwhat he should do. It seemed some~ow natural that he should continue along the river; there, wherehe had found the first sign, mighthe not find at least a second?

.At first he splattered along onthe sand flats and gravel beds, themudbanks and shallows of theshore. The river looked so wild, sowide, full of mystery (and, perhaps, menace). Here presently thesalmon would come surging upstream, that was certain, but notnow. What else might lie beneaththose sounding waters was uncertain indeed. Sometimes the forestcame right down to the brim andbarm as though the trees would dipand drink. Sometimes he walkedbeneath towering banks andbluffs.. After awhile he saw the

river divide and flow around anisland, the main channel to the farside, the hither side forming aquiet pool, the shore of which was asandy beach. On impulse hestopped, scooped out a hollow,placed into it his bundle and hisbasket with the perry thing, covered all with his leathern kilt,heaped sand over it. Then heturned and walked into the water.

sand, sand'clinging to him here andthere, and looked at the other twosmall'things in·-his budget of wonders: the beechnut and the bearclaw. Certainly the last was theSign of the' Bear himself, and bynow it was plain th~t what the bearwas saying was, Seek these othersif you would seek me. Find theseothers and you will find me. In theway a scout leaves signs along atrail so that those who follow may

T HE shallows had been sun- see and know what his message is,warmed, but now the deeper so the -Bear had left these signs:

and cooler waters began to lap not indeed in any sequence setagainst his legs, higher and higher, apart by space-so that one who-and he saw and felt the flesh about followed after might follow farthereach hair creep into a tiny mound. yet. .He saw that hair was now growing All clear, that. But what was thethicker about his man-parts. meaning of the beechnut? BeechAbruptly, with a slight gasp, he nuts were good to eat, though perslipped deliberately beneath the haps not very good. The blacksurface and for .a moment swine of the woods were said to besquatted on the bottom like a frog. fond of them. It wasn't clear whatHis breath heaved against his connection the wild swine had'withchest. He opened his eyes. All was the bear. Perhaps none. He beganstrange in this new world. Then to feel confused and set his.something' was suddenly familiar; thoughts to tracing their way' ashe opened his mouth and only the though through a forest path:sudden burst of bubbles reminded Bear-black swine-beechnut-.:.him that water and not air was his well enough, by working backwardsurroun~ing. He surfaced, took he had come at least to some ceranother breath, slid down once tain thing-beechnut-forestmore. In the curious light he ex- trees-

·changed quick glances with a small Beechnuts, whatever else theyfish, then bent his eyes to the river indicated, certainly indicated abottom. Green light wavered in beech tree.the green water and rippled over Not bothering to brush the sandthe green stones. from his .bare legs and bottom, not

Reed in his medicine bag, reed from the leather kilt he swiftly andbeside the water. absently donned, he slung on his'

Greenstone in his medicine-bag, gear once more and set off alonggreenstones beneath the water. the river. But this time he walked

It was the sought-for second along the dry land and looked, notsign. down, but up. And so, by arid by,

The boy-frog squatted on the by its silver-gray bark and its pale

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE 87

green leaves, but most of all itsheight, he saw the trees he sought.Some long past storm or earth.shake, or perhaps a hidden sub-sidence of the ground beneath itsroots, had inclined it at a slight angle, for it was ·near enough the river for the stream in spate to haveundercut and then covered up itsexcavating-or, pe(haps the blowof a thunderstone had bent it;above the lowest branch, many

, times his own length high over hishead a great scar was burned intothe massive trunk.

Once again he had the feeling ofbeing watched; the feeling ebbedagain.

And there was certainly no sightnor sign of a bear.

H IS disappointment .was~great.It would have been easy to

stumble or falter, only that day·s.morning had he gotten up from adaze of illness which had lastedhe realized he did not know forhow long-and he had barelypaused for rest. He had drunkonce..He had not eaten. Weaknessrose inside him. What had he expected'? To find his father and, infinding him, an end to all mysteryand aloneness forever'? Had he expected to find a father sitting at thebottom of the huge beech tree,ready to welcome him with warmembrace? Here he was, Arnten,and he was as alone, as hungry, asunkllowing as he had ever been.

What then was·he to do? Slumpbehind the shelter of a bush andsleep and die? Weakness vanished. The very force of its sensation became a strength that blazedup within him and made itself felt

without. He felt his skin tinglewith something close to rageagainst this curious father whohad cost his mother's life, hadnever come near to see what he hadbegotten, had left his cryptic messages with the nains alone. k fatherwho might be dead, long dead.

Had he been pursuing a ghost?Had he himself perhaps died already under the blows of thePainted Man and was now himselfbut a ghost? Did ghosts hunger?He allowed himself a cry of angerand bafflement. Then, ·fie'rcely, hefilled his bark basket with suchnuts and barries and leaves andshoots of greenfood as were closeto hand. At a small trickle on itsway to join the stream, he filled theperryware flask, stoppered itsneck with a plug of. fern. Hearranged everything to hang behind him. Then, angry and hoteyed, defiant and determined, heset his toes and fing~rs in thecracks and ridges of the beechtree's bark and began to climb.For the first time he allowed himself to speak his thoughts aloud.

HI will go up!" he said, throughhis set teeth. HI-will-go-up!"· Heinched up. ,And up. HAnd I wi/I findout!" The bundle and basket.dangled, swung out, bumped back,grew heavier. HAnd until I findout-" he panted, dug in oncemore, advanced, advanced-HI

· will not come down-"He swung one leg over the lower

most branch, hoisted himself up,pressed his head to the roughbosom of the tree and hung on forvery life against the wave of vertigo which threatened to plummethim to the ground. Slowly it

passed and slowly he opened hiseyes. The lazy wind swung into hisface, laden with scents of the richearth, of flowers and other' growing things. He looked over leaguesof land and the swelling and fallingaway of hills, the glittering serpentine length of the river, .forest forever a great green roof. And far,far off, so distant that he could ·notbe sure, he thought he saw threadthin smoke. It might have been hisvillage. He thrust forward his chinso suddenly that he felt ~ creak inhis neck and, with all his force andmight, spat in its direction: Andthen he allowed himself to realizethat the lightning-burn upon thetree, just above the branch, was actually a tree-cave, a hollow.

It was, he considered (with ashiver), too small to harbor eithertiger or leopard; it even lacked thereek of a. bird's nest. Serpentswould not go so high. Slowly,cautiously, he passed himself into it. Part· of the bark 'still lay inplace lik.e a shell. And, patientlya waiting his discovery, wedgedwith splits of wood, ptotectedfrom the worst assaults of theweather, was another hide-boundbag. I nside this was a box ofcarved wood. And in the box,padded with red-dyed fleece, wassomething that lay almost outside all his experience. Long hecrouched in the dim light, halfafraid to touch it; then his fingersplayed over the intricate carvings.There wa~ mammont-ivory andhorn of wild ram, horn of elk; therewas bear claw, there was-;-therewere many things. Parts of itmoved around, circle-wise, whenhe turned them. Parts moved up

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

and down from holes, like littlelevers, when he touched them.Shapes of beasts and birds werecarved into it. No man-nor nain-nor perry-had devised it. It waswizards' work, and wizardry ofwitchery alone. It was a witchhorn, so huge and adorned andcomplex it could only be th~ witchhorn. Could only be All-caller, thegreat, fey ·horn.

V I

SEE then, in the late rays of the"afternoon sun, while the great

red circle still throws heat beforedescending for its slow journeythrough the Cavern .Beneath TheEarth whence.it will rise again nextmorning, a small, a very smallSomething sticking out its headfrom the bole of the huge beechtree. After the head, an arm, at theend of the arm a hand and in thehand-what? It is needful to comecloser. A shaggy boy, not quite anew young man, excitement andtriumph and also fear upon itsmold-smutched face. Carefully heholds the great horn in both hisdirty hands. Carefully he examines it yet again, turning itsturnable parts.

Ah. Ahah. So. Here is the bearclaw, as like to the bear claw in hiswitchery-bundle to make onethink they had come from the samebear-beast. As, perhaps they had.

The boy's full lips protrude,compressed in thought. So-hereis the bear carved in ivory uponthe horn band. Surely it wasmeant to come in apposition tothe bear claw. He takes a deepbreath, fills his dusty cheeks, lifts

the horn to his lips. His eyes roll,his nostrils distend.

And below upon the mossyground, while the echoes of thegreat cry, part growl, part roar,still send the birds whirling aboutand the leaves quivering, something comes into the open gladearound the beech tree. Somethingcomes as though the thicket were'mer~ fern grass. Something comescrashing, comes trampling,comes on all fours, comes walkingupright. Stands, stopping. Peering this way and that. Paws andhead swaying. Issues a cry, partroar, part growl. Part challenge,part question. Puzzled. Vexed.Brute. Bewildered.

Bear.Bear.Bear.A moment passes, or does not

pass; endures without end. Thenthe bear coughs, grunts, sighs,brushes at one ear.' Gurgles deepwithin its shaggy chest. Amblesand shambles down to the river.Stands there without motion.Then makes gestures which nobear has ever before been seen tomake-or so it seems to the watcher up high. W.ho has ever seen abear take off its skin before? Whohas ever seen a man i.nside a" bearbefore? Who has ever seen a manstride into the water and leave anempty bearskin lying on the bankbehind, gaping empty, eyeholeslooking up, sightless, at the sky?

Has anyone-?-before?

• RNTEN plucked up his talisd man and, though it was thefamiliar-most of any object he had

with him, he studied it as though hehad never seen .it before. Almost,for that matter, he had never seen abear before. Perhaps he had seenlive bears one or two times-deadones, before they had been allskinned and dismembered forfood and hide, several times. Thecarving did not seem to havechanged. The bear was still certainly a bear-except that it stillcertainly had man's feet. Hecould not recall that he had everobserved the feet of living bears,these must have been concealed ingrass or underbrush, or perhapshe had just not been looking; likelier he had had his eyes (as hecrouched fearfully out of sight) onthe paws of the forelimbs, on thefearsome ja,ws. .Perhaps all bearshad man's feet. But then a clearpicture came to him of the fo~r

paws of one dead bear, cut off forthe pot-and all were pa.WS, nonetruly feet. And yet, might it not bethat bears, alive, had feet like men,'and that these changed at death?As for the bear below? Truly, hehad not noticed. He did not know.

Well, regardless, he kne~ whathe had to do now.

He watched the man (formerlybear) swimming strongly in the water, bob.bing under, emerging withhair all sleek, shaking his head,then resuming his swim, finallypassing out of sight around a bendin the river. He would certainlybe back. But Arnten was certainthat he would not be back at once.Unencumbered by any burdens,all of which he left in the hollow,he climbed carefully down; heran, eyes racing between threeplAces-the ground, lest he stum-

ble-the water, lest the man, re- marks or patterns (but blazingturning, see him soon-the bear- and patterning were not intend~kin, lest-lest what? Lest, per- ed to be other than open for all whohaps, and most horrifying by far, could to read). And yet-and yet,the empty skin somehow take on why had he intended that his sonlife and move, either toward or should some day follow? How sureaway from him. For a second it he had felt the son .would follow,did indeed seem upon the -point of would meet the nains, would undoing so and he gasped in fright. derstand the messages bound upBut it was only the wind raising in the witchery-bundle: but thisa worn corner. was for the moment beside the

He seized the skin and ran, fling- point and the point.was the bearing it across his shoulder and feel- manjmanbear was power, anding it on his back, bounding and' power, as much as it was to be debouncing. He could see it, ·feel it, sired, so much was it to be feared.thankfully he could not hear it, he Presently something showed ithad no desire or reason t<l taste if. self in the river, moving against theHe could smell it, though, and its current. Arms flashing in the dereek was very strong, partly bear, clining sunlight. A figure camepartly man. All these things he padding out of the water on aperceived without being aware of sandbar, moving as a bear doesconcentrating on them. He con- on all fours, but was not a bear;centrated first on getting out of moved to the other end of the sandsight of the water. And then he bar, where, motionless, it seemedpaused to ~hink of what he should to be staring into the water. Ado next. forelimb moved so fast.. that the

And, with a start, realized that motion could hardly be followed.he had already done something. Something flew out of the water,Perhaps he should not have, per- sparkled, fell. Twice more was thehaps he should return and undo scene repeated befor~, now walkit. But he knew he would not. "That ing upright, a fish in each handwhich he had so greatly desired, and one. in toe mouth, the figurethe one whom he had so straightly walked through the water to thesought, the source of his being and shore and shambled up the bank.his childhood's woe, man or bear Another, smaller figure, watchor manbear or bearman, the ing, trembled. The tall one waswitchery creature which had been thickly built, with hair (now·his weakness and must now be his slicked down flat with water) sostrength. . . thick that almost the skin could be

"I'am afraid," he whispered. termed a pelt..It seemed that all theTrue, That One In The Water brightness of the sky of Thule,

clearly had desired to see him., had which had' only an hour ago beenleft a trail for him to follow per- 'evenly divided, was now move~

haps. not as clearly a.s if it had been and crowded to one side and thatblazed, as if it had consisted of tra.;. side so much brighter; while a blueditional and familiar hunters" dimness gathered on the other

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE. 91

side. The birds began to fall silent: The air grew cool. Leisurely,the tall figure ambled up the slopeand onto the bluff. The fish fellfrom its hands and mouth and itdropped backward so that it cameto· rest sitting down, legs straightout and arms crooked uprightfrom the elbows. It gave a greatroar of disbelief and rage .. Then itrose and stabbed at the mossyground and took up something inits hands.

The talisman, the wooden carving ...

Then the head rose and scannedthe bluff, the brush, the crowdedarbor of the forest. Abrupt growlscame from the thick chest formedthemselves into rage words.

HWhere are you?HWhy have you done·this?H Where is my skin?"A voice came from somewhere

up above, from t.he thickeningdarkness. HI will not answer yourquestions till you have answeredmine." ·

HAsk, then-"And the other voice, a moment

" silent, wavering a bit, but not halting, said, HWho are you? Who am"I? What is next?"

~PPROPRIATELY the backn log of the fire had come fromthe great beech tree. ULong since Ihave made fire, or eaten foodcooked on it, or food with salt onit," said Arntat. His hands, however, seemed to have lost no skill.The fisn had been deftly gutted,!illed and grilled. Salt, in a screwof bark rag, was still in Arnten'sbasket. HSalmon will be better,"'Arntat said, smacking his mouth

at the thought. UBut these are wellenough." Sparks leaped, embersblackened, glowed again. Abruptly he swiveled and faced the boy.Hyou be thinking, 'Is it to heartalk of fish and fire that I've comethis long way, waiting?' Eh? I seeit by your face, 'tis so. Arnten. Ihave waited longer than you. Bepatient."

And the boy was silent.

~ ~N D· his fullfather said, uThen bear is in the blood and thebear may take you as the bear tookme. At any time whilest life bloodbe in you the bear may take you,for the bear is in the blood. If ittakes you not, and it may not takeyou, if· it takes you not then 'twilltake your son and if not you andnot him then 'twill take your son'sor daughter's son for sure. Let thisbe no burden. Fear it not. I'vedabbled and dallied with a queenof love, and though 'twas joyouspassion, yet 'twas nought compared to shambling 'mongst thenew berries or finding honey in atree or· scooping forth first salmon, when I was gone a-bearing,"his fullfather said.

And he said, UBear's weird bebetter than man's weird and better than nain's weird. As a manI've been a chieftain high withland~ and wealth-you may letyour ears drop, 'tis nought to youwhere and nought to you what'smy-name-then. You were not madeupon empty bear hide in lawfulbedcham ber, ah no, you weremade when the bear was in thebearskin. My heritage to you isother than to my othergotten

sons. Heed and hear me now, Arnten. By my witch-bundle and bymy shadow, sons you make outside the bearskin be outside thebear-blood. But s~ns you makewhen you be a-bearing and be inside the bearskin, the blood of thebear be in the.m. And if the blood ofthe bear be in them, then not running water nor icy pools nor firehot springs can wash it out. '!'!

And the bear was silent.

BEECHWOOD makes hard embers and hard embers make

long fires. Long fires make longtales. Long they sat there in thescented night and Arntat talkedand Arnten listened and learned.He learned that the shift and shapewas truly not confined to man tobear, that other creatures indeedcould pair, could couple, coulddouble and shift.

Bee and salmon, wolfand bear,Tiger, lion, mole and hare . . ~

He learned of the slow growth ofmetals beneath the earth's skin andthe formation of amber beneath thesea, how amber was one of thethings of the perries, whereasmetal was a thing of the nains.Once there was a metal calledbronze but at length it grew greenand sick and presently it died.Now there was iron.

uThe sickness of iron is red,"said Arnten, uand iron i~ dying."Red glints in the ashes. Reflections in.the eyes of the watchers.

UAye, eh," muttered Arntat.uThe sickness of iron is red." Heswung up his head and his handgripped his soil~s. uWhat say thee,

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

bear's boy? 'Iron is dying?,'What?"

That he, knowing so much,should not know this, for severalheartbeats kept A rnten silentand astonished. Then he saw pictures in his mind: one: one: then hesaw things moving, heard the naintell of "years since uBear" was bythem seen. Arnten said, UYouhave been long inside the bear-

.skin, then, and that long you've notseen iron?"

Still the hand gripping his didnot move. ulron is dying? True,true, many springtimes I havecaught and killed the great salmonand many summertimes I haveclimbed for honey in the honeytrees and in the rocky clefts. Manyfalltimes have I eaten the last ofthe frost-touched fruits and thesweet flesh of nuts. And many wintertimes have I felt the bearsleepcome upon me and felt the numbness grow inside my head andsunk into the lair till the snowsgrow thinner. Aye. Eh. I can countthe time only by counting yourtime. You are barely a man. Andthe last iron I had seen, the lastiron I had thought of, r wrappedwell the iron knifelet in my witchery-bundle and hid it well for thee.May it b~ sick?"

Arnten did not mind the grip upon his hand. I-le crouched againstthe crouching body of his full fathere He rested on that puissantflesh which had made his own andwhich was no~ his present as wellas 'his past. Defying mankindand beastkind and time and thenight, he let himself reclineagainst the great rough beast whichwas his father and he let his hand

recline in that great. rough paw.Quietly, almost drowsily he said,"That witchery-knife alone is notsick. But all other iron is sick."And he muttered, "The nains,"and he muttered of the nains. Andhe sighed, "The king-" and hesighed words of the king. And almost he fell asleep,- comforted bythe' rough, warm body and itsrough and powerful smell. Thenthe body moved, releasing hishand, and a sound which was almost a cry and almost a groanrumbled and broke loose fromthat strong fatherbody by the embers.

"Iron!"The nains!"'The lclng!" _Almost he flew awake. He slid

-down so that he might '51"ana up.The day had been long and therewas still much to talk about. Theday had begun with the mammonthunt and he had run far and he hadbeen hurt and nains and perriesand Painted Men pursued himand he ran along the river and nowthe long long day was over and hehad nevermore again to run to boltto flee and Iron! Sick iron! Thewiz.ards! and The king"! soundedtheir" names in the darkness. Andthe embers slid down becausethey were tired and the embersslipped beneath the ashes and the

. emhers slept.In the morning the embers were

awake again and spitting and flaring at the meat that turned, spittedand smoking. Arntat was stillcrouched by the fire as though hehad never left it and as though themeat had come at his bidding andobediently slipped out of its skin

and onto the spit. Arntat yawnedhugely and glanced at Arnten andit seemed as though his teeth were"still the tu'shes and the fangs ofBear, his eyes still Bear's eyes sosmall and cunning and sharp, hisblunt face still Bear's muzzle andhis hairy hands with long thicknails- The yawn closed with asnap.

The man said, "There was thelone one of you?""The-'~

"Sometimes a she kindles withtwain. Or more. My get, by yourdam-"

"Only me, as I ever heard. I never k new her. Uncle said shedrowned. Was mad."

Arntat grunted. "It was time forit to be done and I was there andshe was there and 'twas done, so. Ifnot she, another. If not me, another. If not she and me, then notthee." He took the spit from itsfetrks and "rested the savory roast,dribbling, on the grass. "So. Thelone one of you. Called me frommy bearguise." He seized his sonby his downy shoulders. uHidfrom me my bearskin." Son resisted, wordlessly, was presseddown nontheless. uCarried offwith him my token. Found thenain. Found me. Called me frommy bearguise. Stole away mybearskin. The lone one of you."Arnten was on his back, flat. "AmI to regret 'twasn'.!- twins? Or beone 9f such enoulh?" The singlehand quivered the boy" belly as onewould a pup's. Then 'moved, onehand, two hands, tore the roOastedmeat apart, slapped on part still"sizzling on the place the hand "hadbeen-boy leapt up, yelp-

ing-bared his teeth and began toeat.

Boy teeth shining sharp in quickclosed mouth. Boy hand rubbingbelly. Boy snout smelling savoryfood. Boy cub by bear man, tearing meat from bone.

Still eating when father got upand strode off, he followed at quickpace, still holding his own unfinished portion. U Arn!" he said."Arntat! Bearfather!"

Bearfather growled over hisshoulder..

"The hide! The horn! The witchery-bundle! Shall I fetch?"

Arntat growled, HThe hide?Leave it be. I'll go no more abearing for now. The horn? Leave it be.Rather than call wrong, call nonefor now. The witcher-bundle? Asyou want." And he melted intothe shadows of the all-circlingforest. Arnten followed, .thinking and eating a~ he went. Clawand reed and stone and nut, he hadread their message and read themrightly; he could part with themfor now. The hide with its medicine signs he needed not now. Fora moment he begr~dged theknife, the good knife of good iron.He took a longing look at theslightly slant and towering beechtree, casting a long shadow in themorning sun as it had cast in t~e

evening. They were all safe- upthere in the hollow of the hideyhole. And th~re, safely, let thembide, then.

Still eat.ing, he slipped after hisfather into the dappled surface ofthe forest.

• RNTAT did not precisely linn.ger, he did not exactly dally,

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

neither did he rush ahead withgreat speed, nor slink through thewoods. Some sort of game was being played. For neither did Arnten go so fast as he might. It wasthe game, then, that each shouldgenerally hold the other in sight,but only generally. A'nd sometimes the bigger one would suddenly hide himself and as suddenly reveal himself when thesmaller paused to .look around,then proceed as though he had notbeen hidden at all. Before longthey had developed many aspectsto this game and little tricks andpresently they were again andagain filled with silent laughter ateach other. Through many a clearing and burn and along the pathsthey played their game, sometimes'Tat leaping along a fallen tree aslightly as a squirrel, at least once'Ten dropping several leaves before being realized and looked upat.

It lasted most of the morningand might have lasted much long-:er, but then Arnten, runningnoiselessly around a great lichenstudded boulder,' ran full tilt intoflesh which only in that first second he thought was his father's. Aswift blow and an angry word undeceived him before his eyesdid-he who had for all morningdropped even the memory ofblows and angry. words-and, as hetried to scramble to his feet, triedto turn his head to see who it was,tried (all these at once) to run awayany which way, someone grabbedhis arm and twisted it. Only thendid he cry out. .

The man's face had the look ofone who kicks a dog not to be rid of

it but for the pleasure of kicking it.Then the face changed and the armreleased him, raised its spear; themouth that cursed him gave a sic~

croak as something snapped whichwas not the spear. A rntat wasthere. Arntat was holding, embracing, Arntat was crushing.Ugly sounds of witless fright,then, from this other's mouth.Bl09d gushing from that mouth.And then other men, many othermen, spears and clubs and thenropes, Arntat down on one knee.Arntat releasing limp and ble~d

ing body, Arntat clawing out fora grip upon anot~er. Arnten biting, beating. Arntat down. Arntat growling, roaring. Men cursing as much in fright as wrath.Arntat down. Arntat suddenlysilent, save for his meathing inthe sudden silence. Arritat bound.Arnten, too.

And after some moments ofgasping, . recovering breath, slowing hearts, hissing of pain, Someone said as though to a questionnone had heard, "I don't know-Idon't know-:- Eh? Ah? Nains? No!Nor bears-"

Another voice. "We be theking's men. Let the king say what."And others, others. UAye! Ah!Let the king say what!"

T HE red-sickness of all ironflamed into a plague. At first

whispered, it was now said openlythat the king himself had caughtthe evil and the ill. I ndeed, itseemed to" be so. Red blotcheswere seen about his face and handsand all his face and limbs and

frame looked wasted and hollowed. His voice cracked andcroaked. His hands shook. In themornings he groaned and stag·gered. In the late afternoons hiseyes would roll up and his eyelidsroll down and he folded his legsand lay where he happened to be,servants hastily bringing fursand fleeces anU lifting him and settling him again. For the length oftime it took for the shadow of thesun-staff to move over two stonesthe king at such times hly as onedead. And in the late night hours hetended to enrage easily, to shoutand strike out and to cast things.

But in the early and middle afternoon and in the early and middle night times he was as well as ever in those days he was well. As tothe first of these periods, it was assumed he was pa~sing well, for hisvoice could be heard talking--talking, not groaning, not~yelling-and as for the second "Ofthese periods, it was then that heheld such gatherings as he heldand saw such outsiders as he saw.In the red light of the hearth allmen may. look reddened and thedancing shadows may make allmen look gaunted.

But not all men hide themselvesin daylight.

Day by day the couriers troupedin. Night by night the king himselfwould see them and let himself beseen by them and from them receive the tidings which he had, ofcourse, already received; for didhe not sit upon his stool or lie upon .~is pallet behind the reed curtain while the courier made report upon the other side? Tirlagusak, grown stout and gray in his

service as a first captain of theking's men, generally stood forthas the couriers came in, each withthe strip of white bark cloth boundabout his ·head, which even toddlebabes knew signified I am theking's mouth and I am the king'seyes and I am the king's ears.Delay· me not-and if I need aid,aid me.

UThirty-deer Hill," the cou riermight say. Or: HWhalefish Point."

·Tirlag-usak puts out his hand.UTally," he says. UWhy so slow?"

The courier hands over the cutand carved piece of wood. He pantsto show how hard' he has run. Oflate there had been increasinglyless sham in thi~. Tirlag-usek, ofcourse, knows whence everyone ofthe couriers has come but he seesif the tallystick fits ~he proper onefrom his own box.

HReport sightings," he directs.HSwiftly. "

HGood omens from the flocks ofbirds," says the courier. It wouldnot do to report No sighting.

HEat. Wash. Rest. Return afterevening meal."

The courier retires, sweating butrelieved. His tongue may be theking's tongue but that need not prevent it's being cut.

Behind the reed curtain theking's lips writhe, the king's handsmove convulsively. The king'sface grows redder yet. The redsickness increases fast upon him.And·the red-sickness increasesfast upon the iron. The courierhas gone. Tirlag-usak remainsstanding. From behind the reedcurtain comes an anguished whisper.

U Iront! I ron·!"

ARNTEN·OF ULTIMA THULE

HThe ears of the king hear allthings," says the grizzled first captain. After just a breath, he says,HThe king already has heard that itis not better. It is not even as itwas." After three breaths shouldcome the gr.oan or hiss which hascome to mean Go! but Tirlag-usaktoday, after only two breaths, repeats, UThe ears of the king hearall things." And says further,uThe king has already heard thatten of his men who went north in asearch for nains have this day returned with captives."

UUhh?"UOne great and one small, as the

king already has heard. The eyes ofthe king have already seen themand it may be that the king's eyeshave already recognized one ofthem as the king's kin to whom theking'ls mouth will. speak morewords."

Tirlag-usak had spoken somewhat more rapidly than usual. Nowhe waits for the space of manybreaths and he hears each of thesebreaths from behind the -reed curtain. But no question now comesfrom behind the reed curtain andwhat now com·es thence at last is acry of such agony and terror andrage that almost the hand of Tirlag-usak touches the woven 'reedbarrier-almost he stoops to liftit. But he hears other feet, othervoices, babble and whisper andshuffle and sigh. Then nothing.Then, only then, he departs. It

·Later, in the enclosure wherethey were penned, Arnten suddenly looked up.. Arntat, his father, did not pause in his sham~

bling and shuffling, shuffling -andshambling, back and forth and

back and forth, head weaving likea snake's head from side to side. Itseemed he did not share ·his son'sthought, a sudden o·ne whichprojected into the boy's mind apicture of the mandrakes dancing to the sound of the small drumin his old uncle's medicine hut.The recollection was so clearthat the boy sat and watched it inside his head for some time.

M ERED-DELFIN beat thesmall drum and his man

drakes, which were the mandrakesof the king and queen, d~nced theirwitchery~dance and Mered-delfinwatched them from the corner ofhis eyes and the king and queenwatched them full front. Ev.ery feeling- moved across the king's face,none at all disturbed th... face ofthe queen. The mandrakes movedand the mandrakes moved andthey mimed and mimed and theydanced. At first, coming forthfrom their carved wood chest, themandrakes' motion kept time tothe tune of the witchery-drumlet.But after a while and afterMered-delfin had sung to themand hummed to them and chantedto them, whistled and drummed tothem, then the pattern of theirmoving changed. They led andMered-delfin followed, his fingers and his palms straining tokeep up with them, to rna.intainthe proper tune and rhythm uponthe drumhead made from the skinentire of a dwarf deer slain without bruise or blood.

At length, when they had begunto. repeat them·selves and no chantings or whistlings could prevailupon them to enact any new pat-

tern, Mered-delfin drummed themback and dancing they went,throwing up their root-thin armsthey danced backward upon theirroot-thin legs, and climbed back in-·to their box at last and closed its lidupon them.

Thus the dancing mandrakes. Asfor the watching mandrakes, theyremained in the outer court andwould shriek, beshrew, if so muchas an unbidden shadow fell. Andthere they muttered and watched..

The chief witcherer licked hismouth and wiped his arm acrosshis sweat-slick face and quicklyrolled his eye·s. The other two werenot looking at him. Swiftly he sethis countenance into its accepted lines. He softly clicked his fingernail against the side of thedrum. They looked up towardhim.

Hit is as we have seen, it is as Ihave said, they have enacted thelineaments of the dream andmimed for us the finding and thesounding of All-Caller, the GreatFey Horn-"

The king grimaced and showedhis sharp teeth- As he leaned forward.on °his hands and arms heseemed to crouch on all fours.uAnd where, then," he asked, "isthe great good which you said thisdream portended for me?" .

Mered-delfin parted his thinbeard from lips and mouth anddared to grin. The very daring ofthe deed made the king draw back,somewhat relax the tenseness ofhis pose. Witch-Mered thrust outhis hand and arm and described aquarter-circle in the air and letthe hand extend two fingers in apoint. uCan it be that the sounding

"King Orfas!' Great Wolf! KingWolf! I

"-King Wolf-"

L ONG the wolf-king lay uponhis side, panting, wet with

sweat. Then he jerked his head andin two silent bounds Mered-warlock was c£oucbing at 'his head.Said the king, ~'Not kill him?"

Said the witcherer, "Not yet."Said the wolf-king, "When,

then?"Said the sage, "When the curse

is canceled. When iron is well."The king said no word. His eyes

rolled up and his lids rolled down.He nodded. He touched his sage'shand. His queen kneeled besidehim and he touched her face. Thewords last spoken' hung upon theair.

And the words unspoken, too.

• RNTEN and his father wered allowed to toil together; one of

. the guards had said with a guffawthat the two of them were barelyequal to one nain. Iron was thenains' heritage and though theyhad been used to it in all its workings at their own speed and thoughtimed toil was inhospitable !Pthem, still the nature of miningwas not ·strange. But it was allstrange, strange and fell, to Arntatand his son. Only the unswervingfriendship of the nains: and the factof his and his son's being still together at all relieved the toil. Andworse by far than the toil was thecirc*mstance of bondage, of confinement, of life now beinglimited to a set series of motionswithin severely limited space. Allthralldoms are one same thrall-

of All-Caller has lured fromacross the all-circling sea anenemy who is not to be named?And with him a son begat intreacherous exile? Lured themthence and it must be alone?"

His master's grimace grew into asnarl. His eyes blazed red. Heseemed like a creature of the forest about to hurl ·itself from itsden. He gave off the rank and bitter smell of denizen and den. "Ishall kill them !" His voice rose intoa howl. "I shall have them killed!They shall be killed for me and before me!" ..His tongue lolled out ofhis mouth. "Limbs broken-" thehowl prolonged itself-" impaled-"

"Slayer of Bull Mammonts-""-flayed-""GreatDire Wolf-""-disemboweled-"The last word hung. upon the air.

The Orfas panted. His sidesheaved. He flung up his head andagain he howled. In this howl therewere no words, but it rang with alust for vengeance long delayed.In his narrow pen Arntat heard itand stopped in his mindless pacing and hearkened to it and hisarms moved slightly and he stoodstill. The nain-thralls heard it intheir tunnels and turned theirmassy heads on their short necks.Servants heard it and shivered andtremored. King's men felt fleshpucker and hair rise and let theireyes roll to each other, and almost they clean forgot the tales orthe ill-struck king, cloistered andshabby and sick and old.

"The Orfas," they whispered toone another.

"The wolf! The wolf!

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

dome The unremitting labor ofthe toil, the unremitting oppression of the guards, the ill food,cramped space, uncleanliness,lack of hope, dull hatred, scantedsleep, infinite heaviness ofspirit-are not these the featuresof all thralldoms?

4o4olt is harder, Bear, for thee thanwe," the nains said. UThe tunnelfits we as the hoodsk in fits the pizzle."

uThen I stoop," he said.Stooped, grunted. 4040 1 have stoopedbefore." But his eyes were sunken. And his forehead bruised·andscabrous, for he did not alwaysthink to stoop, nor they to warnhim.

And the nains said, Ult is harder, Bear, for thee than we. We beused to the smell of iron dust andfire and have forgot the smell of'grass and waterflows."

uThen I shall grow used to thisand shall forget that other, too,"" hesaid. But he did not grow used to it,he ofteri was coughing, and therewas that in his eyes and on his facewhich seemed to show that he wasnot forgetting. A.nd one nightwhen the begrudged fire burnedlow and the older nains had begun.. -creep into their sleepy-holes andkick the crushed bracken-fern into a brief semblance of softness-at last that night his voiceburst loud with, UBut I cannot forget! No! No! I cannot forget!"

The older nains crept out fromtheir sleepy-holes, greasy-sided,fetid, close. They laid their handson his, and on his knees and armsand legs, their huge and callousedhands. And a few did so to Arnten,who had crept close to his father;

100

and the heavy nain-hands werelight and gentle. uSince thee cannot forget, Bear, cease to try,"they said. HAnd speak it out towe." And the Bear spoke.

Not-at first-of the free life ofsun and stars, grass and waterflows, salmon hunts and honeythefts, of timeless days and worldwithout walls. These all, itseemed, though well rememberedin general, had become as it werea design bordered in dyed grasses around a basket rim-turn it,turn it, now faster, now slower,and see the same sequences following forever; man's mind nolonger holding in differentiating recollection anyone sequence fI:om any other like it-soit seemed, when by and by his talktook up those days.

•BUT he began with other days,

when he was a man's childamong other mens' children, heone and Orfas another and Orfasa little older. Not much difference in age and little if any in status, even after both presentlyrealized that Orfas was in a wayan uncle-that Orfas' father wasthe other's grandfather, theother"s father Orfas' half-brother.Both playing and 'tumbling andchasing dogs in one familiar yardonto which opened (so it seemed)the doors of many houses, yet all ofthem family houses. In those daysthey were but two among manyand each father had several sonsand neither more of a rival toeach other than either was to anyothers. All the sons and cousinsand uncles of that age had casttheir reed practice spears and

awkwardly fletched their boy-arrows and went creeping and hunting in the mock-forests of thegreat yard. The years had flownaway like the wild swans flyaway,yet never do the absent years return as do the absent swans.

Boys had grown to men, passedthrough ordeal and initiation,learned which was their witcherybeast, dreamed medicine dreams,had found women and knew themilk .of life to be within them. Thehunt had ceased to be play and often man had fought with man, notfor proving or for pleasure but forvery life; and some had taken lifeand some had lost it. Some of allthat company of boykin had diedyoung beneath the feet or claws orwithin the jaws, of wild beasts orhad been dragged down beneaththe waves by waterkelpies or byfierce hippotames. Others had.made themselves house-holdersand gotten children while stillbarely bearded. Some had soughta name and fame by captainingpursuits' of whalefish or werewhales, tree-tigers, or had gonenorth into the snows to hunt thewild leopard. One had beenallured by the bewitchments ofthe Painted Men (whose skin mustnot be seen).

HThere was a certain great treewhose wide-spreading branches weall climbed as boys. It became ourgathering place and remained soeven when we were men andgathered there more seldom. Butwhenever we so returned, therewe went and there we looked tomeet with our comrades and ourkin of our age. I had been away andgone a full handful of years, and I

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

returned and sat beneath the treeupon a seat made by an out-thrustof rootburl. There ( sat and long Isat and many passed but none wereof our old company. And thencame one whose shape (. knew,whose walk I' knew, even before Ikenned his face.

Hit was Orfas. .HHe came and I remembered it

was right that I should rise because he was my father's brotherof the half-blood, and so we atsome length stood and faced eachother. He had the slight semblance of a smile on his face. For,awhile we said no word. And then (said, 'I t seems, then, that of all only we two remain, in this cornerof the Land of Thule.'

HAnd he said, 'It seems that thisbe one too many,' and although Idid not dee.ply consider on hiswords, still, a particle of them musthave touched upon a particle inme-at once I said, 'Then let usboth be gone and let us make acompact and both be gone together." We made our compactand prepared a boat and formedan alliance with others, gatheredour gear and store and had thewitcherers discover the best dayto depart. .South-south across theall-encircling sea we went, to thebarbar-Iands we made' our course,sometimes along. the coast andsometimes up the great rivers.Betimes we traded and betimeswe sold the service of our swordsand spears, fighting now for onetown or tribe or chieftan, now foranother; and betimes we sharedthe plunder-spoil or betimes wekept it all, as it had been agreed, oras it fell out.. A nd then for a while

101

we went a-roving and a-robbingas we would and as we willed, untilthe durancy of our compact fellaway to expire, and ~here was only a handful of day.-sticks left inthe' tally-bag. One of us had adream to take a certain coursewith our three vessels (as by thenthey were) and reach on the thirdday an island all suitable for ourneeds, which was done, and the daywe broke the third stick we madeour landfall and the island was ashad been seen."

EVERYONE has in his mindthe image presented by story

and by song, of all the troves andtreasures piled in one great glitteryheap, "dragon-high, dragonbright, sparkling while its seekersfight-"but it is not always thus infact, nor was it so this time.

Said he who had dreamed thedream, "Think it clearly for yourselves. Will he who lives alone toclaim it be wanting to lug it allback to the ships again?" There_was a burst of laughter in whichwas no sound of love or warmth. Itwas done so, that the wealth wasdivided between two ships, whichwere dismasted, and the third wasbroken up at once.to .mak~ a deckfor the complete vessel, whichwas a double-hulled raft of sorts,with a single mast. Then each manset to sharpening his weaponsand ,mostly he sat alone, with nomore than now and then a sideways glance to estimate the'strength or calculate the skill ofanother; and sometimes the other, on whom his direct look mightfall had been his near-comrade;and some seemed to repent great-

102

ly of this compact and to wishthemselves away.

But only one would live to goaway.

The fighting field was laid outand deeply trenched around, andthen the lots were drawn to selectthe two for the first combat. Orfas drew one of the black pebblesand a younger man, often a singer of merry songs, drew the other.He sang no song now but mutteredcharms as they stepped to the center of the field but Orfas did notopen his mouth as they faced eachother. Then all the rest shoutedHo! and in that instant Orfas spat'in his opponent's eye and as heblinked, dumbstruck, Orfasrushed him from the side of thateye and with his axe he splitthrough his collarbone. The man.fell backward with a great croaking cry. Orfas kicked up the fallenone's kilt and again he spat, nowupon his foe's manhood, saying,"That is for the wench you stole ofme a. two months' since!" and thenhe brought the axe down onceagain.

And went and took his restacross the trencb until every otherman should have fought once-andthen he would again be subject tothe lots.

Not every v-ictor lived to draw asecond lot.

Now-said Arntat-I had killedmy man and had killed my secondman.' And as I sat resting andwaiting I chanced to feel an eyestrong upon me and I looked upand around and I saw that it wasthe eye of Orfas. It came 'to methat I had felt it heavy upon me before but had not fully thought

103

TH E fire barely lived at all.Then someone blew briefly on

the dull embers and someoneplaced an armful of bracken on it."Eh, ah, Bear,'~ an older nain said.HWell I remember when the .oldasking began to ·be heard again.By what three things is a kingmade? and answered, By strength,by magic, and by fortune. He whopaid the nain-fee then, I shall sayplain, was not the worst as ever

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

about it. And now all at once I re- paid it. But even kings live not fQrcollected what had been said that ever. And in all that 'struggletime we met after long apart, un- which came then, Bear, some sayder the tree of meeting; I saying, thee helped the Orfas, he beingIt seems that only we two remain, near of kin. Some say thee befoedand he saying, This be ·one too him and would have been king inmany. It came to me so late as then stead. 1 ask not and care I not.that he had long hated me, and 1 Thee has ever been the friend ofsuppose that inside me that one nains, as nains have ever been theparticle must have returned his friends of thee. The Orfas winnedfeeling or 1 would not have an- the kingship and was made king asswered as I did. . kings be made and he paid the

Well! So be it! 1 knew then that nain-fee-then-full and fair. Butwe two would be the last to stand the nains be feed to work in iron,upon our feet and fight for life and not to set snares for bears-orfor treasu.re, winner take all. It was men. We saw thee in the wildwoodour weird. 1 do not know at what dwelling where never manfolkpoint in our' lives he had begun to dwell at all, we told it to each otherhate me-or why. Perhaps he him- and we told .it to the forge, l)utself did not know it till he saw me i; never did we tell it to the king."there under the tree of meeting. H( know."Perhaps until then he had thought HSuch rewards he offered, andI would not come back, that I was such afflictions he threatened asdead; it may 'be that the deaths of never did we hear before."others of our line had gradually HI know."or suddenly given him hope that HThat bitter winter when thehe would be chief over all our birds fell frozen from the sky andline-and, as our line has always the all-circling sea itself wasbeen a line high in Thule, he may turned to ice, far as ever eye couldhave bethought him that he might see, when no track nor trace couldsome day be highest of all in be concealed upon the snowyThule. ground and no snow fell more from

If I were not. the fast frozen sky; then the Orfascame for thee, for Witch-Mereddid plot it out for him."

"I know."HCorby-Mered. Mered-Crow.""His witcheries espied thee out,

we knew and said nought, he sawand said all. With a many troops ofmen they came for thee, and circled around where thee had gone.Where could thee hide? Wethought it woe, we whispered low,we told it to the forge, but nainsmix not in the affairs of man-

folk-would that man would mixas little in the life of nainfolk!They circled all about where theehad gone, they sc'anned the still,unbroken snow, they drew theirlines inward as wading fishermendraw their nets, they met face toface and arm to arm in the center;but A rn they never met."

"I know."He said, HI know. 1 know."

Crouching in the darknessmatred by feeble' flicks of flames,he said, HI cannot forget." A prisoner, he remembered himself afugitive; though it had seemed bitter then, now long later it revealedits sweetnesses. And he could notforget. .

,The nains sighed and they sighedfor him, not for themselves. The·king had sought him._.!~e.n andfound him not, and hunted· himagain and found him not. King- andking's men hunted a man, but hewhom they hunted was a man nomore. He had become a bear.

VII

D AY followed day and toil followed toil and slowly the great

rust increased. Its pace was notsteady. At times it had seemed toleap onward like a dread grass firein the dry season, at times it hadseemed to pause as though tired.Now for some long while, the redsickness had gone at so slow a stepthat some did not .perceive that itstill continued until, perhaps, anaxe-head crumbled' as it met thewood it could not cleave, or anarrowhead collapsed into a pinchof russet dust when the quiver wasmoved. And many stilt had not re-

104

alized- that the pest pursued itscourse.

But the king was not among themany.

It was not only that he asked orcaused to be asked, UHow goes itwith iron?" of those who camefrom far off. He asked always, inhope of hearing what he wouldhear; but he was not content onlyto ask. The king had great store ofiron, not in the armories alone, butin his own chambers, very near tohim. Several times a day, if he didnot go to iron things, he had' ironthings come to him. He looked, hetested, poked, probed, he scrapediron with his fingernails and hescaled with instruments which werenot of iron. The king knew the rateeach day at which the plague pursued. He knew it and 'he sickenedfrom his knowing.

HWill you not leave off?" thequeen asked him with a sigh.

HHow can I?" he asked, with asick and sidelong look.

There was almost a proverb inthose days: The queen grows notold. Some had grown up hearing itand thought it a saying applied toall queens; that women who heldthe queenly seat, by virtue of thepower of that office did not age:But in truth it was a saying whichhad not been heard before, although likely enough that 'anywoman spared the labors of hoeing and bark-beating and preparinghides and all such toilsome work,who had but to put on her clothesand jewelry and suckle her children-and sometimes' not evensuch slight, light tasks as thatlikely enough that thus a woman,queen or not, would grow- not old

rot. Perhaps I have. But if I havecaught it, I have it-so what goodthen be distance? Or any precaution?" He moved nonetheless to hiscouch. Muttered, ulf iron die, thenI die. If I die, let iron die. But letwe not die, either, nor the barbarfolk come swarming-savagesfrom over the circling sea-" Helet himself down on his couch andleaned on the pile of prime. peltssewn in bags and stuffed with thedowny breast feathers of swans.His eyes were sunken and closed. Along breath shuddered and sighedin his throat and fluttered hiscracked and blistered lips.

Suddenly his eyes flew open.Those of the queen were fixed upon his. UWhy do you think he cameback alone? Or did he?" Withoutgiving her time to .reply he rolledhis head back and forth andclenched his hands. UOnly becauseMered-delfin feels that this traitormay somehow prove the key to thecure of iron do I spare his life." His·teeth showed and sounded. HIshould never have spared itbefore." Another thought workedits way across his ravaged face andthe queen drew near and kneeledbeside him. "Mered-delfin-hesaid that you must p·repare to wearmany masks and to make manyjourneys." She gave a slow, single·nod. The king said, "Wear one--mask now. Make one short journey."

so soon and certain as the generality of her sex.

Still, the saying was a new one,as sayings go. Here lies the truth-quite early had her hair turnedthe color of a winter's sky, quiteearly and quite suddenly. Therefore most of Thule became awareof her when she in some measurealready wore the mantle of moreyears than she had. And also hermanner had already then becomegrave and withdrawn. Since themass of folk did not observe herslowly losing what were commontokens of youth, gradually the saying came to be heard: The queengrows not old.

Some held this to be due to hercommand of witchery-wisdom. On~ly a few, and they not often andnever openly, were la.tely beginning to whisper that she sipped thecup of the king's own years, thatshe stayed one age while he agedswiftly. And at least the very lastpart of this was true.

UYou can leave off by leavingoff." she said. Only a very few lineswere to be seen upon her face-about the eyes, and about thecorners of the mouth-but none atall upon her upper lip. URest uponyour cot or couch and let othersexamine iron while you watch. Andwatch not too closely, that is tosay, too nearly. Iron is sorely ill.And you are not too well."

A slight snarl moved his mouth,but did not move it much; his ·nextwords and the inclination of his FROM time to time word came,head showed how little the snarl presumably from the king, towas meant for her. UYou are ever switch the mining from the open pitgentle of me in word and deed-but to the tunnels or from the tunnelsI know well what they say out to the open pit. Evidently neitherthere-that) have caught the iron- change had perceptibly improved

AR~TENOF ULliMA THULE lOS

the fate of iron, but from time totime still came directions-change.

Thus on this day the mattocksswung up and down upon the en'..circling path which went aroundand around about the great deeppit, up from its narrow center to itswider rim, digging deeper into thewalls of ruddy ore. Up the toolswent, paused, still scattering dust;down they fell, a grunt, a thud, andsome were of bone and some wereof stone, but none were of iron.Arnten had been detailed to carrythe yoke with its brace of leathernwater buckets and a drinking hornslung about his neck on a thong.For the most part he kept his eyeson. the uneven footing of thecircling path, but when he pausedto allow one of the nain-thralls todrink he allowed himself to .. lookup. The yoke had bitten into hisflesh, but he preferred it out herein t~e open pit. He thought they allmust. It was like being inside agreat clay pot, one only partlymade; the pot-woman had rolledthe strip of red clay between herpalms and coiled it into the roughshape of the pot-to-be, but she hadnot yet taken up her shell or shardto smooth it. The pit was like agreat clay pot and they were insideit, small as mandrakes.

Of course, pots hag no light bluelids on them. Against the rim, .out..lined, stood the guards. His eyesswung around. The nain groanedgratefully between gulps. All aboutthe rim the guard~ stood at equalintervals, weapons sticking up likefishnet sticks. But at one placethere were a number of themgrouped together. They moved andhe saw that one of them had no

106

spear, no club, seemed to bedressed differently. Dressed more.

The nain gave one last groan,looked enviously at the rest of thewater in the pails, licked his mouthand bristles and put the flat of hishuge hand between the boy's shoulders below the yoke the nain hadeffortlessly lifted into place, gentlyshoved him on his way. The yokegrew lighter as he went from nainto nain. Presently he stood beforehis father. Arntat looked at him amoment with a dull gaze. His eyeswere filmy. Then they saw the boy.A faint smile rested briefly on hishaggard face. Suddenly the boycried out, HI am sorry! I am sorry,Father, that I ever took away thebearskin!"

The yoke was lifted, the bucketsput down. HI had set all things tothat end," his father said. HAs forall this-it be our weird. Ah, wa...ter. Good." He took the horn anddipped it full and raised his head ashe raised the horn to his 'mouth andhis eyes settled on somethingbeyond. For a moment he did notmove. Then his teeth clicked aridrattled on the rim of the horn. Thenhe made sounds in his throat. Andnext he drank. But his eyes nevermoved.

A guard, perhaps thinking thatthey had been too long over thematter, approached-the expression on his face was part sneer andpart fear. He g"ave a quick lookover his shoulder and with his headmotioned to another guard to follow. This first guard set his features for stern speech and gave thehand which held the club a shake ortwo. But what he was about to saywent unsaid, as from above and

beyond a voice whose syllables theboy could not make out camefloating on the air and echoed twiceor more. The guard's face twistedin his own effort to comprehend,then showed surprise-regret-relief. The guard turned away,turned back, spoke to the guardbehind. And this one gave a quicklook at the captive father and son,a quick look up and beyond. Meshrugged. The two king's menmoved apart and drew themselvesup in a stance of bravado andwatchfulness.

Arntat let out a'long breath. Onehand groped for his son. The otherthen hung the horn-thong aroundthe boy's neck. A drop of watertrickled from it, m'ade a muddywormtrack through the dust on hischest. Both hands found the yokeand lifted it as the boy bent toreceive it. Both hands turned theboy around and told him, plain aswords, to be on his way. Arntenwent. He went several steps. Heheard behind him the grunt and thethud as, rest over, toil returned to,the mattock struck the red-oreground. Then·- he stopped andlooked up, whither his father hadlooked, up to where the guards hadlooked. Nothing was there. Hiseyes, darting about, saw again thegroup of guards. They had justbegun crossing over the rim and, asone by one ,they stepped out ofsight, he saw once more theunarmed person among them, whopaused upon the edge betweenearth and sky. Pausing for amoment and looking back, thisperson for an instant seemed tohave raised wings poised for flight.

Wide-cut sleeves. A woman.

She vanished over the rim.A blow caught him in the ribs, a

rock fell and bounced. He dodgedthe second. It came from the guardwho had desisted from striking himand his father before. But he had tomove and turn his back and yetbalance the yoke and the buck.ets,so he could not run. The third stonecaught him. And so did the fourth.

W HEN the thralls lay downtheir mattocks and began to

load the broken ore into the barrows the first captain looked, sayin"g nothing. Afterward he gesturedto Arnten and Arntat. UYou two-'or you one and half-" the guardsguffawed-"Take the tools to thetunnel. The rest of you to theforge." Two by two, the nainsstooped and took up the barrowpoles. Low at first like" a mutter,then a rumble, as though the voiceshad descended from mouth tothroat and chest; then so very highit seemed almost that they sang notat an as they padded along thecurving path-and then cry aftercry, as great wave after great wavebreaking upon the rocks-

The swans fly overheadA nd the nains see them.The moles tunnel through.

the earthA nd the nains see them.

The guards could not ken thewords, but the sound of the chantmade them uneasy. They howledand mocked, they threw stones,small ones but vicious and thrownhard.

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE .. 107

The king'sfire gives no light,The queen'~ light gives no fire,Evil, evil, are these times,These carrion times, consumed

by crows.When will the wiz.ard's mouths

be/ed,A nd the nains see it?

The tools were gathered andbundled together like greatfa*ggots of firewood. Father andson bowed their backs beneaththeir loads and turned their facestoward the tunnel. It· was not theload that made Arntat tremblenow, nor was it his last labor of theday that made him sweat and gasp.Unwilling, unwilling, slow, werehis steps and he craned his neck atthe darkening sky as though hewo.uld never see it agai~

Beyond them the guards seemedto have been 'take~ by a frenzy,stoning the nains and shouting andfeinting at them with clubs andspears. But above all such noise thewild chant continued to be heard.

The king's evil rots like rust,A nd the nains see it.When will the stars throw down

their spears,A nd the nains see it?Then may this kingdom turn

to dust,A nd the nains see it!

SOMETIMES the bigger Arntrudged back and forth in the

tunnel, .head stooped low-perhapsfor safety, perhaps from apathyhands against the sides as though atany moment he might push one oranother of them aside. Sometimeshe shambled on all his limbs, head

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weaving from side to side. But he"was sitting motionless when the drybracken rustled as it sometimesdid, as though remembering whenit was alive and yielding to eachslight breeze. And a woman camein. She first saw the smaller Arn,and for just a moment the smoothcomposure of her face wasdisturbed-how curious, then, herexpression! He moved at once tohis father's side and her face was asbefore. I n a single motion, effortless, graceful, she seated herself, her legs tucked under, herhands resting in her lap. Sonlooked at father and he thought hisfather looked as though he hadalways been looking at her.

HYet another son gotten, Ahazmazra," she said. HAnd so muchyounger than the others." ~he

made a slight sound as if pleasantly relaxing from some not too onerous task and she said, Hyou willwant to know about your othersons." -

Lips barely moving, he said, HEither they died or they made theirpeace. I can do them no good. Northey me."

Calmly: Hyou may do good forthis one then," she said.

This one, crouching next to hisfather, was not much thinking howgood could be done for him. Part ofhis mind was entranced by theappearance of her. Part of his mindscurried and searched, as a squirrelrousting nuts, for certain words. hisfather had said-when? Long, longago. When they were free.

'Tis nought to you what's myname-then. But now he knew, hisfullfather's name then was Ahazmazra and if this woman knew it

moment a branch he presentlythrew upon the fire. I have-

HI have done ill enough for himby getting him," said his father(now) to the strange woman. Whosaid a strange, strange thirig indeed.

Hyou may get him back withyou whither you both came-on aship already prepared in all things-at dawn tide three days hence,"she said. "You have only to renounce the curse on iron and toswear by your shadow and by histhat it shall stay renounced. Andyou may even delay compliance tothe last-when the· third day's suncomes up and shadows first appear-upon the very shore beside theship."

The sick, confused look, whichI had been absent since her entrance,

now returned to the man's face. Hemuttered, uncertainly. "The thirdday's sun?"

HIt is three days' journey towhere the boats are."

He squinted, trying to resolve allinto sense. Then he in one swiftrush was on his feet and Arntencried out and put his hands on hisown head as though feeling thepain of his father's would crashupon the tunnel top. But that oneor two fingers' breadth away· theman's head stayed, stooped. Thewoman had not moved. She did noteven raise her eyes. And the manfell to a charging position, his 'eyeslevel with hers, his face very closeto hers, his eyes now suffused withblood.

"Innahat-erex," he cried, "ah,eh! Does that crow still live, that hehas stolen all the wits of thee?4Wither we both came?' 4By ship?'

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she had known him then. Her underdress, beneath which her feetwere tucked, was all of blue. Hehad never seen so much cloth ofblue before, blue was a preciouscolor, a sky-color, and he hadheard more than one say that farfar-away at the farthermost edge ofthe world dwelt the Sky Gatherersand that all the blue in the worldcame from them, scarce, scarce, I

precious and beautiful blue: but hisold uncle had said this was in noway true and that blue was madefrom an herb called woad; it didnot flourish in Thule, was· broughtfrom the barbar-Iands and tradedfor amber, weight for weight.

Ahaz-mazra. And not Arn.My other begotten sons . ..

made upon empty bearhide in law-ful bedchamber. Her sleevelessoverdress was the whitest whitewhich he had ever seen, paler thanthe common pallor of bark-cloth,and came to her knees. Roundyoke and hem were broad andcomplex broider-work in severalcolors, flowers and leaves andthicket-something else which hecould not qui~e determine andwhich peered out of the thicket.Around her neck was a rope ofpieces of amber wrapped ·in goldenwire. Her face was strong, serious,totally self-assured. Although shehad come from the free, the outside world, she had come neitherto triumph nor to condescend. Ihave dabbled. Why was that wordin his mind? ... have dabbled . ..Or should it be dappled? Thatmade no sense. Yet the memorythat went· with the words was ofhis father's face dappled by a leafshadows as he held for a passing

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

'Renounce the curse on iron?'What babblement is this? Fromnowhere did we come by ship! Noword of any curse on iron heard Iever till my cub.here did mention it,before we feU into the nets of yourlong-tongued lord! 'Sear by myshadow and by his?' Eh, ah! By myshadow and by his, then-"

M ORE than once, after havingreturned in from out, Arnten

had felt sickened and dizzied. Thesun might have been the cause,beating 'as it did on him all day.Such a moment came upon himsudd,enly as he wondered whatgreat oath his father was' about toswear upon their twain shadows.He closed his eyes. He did not hearif the oath were sworn. He did hearthe distant droning of the ,nains asthey returned, as their voices rosesuddenly and dropped again. Thestrange woman was now gone, hes,aw. He saw his father's eyes we~e

fixed on his and all manner ofstrange things he saw inthem.

"Eh, ah, Bear! What odd thingwe seed by yonder tunnel-mouthbut two, or three! How 't did leap!A hare! Was 't an omen, eh?"

"I ken't not, if omen 'tiz," anoth.er nain said. "But 'twas as theesay, senior Aar-heved-heved-aar, agreat puss-Iongears indeed, andwould I'd a snare to catch she doehare, do she return-eh?-cub?"

For this other nain looked nowat Arnten, who had stood up, although still di'zzicd, waving hishand, trying frantically to put athought into words before thethought fled. '''The hare came in!"he said, almost stammering. "Thehare came in! What way she camein, would she not go out?"110

The man put an arm around hisson. The comforting nain-droneand nain musk surrounded them.The boy's head drooped upon hisfather's side. ,He felt weak and soreand hungry. Food would come.Words sang in his head and faintfires danced there. Bee and salmon, wolfand bear. A rough handrested gently on him. 'Tiger, lion,mole and hare.

Fetters do not bind the moles.A nd the na;ns see them.

VIII

AAR-heved-heved-aar thatnight sent a youngster nain to

search out the passage where thehare had run. Guards did not trustthe lower l'evels at night, would noteven if the nains were gone. Postsand watch fires were at pit mouthonly. Even wind and rain could notdrive the guards more than a fewfeet inside after full dark. Thenain-senior knew this, but did nottrust the slickskins as cowards anymore than he trusted ,them asbraves; he chose to lessen all risks.It was not true that nains had fullvision in the dark, but in this wi'setheir eyes were in between those ofmen and thos,e of beasts. Theyounger nain reported thatalthough the tunnel appeared to bea blind gut, yet it did not end clean.A huge pile of debris at one endseemed to' show that it might notalways have been a blind gut-thatperhaps the roof had fallen in atone time. And, more than this, theyoungeronain had sought and foundthe scent of the hare and it hadseemed to go on up the pile ofdetritus to. its peak. · . tF

"But I clambered not after 'it,"he concluded.

"Wisely," said the senior. '''Forthough I be as much a-zeal as anyto be gone from here, needless riskswe must not take. It is man who isimpetuous, but we nains do .bedeliberate, so-"

"Feed the wizards."Aar-heved-heved-aar, true to his

penultimate word, reflected. Then,"Eh, ah, Bear. Say thee well." ,

"Feed the wizards'!"The nain-senior looke<l up at the

man-for all his breadth, the-nainwas no taller than Arnten-andnodded his massive head. "Thatmust be 9ur aim, hard task thoughit be. It is the coming death of ironwhich has turned this king's headmad and turned his hands againstus all. H'is need be great. But is ourneed not greater? .If he "do dietonight and tomorrow we be toldthat we be free, what then? Iron beour life, without iron we be deadnains. 'Tiz but the first step, getting gone from here. He will pursUe we, but if he should not, what,eh? We do make the hoe, but wehoe not; we have traded iron andiron's work for most our food. Wemake the spearhead, but we cast n9spear. And if we will to eat in thewoods, as the wild brawnesdo-say, ah!-be' not the wildbrawnes a fitter match for us, be wenot armed with iron?"

He uttered a long, shudderingcry and his head shook so from sideto side that his thick hair rustledupon his' broad and shaggyshoulders. "Men gender much," hesaid, "and the men-wives bearoften. Nains gender seldom for ourpassion be for the forge and few are

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

the nain-bairns our shes do get.Before the Great Bear took starfireand gave it we and beteache9 wehow to delve and deliver metalfrom the earth's belly and to moldand shape it as the bears do moldand shape their cubs-before eventhe yore-tide-'men were few andnains were few and lived they twainfolk far apart, for broad and longbe Thule. '

"But since then men haveswarmed-yet the nain's numbersdo stay the same. Still be Nainland far from menland, eh but ah,it be not so far as once 'twas! Mencan hunt without iron, men canfarm without iron, men can stillbeget them many mennikins without iron; men can do without ironand I betell thee this: If men maylive without iron, men may livewithout nains."

The echo of his voice was long inhis listeners' minds.

He divided them into ninewatches and to each watch he assigned a third' part of one night.And the first watch for the firstthird of the first night began atonce to clear away with slow carethe rubble at the end of what theyhad begun to call The Doe-Hare'sDen. The nains stripped off theirleather kilts and piled loose stonetherein, then gathered up the cor~

nors four and slung the juried bagsover their shoulders and trudgedaway on noiseless feet to emptytheir loads well out of sight in yetanother disused corridor. And thento return. Thus, while the workwent on, none lost more rest thanone-third of every third night; and,after many nights, the toilers in theDoe-Hare's Den, pausing a

111

moment for rest, recognized intheir nostrils the bitter, faint, familiar smell of woodsmoke-andrecognized that an aperture, ofwhatsoever a nature, existed between them in their captivity andthe unfettered outside world.

~ND thus the elusive memoryft returned to the boy. Remembering woodsmoke and firelightand father's words, he said, "Thestrange woman who was here. Wasshe the queen of love with whomyou dabbled and dallied?"

A silence. UEh,. she was."UBe that why the king do hate

thee?"A growl. uShe said he never

knew.""Then why do he hate thee?"A grunt. "Has thee-fotgot my

tale of how he and me vowed acompact and at the end stood faceto face to fight for treasure and forlife, winner take all?"

"No, I remember that."A cough~ A second, longer, deep

er cough.A gasp. "I won. He lay at my

feet. He groveled and gibbered. Iraised him up, gave him half th,eplunder and I spared his life. Thatis why. For this he cannot forgiveme."

I N THE darkness he heard droning of dry and dusty voices· and

he knew it was the wizards that heheard. He heard them droning asthough ineffably bored and weary,as though repeating over and overto themselves, lest they forget,forcing their dust-ohoked voicesand thinking with dust-chokedminds, at a great distance away,

112

repeating something· of great importance which must not be forgotten-The bear dies, iron dies.The bear dies, iron dies. As thebear comes. to life, so must ironcom~ to life. As the bear comes tolife, so must iron come to life. Apause, a faint gasp, the click ofvoices in dry, dusty throats. Andagain and again the droning recommenced. The bear sleeps in theground, so must iron sleep· in theground. As the bear sleeps itsdeath-sleep-life, so must iron . ..

The bear dies, iron dies . ..Endlessly he heard this. The

sound ebbed and fadded away as hefelt himself gently rocked:

"What?""Bear's boy, it be time."Time for iron, time for. . . But

the droning voices were away andgone. Had he heard them echoingthinly in a cavern somewhere? Orwas it only the familiar echo of thenain voices in the mine? Confused,already forgetting, he got up.

Still half asleep he followed,sometimes st~mbling. as the menfiled .from their sleeping-cell intounguarded tunnels. In the DoeHare's Hole he saw the now familiar sight of and heard the now familiar sounds of debris and detritus being shoveled and scraped intothe carrying-skins. But while thisstill went on he heard those whowatched and who waited discussingwhither they ·should go when theyhad made their escape from themines: and should they go in onebody for defense, or should theysplit up and make their several-orit might be their many-ways, inorder to divide and so to weakentheir pursuers.

He did not hear if an answer hadbeen c·oncluded, let alone what itwas, for Aar-heved-heved-aar tookhold of him and said, HBear's-boy,'tis thought they have Drokethrough up ahead. Get thee upthen, fOf thee be but small as becompare to us and maybe can findout-"

The senior nain did not finish hisphrase, but propelled Arnten forward, saying, HUp, then, and upand up."

Though so much diminished,still the pile was high and required~Iimbing. He half scuttled and hehalf slid as he set to climbing. Andhe had somehow a fear that,though he went on his way slowenough, still, he might strike hishead there. in the darkness; andfrom this· fear he went slower. Andevery few paces he paused andthrust his hands forward.

And by and by he felt his hand asit scraped the face of the cavernsuddenly fall through into nothingness, and he fell forward a bit andhe grunted rather than cried out.And ahead of him, where yet hecould not see, ahead of him in theblack, black, blackness, somethingmoved which was even blacker(though how he knew this he didnot know). Something made a sudden movement and a sudden noiseand he had the impression thatsomething had been waiting andhearkening, liste!1ing very closely,he had an impression of a headco*cked-to one side- .

And before he himself could domore, the sound from the otherside of the hole ceased to be startled, flurried, resolved itself into theflap of wings in the darkness.

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE"--

And he and all of them heard thesudden sharp cry of a crow. Andagain, farther away. And oncemore, faint.

Now the work quickened, con-'centrated and focused on en-

larging the opening. An openingonto the world at large? Or intoanother cave? If the latter, still, thisnext cave must itself open onto theworld at larg~, else how came anybird to be there? But the stone orbone blades of their picks no longers(\nk. into rubble. Either theysprang back as they were swung·against the lips of the scrape-holeor they shattered. The nains beganto mutter. Then Arn came forwardon all fours, reached out his long,shaggy arms, felt and pawed andgroped in the darkness·. .

HIt seems that two slabs of rock·all but meet face to face here," hesaid. HSome bit of softer stone didrest between them, as might a pieceof stale bread· between a dead.man's teeth-

HNow, part of that had weathered away, else that hare had neither entered nor left-and we havebattered away th.e rest-but theteeth be fixed firm. Somehow wemust crack the jawbones, then.50-"

His voice fell into a mutteringgrowl.

HWe must break the jaws of therock," he said once more. HHow?"he muttered. UHow? How?"

• DULL glow froin a brazierft of coals made shadows as theking moved slowly and. painfullyupon his bed. Something scuttledoutside the chamber. Someone en-

113

tered on hands and knees. The kinglifted his head, stopped, groaned,rubbed his face, moaned.

UYou smell of mold and ofJrees," he whispered. "Wellwhat?"

Merred-delphin panted a mo- .mente Then: "Slayer of-'"

The king made a noise of loathing, deep in his throat.

"Damn all fulsome phrases!None's here now save thee and me.What?"

"Wolf-the mine-thralls-trying to break-" His wind failed,his voice caught in his scrannelchest and throat.. His master finished the words.

"To break out? Eh? To-" Hestruggled up, hissed his pain, restedon .·his. elbows. Raised his voice."Hoy!" he cried. "The captain ofthe guard! Hoy! Hoy! Hither!Flay him, does he slumber? Hith~r! Here! Now! Hoy!"

THE bear half-slid, half-crawledbackward. The air in the hole

was thi.ck. "Bring bracken," hesaid. "Bring all the bracken thatbe. Not all of ye!" he called sharply. "The crew of the firstthird-go!" What might have beenconfusion was at once averted."The crew of the second third-tothat line of tunnel where the pitprops be fallen and bring, for thefirst fetch, the smallest and thesoftest pieces of the dry-rotted oldprops-"

He waited till they had got themgone and next he said, "SeniorAar. We must needs soon makefire. "

A moment, then the elder nain

114

murmured, "Ah,. bear, that be noeasy thing, thee knows."

"I do know!"'''They take care-and always

have-the accursed smoothskins,that we have no flint about us-toname but one lack-and though wemight break the pick-handles, theirwood be oot-"

~'And this, all this, I know. Andthee knows and all of ye know whatI mean. Well. The cub and I willwithdraw."

Softly, as it might have been re;.luctantly, the senior nain said,"Nay the twain of ye may bide.'Tis no time to stand upon custom."

He made a sign to the remaining nains and, though somewhatslowly, they joined hands. Therewas scarce room even at the. broader end of the Doe-Hare's cave for awide circle, shoulder to broadshoulder they stood, hand in hand,leg against leg and foot againstfoot. All was silent and, as silencewill when thought upon, silencegradually gave voice. Silencewhispered to itself, and silencebegan to sing a little song. I t was acurious bit of song and it hissed'and it crackled as the nain feetshuffled, as the nain forms shiftedthemselves in the darkness, as thesmall and cramped circle wentaround and around in the darkness, softly stamping feet uponthe rubble-strewn floor.

Arnten stared into the blacknessand, as it will when stared long into, the blackness began to givelight, a faint blue light, a spark, aworm, a glow that had no outlineand faded. And then did not fade.

Arnten felt the hairs on his flesh

rise as his skin puckered in some...thing the far side of fear. He saw inthe darkness the forms of the nainsand he saw their hairs risen and hesaw upon that nimbus of hairoutlining each head and each bodya nimbus of blue light: and as thenains so softly...softly muttered thelights wavered and as the na'nsslowly circled around the bluelights slowly undulated and as thenains slowly and softly stampedtheir feet the blue lights softlyhissed and softly crackled.

The dance did not cease whenthe first crew returned, arms ladenwith the great coarse bracken-fern;Arnten gestured and they .passedtheir burdens, bundle by bundle, tothe end of the cave. First theystuffed it through the still smallopening into the outside worldand then, when this would take nomore, piled it all around about.

Then the second crew began tocome back, stripped to the buff,their garment~skins used as carry...ails for piles of wood from the fallen pit...props, soft from long dryrot, and Arnten gestured again andthey piled wood on the bracken.And still 'the .slow, strange dancewent on and on. Arn, in a fewwords, bade two more crews begone. They must bring back thelarger stumps and shafts of thewooden columns used here andthere to hold up the tunnel roof.

The dancing nains, meanwhile,had danced nearer and closer" to.what was now a bosky mass of dryrotted wood and bracken. Thedancing nains were pressed together almost as though to make oneenormous grotesque creature withmany limbs, a· sort of nainipede;·

ARNT,EN OF ULTIMA THULE

and this grotesque he~ved and huddled close to the~piled up brackenfern which had been its bed. Still itsang and still the blue lights wavered at the ends of its hairs; andthen the blue light gathered itselftogether into one mass and thenainipede went dancing back on itsmany limbs. The ball of lightfloated up and bounced along therough roof of the cave and settledupon the pile of wood. It seemednext to snuggle and to creep its waydeep into the bracken and thenthere was a flash and the blue· wasgone and there was the familiar redand orange and yellow of fire. Andthe song was silent but in its placethey heard the crackling of flames.

M ERRED-DELPHIN stood. by the curtained door and

flapped wide black sleeves. .""My men have them safe noW?"

the Orfas demanded.His chief witcherer opened his

mouth and closed it, long thintongue fluttering. Then he said,"They will not go."

Then seemed the King confused."How now? Won't go? Thenains?"

Merred shook his dry old head,his long nose seeming to point allways at once. "Not the nains, KingWolf! The men! Your men! Theking's men will not' go! They willnot go down into the mine!' Itseems-I should have rememberedthat-" His voice stuck, came outagain at last. "They fear the deep,they fear the darkness, assuredlythey fear the nains and theirwitchery."

The old wolf let waste no time inrage and imprecation, but he

115

rubbed one rusty wrist with onerusty hand and he said in the voiceof one who thinks, "Then what is itwhich they may fear e'en more, mycrow" than the nains and the deepand dark-eh?" .

They looked at each other. Theking's eyes went 'past the old vizierand the old vizier turned; and together they exclaimed a word.

SO DRY was bracken and dryrotted wood that both together

burned with minimal smoke, butsmoke even so there was. Arn andArnten and the nains stood in themain corridor and with their garment-skins they flapped andfanned away the smoke. And now.and then they stopped and tooksips of water from the buckets, butonly sips. A thin glow of.firelight litthe somber halls of undergroundand over this overlay a thin haze ofsmoke. The fire dance of the nainfolk had ceased.

He leaned against his father andin his body be was in the mine-caveand beside his father; yet in hismind he was beside his old uncle inthe old man's medicine hut. Andthere was the sound of a dance ...the sound of a drum ...

Out of the dimness and the deep,deep darkness came the figures ofmen. It was no vision ordream-here, in the mine and outof the darkness of the mine-tunnels, they came.

HThe guards," said Aar. HAye,ehh'ng, be sure, be sure, 'twas thatskulk-crow as sped the word totheir crank lord." And in the naintongue he said a word. The men·came not fast ahead, they movedslowly, irresolute. And in the dim

116

giow of the fire and the thin haze ofthe smoke the nains began anothersort of dance. They moved theirfeet up and down and they leanedforward and they wave<ttheir long,long arms. They did not actuallymove an ell along the tunnel floor,but in the misty, swimmy light,diM and flickering, it seemed asthough they did move, did advance;and the men, moaning, dismayed,retreated.

Then at the edge of his ear Arnten heard the sound which hadtapped below the surface, the thintap-tap, tump-lump, of a witcherydrum. And the soldiers milledabout, cried out in alarm and unease. A spurt of fresh air cleared.vision for a moment and a wayahead and now it was Arnten whocried out and a murmur went up.For back, far back, as far back asthey could see in the main corridor.came a marching column, a marching double column, a dancingdouble column, of figures whichwere manlike but were no men, awaving in their tiny hands themenace of tiny spears.

And the witch-drum beat and thewitch-things came and the mencried out and turned and turned.

Said one nain voice, amused andscorning, HDo they come at us withmandrakes, then? Nay'ng! Thechildr.en 0' the forge know a poweror two for that."

Swiftly said the elder Aar, H 'Tisnot against us that they deploy themandrakes, 'tis to force on themen o'the king, who know no power, let alone two, for that."

Arn, without one word, pickedup one of the water. buckets andwent straightway into the smoke-

filled hole of the hare, pausing amoment at the entrance to pick upa fallen bit of bracken and dip it inthe water and crush the drippingfrond against his nose and mouth.In a moment came a hissing soundand a cloud of steam rolled out andall firelight was quenched.

But not for long, for torches nowmade appearances farther downthe main corridor. The men,fearing the mandrakes more thanthe nains, came closer.

Arn emerged, stumbling, seizedanother bucket and again enteredthe cave. Again there was a hissingand a sizzling and again a cloud ofsteam. And a long pause-andArnten held his breath and feared.And then the bear emerged .again.

HThe fire be out," he said, lowand urgent. "And now it comestime to take these two last bucketsof water and toss them on the hotrock. Do they crack well, we mayall yet take our leave. And ifnot-" He shrugged. A huge massof smoldering bracken wasdragged out, picked up, heaved toward the advancing soldiery-whocried out, fell back into the smokeand gloom. And the drums beatand the mandrakes moved.

Now, all at once, all were in theplace whence the hare had fled.Somehow there was light, light of athin gray sort, obscured by steam,by smoke, but light. And Arntenfelt the floor hot, hot against hisfeet and hissed his-pain. He saw hisfather tQss one bucket, heard himtoss the second. Heard a crackingsound. And a second. Heard thenains give cry to their satisfaction. Heard the almost desperatecries of the king's men as they

ARNTEN OF ULTIMA THULE

charged. Heard the sound of spearsstriking against wall and floor.Heard the sound of spear strikingagainst flesh. Heard his voiceraised in a wail as he saw his father stumble upon one knee withone spear into him. Saw Aarheved-heved-aar fall and saw himcrawl and saw him writhe andheard his death rattle.

Saw the bear seizing the veryrims of the hole of the rock andsmelled his flesh burn and saw hisshoulders writhe and saw the rockface crack still more. Cried out andwailed again as he saw his falherturn toward him, face grim andhideous and smudged with ash andsoot and blood spurting from noseand mouth. Saw that protrudingfrom his father's flesh which heknew was the bloodied head of aspear. Felt his father seize him upand swing him around and protecthis smaller body and thrust himthrough the hole in the rockwhence came the milky light ofdawn. Felt the last great thrust ofthat great body and saw the minevanish from sight and felt the hotrock graze his side and saw the skyand felt himself fall. And roll. Andmove, crawling, crawling. Leavesin his mouth, dust in his nostrils,smoke all about him. Then nosmoke about him. Writhing on hisbelly like a wounded snake. Nomore smoke. Shouts and cries inhis mind alone. Then silence falling in his mind.

His father.His father's face.His father's deed.At this last moment his father

had said no word.His deed had been enough. •

117

LESTER DEL REY

THERE is a theory that ourprogress must be represented

by an' asymptotic curve; that is, thehigher we climb, the steeper therate of change. If the predictionsI've seen are even reas~nably

close, there will be far more changein conditions and in what we callour body of fact it) the next thirtyyears than in the last hundred.

This makes it difficult forscience fiction to predict the futurewith even a crude approximationof what will happen by the year2000. In fact, writers in search of areputation for prophecy can't besure whether to produce wishdreams of glory or nightmares ofman's ul~imate doom. Most ofthe dooms pictured a century ago

turned out to be nonsense, as didthe utopias. And while" we seem tobe living at a time of ill omens,those who seek the easy answer bypredicting horrible futures areno closer to probability than themost optimistic.

But nobody with any seriousright to be h'eard ever claimed thatscience fiction was primarilyprophecy. At best it is merely anattempt to create a consistent,reasonably rational backgroundpicture, of what a future might belike. The science in our science- fiction doesn't really relate to thehard body of physical facts thatmight be used by an engineer,though we try not to violate suchfacts unwittingly. I nstead, we

118

try to use some of the techniquesof the supposedly impractical,"pure" scientist; we look over theknown facts to find what isn't fullyknown; we devise theories, carefully weeding out what is inconsistent or already disproved; andfinally we test our theories to seewhether they work. Of course, wetest them only as fiction, with theproof being the workability of ourfuture world as a place where ourstory characters can function asmore than shadows.

Unfortunately, much of the material now being written doesn't operate that way. A great deal of itcops out by taking something thatis currently in the news and actingas if ·it would be even more so ahundred years from now. Othercurrent writing, all too often, borrows from past vision withoutadding current vision.

As a result, I find it difficult tolocate material that has any realinsight, either visionary or nightmarish, except for the fortunatereprinting of stories done a decadeor three ago.

However, there is now a seriesof books which should be read byeveryone who enjoys good fictionFe the future. These are reprints,long unavailable except in ratherexp"ensive hard-to-find editions.

They a~e the" so-called juvenilebooks of Robert A. Heinlein, currently being issued in soft covers byAce, at a price of 95¢ e~ch. Manyof them are the top examples of

READI NG ROOM

what good science fiction shouldbe. They represent the work of oneof our best writers at the very peakof his form.

Don't let the term "juvenile'-'fool you. The stories are partiallytold from the viewpoint ofcharacters who haven't reachedlegal maturity yet; but so was vanVogt's Sian, and nobodyconsidered that a juvenile story.The outlook, the writing, the philosophy and the complexity of theHeinlein pieces are completelyadult.

. Above all, they present a highlystructured, thoroughly imaginedand consistent picture of a futurefor each novel. On the average,nobody has done as good a job ofmaking futures real as Heinlein,and these book.s are among his bestin that respect.

Between Planets is most certainly not a picture of the future, according to what we now know scientifically about Venus. This waswritten twenty years ago, beforeradio astronomy and the Venusprobes. It uses a picture of Venusthat is hopeless, in the light oflater discoveries. Here the planetis the old-fashioned waterdrenched world, covered with deepfogs and mists, with some islandssticking up from the great shallowseas. As hard prophecy, it failsmiserably.

But that doesn't matter toomuch. The water-world is complete, livable and lived in, with

-119

technologies and attitudes that fitit. It has its own intelligent raceand a bunch of alien creatures thatare completely delightfvl. And it isone of the better stories of an attempt by a colony world to breakfrom the strictures of Earth in asort of interpla~etary war-onelogically worked out for its spaceUba~tles" and its eroding, desultory home battles.

THIS was fairly early in Heinlein's work in the juveniles. The

protagonist is quite acceptable toany adult reader-and he most definitely doesn't stay a juvenile-butsome of the mechanics of the solution creak a bit. Still, BetweenPlanets stands up todayo"etier thanmany current adult books, andthere is no writing down in it.When it first appeared, it wasgood enough· to be used as a serialby one of the most adult of the adventure magazines, at a timewhen science fiction had to b~

better than most other materialto win acceptance.

Red Pl~net, in a way, lets down abit. Again there is the completelybelievable development of rebellion, this time by the colonists onMars against the Earth-basedCompany and its corrupt localrepresentatives. Again, local faunaand flora are worked out so wellthat the book is justified by 'Itsaliens alone. But much of thisseems somehow more standard inits development than the Venus

120-

book. The science is not as farfrom current theories-Marswas better known than Venusbut it fails in indicating too rich asupply of oxygen on Mars.

But when we get to The RollingStones, all the early slight com~

promises Heinlein made to the ageof his readers is discarded. Thismust be a delight to young readers,but it's twice as much fun for thosewho are adult. The main viewpointcharacters here are a couple ofteen-age twins. But the wholeStone family-mentioned in thelater adult Moon Is a Harsh Mistress-is the real uhero" of thestory.

Unlikemost of the series, Stonesis one of Heinlein's fairly rarestories with a completely humorous slant. The humor doesn'timpede the plot, which is a bitfree-wheeling but still excellent.

My own favorite is Star Beast.Given a period of interstellar exploration, it seems inevitable thatsome odd pets would be broughtback to Earth. But suppose one ofthose pets, a hundred-odd· yearslater, turned out to be a rankingmember of one of the most important, sapient and rambunctious races in the universe? Suppose it didn't particularly wantto return, but the total future ofinterstellar peace depended .onfinding and returning it? That'sjust the beginning of the complications in this novel. The real herois':l't a youngster, either. He's the

IF"

real head of all interstellargovernment on Earth, thoughlacking the title. He's also allergic to certain aliens; though he hasto deal warmly with them. .

This novel also is brightenedby as unpleasant a mother and asprecocious a girl friend as can befound in science fiction. Heinleinuses them, among other thing~, aspointers toward the radical·ch'anges that have to be made inour· society and its mores ·when weenter an age of interstellar negotiations. His concept ot a futureearth is complete not merely surface treated. His people think differently from ·us, act differently,and have to find different ways ofmaking the same instincts andmethods serve them. If sociologyand psychology are to' be treatedas scienc~s in our field, this bookstands out as one of the better examples of how to do so.

The science of sociology formsthe background also for Tunnel inthe Sky. The tunnel here refers toa Utube" between dimensions, inwhich it is possible to transferfrom one world to another. Earthhas obviously just opened up colonization of various habitableworlds discovered by the tunnel.And it is undergoing some ratherradical upsets in its social customs. Among these is the need toprepare its younger people for theunknown hazards they may faceon other worlds. One method oftrainil"g is a course in survival.

READING ROOM

The graduating class has to pass asimple test. It's members aredumped onto a planet-type andconditions not specified-andleft there to take care of themselves for two weeks. They can take·any equipment with them whichthey can carry-though Heinleinindicates what he thinks is thebest equipment. At the end, thosewho survive are graduated; thosewho fail are simply dead.

Nice. And probably totally unconvincing to most readers of thisquick su'mmary who cannot believe that our attitudes towardyoung men and women couldchange that radically. But his.torically, Heinlein is on solidground, and he develops his themeso well that it makes total sense inthe story.

A local accident makes it impos-'sible for a student group to usetheir return Utunnel." The time forreturn comes and goes-and moretime goes. And those who have survived. for this long gradually begin to realize that they JTlay neverbe called back. Now, on a worldabout which they still know verylittle, and with only rudimentaryequipment for a· two-week survival test, they must set out to builda viable way of life for their colonyand, hopefully, to become a realworld in time.

But this -is also a story of sociology, as I said. Heinlein has used

(Please turn to page J76)

121

,PHILIP JOSE FARMER

THE··--FABULOUSWHAT HAS GONE BeFORE and the shocks of resurrection

were over, humanity began to lookOne morning the dead of Earth around and to construct new so-

awoke with a great cry. cieties within the .. physical limita-They were on .the banks of a tions of the Rivervalley,. their

river of a planet somewhere in.a psychic conditioning and thestar swarm. They were naked and changed rules ofhuman' life.in an interminable valley which The River was usually one to oneoffered no food-at first. The old and one-half miles wide, though ithad been rejuvenated, so that an sometimes became a narroweighty-year-old, for instance, strait or a lake. The only animalagain had his twenty-five-year-old life consisted of the small earthbody. The diseased were healthy; worm and the fISh, which rangedthe crippled walked straight; the from trout- to whale-sized. Onmisshapen were reshaped. More- each side of The River was a gentover, all men had awakened cir- ly sloping plain a mile wide, thencumcised and were permanently two or so miles of hills and thenwithout facial hair. All women perpendicular unscalable mounwere virgins again but forever tains 10,000 feet and more. Thesterile. plains were covered, with short

After the horrible fears of hell grasses, the hills with tall grasses.

122

RIVERBOAT CONCLUSION

The other plants were bamboo hemisphere and emptied into the(which is a grass), giant oaks, pine, north polar sea.fir, yew and the indestructible Along each bank of The River,non-Terrestrial irontrees. Vines at one-mile intervals, and also inwith huge, varicolored blooms the hills, were huge mushroomgrew on the latter. shaped· stones. Three times a day

The temperature rose to an esti- they discharged enormous elecmate4 85 0 F at 2:00 P.M. and fell trical energies derived from someto 60 0 F around 2:00 A .M. The place-or mechanism-deep ~n

rainfall was unvarying. The esti- the planet's guts. Mankind hadmated population density was awakened possessing metal cyl260-261 persons per square inders containing snap-downmile-:-total population was 36 bil- racks and dishes. These cyllion or so. The River was supposed inders-the grails-when placed onto be from five to ten million miles top of the stones, yielded food,long. It cir.cled this world like a liquor, tobacco, marihuana cigaMidgard Serpent, issuing from rettes and cigars and "dreamthe north polar sea and, after much gum" after the energy discharge.twisting across one hemisphere Apparently the grails containedand cutting back around the south devices, inside false bottoms, forpole, twisted back up the other converting energy to matter.

123

Mankind was where he could years after Resurrection Day,live simply but with no fear of Samuel Langhorne Clemens-orfreezing or dying of thirst or -Mark Twain-had been lookingstarvation or bacterial or viral for two things. One was his Earthdisease or ~ancer or almost any of wife, Olivia. The other was iron.the scourges that had made life on He had two dreams, neither ofEarth a hell. which seemed likely to come true.

Sixty percent of mankind had Sam·Clemens had met a colossalbeen strung along The River in·a subhuman (whom he called Joesequence roughly corresponding Miller) who told a strange story.to the chronology of their exis- Joe had managed to. get uptence on Earth. Thus the earliest through the mountains surroundmen (and subhumans) of circa ing the north pole and had seen a2,OOO~OOO B.C. were closest to The tall pale tower in a misty sea and aRiverhead and the latest, born flying machine descending tocirca 1980-2009 A.D., were near wards it. Then he had fallen to histhe mouth. (Mankind had been death and awakened near Clemwiped out in 2009 A. D.) Mixed ens. Sam WQS fired-up about this;with the 60% of a particular time he thought that the beings reand nationality were 30% of a sponsible for this world must have

-minority from another time and their headquarters in that tower.nationplity and 10% apparently He would build a boat and go allchosen at random from any time the way up The River, if it tookand place. But 1% of the total was him a hundred years to do it.composed of 20th-century hu- Then, somehow, he would stormmans, these being the most nu- the tower and discover the secretmerous of mankind and the most oj resurrection.widely scattered. For the trip Sam wanted a great

Though many people clung to riverboat such as he had piloted onthe idea that their resurrection the Mississippi in his youth. Unwas of supernatural origin, many fortunately the planet seemed tothought they knew better. It was have little iron" ore. However, herumored that one man had awak- met a Norseman, Eric Bloodaxe,ened in a strange and frightening who had an axe made from aplace where the dead were being nickel-iron meteorite. With Eric'srecreated, refleshed and pre- Norsem*n and Joe, Sam set outpared for their second deaths and down The ·River to find a largerecreation upon the planet's sur- supply ofmeteorite metal.face through some unknown He found it, but not as he hadmeans. This man (who, said some, planned. A giant meteorite struckwas Richard Fran.cis Burton, the the valley and the tidal waves al19th-century English explorer, most killed the searchers. 'But theylinguist, and author) had seen the located the iron and began minwarders of that chamber ()f the ing. From the first, to attain hisdead, who lookedjust like men. boat, Sam had had to make deals

During this time, the first twenty and compromises he would other-

124 IF

wise have scorned. He had to become partners with the man whohad once been King John of England. He had to murder EricBloodaxe. And Eric, before dying, had sworn that when Sam didget to the end of The River, ·hewould find Eric waiting for him,and Eric would kill him and thussend him offdown The River a million or so miles. Sam would neverget to the misty tower, nor wouldhe keep his fabulous Riverboat.Sam was to have nightmaresthereafter about Eric.

One night Sam awoke in his hutto find a hooded man crouched beside him. Thisma1l, whom Samwas to call The MysteriousStranger-or X-was one of thegroup that had created this planetand the resurrection. Though anEthical (as these beings calledthemselves), he was a renegade.He told Sam that he had used hispowers to deflect the giant meteorite and to deactivate the repulsive system that would ordinarily'have sent the falling star past theplanet. His fellows suspected thatthey had a traitor among them, butnone of them knew for sure. Sam.was to build his great boat and take.a crew upRiver. He would be aided by eleven men 'whom TheStranger had chosen to storm. thetower and wreck the plans of theEthicals. These men would comesecretly to Clemens and introduce themselves.

.Sam's problems as co-consul ofParolando,. the state formed tobuild the boat, kept him busy. dayand night.. One of his problemswas getting enough wood as fuelfor the mills and plastic factories.

THE FABULOUS RIVE-R.BOAT

And Parolando had to tradefor-or gain by conquest-materials and ores other states had:~ryolite and bauxite to makealuminum, tungsten and iridiumfor electrical components. Adding to Sam's troubles was the attitude ofOlivia, his Earth wife, whowas no longer in love with him, butchose to live with the resurrectedFrenchman, Cyrano de Bergerac.

One downRiver state, Soul Gity,was headed by a late 20th-centuryA merican black militant, Elwood Hacking. He had controt ofcertain materials Sam neededand was demanding high prices.He was also, Sam was sure, plotting to. get hold of the boat after it.was finished, if not before. Neighboring states were hoping to dothe same'. King John also wasmaking life jumpy. jor Sam. Hewas bound to be plotting to get theboat for himself Mean}Vhile,John's arrogance and lechery hadto be repressed by Sam.

Moreover, 'the missionaries ofthe Church of the Second Chancewere plaguing him. This religiousbody had formed a few years afterResurrection Day. It claimed toknow what the whole business ofthe River and the Resurrectionwas about. Its members preachedtotal pacifISm, love' for all and astriving towards ethical perfection. They were also responsiblefor introducing Esperanto as auniversal language. They welcomed martyrdom as the quickest way for them to travel. up anddown The River and spread tlieirreligion.

They were a threat to Clemensbecause they were opposed to the

125

VI II

SAM saw thirty or so womenwalking out through the open

gates and knew that John "had decided to rectify his mistake. Even·so, he could be accused of kidnaping, a graver crime than murder inthis topsyturvy world.· But if thewomen were unharmed it would betoo much trouble to push thecharg~.

He stopped-and this time. hethought his heart would also stop.Gwenafra was with the women!

Lothar, crying her name, ran toher. She ran to him with her armsout and they embraced.

126

building of the boat. Their main After a minute of hugging, kissspeaker in this area was Hermann ing and sobbing, she pulled herselfGoering, the ex-Nazi, the ex- away and went to.Sam. He couldReichsmarschal. Goering had not help reproaching hil1Jself. If hesuffered a psychic conversion as had shown that he wanted her,sudden and as strange and ap- when she had made it plain that heparently as sincere as that of Paul could have her, she might not haveoj Tars'ls. - turned to von Richthofen. Why

A large group offellow mission- hadn't he taken her? Why had heQries, kicked out of a neighboring clung to the idea that Livy wouldstate, landed in Parolando despite eventually come back and that, iforders to stay out. King John, he took another woman now, Livyeager to.try out a new pistol using would resent it so much she wouldplastic. bullets, massacred all but never have anything to do witha few women. T~ese he took into him? She was living with Cyrano.his log palace. Sam could not allow So he could do what he pleased.John to get away with this, even if His thinking wasn't logical. Heit mealit civil war. So he set out to sighed. Logic was what one used todemand the women back, un- justify one's emotions.harmed, and to arrest John.. Odys- Gwenafra kissed him while herseus WQS upRiver on a mission. tears ran down his bare chest.Sam had with him LQlhar von Again she left his arms and wentRichthofen, de Bergerac, Joe back to Lothar, and Sam ClernensMiller and afew others. IfJohn re~ was left with the problem of wh~t

sisted he could cause Sam to t<tdo with-or to-John Lackland.lose-forever-all hopes of sail- He strode through the gates, Joeing on hisfabu/ous Riverboat. Miller lumbering behind him. A

moment later von Richthofen hadcaught up with him. He was swearing and muttering in German, ul'llkill him!"

Sam stopped. '~You get out ofhere," he said. UI'm mad enough,but I can control myself. You're inthe lion's den now-and if you tryanything he can have you killed andclaim self-defense. He'd love that.In fact, he may have done all thisjust to set up our murder."

Lothar said, HBut you're herewith only Joe."

HI wouldn't ever call Joe anonly," Sam replied. HAnyway, ifyou hadn't been so busy muggingwith Gwen you would have heardme"'order the troops to storm the

palace and kill everybody in it ifI'm not out in fifteen minutes."

Lothar stared at Sam. "You'vecertainly gotten much more agressive than you used to be."

"The more trouble I have andthe longer the building of the Riverboat takes, the meaner I get,"Sam said. There was no point inmentioning that his anger at Lothar and Gwenafra was turned onto John, who already had so muchdirected at him that he should havecurled up and crisped away~ Andwould have if there were any justice in the world.

He entered the largest buildinginside the stockade of tall .lodgepole-pine logs and brushed pastSharkey. The slope-shoulderedthug started to block his way, butSam did not break his stride.Sharkey snarled soundlessly andmade the mistake of not movingfar enough to one side. A huge reddish-haired hip sent the two-hundred-and-thirty-pound man staggering back as if he were a hollowdummy.

"I'll kill you one of these ·days,"Sharkey said in English.

Joe turned his head slowly as ifit were a turret on a battleship andthe tremendous proboscis were acannon. HYeth? You and vhatarmy?"

"You're getting pr~tty snappywith the comeback,. Joe," Sammuttered. HMy influence, nodoubt."

"I'm not ath dumb ath mothtpeople think,'l' Joe said.

"That wouldn't be possible."

bodyguard, he was far from beingsafe. But he was banking on thefact that John would go only so farwith him-John wanted the Riverboat, too.

John was sitting at the big roundoaken table with a dozen of histhugs. The giant Zaksksromb wasstanding behind him. All held claysteins. The room reeked of tobaccoand liquor. John's eyes were redbut then they usually were. Lightcame in through the windows butthe direct sunlight was blocked offby the stockade poles. Some pinetorches burned smokily..

Sam stopped, took a cigar outQf the little box in the bag hangingfrom his belt and lit it. It angered.him that his hand shook so much.

He said, "All right, Your Majesty. It. was bad enough that youtook those women for your ownvile purposes. But to take Gwenafra? She's a citizen of this state!You really put your neck in thenoose, John, and I'm not just usingfigurative language."

John downed the whiskey in thestein and gently put it down on thetable. He said softly, "I had thosewomen removed for their ownsafety. The crowd was ugly; theywanted to kill all the missionaries.And Gwenafra was taken alongthrough a mistake. I will ascertainwho is responsible for that andpunish him."

"John," Sam said, "I ought toarrest your assertions for vagrancy.They certainly are without ~ny visible support. But I got to hand itto you. You just dispossessed thedevil. You are now the father of

SAM'S rage had become a dull lies and grand master,-past, presentred now. Even with Joe as his and future, of deceit. If being bare-

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 127

faced is the criterion of the greatest liar, all·other liars are whiskered like Santa Claus."

John's face turned red. Zaksksromb sneered and lifted his clubchest high. Joe growled.

John blew out a deep breath andsaid, smiling, uyou are upset overa little blood. You will get over it.You cannot disprove anything Ihave said-isn't that right? By theway, have you called a meeting ofthe Council yet? The law of theland requires you to do so, youknow."

The horrible thing was that Johnwould get away with his claims.Everybody, incl.uding his supporters would~ know he was lying. Butthere was nothing Sam cou'd dounless he wanted to start a civilwar. And civil war woula meanthat the wolves-Iyeyasu, Hacking,maybe the supposed neutrals, Pub-·'tius Crassus, Chernsky, Tai Fungand the savages across the Riverwould invade.

CAM snorted and walked out.~wo hours later his expectationsbecame realities. The Councilmenvoted an official reprimand againstJohn for his mishandling of thesituation and his hastiness. He wasdirected to confer with his co-Consul in any su:ch future situations.

No doubt John would laugh uproariously when he was told of thedecision and he would call for moreliquor~ tobacco, marihuana andwomen to celebrate.

However, he did not have a complete victory. Every Parolandoknew how Sam Clemens had stoodup to John, stormed his p.alacewith only one supporter, released

128

the women and insulted John tohis face. John knew that his triumph was standing on shaky legs.

Sam asked the Council to exileevery Second Chancer in Parolando for his/her. own protection.But several Councilors pointedout that this would be illegal. TheCarta would have to be changed.Besides, it was u.nlikely that Johnwould take any more actionagainst the sect after the warninghe had received.

They knew as well as Sam whyhe was taking advantage of theemotional climate to oust the Second Chancers. But there were somestubborn men on the Council. P~r

haps they felt angry because theyhad not been able to do anythingabout John and wanted to make astand for principle.

Sam would have bet that thesurvivors of the massacre wouldwant to leave immediately. Butthey insisted on staying. Theslaughter had convinced them thatParolando needed them. Goeringwas building several large huts forthem. Sam sent word down thatthis should stop. Parolando wasalready short of wood. Goeringsent word back that he and hismale comrades would move outand sleep under the grailstones.Sam swore and blew smoke in theface of the Chancer messenger andsaid that it was too bad pneumonia·did not exist. A fterward he feltashamed, but he did not relent. Hewasn't going to scant his. furnacesso that people he did not even wantcould sleep under a roof.

He felt upset enough, but thatevening he got two messages whichopened the earth under him. One

was that Odysseus had disappearedat night from his boat while on hisway back to Parolando. Nobodyknew what had happened to him.He was just gone. The second message informed him that WilliamGrevel, the man who had been spying on John, had been found under.a ledge at the base of th~ mountain, his skull smashed in.

Somehow, John had found himout and executed him. And Johnwould be laughing because Samcould not prove a thing or, for thatmatter, even admit that Grevel hadbeen working for him.

SAM called in von Richthofen,de Bergerac and others wh.om

he considered to be his people. Itwas true that de Bergerac and hewere hostile because of Livy, butde Bergerac preferred Clemens toJohn, with whom he had had somehOt words. ,

HMaybe Odysseus' disappearance from the boat is only a coincidence," Sam said. HBut that, plusGrevel's death, makes wOe wonderif John isn't striking at me throughmy friends. He may be planning on~utting you down, one by one, under circ*mstances where he can'tbe. accused. He's crafty. He probably won't do anything now forsome time. But Odysseus was gotten rid of in a place where an investigation will probably revealnothing. And I can't accuse Johnabout Grevel without exposingwhat I've been doing. So, watchout for sit"uations where accidentscan happen. And be careful whenyou are alone."

De Bergerac swore. Hlfit.weren'tfor this ridiculous law against

THE _FAB~LOUSRIVERBOAT

dueling,. I could challenge John andrun him through. You, Sinjoro.Clemens, were respons~ble for thatlaw!"

HI was raised in a country whereduels were common," Sam said.44The whole idea sickens me. i'lfyou'd seen the tragedies-well,never mind. I guess you- did seeand ..it doesn't seem to have affected you. Anyway, do you thInkfor one moment that John would~ver let you live long enough tomeet. him for a duel? No, you'ddisappear or have an accident, youcan bet on that."

UVhy can't Chohn have an acthident?" Joe Miller asked.

UHow would you get past theliving wall of his bodyguards?"Sam said. uNo, if John has an accident, it must be a genuine one."

He dismissed them with the exception of de Bergerac and Joe,who never left him unless he wassick or Sam wanted privacy. Thesewere the only ones who knew about 0

The Mysterious Stranger.UThe Stranger said that he'd

picked out twelve humans for thefinal onslaught against the MistyTower," Sam told Cyrano. 44Joe,you, Richard Francis Burton,Odysseus, and me. That's five. Butnone of, us knows who the otherseven are~ Now Odysseus is goneand God knows if we'll ever seehim again. The Stranger impliedthat all of the twelve would jointhe others on the Riverboat somewhere along the line. But if Odysseus has been resurrected somewhere to the south, downRiver, sofar away he can't get back up herebefore the Riverboat is built, thenhe is out of luck."

129

Cyrano shrugged and rubbed hislong nose. UWhy worry? Or is that

···your nature? For all we know,Odysseus is not dead. He may havebeen contacted by this MysteriousStranger-who, Odysseus claims,is a woman, so his ~tranger is not.the one that you and I met-but Idigress. As I said, Odysseus mayhave been called away suddenly bythis so mysterious person and wewill find out in time what did happen. Let that shadowy angel-orfiend--take care of the matter.We must concentrate on gettingthis fabulous boat constructed andskewering' anybody who gets in ourway."

UThat maketh thenthe," Joesaid. ulf Tham had a hair for every time he vorried, he'd "look likea porcupine. Vhich, now· that Icome to think of it-"

UOut of the mouths of babesand tailless monkeys," Sam said.uOr is it the other end? Anyway, ifeverything goes well-and so far ithasn't-we'll start bonding themagnalium plates for the hull inthirty days. That'll be my happiestday until we actually launch theboat. I'll be happier even than whenLivy said yes-"

H E COULD have cut himselfoff sooner, but he wanted to

antagonize Cyrano. The Frenchman, however, did not react. Whyshould he? He had Livy-she wassaying yes to him all the time.

HMe, I do not like. the idea, sinceI am a peaceful man. I would liketo have the leisure to indulge myself with the good things of life. Iwould like to have an end to wars-and if there is to be any blood-

130

shed, let it be between gentlemenwho know how to wield theirswords. But we cannot build theboat without interference, becausethose who do not have iron desireit and will not stop until they getit. So, me, I think that John Lackland may be right in one particular.Perhaps we should wage an all-outwar as soon as we have enoughweapons, and clear The River onboth sides of all opposition forthirty miles both ways. We canthen have unlimited access to thewood and the bauxite and platinum-"

UBut if you did that, if you killed all the inhabitants, the countrieswould be filled up within a day,"Sam said. uyou know how resurrection works. Look at how'swiftlythis area was reinhabited after themeteorite had killed everybody init."

Cyrano held up a long-anddirty-finger. Sam wondered ifLivy was losing her battle to keephim clean.

UAh!" Cyrano said. UBut thesepeople will remain unorganizedand we, being on the spot, will organize them, take them in as citi...zens of the expanded Parolando.We will include them in the lotteryfor the crew of the boat. In thelong run, it would b~ faster to. stopthe boat building now and do as Isuggest.'"

And I will send'you forth in thelead, Sam thought. A nd it wi/I beDavid and Bathseba and Uriah allover again. Except that Davidprobably didn't have a conscience,never lost a wink of sleep overwhat he did ...

HI don't think so," Sam said.

"In the first place, our citizens willfight like. hell to defend themselves,because they're involved in theboat. But they're not going. to engage in a- war of conquest, espe-·cially after they figure out thatbringing new citizens into the lottery is going to reduce their chancesenormously. Besides, it just isn'tright."

De Bergerac stood up, his handon the hilt of his rapier. "Perhapsyou are right. But the day youmade an agreement \Yith JohnLackland and then murdered ErikBloodaxe, that was the day youlaunched your boat 0'0' blood andtreachery and cruelty. I do not reproach you, my friend. What youdid was unavoidable if you wantedthe boat. But yop cannot start thusand then shy away from similar oreven worse acts. Not if you wC:lntyour boat. Good night, my friend."

He bowed and' left. Sam puffedon his cigar, then said, UI hate thatman. He tells the truth."

Joe stood up, and the floorcreaked under his eight hundredpounds. UI'm going. to bed. Myhead hurtth. Thith whole thing ithgiving me a pain in my athth. Either you do or you don't. It'ththat thimple."

uIf I had my brainth in my aththI'd thay the thame thing," Samsnarled. "Joe, I love you. You'rebeautiful. Your world is so uncomplex. Problems make you sleepy-so you sleep. But 1-" •

UGood night, Tham!" Joe said,and walked into the texas. Sammade sure that the door was barredand that the guards he'd postedaround the building were alert.Then he, too, went to bed.

THE FABULOUS R'IVERBOAT

H E DREAMED ·about ErikBloodaxe, who chased him

through the decks and into the holdof the Riverboat. He awoke yelling. Joe loomed over him, shakinghim. Rain pounded the roof andthunder boomed somewhere ·upalong the face of the mountain.

Joe stayed a while after makingsome coffee. He put a spoonful ofdried crystals into cold water andthe coffee crystals heated the mixture in three seconds. They sippedtheir coffee and Sam smokedwhile they talked about the dayswhen they had voyaged down TheRiver with Bloodaxe and his Vikings in search of iron. And then Joetalked of how he had awakenedalong The River the first time andfound. himself in the Arctic regionsamong his own kind, the titanthropi. Then Egyptians had come intheir oared vessels and he had beeninduced to g-o with them up TheRiver~ Th~y calle~ him Tehuti (thati~,"Thoth) because of his long nose,which reminded them of the ibisheaded god. And then they hadcome to the headwaters of The Riv~

er and climbed mountains whichseemed unclimbable. They hadfound their way prepared, somesteps cut out of the cliff, a tunnelbored, a ledge widened, ropes lefthanging down. The person who haddone this, Joe now knew, must havebeen Sam's Mysterious Stranger.And then high up on a ledge, withthe cold gray mists of the Qorthpolar sea below him and the suncreeping along forever just belowthe top of the mountain range thatringed the sea,. the mists had partedfor a moment. The top of a tower,a vast gray cylinder shaped like a

131

the aggravating and often wastedhours of wrangling, Sam delegatedthe final word to Van Boom. Theywere not to worry him about anything unless they needed his authorization.

An amazing number of thingsinstantly required his .authorization.

grail, had been visible for, a fewseconds as the sun passed a notchin the mountains. A big egg-shapedmachine had flown d9wn towardthe top of the tower. Joe had steped back, forgetting that there was agrail just behind him. He had fallenbackward off the 'mountain anddown into the mists and then intothe sea, many thousands of feet below. He had awakened in a regionof The River where only humanslived and there had met Sam Cle- IYEYASU conquered not onlymens. the Bushman-Hottentot area

UAt leatht, ve uthed to have fun across The 'River from him butnow and then," Joe' said..UBut not nine miles of the Ulmak territory.any more. There 'th too much vork Then he sent a fleet down to theto do and too many people out to three-mile, stretch below' the UIthkin our hideth. And your voman maks, where seventeenth-centuryvould thyow up vith that big- A.D. Sac and Fox Indians lived.nothed Thyrano." This country was conquered with

Sam chuckled and said, ,~4Thanks \ resultant slaughter of half the infor the first laugh I've had in days, habitants. Iyeyasu then beganJoe. Big-nosed! Ye Gods!" dickering with Parolando for a

UThometimeth I'm too thubtle higher price for his wood. Also, heeven for you, Tham," Joe said. He wanted an amphibian exactly likerose from, ,the table and walked the Firedragon I.back to his room. By then the second Firedragon

Sam had little time for sleep that was almost finished.night and on subsequent nights. And by this time over five hunHe had always liked to stay in bed dred blac'ks from Parolando hadin the mornings-now he managed been exchanged for an equal numless than five hours out of twenty- ber of Dravidians. Sam had steadfour, 'with an occasional siesta. fastly refused to accept the WahSomeone always seemed to need a habi Arabs, or at le'ast had insistedquestion answered or an issue that the Asiatic Indians come first.thr,ashed out. H'is chief engineers Hacking apparently did not likewere far from agreeing on every-· this, but nothing had been said inthing. Sam had thought engineer- the agreement about which grouping a cut-and-dried profession. had priority.You had a problem and you solved Hacking, having heard from hisit the best- way. Usually there was spies about Iyeyasu's demands,only one way. But Van Boom, Ve- sent a message. He wanted a FireIitsky, and O'Brien seemed to be dragon, too, and he was willing toliving in worlds that did not quite exchange 11 great quantity of mindovetait. Finally, to spare himself erals for it.

132 IF

him I hadn't sworn any oath ofloyalty to you, but I had acceptedyour offer and that was as good Isaid. I wasn't going to betray youand that if Soul City invaded Parolando I'd defend it to the death."

uThat's fine, superb." Sam said.HHere, have a snort of bourbonand a cigar! I'm proud of you andproud to command such loyalty.But I wish-I wish-"

Van Boom 10Qked ·over the cup.HYes?" ( .

HI wish you'd strung him along.We could have found out a lot withyou feeding us information."

Van Boom put the cup down andstood up. His handsome brownfeatures were ugly .. HI am not adirty spy!"

"Come back," Sam said, butVan Boom ignored him. Samburied his head in his arms for aminute and then picked up VanBoom's cup. Never let it be saidthat Samuel Langhorne Clemenswasted good whiskey. Or even bad,for that matter. Although the~grailnever yielded any but the best.

Van Boom's lack of realism irritated him. At the same time heknew a counter feeling of warmpleasure. It was good to know thatincorruptible men still existed.

He regretted that he had not hada chance to pry out of Van Boomhis basic attitude toward whites.Sam knew ·that his chief engineerhad been delivered by a Zulu mother in a ditch during a bombardmentin the course of a revolution inSouth Africa. Van 800m'S fatherhad been an Afrikaans who hadjoined the black underground. Van.Boom had been raised in a societyin which whites and blacks were

Publius Crassus and Tai Fungallied to invade the area across TheRiver from them. This was occupied by stone-age peoples fromeverywhere and everytime andstretched for fourteen miles alongthe left bank. With their superiorsteel weapons and numbers, theinvaders killed half the populationand enslaved the rest. And they upped their price for the wood butkept it below Iseyasu'8.

Spies reported that Chernsky,who ruled the fourteen-mile-longnation just north of Parolando, had'ma~e a visit to Soul City. Whathappened there was anybody'sguess, since Hacking had set up asecurity system that seemed to be'one hundred percent effective. Samhad gotten in eight blacks to spyfor him and he knew that John badsent in at least a dozen. The severed heads of all soon were tossedfrom boats in the mists late ~t

night onto the top of the wall alongthe bank of Parolando.

Van Boom came to Sam late onenight and said that Firebrass hadcautiously approached him.

"He offered me. the position ofchief engineer on the boat," VanBoom said.

UHe offered it to you?" Samsaid, his cigar almost dropping.

UYes. He didn't say so in somany words, but I got the idea. TheRiverboat will be taken over by theSoul Citizens and I will be chiefengineer."

uAnd what did you say about hisfine offer? After all, you can'tlose, either way."

UI .told him not to etch a pseudocircuit. Come out and say it. Hewouldn't, though he grinned. I told

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 133

theoret.ically equal, though therewere not many whites around.Most of them had been slaughteredor fled the country. He had grownup with the history of the long exploitation and suppression of theblacks by the whites drilled intohim. But he himself had seemed tobe unaffected by his backgroundand he had not come into contactwith whites who looked down onhim. He had never left his country.

Sam decided he did not have toworry about Van Boom.

I N THE middle of the night heawoke wondering if he did have

to worry after all. What if VanBoom were not as. upright as hepretended to be? What if the cleverFirebrass had told Van Boom togo to Clemens with ·his-" -story?What better way to put a man off·his guard? But then it would havebeen better if Van Boom had pretended to Sam that he was playingalong with Firebrass.

U('m beginning to think likeKing John," Sam said aloud.

He finally decided that he had totrust Van Boom.. The work on the great Riverboatwent on day and night. The plates

. of the hull were bonded and thebeams were welded on. The batacitor and the giant electric motorswere built and cranes began theslow and cautious work of lowering them into the hull. The cranesthemselves were enormous structures on huge rail~, powered byelectricity from the prototype batacitor. People came from thousands of miles up and down TheRiver, in galleys, dugouts, canoes,to see the fabulous works.

134

Sam and King John agreed thatso many people wandering aboutwould get in the way of the workand would enable spies to functionmore efficiently.

-uAlso, it'll put the temptationto steal before them, and we don'twant to be responsible for tempting people. They have enough trouble as it is," Sam said.

John did not smile. He signed theorder that expelled all noncitizens,except for ambassadors and messengers, from the work area. Thisstill did not prevent many boatsfrom sailing by while the occupantsgawked. The dirt and stone wallsalong the bank were about finished-there· were, however, manybreaks through which the curiouscould stare. These openings wereleft to provide ingress to freightboats bringing wood, ore and flints.Moreover, since the plain slopedup toward the hills, the touristscould see the factories and cranes-and the great structure of theboa.tyard itself was visible for milesaround.

After a while the tourist tradebegan to peter out. Too many ofthe curious were being picked upalong the way by grail slavers.Word got around that it was becoming dangerous to travel TheRiver in that section. Six monthspassed. The wood. supply in thearea was cut off. Bamboo grew tofull length in three to six weeks; thetrees took six months to reachcomplete maturity. Every state forfifty miles both ways from Parolando had enough wood for theirown uses only.

Parolando's representativesmade treaties with more distant

til the boat was nearly finished.Once Joe Miller said, uTham,

don't you think maybe you're.wrong about Chohn? Maybe he'thgoing to be -content vith being thecond in command of the boat?"

."Joe, would a sabertooth partwith his canines?"

"Yhat?""John is rotten to the core. The

old kings of England were neverany great shakes, morally speaking. The only difference betweenthem and Jack the Ripper was thatthey operated openly and with thesanction of Church and State. ButJohn was such a wicked monarchthat it became traditional never to.name another English king John.Even the Church, which had a hightolerance' for evil in high places,could not stomach John. The Popeslapped the Interdict on the entirenation and brought John crawlingand begging to the feet ofthe Pope,like a whipped puppy. But I suppose that even when he was kissingthe Pope's foot, John managed tosuck a little blood. And the Popemust have felt his pockets to make,sure his money was still there afterhe embraced John.

"What I'm trying to put acrossis that John couldn't reform evenif he wanted to. He'll always be ahuman weasel, a hyena, a skunk."

~AM wanted to be with the boattr.::)from dawn to dusk and evenlater-he loved every minute ofprogress there. But he was caughtin so many administrative detailsthat he could indulge himself foronly two to three hours-on a goodday. He tried to get John to takeover more of the administration,but John would accept only dutieswhich gave him more power overthe military forces or allowed himto exert pressure on those who op-posed him. JOE puffed on a'cigar even longer

The anticipated attempts at as- than his nose and said, "Yell, Isassination of those close to Sam don't know. Look at vhat thedid not occur. The bodyguards and Church of the Thecond Chanthethe close watch at nights were con- hath done to Goering. Look at yo'u.tinued, but Sam decided that John You told me that in your timewas going to. lay low for a while. vomen vore clotheth that coveredHe had probably seen that it would them from the neck to the anklethbe best for his purposes to wait un- and you got ekthited if you thaw a

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 135

states, trading iron ore and weapons for wood. A large supply ofsiderite masses was still available;Sam was not worried about running out of it. But the mining of ittook many men and materials andcaused the central part of Parolando to look like a heavily shelledlandscape. And the more wood wasbrought in, the more men, materials and machines had to be divertedfrom the boatbuilding to makeweapons for trade. Moreover, theincrea'se in shipping resulted inmore demand for lumber to buildfreighters. And more men had tobe trained and shipped out as sailors and guards for the wood-carrying and ore-carrying fleets. Finallyboats had to be rented from neighboring states and the rent, as always, was iron-nickel ore and finished weapons.

good-looking ankle-and a thigh,oh my! Now you aren't too dithturbed if you thee-"

"I know-I know," Sam said."Old attitudes and what the psychologists call conditioned reflexescan be changed. -That's why 1 saythat anybody. who still carries inhim the racial and sexual prejudices he had on Earth is not takingadvantage of what The River offers. A man can change, but-"

"He can?" Joe said. "But youalvayth told me that everything inlife, even the vay a man actth andthinkth, ith determined by vhatvent on long before he vath evenborn. Vhat ith it? Yeth, it'th a determinithtic philothophy, that'thvhat. Now, if you believe thateverything ith fikthed in itthcourthe, that humanth are mathyineth, tho to thpeak, then how canyou believe that men can chanchethemthelveth?"

"Well," Sam drawled, lookingfierce, his blue-green eyes brightabove the falcon nose, "even mytheories are determined in advanceand if they conflict, that can't behelped."

"Then, for heaven'th thaketh,"Joe said, throwing up his footballsized hands, "vhat'th the uthe oftalking about it? Or even doing anything? Voy don't you chutht giveup?" ~

"Because 1 can't help myself,"Sam said. 'loBecause, when the firstatom in this - universe bumpedagainst the second atom my fatewas decreed, my every thought andaction was fixed."

"Then you can't be, uh, rethponthible for vhat you do, right?"

"Thafs right," Sam said. He

'136

began to feel uncomfortable. ."Then Chohn can't help it that

he'th a murdering treacherouththoroughly dethpicable tbvine?"

"No-and 1can't help despisinghim for what he is."

"And 1 thuppothe that if thomebody thmarter than 1 am camealong. and thyowed you, by thtrictundeniable lochic, that you werEwrong in your philothophy, thatyou vould thay that he can't helpthinking you're wrong? But he'thwrong, it'th chutht that he'th predetermined, mechanically, to thinkthe vay he doeth."

"I'm right and I know it," Samsaid, puffing harder. "This hyppothetical man couldn't convinceme because his own reasoning doesnot spring from a free will, whichis like a vegetarian tiger-that is,it doesn't exist."

"But your own reathon1ngdoethn't t~pring from a free viII."

'loTrue. We're all screwed. Webelieve what we have to."

'loyou iaugh at thothe people whohave vhat you call invinthibleignoranthe, Tham. Yet you're fullof it, yourthelf."

"Lord deliver us from apeswho think they're philosophers!"

"Thee! You fall back on inthultth vhen you can't think ofanything elthe to thay! Admit it,Tham! You haven't got a lochicalleg to thtand on!"

'loYou just aren't capable Qfseeing what I mean, because Qfthe way you are," Sam said.

"You thyould talk to ~ Thyranode Bercherac more, Tham. He'thath big a thynic ath you, althoughhe doethn't go ath far ath you dovith determinithm."

UI'd think you two incapableof talking to each other. Don'tyou two resent each other, , youlook so much alike? How can youstand nose to nose, as· it were, andnot break up with laughter? It'slike two anteaters-"

UInthultth! Inthultth! Oh,vhat'th the uthe?" .

"Exactly," Sam said.Joe did not say good night and

Sam did not call after him. Hewas nettled. Joe looked so dumbwith his low forehead, bone-ringedeyes, dill-pickle nose, gorilla buildand hairiness. But behind thoselittle blue eyes and the lisping wasan undeniable intelligence.

What disturbed him most wasJoe's comment that his deterministic belief was only a rationalization. To excuse his guilt? Guiltfor what? Guilt for just abouteverything bad that had happenedto those whom he loved.

But it was a philosophic labyrinth which ended in a quagmire.Did he believe in determinism because he wanted not to feel guilty?Or did he feel guilty, even thoughhe should not, because the universe was so constructed that hehad to feel guilty?

H E SAT up later than usualthat night, but not working.

He drank at least a fifth ~f ethylalcohoJ mixed with fruit juice.

Firebrass had said two monthsearlier he could not understandthe failure· of Parolando to make-ethyl alcohol. Sam had been upset. He had not known that grainalcohol could be made here, hadthought ~hat the only supply of

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

liquor was the limited amountthat the grails yielded.

No, Firebrass had said. Hadn'tany of his engineers told him? Ifthe proper materials, such as acid,coal gas, or acetaldehyde and aproper catalyst were availa"lewood cellulose could be convertedinto ethyl alcohol.

Sam had called in Van Boom,who had stated that he had enoughto worry about without providingbooze for people who alreadydrank too much. .

Sam had ordered materials andmen diverted and, for the firsttime in the history of The River, asfar as anyone knew, potable alcohol began to be made on alarge scale. Thi_s resulted not onlyin happier citizens, except for theSecond Chancers, but in a new industry for Parolando. Sam exported alcohol in. exchange forwood and bauxite.

The trade, Sam thought, couldafford his indulgence this night.He finished the bottle, fell intobed and, the next morning refused to get up before noon. Butthe day after he was back at histoils.. He and John sent ~ message toIyeyasu that they would regard itas a hostile act if he invaded therest of the Ulmak territory orChernsky's Land.

Iyeyasu replied that. he had nointention of waging war. on theselands and proved it by invading·the state just north of his, Sheshshub's Land. Sheshshub was an As.;,syrian, born in the seventh centuryB.C. Me had been a general ofSargon II, and so, like most powerful people on Earth, had become

137

a leader On the Riverworld. Hegave Iyeyasu a good fight, but theinvaders were more numerous.

Iyeyasu was only one worry.Sam had others.' Hacking sent amessage through Firebrass. Hewanted Parolando to quit stallinga·nd send the amphibian promisedto him. Sam had kept pleadingtechnical difficulties, but Firebrass told him that excuses ofany kind were no longer acceptable.

Firedragon III was reluctantlyshipped off.

S· AM made a visit to Chernsky,. just nortt) of Parolando, to re-assure him that Parolando woulddefend ternskujo. Coming back,a half-mile upwind of the factories, Sam almost gagged. ..He hadbeen living so long in the acidbath-cum-smoke atmosphere thathe had, gotten used to it and thevacation from it had cleansed hislungs. The stench set him coughing. Though the wind was at fifteen mph, it did· not carry thesmoke away swiftly enough. Theair defini~ely was hazy. No wonder, he thought, that Publiujo, tothe south, complained.

But the boat continued to grow.Standing before the front port -ofhis pilothouse, Sam could lookout every morning and be consoled for his troubles and for thehideousness and stench of theland. The three decks would becompleted in another six monthsand the great paddlewheels wouldbe installed. A plastic coatingw~uld seal the part of the hull incontact with water. This plasticwould not only' prevent electroly-

138

sis of the magnalium, it would reduce the effect of water turbulence. Van Boom said the reduction would add ten mph to theboat's speed.

The upper decks would bewhite with red, black and goldtrimmings.

During this time Sam receivedsome good news. Tungsten andiridium had been found in Selinu-jO,the country immediatelysouth of Soul City. The reportwas brought by a prospector, whotrusted ito one but Sam. He alsobrought some bad news. SelinaHastings refused (0 let Parolandomine there. In fact, if she hadknown that a Parolandano hadbeen digging along the mountainshe would have thrown him out.

. She did not want to be unfriendly-indeed, she loved Sam Clemens, since he was a human being.But she did not approve of theRiverboat and she would not permit anything to go out of herland that would help build thevessel. I

Sam erupted and, as Joe said,UThyot blue thyit for miletharound." The tungsten was verymuch needed for hardening machine tools but even more forradios and, eventually, the closedcircuit TV set~. The iridium couldbe used to harden platinum. forvarious uses-scientific .instruments and surgical tools.

The Mysterious Stranger hadtold Sam that he had set up thedeposit of minerals in Sam's territory, but that his fellow Ethi~

cals did not know that he haddone so. Along with the bauxite,cryolite, and platinum he had

139

Sam, was angered but alsoamus·ed. He knew John wouldhave liked to have sent a messenger with a summons, in keepingwith the dignity of an· ex-king.But John, in turn, knew that Samwould not have answered for along time-if at all-and meanwhile there was no telling howmuch hankypanky Firebrass andSam would manufacture.

"What's going on?" John asked,glaring.

uyou tell me,'" Sam said."Something must be on yourmind."'''None of your wisecracks,~'

John said. Without being asked hepoured out a quart of purple passion into a stein. UI know whatthat drumming was about-evenif I don't kriow the code."

UI thought as much," Sam said.uF~r your information, in caseyou missed anything-" and hetold him what Firebrass had said.

John 'glared at the offender."The arrogance of you blacks

is unendurable," John said. UYouare telling Parolando, a sovereignstate, how it must conduct itselfin .vital .business. Well, I say youcan't. We'll get those metals oneway or the other. Selinujo doesn'tneed them; we do. It can't hurtSelinujo to give them up in fairtrade."

UIn what?" Firebrass said. "Selinujo doesn't want weapons or alcohol. What can you trade?"

JOHN,. his eyes inflamed'~ his uPeace, freedom from war."face red, entered. Since the in- Firebrass shrugged and grinned,

troduction of grain alcohol he had incensing John.put on even more fat and seemed uSure," Firebrass said, "youhalf-drunk all the time and all can make your offer. But whatdrunk half the time. Hacking says still goes."

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

promised tungsten and iridium.But an error had evidently beenmade and the latter' two metalshad been deposited several milessouth of the first three.

Sam did not tell John at oncehe needed time to think about thes'ituation. John, of course, wouldwant to demand that the metals betraded to Parolando or that warbe declared~

While he was pacing back andforth in the pilothouse, cloudingthe room with green smo-ke, heheard drums. The drummers wereusing a code he did not know butrecognized, after a moment, asbelonging to Soul City. A fewminutes later Firebrass was atthe foot of the ladder and comingup. .

USinjoro Hacking knows allabout the discovery of tungstenand iridium in Stlinujo," he said.uHe says that if you can cometo an agreement with Selina, fine.But don't invade her land. He'drega'rd that as a declaration ofwar on Soul City." _

Sam looked out the starboardport. UHere comes John, hot-footing it," he 'said. UHe's heard thenews, too. His spy system is almost as good as yours, slower bya few minutes, I'd say. I, don'tk..now where the leaks in my system are, but they're so wide that·I'd be sunk if I were a bo'at-and Imay be anyway."

Sam choked and John stared.uThat's how "he regards both of

you," Firebrass -said. uAnd theway he defines those terllls, youare what he says you are."

....Because 1 want this boat sobadly?" Sam shouted. UDo youknow what this boat is for, what itsultimate goal is?"

UHa~king has no love 'for, Selinujo," Sam said. "He kicked outall the Second· Chancers, black orwhite."

"That's because they werepreaching immediate pacifism.They also preach and apparentlypractice love for all, regardless of

.color. But Hacking says they'rea danger to the state. The blackshave to protect themselves, otherwise they would be enslaved allover again." HE FOUGHT back his anger,

"The blacks?" Sam asked. sobbing with the effort. He....Us blacks," Firebrass replied, felt, dizzy. For a moment he had

grinning. almost told Firebrass about theThis was not the first time Fire- Stranger.

brass had given the impression "What is it?" Firebrass said.that he was not too deeply con- UNothing," Sam replied. UNoth-cerned with skin color. His identi- ing. I just want to get to the headfication with blacks, as such, was waters of The River. Maybe theweak. His life had notneen un- secret of this whole shebang istouched by racial prejudice, but there? Who knows? But I ,certainit had not been much "affected. ly don't like criticism' from someAnd he had said things now and one who just wants to sit aroundthen that indicated that he would and collect soul brothers. If helike a berth on Sam's boat. wants to do that, more power to

All this, of course, could be a him, but the point is, if'l don't useput-on. the siderite metal to build a boat,

UWe'll negotiate with Sinjorino which is designed for travel only,Hastings," Sam said. Ult would not for fighting any battles, somebe nice to have radios and TV for one else will. And that someonethe boat, and the machine shops else may use it to conquer and tocould use the tungsten. But we hold, instead of for tourist pur-can get along without them." poses.

He winked at John to' indicate uNow, we've gone along withthat he should take this line. But Hacking's demands, paid hisJohn was as stone-headed as' jacked-up prices for the ores whenusual. we could have gone down there and

44What we do with Selinujo is taken them from him. John'sour problem, nobody else's.'" apologized for what he called you

441'11 tell Hacking," Firebrass and Hacking and if you think it'ssaid. ....But Hacking is a strong easy for a Plantagenet to do that,person. He won't· take any .crap you don't know your history. It'sfrom anybody, least of all from too bad about the way Hackingwhite capitalist imperialists." feels. I don't know that I blame

140 IF

him. Of course, he hates whites.But this is not Earth. Conditionsare radically different here."

"But people bring their attitudes .along with them," Firebrasssaid. "Their hates and loves, dislikes and likes, prejudices, reactions, everything."

"But they can change."Firebrass grinned. "Not accord

ing to· your philosophy. Hackinghasn't seen anything here to makehim change his attitude. So whyshould he? He's experienced thesame exploitation 'and contempthere as he did on Earth."

"I don't want to argue aboutthat," Sam said. "I'll tell you-"

He stopped and stared out theport. The whitish-gray hull andupper works gleamed in the sun.Beautiful. And, in a sense, all his.She was worth everything he wasbeing put through.

." I'll tell you what," he repeatedmore slowly. "Why doesn't Hacking come up here? Pay a littlevisit? He can look around, see forhimtelf what we're doing. See ourproblems. Maybe he'll appreciate them, see we're not blue-eyeddevils, who want to enslave him. Infact, the more he help~ us thesooner he'll be rid of us."

"I'll give him your message,"Firebrass said. HMaybe he'llwant to do that."

-"We'll greet him in style," Samsaid. "A twenty-one gun salute,big reception, food, liquor, gifts.He'll see' we aren't such bad fellows after all."

John spat, but said no more.

F IREBRASS brought a message three days later. Hacking

THE FA·BULOUS RIVERBOAT

would come after Parolando andSelinujo 'had agreed on the disposition of the metals.

Sam felt like a rusty old boiler ina Mississippi steamboat. A fewmore pounds of pressure and hewould blow skyhigh.

HSometimes I think you'reright!" he shouted at John. "Maybe we should just take over ourneighbors and get it done with."

HOf course," John said.smoothly.. "It's obvious that thatex-Countess Huntingdon-shemust be descended from myoidenemy, the Earl of Huntingdon-is not going to give in~ She isa religious fanatic, a nut, as yousay. And Soul City will fight us ifwe invade Selinujo. Hackingcan't go back on his word. And he'sstronger now that we've given himFiredragon III. But I say nothingQbout that; I do not reproach you.I have been thinking."

Sam stopped pacing and lookedat John. John had been thinking.Shadows would' be moving insideshadows; daggers would be unsheathed; the air would grow grayand chill with stealth and intrigue;blood would spurt. And the sleeping would do well to stir.

"I won't say that I have been incontact with Iyeyasu, our powerful neighbor to the north," Johnsaid. He was slumped down in thetall-b~cked, red leather coveredchair and staring into the purplepassion in the tilted stein. "But Ihave information-or mea'ns ofgetting it. I am certain thatIyeyasu, who feels very strong indeed, would like to acquire evenmore territory. And he would liketo do us a favor. In return for cer-

141

tain, payments, of course. Say, an the fact is that Selinujo keepsamphibian and a flying machine? sending missionaries intoHe's wild to fly one of those him- Iyeyasujo, though he has kickedself. I f he attacked .Selinujo out all Chancers. Since SelinujoHacking couldn't blame us. And if won't stop doing this-"'Soul City and Iyeyasujo fought "Well," Sam said, UI couldn'tand Soul City were destroyed and let Parohindo get involved in aIyeyasujo weakened-how could deal like this. But if Iyeyasu dewe fail to benefit? Moreover, I tides on his own to fight, there'shappen to know that Chernsky nothing we can do about it."has made a secret compact with uAnd you call me dishonest?"Soul City and Tifonujo to fight if HThere's nothing _ could doany of them are invaded b.y about it," Sam said, clampingIyeyasu. The resultant carnage down on his cigar. UNothing. Andwould certainly find all of them if something develops that'sweakened and us strengthened. good for the boat-we'll take ad.Then we could take them over-or vantage of it."at least do what we wanted with- uThe shipments from Soul Cityout interference. In ~ny case, we would be held up while the fightingwould have uncontrolled access was going on," John ·said.to the bauxite and the tungsten." uWe've got enough stock to keep

The skull under that-mass of . going for a week. The big worrytawny hair must hold a thunder- .would be wood. Maybe Iyeyasumugful of worms, Sam thought. would be able to keep that comingWorms that fed on corruption even with a war going on, since theand intrigue and deviousness. fighting will be south of us. WeJohn was so crooked, he was ad- could handle the chopping andmirable. transportation ourselves. I f he

HDid you ever meet yourself didn't plan to invade for a cduplecoming around a corner?" Sam of weeks we could lay in extraasked. stocks of ore from Soul City by

"What?" John looked up. HIs offering Hacking increased paythis another of your unintelli- ments. Maybe promise him an airgible insults?" plane, the APM-One. That's just a

uBelieve me, it's as close to a toy-now that we've almost gotcompliment as you'll ever get our first amphibian airplane finfrom me. What you're suggesting ished. All this is hypothetical--"is all hypothetical. But if Iyeyasu UI understand," John said. Hedid attack Selinujo, what excuse was not trying to mask his conwould he have? They've never tempt.offended him and they're sixty Sam felt like shouting at himmiles away from him on our side of that he had no right to be conThe River." temptuous. Whose idea had this

UWhen did any nation ever need whole'bloodbath been, anyway?a reasonable excuse for invad- It was the next day that the threeing another?" John asked. UBut chief engineer~ were killed.

142 IF

SAM was there when it happened. He was standing on the

scaffolding by the starboard sideof the boat, looking down into theopen hull. The colossal steam cranewas lifting the immense electricmotor which would be driving theport paddlewheel. The motor/ hadbeen moved during the night fromthe building where it had beenbuilt. The moving had taken overeight 'hours and had been effectedby the crane, which also had a gigantic winch. The winch, plus hundreds of men pulling on cables,had pulled the motor on its big car,which moved on steel rails.

Sam rose at dawn to watch thefinal work, the lifting and theM thelowering of the motor into the hulland its attachment to the paddlewheel axle. The three engineerswere standing in the bottom ofthe hull. Sam called down to themto get away, that they were too vulnerable if the motor should drop.But the engineers were stationedin three different places so thatthey could transmit signals to themen on the port scaffolding, who,in turn, were signaling the crane'operator.

Van Boom turned to look up atSam' and his teeth flashed whitelyin his dark face. His skin lookedpurplish fn the light of the big electric lamps.

And then it happened. A cablesnapped, then another. The motorswung out to one side. The engineers froze for an instant. Thenthey ran, but they were t~o late.The motor fell and crushed allthree 'of them.

The impact shook the great hulland the vibrations made the scaf-THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

folding on which Sam stood quiveras if a quake were passing throughthe land.

Blood ran out from under 'themotor.

It took five hours to put newcables on the crane and lift themotor. The bodies were removed;the hull was washed out and themotor was lowered again. A closeinspection had determined thatthe damage to the motor would notaffect its operation.

Sam was so depressed that hewould have liked to have gone tobed ...and remained there for aweek. But he could not le'ave theboat. The work had to go on andwhile there were good men ~ho

would see to it that it did, Sam didnot want them to know'how ·shaken_.he was. Van Boom and Velitskywere Sam's only engineers fro,mthe twentieth century.

T HREE days after the accidenthe asked Firebrass into his

pilotho,use for a private conference. After giving him a cigar andscotch Sam asked Firebrass totake over as chief engineer.

Firebrass almost dropped hiscigar. .

"Steer me, stymate! Do 1 readyou unfrosted? You want me asyour nlimber one dillion?"

UMaybe we should talk inEs~ranto,"Sam said.

HOkay," Firebrass said. 64 1'11bring it down to dirt. Just what doyou want?"

"I'd like you to get permission towork for me on a temporary basis,supposedly."

"Supposedly?""The job is yours permanently if

143

you want it. On the day the boat position 'as the chief engineer's.".sets out on the long journey you Hit's a lot more work andcan be its chief engineer." responsibility; And I like the idea

Fiberbrass sat silent for a long of flying again-"time. Sam rose to pace back and "You can fly! You can fly! Butforth. Occasionally he looked you'd have to serve under vonthrough the ports. The crane had Richthofen. You see, I promisedput in the s~arboard motor and him that he would be the chief ofwas .now lowering parts of the our air force-which, after all, willbatacitor into the hull. The huge only consist of "two planes. Whatinstallation would be thirty-six do you care whether or not you'refeet high when fully assembled. A the chief as long as you get to fly?"trial run would check its operation "It's a matter of pride. I haveand that of the motors. A double thousands of hours more' flyingc-able, six inches thick, would be time than Richthofen-in planes

., run out for two hundred feet and far more complex and bigger andits free end, attached to a large speedier. And I was an astronaut.shallow hemisphere, would be I've been to the Moon and Marsslipped onto the nearest grail- and orbited Jupiter."stone. When the stone delivered UThat doesn't mean anything,"its tremendous electrical energy, Sam said. The planes you'll be flythe energy would be transmitted ing are very primitive. More likeby the cables into the batacitor, the World War I machines thatwhich 'would store it. The power Lothar flew."would be drawn out at a controlled· "Why do'es a black always haverate to run the electrical motors. to take second place?"

Sam turned away from the port. "That's unfair," Sam said. "Youult's not as if I were asking you to could be the chief engineer. You'dbetray your country," he said. have thirty-five people under yourUln the first place, all you have to command. Listen, if I hadn~t

do now is to request permission made Lothar that promise, you'dfrom Hacking to work for me on get the captaincy, believe me."the building of the boat. You can Firebrass stood up. UI'1l tell youmake up your mind .later about go- what. I'll help you build the boating with us. Which would you and set up the training of your enrather do? Stay in Soul City where gineers. But I get to fly during thatthere is actually little to ~o time, 'too-and when t.he time'except indulge, yourself? Or go comes we'll talk about who's go-with us on the greatest adventure ing to be head of the air force."of all?" UI won't break my promise to

Firebrass said slowly, uIf I ac- Lothar," Sam said. .cepted your offer-if, I say-I uYes, but many things may hap-would not want to 'go as chief en- pen between now and then."gineer. I would prefer to be thechief of your air force." SAM was relieved in one way

HThat's not as important a but disturbed in another.

144 IF

check ·on the well-being of Parolando's black citizens and to seethe great Riverboat.

Sam announced that he would behappy to receive Hacking. Hewasn't, but the essence of diplomacy was dissimulation even inthis new life: The preparations forhousing Hacking and his largeentourage and setting up the conferences occupied Sam. He didnot get much chance to supervise'the work on the boat.

Special preparations also had tobe made for docking the largenumber of ore boats from SoulCity. Hacking was sending threetimes as much a~ the normal shipment to show his sincerity and desire for peace and understanding.Sam would have preferred that theshipments be spaced ()ut, but healso wanted to get as much ore aspossible in as short a time aspossible. The spies said that Iyeyasuwas collecting several large fleetsand' a great number of fighting

-men on both sides· of The River.And he had sent more messages toSelinujo to stop trying to landtheir missionaries on h.is territory.

,Hacking gave his permission, viadrum, for Parolando to use Firebrass. This suggested to Sam thatHacking wanted Firebrass toknow the boat's operation because he might be serving Hacking as chief engineer some day. Asfor Firebrass-he might be planning to remove von Richthofenbefore the. boat~ was ready forlaunching. Firebrass did not seemlike a cold-blooded murderer butlooks meant nothing where humans were concerned.

Hacking sent word a few dayslater that he would agree to a largeshipment of minerals in returnfor the AMP-I. Firebrass flew itthe thirty-one miles to ·the northern limit of Soul City, where another flier, a black who had been ageneral in the U.S. Air Force,took it over. Firebrass returnedby sailboat a few days later.

The batacitor and the electricmotors worked perfectly. Thepaddlewheels turned over slowlyin the air, then were speeded upuntil the vanes whistled. When thetime came a canal would be dugfrom the water's edge to the greatboat and it would wheel out intoThe River under its own power.

Lothar von Richtofen andGwenafra were not getting along HACKING'S boat dockedat all. Lothar had always been a about an hour before noon.lady killer and he could not seem to It was a large, two-masted, forehelp flirting. More often than not and-aft rigged ship. Hacking'she followed up the flirtation. bodyguard, tall ·well-muscledGwenafra had some definite ideas bl.acks holding steel battle axesabout fidelity with which Lothar (but with Mark I pistols in bigagreed only in principle. The prac- holsters) marched down the gangtice tripped him up. plank. Their kilts were pure black

Hacking finally agreed to visit and their leather helmets and cuirParolando. He wanted to hold a asses and boots were of black fishseries of conferences on trade, to skin. They formed in ranks of sixTHE FABULOUS RIVER-BOAT 145

on each side of the gangplank.Finally Hacking himself disembarked.

He was a tall well-built man witha dark brown skin, somewhatslanting eyes, a broad pug nose,thick lips and a prominent chin.He wore a black towel as a cloak, ablack kilt and leather sandals. Hisonly weapon was a rapier in asheath at his broad leather belt.

Sam gave the signal and acannon boomed twenty-one times.The salute was intended not onlyto honor Hacking but to impresshim. Only Parolando had artillery, even if it consisted of onlyone .75 mm. cannon.

The introductions took place.Hacking did not offer to shakehands, nor did Sam and John. 80thhad been warned by Fite1irass thatHacking did not care to shakehands with a man unless he regarded him as a proven friend.

Some small talk followed whilethe' grails of Hacking's peoplewere set on the nearest grailstone.After the discharge of energy athigh noon the grails were removedand the chiefs of state, accompanied by their bodyguards andguards of honor, walked to John'spalace. John had insisted that thefirst meeting be held in his place,doubtless to impress Hackingwith John's primacy. Sam had notargued. Hacking probably knewfrom Firebrass how things stoodbetween Clemens and Lackland.

Later Sam found some grimamusem*nt in John's discomfiture at being bearded in his ownhouse. Hacking seized the floorduring lunch and held it with along and vitriolic speech about the

146

evils the white man had inflictedon the black. The trouble was,Hacking's indictments werevalid. Everything he said was true,Sam had to admit. Hell, he hadseen slavery and what it meant andhad seen the aftermath of the CivilWar. He had been born and raisedin it. And he had written Huck/eberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wi/son and A Connecticut Yankee.

THE high-pitched voice went onand on, mixing obscenities with

facts, lurid tales of miseries, beatings, murders, starvation, humiliations.

Sam felt guilty and ashamedand, at the s~me time, .angry.

"You are all guilty!" Hackingshouted. UEvery white man isguilty!"

"I never saw more than a dozenblacks before I died," John said.UWhat can I have to do with yourtale of unjustices?"

"If you had been born five hundred years later, you would havebeen the biggest honky of themall," Hacking said. H( know allaboutyou-"

Sam suddenly stood up andshouted, "Did you come here totell us about what happened onEarth? We know what happened.But that's the past. Earth is dead.What's taking place now counts."

uYeah," Hacking said. HAndwhat's taking place now is whattook place on good old Earth.Things haven't changed one littlebit. I look around here and whoheads up this country? Two honkies! Where are the black men?Your black population is aboutone-tenth of your total. You ought

147

ness of his face came from morethan the liquor. He looked ready to'explode at any moment. Itwasdifficult to swallow insults aboutyour injustice to blacks when youwere innocent-but then Johnwas guilty of sO' many hideouscrimes .that he should suffer for·some, even if they were committedby others. And, as Hacking said,John would have been guilty ofracial bias if he had been given thechance.

Hacking finally quit talking.Sam Clemens said, "Well, wedidn't plan on any after-dinnerspeeches, but I thank you for yourvo~uriteering'-::""we all thank youas long as you don't charge us forit. Our exchequer is rather low atthe moment."

Hacking said, uyou have tomake a joke out of it, don't you?Well, how about a tour? I'd love tosee that big·boatofyours."

The rest of the day passed ratherpleasantly. Sam forgot his angerand his resentments whi·le conducting Hacking through the factories, the shops and, finally,through the boat. Even half-finished, it was magnificent. Themost beautiful sight he had everseen~ Even, he thought, even-yes,even more beautiful than Livy'sface when she had first said sheloved him.

Hacking did not becomeecstatic, .but he was deeply impressed. He could not, however,refrain from commenting on thestench and the desolation.

Sam was called away shortl.ybefore supper. A man who hadlanded from a small boat had demanded to see the ruler of the

to have at least one black on a tenman Council!· Do I see one? Justone?"

uThere's Cawber," Sam said.uYeah. A temporary member

and he's that only because I demanded you send me a black ambassador."

uThe Arabs make up about asixth of your state," Sam said,uand there isn't one Arab on yourcouncil."

UThey're white, that's why. AndI'm getting rid of them. Don't getme wrong~many Arabs are goodmen, unprejudiced men. I metthem when I was a fugitive inNorth Africa. But these Arabs arereligious fanatics and they won'tstop making trouble-so out ,theygo! What we blacks want is a solidblack country, where we're all soulbrothers. Where we can live inpeace and understanding. We~·llhave ~ur own kind of life and youhonkies c~n have yours. Segregation with a capital S, Charlie!Here, a big S segregation canwork, cause we don't have to depend on the' white man for our jobsor food or clothing or protectionor justice. We've got it made,whitey. All we have to do is tell youto go to hell, keep away from usand we got it made!"

F IREBR.ASS sat at the table,his dark-red kinky head bent,

looking down, his bronzed handsover his face. Sam had the feelingthat he was trying to keep. fromlaughing. But whether he waslaughing at Hacking or his hosts,Sam could _Dot guess. Perhaps hewas laughing at both. •

John kept drinking but the red-

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

land. A Clemens man had takenhim in- and sent for Sam. He wentoff at once in one of the two alcohol-burning Ujeeps" that had beenfinished only a week before. Aslender blond youth at the guardhouse introduced himself, in Esperanto, as Wolfgang AmadeusMozart.

Sam questioned him in German,noting that, whatever the youth's

.identity, he did speak the soft Austrian version of High German.He said that he had lived abouttwenty thousand miles up TheRiver. He heard about theboat-and that it would carry anorchestra for the amusem*nt ofpassengers. The instrumentswould be those that Earth hadknown. Mozart had suffered fortwenty-three years in thTS"world oflimited materials, where the onlymusical instruments were drums,whistles, wooden flutes, pan pipesand a crude sort of harp m~ge ofbone and the guts of a Riverfish.The great Riverboat's orchestra,he had heard, would feature piano,violin, flute, horns and all the otherbeautiful instruments he hadknown on Earth, plus others thathad been invented since his deathin 1791. And here he was. Wasthere a place for him in the musicmaking ranks of the boat?

Sam was an appreciator, thoughnot a passionate lover, of someclassical music. But he was thrilledat meeting the great Mozart faceto face. -That is, if this man trulywere Mozart. Phonies on The.River were claiming to be every~body from the original one-andonly Jesus Christ down to P. T.Barnum, and Sam took no man's

148

'word for his identity. He had evenmet three men who claimed to beMark Twain.

Hit just so happens that theformer archbishop of Salzburg isa citizen of Parolando," Samsaid. HEven though you and heparted on bad terms, if I remember correctly, he'll be glad to seeyou."

Mozart turned neither pale norred. He said, HAt last, somebody Iknew during my lifetime! Wouldyou believe-"

Sam would believe that Mozarthad not 'met anybody he hadknown on Earth. So far he himselfhad met only three people he'dknown and his acquaintanceshiphad been extensive during hislong life ·and worldwide travels.That his y<ife Livy was one of thethree was a coincidence exceeding the bounds of probability. Hesuspected that the MysteriousStranger had arranged that. Buteven Mozart's eagerness at seeing the archbishop again did notconfirm that he was indeed Mozart. In the first place, the imposters that Sam had met had frequently insisted that those whowere supposed to be their -oldfriends were either mistaken orelse imposters themselves. Theyhad more gall than France. Iii thesecond place, the archbishop ofSalzburg did not live in Parolando. Sam had no idea where hewas. He had sprung him just to testMozart's reaction.

Sam agreed that Mozart couldappJy for citizenship. First,. hestraightened him out about themusical instruments. These hadnot been made yet. Nor would they

was addressing, and fell into. hisown bed~ It had been a long, hardand trying day. ,

He awoke dreaming that he wascaught in a California earthquakeon the Fourth of July.

H E LEAPED out of bed andran on the trembling floor .to

the Pilothouse. Even before hereached the ·ports he knew tllat theexplosions and the earth-shakingwere caused by invaders. tie neverreached the ports, because arocket, its tail flaming red, struckone of the stilts. The roar deafenedhim, smoke whirled in through thebroken ports, and he pitched forward. The .house collapsed and itsfront part fell down.

He banged into the wood and.broken glass and earth and laystunned. A biS hand picked him up.By the light of an explosion hesaw Joe's great-nosed face. Joe hadclimbed down from the open end ofhis room· and thrown aside thelumber until he had found Sam. Heheld his grail and Sam's in his lefthand.

HI don't know how-it's amiracle-but I'm not hurt" bad,"Sam said. "Just bruised and cut byglass."

"I didn't have time to put on myarmor," Joe said. "But I got myakthe. Here'th a thword for youand 'a pithtol and thorne bulletthand powder charcheth." .

"Who the hell can they be, Joe?"Sam said.

HI don't know. Thee-they'recoming in through the holeth inthe vallth vhere the dockth are."

The starlight was bright. Theclouds that sent the rains down

149

A BIG party w~s held at John'spalace in honor of Hacking,

who seemed to have discharged-hisvenom for the day at the first meeting. Sam talked .with him for anhour and found that Hacking wasan intelligent and literate manwith a flair for the imaginative andthe poetic. '

Near midnight Sam accompanied Hacking and party to thebig thirty-room, second-story,stone-and-bamboo building setaside for state guests. Then hedr<we his jeep to his home, threehundred yards away. Joe sulked alittle because he had wanted todrive, even though his legs were fartoo long. They staggered up theladder and barred the door. Joewent into the rear and flopped onhis bed with a crash that shook thehouse" on its stilts. Sam looked outthrough the ports just in time to seeCyrano and Livy, their armsaround each other, lurch into thedoor of their hut. To their left, setabove them, was von Richthofen'shut, where he. and Gwenafra hadalready gone to bed.

He muttered, uGood night-"not knowing exactly who.m he

THE FABULOU.S RIVERBOAT

be wood or brass. They would beelectronic devices which could reproduce exactly the sounds ofvarious instruments. But if Mozart were indeed the man heclaimed 10 be he had a good chanceof being the conductor of theorchestra. And' he could have allthe time he wanted to composenew works.

Sam did not bind himself to anything~ He. had -learned his lessonabout making promises.

XII

men had sneaked out of the "guesthouse to launch a surprise attackin conjunction with an attackfrom the supposed ore boats, thenSam should have been a primarytarget along with John Lackland.

He'd find out later what it wasall about-if there was a later.

every night at three o'clock had notyet come but the mists over TheRiver were heavy. Out of them menwere still pouring to add to themasses spreading over the plains.Beyond the walls, in the mists,must be a fleet.

The only fleet that could getclose without causing an alarmwould be the Soul City fleet. Anybody else arriving at this hourwould have had to have been with- THAT Hacking's men had got~in view of the spies Sam and John ten hold of the cannon wasLackland had set up along The bad news for Parolando. SamRiver, even in hostile territory. heard the big gun boom. HeIyeyasu's fleet was still sitting in whirled in h,is flight and saw piecesits docks, according to a report of wood flying out of the smoke.Sam had received just before John's walls were wide open andmidnight. the next few shells should reduce·

Joe peered over a pile of wood his log palace to rubble.and said, HThere'th a hell of a There was only one good thingbattle around Chohn'th· palathe. about the invaders having theirAnd the guetht houthe-vhere hands on'the cannon. The supplyHacking and hith boyth vath-ith of shells was limited to fifty. Evenon fire." with the many tons of nickel-iron

The flames lit a number of still in the ground, metal was not sobodies on the ground and showed common that it could be wasted totiny figures str'uggling around the any extent on explosiv~shells.log stockade of John's palace. Ahead was Livy's hut. The &oorThen the cannon was pushed be- was open and the place was empty.fore the stockade. ~am looked up the, hill. Lothar

uThat's John's jeep," Sam said, von Richthofen, clad only in a kilt,pointing at the vehicle which had carrying a rapier in one hand and,just driven up behind the cannon. a pistol in the other, was running

uYeah-and it'th our cannon," tow~rd him. A few paces behindJoe said. HBut it'th Hacking'th him came Gwenafra with a pistolmen that're going to blatht Chohn and a bag of bullets and gun-_out of hith little love netht." powder packages.

"Let's get to hell out of here," Other men and women wereSam said and scrambled over the coming toward Sam. Among ,themlumber and in the, opposite direc- . were a few crossbowmen.tion. He could not understand why He shouted at Lothar to or-

o the invaders .. had not yet sent men ganize them and turned to lookto his house. The rocket that had down toward The River. The docksh*t the Pilothouse had come from were still black with men. If only·the plains. And if Hacking and his the cannon could have been turned

150 IF

Then a charge' carried the enemythrough to the defenders and itwas rapier, broadsword, axe, club,spear, and dagger that drove themback.

to catch them packed together andunable to retreat. But the cannonhad been wheeled around .fromJohn's flaming palace and was being trained on Parolandanoj hurrying up the hill.

Then a big dark machine came JOE MILLER, ten feet high andthrough a wide breach in the wall. eight hundred pounds, his hairySam cried out with dismay. It was hide drenched with blood-his ownthe Firedragon III. But where were and that of others-swung his axethe three amphibians of Paro- with its eighty-pound nickel-steellando? head at the end of an oak shaft

Presently he saw two coming to- three inches thick and six feet long.ward the hills. The steam machine It crashed through oak shield andguns in the turrets began to stut- leather arm.or, brushed asideter and his men-his men-were rapiers and spears and axes, splitfalling. breastbones, took off arms and

The Soul Citizens had captured necks, halved s.kulls. When his en-the amphibians..' emies refused to come near him,

Everywhere he looked he saw a he charged them. Time and again,battle raging. Men were fighting he broke up assaults that mightaround the Riverboat. He cried otherwise have succeeded.out again, because he could not Mark I pistols were fired at him,endure the thought of its being but the shooters were so unnerveddamaged. But no cannon shells by him that they fired from too farwere delivered near it. Apparently away and missed. Then an arrowthe enemy was as concerned about went through Joe's left arm and ait as he was. man braver-or more fool-

Rockets from the hills' soared hardy-than the rest stepped unoverhead and blew up among the der his axe and thrust a rapier intoinvaders below. Enemy rockets his thigh. The butt end of the shaftrose in reply; scores of red flames came back and broke the atstreaked above; some came so tacker's jaw and then'the reversedclose Sam could see the blur of the axe severed his head. Joe couldcylindrical body, the long bamboo still walk, but he was losing bloodstick protruding from the rear. fast. Sam ordered him to retreat

The next half-hour-or was it to the other side of the hill, wheretwo hours?-was a shrieking, yell- the badly wounded were beinging, shouting; gunpowder-stink- treated.ing, blood-stinking, sweating, Joe said, UNo-I ain't going-"bowel-churn.ing chaos. Time after and fell to his knees. with a groan.time the Soul Citizens charged up uGet back there-that's an orthe hill and time after time they der.!" Sam screamed and ducked,were repelled by rockets, by .69 though it was too late. A bulletcaliber plastic bullets, by cross- whistled past his ear and shatteredbow bolts and longbow arrows. against the side of an irontree.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 151

empty gun behind him; Livy wouldcatch and reload it. Sam thoughtbriefly of the change that had comeabout in Livy. He had never s'uspeeted her potential for action under conditions, like these. The frail,often sickly, violence-loathingwoman was coolly performing d~

ties that many men would haverun from.

Among them me-ifI'd had anytime to think about it ...

Some of the plastic m~st have ricocheted; he felt a stinging in hisarm and calf.

Joe managed to heave himselfup and shamble off. Cyrano deBergerac appeared from the darkness; he was covered with dirt andsoot, streaked with blood. Hegripped the basket hilt of a longbloody rapier in one hand and apistol in the other.' Behind him,equally disheveled, her long darkhair loose and flying, was Livy.She carried a pistol and a bag ofammunition, and her function CYR'ANO thrust beneath aseemed to be to reload the pistols. shield that an amok WahhabiSeeing Sam, she smiled, her teeth Arab lifted too high in h.is frenzywhite in the powder-blackened and Livy, seeing that she had to doface. . it, that Cyrano could not, held the

HMy God, Sam-I thought you pistol in both hands and fired. Thewere dead. That ro~k.et .. against hammer made the barrel swerve.your house-" . She brought it' back into line

HI wish you were behind me in smoke and flame spurted out, andthis," he said. an Arab fell back with his shoul-

It was all he had time to say, der torn off. .though he would not have said A massively built attacker leapedmore whatever the case. The ene- over the body, axe raised in bothmy mounted another charge, men hands and Cyrano ran him throughslipping and sliding over the piles the adam's apple. .of the fallen or leaping over them. The enemy retreated down the'The bowmen by now seemed out of hill again. An amphibian-a Merammunition and the pistoleers rimae on wheels, Sam thoughtwere using theirs sparingly. But huffed into the action. Lothar vonthe enemy had about expended its Richthofen pushed against Sam,powder, too, though it had more who stepped aside when he saw thearrows. aluminum-alloy tube Lothar and-

Joe Miller was gone, ,but Cyrano a helper were setting up. The helpde Bergerac tried to make up for er kneeled while Lothar loaded athe loss and came close to doing rocket with a ten-pound warheadso~ The man was a demon, as into the bazooka and aimed it. Lodeadly and elusive 'as the rapier he thar was good. The rocket sailedwielded. From time to time he down, its fiery arc ending againstfired the pistol' in his left hand the front of the amphibian. Lotharpointblank into an opponent's face scored a bull's-eye. Smoke coveredwhile "lunging with the rapier to the monster, lifted. The amphibiskewer another. He would toss the an had stopped-but it came on

152 IF

153

GUI DED by the fires of a dozen scattered huts, Sam and a

handful of his men stumbled downthe other side of the hill. The rainssmashed down. A tentacle of theenemy force ran toward them fromthe left. Sam turned and pulled thetrigger of his flintlock; the rain, of'course, drowned out the spark. Butthe enemy's pistols were also· rendered useless.·

Hacking's men .came at the Parolandanoj with their swords andspears and axes. Joe Miller lungedforward, growling with a voice asdeep as a .cave bear's. Thoughwounded, he was still a formidableand terrifying fighter. By the flashes of lightning and the rumbling ofthunder, his axe cut down attackers. Others jumped in to help himand in a few seconds the Soul Citizens decided they 'had had enough.They backed away to wait for reinforcements. Why get. killed nowwhen victory was theirs?

Sam and his people crossed twomore hills. The enemy attackedsporadically. Joe Miller and Cyrano continued formidable, but whenSam finally counted his group ofsurvivors he was shaken. -Fifteen.Where had they all gone? He wouldhave sworn that at least a hundredhad been with him when he had setout from the main field of battle.

Livy was still close behind Cyrano. Guns were useless now, but she

I kept at Cyrano's back and helpedhim with a $pear thrust when shecould.

Sam was cold and wet. And hewas as miserable as Napoleon musthave been on the retreat fromRussia. All, all gone! His proudlittle nation and its nickel-iron

presently, its turrets turning, steamguns lifting.

"Well, that was the last one, H

Lothar said. "We might as wellget the hell out of here. We can'tfight that. Who should know better than we, heh?"

The enemy was reforming behind the armored vehicle. Manywere uttering the ululating crieswhich the Ulmaks, the pre-Amerinds across The River, made during charges..Apparently Hackinghad enlisted those not yet conquered by Iyeyasu.

Suddenly Sam could not see aswell as before. Only the fires fromthe burning houses limned thescene... The rain clouds had comeswiftly, as they always did-likewolves chasing the stars. Within afew minutes it would rain savagely.

He looked and listened. -fhe defenders had been thinned out.Fighting was still going on to northand south, on the plains and thehills along the plains. But theshooting and the cries had lessened.

The night seemed to him filledwith the enemy. He wondered ifPubliujo and Tifonujo had joinedthe invasion.

He took a last look- at the giant'hull of the Riverboat with 'its twop~ddlewheels, half-hidden beneaththe scaffolding and behind the colossal cranes. Then he turned. Hefelt like weeping, but he was toonumbed. It 'would be some time before the tears would come.

It was more likely that his bloodwould run out' before then, afterwhich there would be no tears. Notin this body, anyway.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

mines, its factories and its invulnerable amphibians with theirsteam guns, its two airplanes andthe fabulous Riverboat-all gone!The technological triumphs andmarvels., the Magna Carta withthe most democratic constitutionany country had ever knowngone. And the greatest journeyever to be· made would never bemade.

How had it all been lost?Through treachery, base treachery.

At least King John had not beenpart of the betrayal. His palace hadbeen demolished:-and he alongwith it, in all probability. TheGreat Betrayer had been betrayed.

Sam quit grieving then. He wasstill too· frozen with the terror ofbattle to think for long about anything except survival.

At the base of the mountain, heled his group north along it untilthey were opposite the dam. A lakeabout a quarter of a mile long anda half a mile wide was before them.They followed the shoreline to athick, concrete .dam and walkedacross it.

Sam paced until he found asunken symbol, a diagonal cross,in the concrete. He called, UHere itis. Now, if nobody squeals onus-"

H E LET himself down into coldwater while the lightning

streaked and the thunder bellowedfar away. He shivered but kept going down. When th~ water was upto his armpits his foot struck thefirst rung. He took a deep breath,closed his eyes and sank, runninghis hands along the concrete untilthey encountered the first rung. Af-

154

ter that he pulled himself down bythe other rungs and, at the sixth,knew that the entrance was a fe·winches below it. He went under itand rose. His head popped up intoair and light. A platform a fewinches higher than the water was infront of him. Overhead was adome, the highest point of whichwas ten feet. Beyond the platformwas an exit. Six big electric lightbulbs lit the chamber harshly.

Shivering and gasping, heclimbed onto the platform andstrode to the exit. Joe followed hima moment later. He called weaklyand Sam had to turn back and helphim crawl onto the platform. Hewas bleeding from a dozen places.

The others came after him, oneby one. They helped Sam get thetitanthrop through the exit anddown an incline into a large chamber containing beds, towels, food,liquor, weapons and medicine.Sam had prepared this place forjust such an emergency, but he hadthought he was being foolishly cautious. Only his most trustedlieutenants and the workers whohad built this place knew about it.Joe and Cyrano had briefed therest of the group.

Another entrance, at the bottomof the dam, was hidden beneath theflow that powered the wheels connected to the generators. This oneled to a shaft up which a man couldclimb, only to come to a seemingly blank wall. But the man whoknew ho~ could open that wall.

The whole project was, he knew,a product of the romantic foolishness he had not entirely shed in thisnew life. The idea of secret doorsunder a waterfall and under the

lake and of hidden apartmentswhere" he could rest and plan hisrevenge while his enemies 'hunted invain for him 'continued irresistible.He had laughed at himself at timesfor having built the refuge. Now hewas glad. Romanticism did have itsuses.

Also hidden was a detonator. Allhe had to do to set off the tons ofdynamite inside the base of thedam was to connect.two wires. Thedam would go up and the water of·the lake would roar out and carrythe central part of Parolando outinto The River.

Sam Clemens and his Riverboatwould also be destroyed-but thatwas the price. Sam did not like tothink about it.

TH E wounded were treated andput under the sedation of

dreamgum o"r liquor. Sometimeschewing the gum deadened pain;other times it seemed to increase it.The only way to. neutralize its painexpanding effects was to pourliquor into the patient.

They ate and slept while theguards watched at both entrances.Joe Miller was semiconscious mostof the time. Sam sat beside himand nursed him as best he could.Cyrano came back from his vigil atthe door under the waterfall toreport that it was night againoutside. That was all he knew-hehad seen or heard no one through"the waterfall.

Lothar and Sam were the leastwounded. Sam. decided that theyshould sneak out past the wa~erfall

exit and spy. Cyrano protested thathe should go, too, but Sam refused. Livy did not say anything,

THE FABULOUS'RIVERBOAT

but she looked gratefully at Sam.He turned away; he did not wantany thanks for sparing her mate.

He wondered if Gwenafra weredead or captured. Lothar said thatshe had disappeared during the lastattack. He had tried to get to herbut had been driven back. He nowfelt ashamed of himself for nothaving done more.

Sam and Lothar applied a darkstain all over their bodies and thenwent down the steel rungs of theshaft. The walls were damp and therungs were slippery with moisture.Electric lights illuminated theshaft.

They exited' behind the" waterfall,which roared and splashed at them.The ledge curved, following thelower half of the dam, until it ranout about twenty yards from theend. Here they climbed down steelrungs to the junction of the damwall and the ground. From therethey walked cautiously along achannel which had been cut out ofthe earth. Grass roots still" stuckout of the dirt walls; the roots wentdeeper than any cuts made sofar-it seemed impossible to killthe grass.

The sky was bright with the jampack of huge stars and glowing gasclouds. Sam and Lothar were ableto proceed swiftly in the silvereddarkness. After a half a mile theymoved at right angles to the canal,heading toward John's ruined palace.

Crouching in the ,shadows beneath the outflung branches of anirontree, they looked down on theplains belo.w. Men and womenmoved among the huts. The- menwere the victors, the women vic-

155

tims. Sam quivered when he heardscreams and beggings, but he triedto push them out of his mind. Toact rashly now would be to throwaway his chances of doing any goodfor Parolando.

Yet, if he heard Gwenafra'svoice, he knew that he would go toher rescue.

The fires in the open hearths andthe smelters were- again blazing andmen an~ women were working inthem. Evidently Hacking had already put his slaves to work.Guards stood around the buildings.

The plains were well lit for as faras he could see with huge bonfires.The people around them seemed tobe drinking and laughing.Occasionally a struggling andscreaming woman was carried offinto the shadows.

SAM and Lothar walked downthe hill as if they owned it, but

they did not go near to the buildings or the fires.

Nobody challenged them,though they came within twentyyards of a n.umber of patrols. Mostof the enemy seemed to becelebrating the victory with 'purplepassion or any other liquor theyhad been able to get from the supplies of their prisoners. The exceptions were the Wahhabi Arabs,'whose religion forbade drinking alcohol. And some others apparently were abstemious. These probably were disciples of Hacking, whodid not drink.

Whatever the laxity now, discipline had been maintained duringthe day. The corpses had been taken away and a big stockade of polesremoved from other buildings had

156

been set up at the foot of the hills.Sam surmised it held prisoners.

He and Lothar strolled along,staggering now and then, as ifdrunk. They walked boldly between a nitric acid factory and awaste-treatment building and outonto the plain. And stopped. Samsaw Firebrass-some twenty yardsahead-in a bamboo cage so narrow that he could not sit down init. His hands were tied tightly behind him.

On a big X-frame of wood, upside down, his legs tied to the upper part of the X and his arms tothe lower members, hung Goering.

Sam looked around. A numberof men, talking and drinking, stoodin the big doorway of the wasterecycling plant. They did not' sayanything to Sam and Lothar, butthey were looking at them. Samdetided not to go any closer or totry to talk to Firebrass. He longedto know why Hacking's emissarywas in the cage, but he did not dareto ask him. What he had to do wasfind out all he could and then getback to the hideout inside the dam.So far, he thought, the situationlooked hopeless. He could take hisfaithful and sneak out of the country during the rains. He could blowup the dam and wash out everything, including the forces of SoulCity-but he still did not want tolose the boat. He would let the damalone for as long as he had a chanceto get it back.

His and Lothar's slow and seemingly .drunken wanderings tookthem near a big building that hadbeen occupied by Fred Rolfe, King.John's supporter on the Council.The number of .armed men on

guard around it suggested to Sam HE A WOKE gasping andthat Hacking was inside. coughing. He was still under

It was a one~story house of pine the tree. He 'started to get up, but alogs and bamboo. The windows deep voice growled, UNone 0' that.were without shades and tbe lights. Sit still, or I'll split yer skull."showed people inside. Sam looked around. Lothar, his

Suddenly.Lothar gripped Sam's hands tied behind him and a gag inarm and said, uThere she is. Gwen- his mouth, was sitting propped upafra.", under a half-grown fir sixty feet

The light shone on her long hon- away. The man who had spokeney-colored hair and pale skin. She was big, with excessively broadstood near a window, talking to shoulders, a deep chest and brawnysomeone. After a moment she arms. He wore a black kilt andmoved away and. the bushy hair black cape and gripped mediumand black face of Elwood Hacking sized axe. His belt held a steel tommoved across the bright square. ahawk, a steel knife and a Mark ISam felt sick. Hacking seemed to pistol.have taken her for his woman· for He asked, uYou be Sam Clem-the night. ens?" .

Gwenafra had not looked fright- uThat's right," Sam said. 404.Whateoed. She had seemed relaxed. does this mean? Who are you?"

Sam pulled L'othar away. The big man jerked a head full ofuThere's nothing we can do now thick. hair at-Lothar. UI moved him

and we could be throwing away any away so he couldn't hear what wechance she might have at all if we have to say. A man we both knowstarted anything." sent me."

They drifted around for a while, ·Sam was silent for a moment,observing the other factories and then asked, uThe Mysteriousnoting that the bonfires stretched Stranger?"both ways along the walls as far as The big man grunted. "Yes.their eye could detect. In addition That's what he said you called him.to the Soul C..itizens, there were the Stranger's good enough. I guessUlmaks and a number of Ori- you know what it's all about, soentals. Sam wondered if these there's not much use us jawing toocould be the Burmese, Thai, and long about it. You satisfied thatCeylonese New. Stone Age peoples I've talked with him?"living across The River from Sel- UI have to be," Sam said. Ult'sinujo. obvious that you've met him.

He and Lothar'had just passed You're one of the Twelve he'sinto the shade of a gigantic iron- picked. It was a he, wasn't it?"wood tree when Sam felt some- 404.1 didn't jump him to find out,"thing tighten around his neck from the man said. UI tell you, this childbehind. He tried to yell, to turn ain't ever run up against a human,around, to struggle, but the big red, black, or white, that ·everhand squeezed and he lost con- threw a scare-fit into him. But thatsciousness. Stranger, he'd make a grizzly

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 157

scoot just by looking at him. Notthat. I'm afraid of him, you understand; it's just that· he makes mefeel-str~nge. Like I was a pluckedbluejay. But enough of that. Myhandle's Johnston. Might as wellgive you my history and save jaw-

-ing later. John Johnston. I wasborn in New Jersey about eighteen-twenty-seven, I reckon, anddied in Los Angeles in the· veterans' hospital in 1900. Betweentimes, I was a trapper in theRocky Mountains. Up to when Icame to this River, I killed mehundreds of Injuns-but I ain'tnever had -to kill a white man, noteven a Frenchman. Not till I gothere. Since then-well, I've collected quite a few white scalps."

The man stood up and movedout into the starlight. His 'hair wasdark but looked as if it would be abright red in the. noonday sun.

HI talk a hell of.a lot more'n Iused to," he said. Hyou can't getaway from people 'in this valley."

They walked over to Lothar. Onthe way Sam asked, "How'd youhappen to get here? And at thistime?"

uThe Stranger told me where tofind you, told me about you, yourboat, the Misty Tower and all that.Why hash it all over? You know. Ipromised to find you and go withyou on your boat. Why not? I don't·like being set down here. Thereain'~ no elbow room; you can't turnaround without knocking noses. Iwas about thirty thousand milesupRiver when I woke up one nightand there was that man sitting inthe shadows. We had a long talk,him doing most of it. Then I got upand set out. I heard about some of

158

what was going- on here way· upThe River. I snuck in here while thefighting was still going on and Ibeen looking for you ever since. Ilistened to them blacks talking;they said they couldn't find your·body. So I been skulking around,seeing what I could see. Once I hadto kill me one a those Ayrabs causehe stumbled across me. I washungry, anyway."

They had reached Lothar, butSam straightened up at the lastwords.

"Hungry? You mean-"The man did not reply.Sam said, "Say, uh, you-you

wouldn't be a man called 'LiverEating' Johnston, would you? TheCrow Killer?"

The voice rumbl~d: HI made mepeace with the Cro'ws and becamethefr brother. And I. quit eating hum8n liver some time after. But aman has to eat."

SAM shivered. He stooped tountie Lothar's bonds and re

moved the gag. Lothar was furious, but he was also curious. And,like Sam, he seemed to find Johnston a little awing. The man exud~ds~vage force. Without even hcdftrying, Sam thought.

They walked back to the dam.Johnston did not say anything for along time. Once he disappeared,leaving Sam feeling strange andcold. Johnston was about six and ahalf feet tall and looked as if he·weighed two hundred and eightypounds, all bone and muscle. Buthe moved like a tiger.

Sam j~mped. Johnston wasback. Sam asked~ "What happened?"

introduced and the situation explained. Joe 'Miller, wrapped intowels, sat up and shook -handswith Johnston. And JohnstQn, awein his voice, said, UNight aDd day~tbis~ ma~hild seed many queer.tbings. But I ain't never seed onelike you. You didn't have to crushmy hand, friend."

UI didn't try," Joe said. UYoulook pretty ~ig and thtrorig to me.Bethideth, I been thick."

They moved out about half anhour before the rains. The land wasrelatively quiet by then. Thecelebrators had gone to bed andeverybody had cleared away from '.the fires in expectation of .the rain.But the guard towers and the factories were f~lI of enemy guards.They. had stopped drinking. Apparently Hacking had called a halt foit.

Johnston said, uNever mind.You say you did'n't get aroundmuch. I been all over this place; Iknow the sitchyation passing well.Lots a your people to the north andthe south got away over the walls~If they'd a stood up, they might'velicked the blacks. But the blacksain't won by a long shot. Iyeyas'u isgetting ready to move againstthem. I wouldn't be surprised noneif he invades tonight. I scoutedaround his ..place some before 1came here. He ain't going to put upwith the blacks owning all this ironand the boat. He will take it awayfrom them or know why."

Sam groaned. It made no difference whether Hacking or Iyeyasuhad the boat, if he couldn't get it.But by the time they were inside thedam, he felt better. Maybe the twoforces would destroy each otherand the Parolandanoj who'd fledcould come back and take over. JOHNSTON, like a giant ghost,

Moreover, the appearance of the drifted away while. they leanedHerculean mountain man, Liver. against the side of the sulfuric acidEating Johnston, heartened Sam. factory. Ten minutes later he wasThe Mysterious Stranger had not suddenly beside them.entirely abandoned him. The "I been giving those blacks theStranger was still planning-and ear," he said. UThat Hacking ishe had sent a damn good man for sm.art. All that drinking andfighting, if the stories about Johns- whooping it up and staggerington could be believed. Johnston around, why, that was all a put-onwas the sixth man the Stranger had for the benefit of spies from Iyeyachosen. The other six would show sujo. Hacking knows Iyeyasujo isup some time-though one had going to attack tonight and he'sbeen lost. Odysseus had disap- making it look like it's gonna bepeared. easy. But his men are worried.

He could show up again. The They're short of gunpowder."River~ was a great place for bad Sam was startled by the news.pennies, if you could call the He asked Johnston if he had overTwelve that. They were bad for heard anything else.somebody. For the Stranger's peo- "Yeah. I heard a couple of thempie, the Ethicals, Sam hoped. Citizens talking about why Hack-

In the dam, Johnston had to be ing decided he had to attack us: He

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 159

knew Iyeyasu was going to do it, sohe decided he had to jump the gun.If he didn't, Iyeyasu would havecontrol of the metal and theamphibians and would conquerSoul City next. Them jackasseswas laughing fit to kill, they said itwas King John arranged with.Hacking to take over-And thenHacking blew up King John in hisown house because he didn't trustJohn."

Sam said, u.But why in hellwould John do that to us? What didhe have to gain?"

"Hacking and John was gonnaconquer all the land for a hundredmiles along The River and thensplit it. John was gonna rule thewhite half and Hacking the blackhalf. Half and half, with the twosharing everything equat:-They wasgonna build two boats, two of ev,:,erything." ·

"What about Firebrass? Why'she in the cage?"

"Dunno, but somebody di~ callhim a traitor. And that kraut,what's his name-Herring?"

uGoering.""Yeah. Well, Hacking wasn't to

blame for his being tortured. Someof them Wahhabi Ayrabs did it.'They's got it in for the SecondChancers, you know, and they gothim and tortured him with the helpa some a them bad Dahomeyans,who used to torture a dozen peoplebefore breakfast, according towhat I heard. By the time Hackingheard of it· and stopped it, Goeringwas dying. But he talked to.Hacking, c..alled him his soulbrother and said he forgave him.Said he'd see him later along TheRiyer. Hacking was pretty shook

160

up "about it, from what his mensaid."

Sam digested the news, which sethis teeth on edge. He was so upsethe couldn't even get any amusement from Hacking's doublecrossof the champion doublecrosser,.King John. "'e did have to admireHacking's statesmanship and perception, however. Hacking hadrealized there was only one way todeal with John.

J OHNSTON'S crucial datachanged everything. Apparent

ly, Iyeyasu· was on the way now,which meant that Sam's plans tosneak out during the rain~ wouldnot work.

uWhat's the matter, Sam?" Livysaid. She was sitting near him,looking sadly at him.

'.'1 think it's all up with us.""Oh, Sam-wl'tere's. your man

hood?' It isn't all up with us. Yo~get depres'sed so easily if thingsdon't go your way all the time.Why, this is the greatest opportunity you could ask for to get yourboat back. Let Hacking and Iyeya-

. su destroy eac.h other and then takeover. Just sit back up in the hillsuntil they have clawed each .otherto death and jump on them whilethey're gasping out their last." .

Sam said, angrily, "What areyou talking about? Jump on themwith fifteen men and women?"

"No. You have at least five hundred prisoners in that stockade andGod knows how many more inother stockades. And you havethousands who ran away to Cernskujo and Publiujo."

UHow can I get hold of themnow?" Sam said. Uft's too late! The

IF·

attack will be launched in a fewhours. = Besides, the refugees wereprobably put in stockades, too. Forall I know, Chernsky and PubliusCrassus may be in cahoots withHacking."

"You're still the same paralyzedpessimist I knew on Earth," Livysaid. "Oh, Sam, I still love you, ina way, that is. I still like you as afriend aOO-"

"Friend!" he said so loudly thatthe others jumped.

Cyrano swore and Johnstonhissed, "Shet up. You want themblack Injuns to get us?"

"We were lovers for years," hesaid.

64Not always, by a long shot,"she said. UBut this is no place for adiscussion of our failures. I don'tintend to thrash those out-it's toolate. The point is. do you or do younot want your boat?"

"Of course, I want it," he saidfiercely.

uThen get off your dead ass,Sam!" she said.

From anybody else, the remarkwould have been unremarkable.But from her, his fragile, softvoiced, clean-speeched Livy, it wasunthinkable. But she had said itand now that he thought back on itthere had been times on Earth,which he had suppres'sed. in hismemory, when ...

"The lady makes a powerful lota sense!" Johnston rumbled.

He had far more important.things to think about. But the really important matters were best recognized· by the unconscious-andfor the first time he understood,really understood with every cell ofhis body that Livy had changed.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

She was no longer his Livy. Shehad not been for a long time,. perhaps had not been for some years'on Earth before her death.

"What do you say, Mr.. Clemens?" the mountain man rumbled.

Sam gave a deep sigh, as if bewere breathing out the last fragments of Olivia Langdon CI~menSde Bergerac.

He said, "Here's what. we do."

T HE rains lashed down; thunderand lightning' made the skies

and the land hideous for a halfhour. Johnston appeared out of therain with two bazookas and fourrockets tied together on his broadback. He disappeared again and ahalf hour later was back with somethrowing knives and tomahawks,all of steel.

The rain clouds went away andthe land was brightly silver underthe magnificent stars,· as numerous. as cherries on a tree jn season,as luminous as.jewels before electric lights. The air grew colder andSam's' people shiverecJ under theirontree. A thin mist formed overThe River; within fifteen minutes,it was so thick that the waters andthe .grailstones and the high wallsalong the banks could not be seen.

Iyeyasu struck a half-hour later.The bii boats and the small boats,crammed with men and weapons,came from across The River, wherethe Sacs and Foxes had once ruled,from the northern part of the exUlmak territory, from the landwhere the Hottentots and Bushmenhad once lived in peace. And themain bulk came from the rightbank of The River, from the threelands where Iyeyasu now was lord.

161

Iyeyasu attacked at ten pointsalong the Riverfront walls. Minesblew up the walls, and men pouredthrough the breaches. The numberof rockets shot in the first ten minutes was awesome. Iyeyasu musthave been saving them for a longtime. The three amphibians of thedefenders lumbered ~p, their steammachine guns chuffing and expelling the .75 caliber shells in gardenhose fashion. The carnage theymade was great, but Iyeyasulaunched a surprise. Rockets withwooden warheads' containing jellied .alcohol (made from soap pluswood alcohol) struck all around thethree armored vehicles and madedirect. hits at least twice each. Thec'rude napalm spread flerily overthe vehicles, and if the burningstuff did not get inside tho..yebicles,it seared the lungs of the meninside.

Sam was shaken by the sight, butnot enotlgh to keep him fromtelling Lothar to remind him of thiswhen it was all over-if either ofthem were still around.

HTbe amphibians have to bemade more airtight.and we'll haveto install a self-contained air system," he said.

Johnston appeared. as unexpectedly as if he had stepped out of adoor in the night-and behind himwas Firebrass. The man looked exhausted and as if he were in pain,but he still managed to grin atSam. He was, however, trembling.

"Hacking was told that I wasbetraying him," Firebrass said."And he" believed his informant.Who was, by" the way, your esteemed and always reliable KingJohn. John told him that I was

162

selling him down The River, that Ihad revealed everything to you so Icould become chief of your airforce. Hacking would not believethat I was dickering with you justto string you along. I can't blamehim too much. I should have sentword through our spies what I wasdoing. Th.at I didn't .convince himthat I wasn't doublecrossing himdidn't surprise me."

"Were you?" Sam said.Firebrass grinned. UNo, I

wasn't, though. I was mightilytempted. But why should I betrayhim when I'd been promised Icould be head flier after' Hackingtook over the boat? The truth is,Hacking was eager to believeJohn. He doesn't like me becauseI'm not his idea of what a soulbrother should be~ I had too easy alife according to him. H'e resented the fact that I never lived ina ghetto."

"The job of chief engineer· canstill be yours," Sam said. "I'll admit that I'm relieved about nothaving to promise you the captaincy of the air force. But you can.still fly, if you want to."

"That's the best offer I've hadsince I died," Firebrass. said. "I'lltake it."

He moved closer to Sam andwhispered in his ear. " You wouldhave had to take me along in somecapacity anyway. I'm one of TheTwelve!"

SAM felt as if a cold rod hadbeen plunged through him from

the top of his head down."The Ethical? The Stranger?'""Yes. He said you called him

The Mysterious Stranger."

uyou were ,betraying Hacking?" Then. he led the rest back up in-r UThat little speech I just Rlade to ihe hills. They would camp by

was for public consumption," Fire- the .~am until they saw how thebrass said. uYes, I did betray battle was going. Sam did not haveHacking, if you insist on using the slightest idea of what theythat word. But I regard myself as should do. He "told Cyrano hean espionage agent for a higher au- would play it by ear from-here onthority. I have no intention of and had to repress an imp-lllse toworrying about all-black or all- remark that he was tone deaf.white states on The River when I Afterward, Sam' thanked whocan find out how and why we, the ever there was to thank that he hadwhole human race, were put here. I not camped on top of the dam. Hewant answers to my questions, as had chosen a knoll above and to the~

Karamazov once said. All this left of the dam. Here he had awhite-black turmoil is trivial on better view of the hills and thethis planet, no matter how impor- plains, where the rockets were stilltan~ it was on Earth. Hacking must exploding but were not as nuhave sensed that I thought so, merous as in the beginning. The"though I tried to conceal it." starlight glimmered on the. waters

Sam did not recover from the of the big lake behind the dam as ifshock for some time. Meanwhile, all were peaceful in the "world.the "attl~ raged 'on the plain and Suddenly Johnston leaped upthe Soul Citizens were getting the and said, ULooky there! Yonderworst of it. Though they cost the on top of the dam!"invaders three men for one, they Three dark figures had emergedwere pushed back with a half-hour. from the water onto the dam. They

Sam decided that it was time for ran toward the land. Sam told thehim to act and led his group to the others to withdraw behind the greatstockade where the Parolando pris- trunk of the irontree. Joe Milleroners were kept. Lothar fired two and Johnston seized the three asrockets into the gates of the stock- " they raced up to the tree. One triedade. Cyrano and Johnston did most to stab Joe an<J Joe squeezed theof the work of killing the fifteen knifer's neck until blood spurtedguards. Cyrano was a demon olit from broken veins and arteries.using lightning for a sword and The others were knocked out. ByJohnston downed four men with the time they regained consciousthrown tomahawks and three with ness, they did not have to tell Samthrown knives. He broke two legs 'what they had done: And heand a chest with a foot like iron. guessed that they. had done so atThe freed prisoners were directed the order of King John.to the armory, where bows and The earth shook under Sam'sarrows were still in supply. feet, and the irontree leaves rattled

Sam sent two men each to the like dishes in a pantry. The whitenorth. and the south to go over the wall of the dam flew outwa~d withwalls and try to contact the Parol- a gigantic cloud" of smoke and aandanoj there. roar that pushed at his eardr~ms.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 163

Enormous chunks of concrete flewthrough the smoke like white birdsabove a factory chimney. Theytumbled over and over and struckthe ground far ahead of the waters.·The lake was no longer thepeaceful and quiet glimmer of awonderful world to come. Itseemed to hurl itself forward. Theroar as it raced down the canyonSam's .men had dug with so muchsweat and time was deafening.

THE water, hundreds of thousands of tons of it, funneled by

the s::anyon, rammed through theearthen walls, tearing out greatchunks of it. The sudden drop ofthe water level also removed agreat amount of earth around thelake's shores, so much so. that thewatchers had to scramble-for evenhigher ground. And the thousandfoot irontree, its two-hundred-footroots abruptly exposed, toppledover.

It seemed to take a long timefalling and the explosions of enormous 'roots breaking and the whistling of air through the huge leavesand vines terrified the humans.They had thought they were farenough a\vay, but even though thegiant tree \\'3S falling away fromthem, they w'ere threatened by theeruption of roots from the earth.

The tree struck with a crash onthe other side of the lake, tore outoverhanging dirt and continued ondown into the emptying lake. It slidQut entirely from it~ root-anchorson the bank. The waters picked upthe enormous. tree as if it were atoothpick and carried it down thecanyon for a half-mile before itbecame wedged.

164

The water roared out in a wall atleast a hundred feet high. Its frontcarried a tangle of half-grown treesand bamboo plants, huts, people,and debris. It flashed across themile and a half of plairi~ spreadingout but channeled, for a few minutes, by the secondary walls Samhad built to defend the factoriesand the Riverboat.

Everything was picked up andcarried on out into.The River. Thefactories crumbled as if they weremade of straw. The gigantic Riverboat was lifted up like a toy boatcast into the ocean surf. It rode outinto Th~ River, pitching, andvanished in darkness and turmoil.The sight made Sam throw· himselfon the ground and claw at thegrass. His boat was lost! All he hadmad~ wa~ lost, factories, mines,amphibians, airplanes, smithies,armories-but worst of all, theRiverboat· was lost. The dreamwas shattered, the great shining

.jewel of his dream had beensmashed.

The grass was cold and wet in hisface. Joe's huge hand lift~9. him upand sat him down, as if he were a.dummy. Joe's monstrous hairybody was pressed close to hi~,

warming him. And Joe's grotesque face' with the shelvingbrows and the absurdly long nosewas before him.

uThey't re all gone," Joe said."Chethuth! Vhat a thight-thereain'tt nothing left, Tham!"

The plain was buried under awhirl and toss of waters, ~ut in fifteen minutes The River had resumed its normal appearance alongthe shores of Parolando, though itsurely was swollen downstream.

The great buildings and the b.oatin its scaffoldings were gone. Thecyclopean walls on the sides, a mileapart, were gone. Small ponds glittered here, and there where themines and the basem*nts of thefactories had been. The vast weightof water had gouged out part of'the plain. The stone and earthwalls along the banks had beenswept a\yay as if they were sand.

The skies paled, and the starlitdarkness became gray. The greatfleet of the invaders was gone fardown The River, or under it, broken, smashed. The two armies onthe plain and' the sailors were alldead, crushed by the weight of thewater, .drowned, rubbed into nothing o~ squeezed out like toothpaste.

But Parolando extended for tenmiles along The River, and the lakehad, after all, only raged across atwo-mile area. Its main damagehad been in the middle ofParolando, where it had carriedeverything out that stood withifl ahalf a mile wide area.

Dawn brought with it a thousandmen in boats or over the walls ofChernsky's Land from the north.

At their head was King John.

XIX

SAM drew up his men in battleformation with Joe Miller in the

center, but King John Hmped forward, his hand held out in sign ofpeace. Sam walked for.ward to talkto him. Sam expected eventually tobe killed, but he realized that rightnow John needed him and Firebrass and otbers if he were goingto. get the. boat rebuilt. Also, he

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

banked ·on John's wanting the perverted pleasure of keeping Samalive-and wondering when thedagger in the night would findhim·. .

As it turned out, not everythinghad to be started from scratchagain. The boat. was foundrelatively undamaged, beached ona hill across The River a miledown. It had been deposited asgently as a .cal's Jootstep b}/ thewithdrawing waters. The work ofgetting the great hull back was noteasy; but it took much less timethan making another one.

John explained more than onceto Sam what he had done, but thedeviousnesses and the two timestwo doublecrosses were so complicated that Sam could never· seethe picture as a whole. John hadmade a deal to betray Sam, knowing full well that Hacking wouldbetr"ay. him in return. John wouldhave been disappointed ifHacking had not tried to stab himin the back. He would have lost allhis faith in human nature.

John had made a deal with Iyeyasu to help him invade afterHacking's invasion. Iyeyasu likedthe idea that Hacking wouldweaken his forces while takingParolando. At the last moment,John had made a deal with PubliusCrassus, Tai Fung, and" Chernskythat they would help him ,mop upon Iyeyasu's forces, which wouldbe shattered by the waters released by the blown-up dam.

John had sent the three men toset off the explosives in the damwhen the greatest number of invaders and defenders would beconcentrated between the fun-

165

neling secondary-defense walls."Then you weren't in your pal

ace when Hacking's cannonsopened up on it?" Sam said.

"No," John replied, smiling hiscat's smile. HI was miles. to thenorth, traveling to meet Iyeyasu.You haven~ver thought much ofme, Samuel+ but you should getdown on· your knees now and kissmy hand in gratitude. Withoutme you would have lost all."

"If you had told me Hackingwas going to invade, I could havekept everything," Sam said. "Wecould have ambushed Hacking."

The sun came up and struck thetawniness in John's hair and the peculiar gray-blue of his eyes. 404Ah,yes, but Iyeyasu would still havebeen a formidable problem. Nowhe's gone, and there is-tittle tokeep us from ruling all the land weneed, including the bauxite andplatinum of Soul City ·-and theiridium and· tungsten of Selinujo.I presume 'you have no objections to conque~ing those twostates?"

THERE was a bonanza in the aftermath. Hacking was taken

prisoner and Gwenafra was foundalive. Both had been pushed duringthe fighting into the hills to thewest. Hacking had been g'ettingready to lead a fresh'charge againstIyeyasu when the edge of the waters deluged his party. Gwenafraescaped, though she ·almostdrowned. Hacking had been hurledagainst a tree. Both his legs andone arm were broken and he wasbleeding internally.

Sam and John hastened to whereHacking lay under an irontree.

166

Gwenafra cried when she sawthem and embraced Sam andLothar. She seemed to give Sam amuch longer embrace than shegave Lothar, which was not entirely unexpected, since she andLothar had been quarreling violently before her capture.

John wanted to finish off Hacking with -some refined tortures,preferably as soon after breakfasta.s possible. Sam objectedstrongly. He knew that John couldhave his way if he insisted, since hismen outnumbered Sam's by fiftyto one. But Sam was past beingcautious and John backed away.He needed Sam and Sam's men.

uyou had a dream, Sam,",Hacking s'aid in a weak voice.uWell, I had one, too. A landwhere brothers and sisters couldloaf and invite their souls. Wherewe'd be all black. You wouldn'tknow what that means. No whitedevils, no white-eyes. Just blacksoul brothers. A place like thatwould have been as near heaven asyou can get in this hell of a world.Not that we wouldn't have hadtrouble, no place without trouble,man. But there wouldn't have beenany white-man trouble. Life wouldhave been ours. But that isn't tobe."

UYou could have had your'dream," Sam said, uif you'dwaited. After the boat was built,we'd have left the iron to whoevercould take it. And then-" .

Hacking gr.imaced. Sweat covered him and his face was tightwith pain. 4o4Man, you must be outof your skull. You really think. I believed .that story about you sailingoff on this quest for the Big Grail? I

·IF

~~t~o:o::~o~:t::au:ea~:f.:·· ~c:==:~t~~Y.t~ose chains. ~rou~ u~ a,ain; ,An. "~~Ii~II' Ft· .over··· tbat~~~. .pillar'qld South whitey ·lIke you-" . said. . ". . .... '.

He closed his eyes.· Sam. said9 . . ,

uy~u're ~rong! If you knew me, if 'W1taEEyeanpasscd~~The~you d taken the trouble to know I \v1JS as_in like "8 shell-pocked..me-" battlefield, stinkina witb··fumes·-'-·

Hacking opened his eyes and black with smoke~ ·.BUt ·the 'greatsaid, uYou'd lie to a nigg*r -even Riverboat was completed. 'Therewhen he was on his deathbed, was Doth·inS to do to. it::oow' ex:'wouldn't you?" He· stared up at cept to try it out. Even the·lastSam. uShoot me, will you? Put me touch, the painting of the· Riverout of my pain? I'm really suffer- bo'at's name in big 'black 'letters oning.".. . the white hull~ had been done. On

Lothar stepped up beside Sam both ~ides of the hull, ten feetand said, UAfter what you did to above the water line, ran theGwenafra I'll be glad to." legend: NOTFOR HIRE.

He pointed the muzzle of the big "What does the name mean,flintlock at Hacking's head. Sam?" he had been asked by many.

H.acking grinned ·p.ainfully and '~It mean~ just what it says, con-muttered, "Rape on principle,. trary to most words in print ormo~her! .1 swore off that on speech," Sam said. "The boat isEarth~but that woman just for no man's hire~ It's a free boatbrought out the devil in' me! and its crew are ~ free souls. NoBesides, so what? What about all .man's,,"those black slave women you "And why is the boat's launchwhite mothers raped?" called POST NO BIL~S?"

Sam walked away. Behind him HThat comes from a dream Ithe pistol boomed. Hacking would had," Sam would say. "Somebodybe walking along the. banks of The was trying to put up advertising onRiver tomorrow, somewhere far it and 1 told him that the launcha~ay. He and Sam might even see was built for no mercenary pureach other again, although Sam pose. What do you think I am, ad-was not looking forward to that. vance agent for P. T. Barnum? I

Lothar, stinking of gunpowder, said."caught up· with him. There had been more to the

"I should have let -him suffer. dream, but Sam .had told no oneBut old habits are hard to break. I except Joe about it. .wanted to ~ill him, so I did. That The man who was pasting upbla~k deviljust smiled at me." those garish/osters, advertising

"Don't say any more," Sam re- the coming 0 the greatest Riverplied. "I'm sick enough. I'm about boat of them all and the greatestto chuck the whole thing and settle Riverboat show of them all wasdown with a steady job of mis- I," Sam had told Joe. I was both'sionarying. The only ones whose men in the dream. .

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 167

l don'; get it, Tham, Joe had.said.

Sam had given up.The twenty-sixth anniversary of

Resurrection Day was the day thesidewheeler Not For Hire firstturned its paddles. The big moment came about an hour after thegrailstones flamed to charge thebreakfast grails. The cables and'cap connected to "the grailstone'had been removed and the cableswound up within the hold througha port in the forward section onthe starboard side. The grails hadbeen r~moved from the stone amile north and rushed to the bigboat in. the amphibious, armored, steam-driven launch, thePost No Bills. The fabulous Riverboat, gleaming white with red,black and green trimmings~movedout from the canal and into TheRiver behind a huge breakwateron its starboard side.

Whistles blowing, iron bellsclanging, passengers cheering,people on the shore shouting, themagnificent paddlewheels churning. Not For Hire moved withstately grace out into The River.

THE Riverboat had an overall.I.. length .of four hundred and for

ty feet and six inches. The beamover the paddlewheel guards wasninety-three feet. The mean draft,loaded, was twelve feet. The giantelectric motors driving the paddle-wheels delivered ten thousandshaft horse power. Top speed,theoretically, was forty-fivemiles~an hour..in still water. Goingupstream against the fifteen-milean-hour current, it would bethirty. Going downstream; it

168

would be sixty. The boat would. begoing up'The River most of thetime and cruising at fifteen milesan hou~ relative to the ground.

There were four decks, the socalled boiler deck, the main decJ{,the hurricane deck and the landingdeck. The pilothouse was at thefore edge of the hurricane deckand the lopg texas, containingthe captai~'s and chief officers'quarters, was behind the pilothouse. However, the pilothouse.~

was itself double-decked. It wasset forward of the two tall but thinsmokestacks, which' rose thirtyfeet' high. Firebrass had advisedagainst the ~tacks, because thesmoke from 'the big boilers (usedonly to heat water and.to drive themachine guns) could be piped outon the side. But Sam had snortedand said, "What do I care about airresistance? I want beauty! Andbeauty is what we'll· get! Whoeverheard of a Riverboat withouttall, graceful impressive smokestacks! Have you no soul, bro~h-'

er?"There were sixty-five cabins,

each about twelve by twelve withsnap~up beds and tables and folding chairs. Each cabin had a toiletand a wash basin with hot .and coldrunning water and there was ashower for every six cabins.

There were three big. lounges, .one in the texas, one on the hurricane deck, and one on the maindeck. These held pool tables, dartgames, gymnastic equipment,card tables, a movie screen, astage for dramas or· musicals andthe main deck lounge held a podi-um for the orchestra. '.

The upper deck of. the pilot-

.house was luxuriously furnished STYLES was nervous, as anywith carved oak" chairs and tables body would be the first time,covered with red Riverdragon even the steel-nerved Captain Isafish leather. The "pilot sat in a iah Sellers of ancient Mississippilarge and comfortable swivel fame. There was nothing to pilotchair before the instrument ing the boat-a one-eyed Sundayboard. On this was a bank of small School teacher with a hangoverclosed-circuit TV screens, giving could do it, his six-year-old childhim views ·of the control centers could do it, once he got the hang ofof the boat. Before him was a the two sticks. Push ·forward formicrophone which enabled him to increased speed, put in the middlespeak to anybody on the boat: He position to stop the wheels, pullcontrolled the boat with two lev- back to reverse the wheels. To steerers o'n a small movable board be- the boat to port, pull back a littlefore him. The left stick controlled on the port stick and forward a litthe port wheel; the right, the star.. tie on the starboard stick. To steerboard. A screen before him was a to starboard, do the "reverse.radar i"ndicator used at night. ~ut it took.some practice beforeAnother screen showed him the the proper coordination· wasdepth of the water from the bot.. achieved.tom of the boat as measured by Luckily there was no memorysonar. A toggle on the instru- work involved in piloting a boat onment board could switch the .pilot- this River. There were no islands,ing to automatic, though the rule no sand bars, and there would bewas that a pilot had to be on duty few logs with snags. An alarm bellat all times. rang before the boat worked too

Sam was dressed in bleached. close to shallow water. At nightfish-leather sandals, a white kilt, a radar or sonar would indicate obwhite cape and a 'white officer's structions and activate· a red Hght.cap of plastic and leather. He Sam watched Styles for a halfwore a bleached leather belt and hour, then took over the pilotingholster for a ponderous Mark .11 and, after another half-hour, asked.69 four-shooter "pistol and a John if he would like to try. Johnsbeath for a rapier. was dressed entirely in black, as if

He paced back and forth, a big he were determined to do just the'green cigar in his mouth, and opposite of whatever Sam did.watched the pilot, Robert Styles, But he took the sticks and did wellsteering the boat for the first time. for an ex-king who had never doneStyles was an old Mississippi pi- a lick of work~ in his life and had allot, a handsome Y·outh, no liar, ways let inferiors do whateverthough given to inflating facts. steering was necessary.Sam had been overcome with joy The boat sailed up past the deadwhen he had appeared about two Iyeyasu's kingdom, now split intoyears before. He had known Rob three states again. Then Sam orStyles' when they were both Mis- dered the vessel turned back. Robsissippi pilots. Styles got fancy and pivoted .her

THE· FABULOUS RIVE·RBOAT 169

D URING the return trip thehuge hatch in the stern was

lowered and the launch slipped into The River. It cut back and forthat top speed and raced ahead of themother boat. Its steam machineguns traced lines along the waterand the thirty steam guns on theNot For Hire shot back, thoughnot at the launch. I

The big three-place amphibian.

170

4'gn a dime-" as' he said, to monoplane came out ()f the opendemonstrate her maneuvera- ing in the stein, too. Its wings werebility. While the port wheel backed strdightened out and locked and itthe starboard raced forward at took off. Firebrass was at the COD{ull speed. The boat rotated as if trois. His woman and Gwenafrastuck on a piJ;l, then headed down- were passengers.stream. With the current and wind .A moment later the tiny onebehind· her and the paddlewheels seater open-co*ckpit scout-fighterturning· at maximum speed, the was shot off the top of the texas .byNot For Hire raced along at sixty a steam catapult. Lot-har von'miles an hour. Sam had Styles Richthofen took it up,. wood- .bring her' in close to the shore, alcohol motor buzzing, andwhere the sonar indicated about raced ahead until ·he was out of.one foot of clearance between sight. H~ returned, climbed andhull and bottom on the port side. entertained with the first aerialEven above the slapping of the .' acrobatics that the Riverworldwheels and the splashing of water had ever seen-to the best of Sam'sa·nd the whistling and clanging of knowledge.

. bells, they could hear the crowds. Lothar concluded with a dive. atThe faces whizzed by as if in a the end ofwbich he fired'four'rock,dream. ets and then the twin machine

Sam op'ened the fore ports-of the guns. These were .80 caliber andpilothouse to feel the wind and fired aluminum bullets from aluheighten the impression of speed. minum cartridges. There were

The Not For Hire raced all the one hundred thousand of theseway downstream to Selinujo, then stored on the boat. When they wereturned again. Sam wished, almost, used up there would be no more.that there were another boat· that Lothar landed the tiny monohe 'Could race against. But it was plane on the landing deck on top ofheaven enough to have the only the texas and devices caught' themetal electrically powered Riv- hook trailed out by the plane. Evenerboaf' in existen,ce. A man so, the whirling propeller stoppedcouldn't have everything, not even only ten feet from the smokein the after-Earthlife. stacks. Firebrass returned in the

amphibian and later took thewheeled plane up for a flight.

Sam looked down through theport front at the marines drilling onthe fore part of the broad boilerdeck. They marched back andforth and performed intricateman~uvers under Cyrano'sorders. Their silvery duraluminplumed helmets were like those ofthe ancient Romans. They woregray and red ..-Striped chainma-il

shirts halfway down their thighs.Their legs were cased in leatherboots. They carried rapiers, longknives and Mark II pi-stols. They\yere the pistoleers only,. however. The main part of the marineswere watching the show; thesewere the bowmen and' the rocketeers.

Seeing Gwenafra's honeycolore<t head in the crowd on themain deck ~ade Sam happy.

He saw Livy's dark head nearher and was unhappy.

Gwenafra, after another sixmonths of a jealousy-ridden lifewith von Richthofen, had acceptedSam's offer and moved in withhim. But ·Sam still could not seeLivy without some pain of loss.

,Except for Livy and John 'hewould have been as happy as he·could be. But she would be alongthroughout the forty-year journey.And John prowled. through Sam'snightmares. .

J OHN had been so. willing to letSam be the captain and so un

hesitant about accepting the firstmate's position that Sam knew hewas up to no good. But when wouldThe Mutiny, as Sam thought of it,take place? It was inevitable thatJohn would try to take over the fullcommand of the Riverboat andany intelligent man, knowingthis, \vould have dumped him.

But Sam had been too conscience~stricken by his killing ofBloodaxe. He could not cOlllmit-another 'assassination, not even ifhe knew that John would not bepermanently dead. A corpse wasa corpse and a. doublecross was adoublecross.

The question was, when w.ouldJohn strike? At the beginning, ormuch later during the voyag'e,when Sam's suspicions had beenlulled?

·Actually the· situation was intolerable. But then, it was surprising how much intolerableness aman could tolerate.

A yellow haired near-giant entered the pilothouse. His name wasAugustus Strubewell. He wasJohn's aide-de-camp and had beenpicked up by John during his sojourn in Iyeyasujo after Hack-·ing's invasion. He had been bornin 1971 in San Diego, California,had been an All-American fullback, a captain of the U.S. Marines. Decorated for bravery in theMiddle East and South America,he had made a career in themovies and on TV. He seemed apleasant enough feHow exceptthat, like John,. he bragged of hisconquests among women. Sam didnot trust him. Anybody whoworked for Joh", Lackland had tohave something wrong with him.

Sam shrugged. He might as wellenjoy himself. Why let anythingrob him of the joy of the greatestday of his life?

He leaned o~t of the port andwatched the drill team and thecrowd. The sun sparkled on waves;the breeze was cooling, though hedid not need it. He could shut theports and turn on the-air-conditioning. From the tall pole on the bowthe flag' of the Not For Hireflapped in the wind. It was squareand bore a scarlet -phoenix on alight blue field. The phoenix symbolized the rebirth of mankind.

He waved at. the .people massed

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 171

along the bank and pressed a button that set off a series of. steamwhistles and clanging bells.

He drew in smoke from his finecigar, stuck out his chest andparaded back and forth. Strubewell handed John a glass full ofbourbon and then he offered Samone. Everybody in the pHot-.house, Styles, the six oth~r pilots,Joe Miller, von Richthofen,Firebrass, Publius Crassus, Mozart, John Lackland, Strubewelland three other aides of John tooka glass.

""A toast, gentlemen," John saidin Esperanto. ""To a long and happy journey and may we all 'get whatwe deserve."

JOE MILLER, standing nearSam, the top of his heact1ttinost

touching the ceiling, held a glasscontaining about half a quart ofbourbon. He sniffed at the amberliquor with his monstrous proboscis and then tasted it with thetip of his tongue.

Sam had been just about to tossdown the four-ounce drink when hesaw Joe's apish face grimace.

""What's the matter, Joe?"""Thith thtuff hath thomething in

it."Sam sniffed and could detect

nothing but the most excellent ofKentucky's best. I

But whe'n John and Strubewelland the others reached for theirweapons he threw the liquor inJohn's face.

Yelling, ""It's poison-" he divedfot the floor.

Strubewell's Mark II pistolboomed. The plastic bullet shattered against the bulletproof plas-

172

tic of the port above Sam's head.Joe roared-he sounded like a

lion suddenly released from itscage-and threw his liquor intoStrubewell's eyes.

The other aides fired and firedagain. The Mark II pistols werefour-shot revolvers. The powder inthe aluminum 'cartridges waselectrically ignited. They werelarger' and heavier than the MarkI's, but they could fired more swiftly and cordite, not black gunpowder, propelled the plastic bullets.

The pilothouse became a fury ofbooming, deafening explosives, thescream of shattered plastic ricocheting, the shouts and screams ofmen and the subhuman bellowingof Joe.

Sam rolled over, reached up andflicked the automatic pilot switch.Rob Styles was on· the floor, his,arm almost torn off. One of John'saides was dying in front of him.Strubewell went flying over himand banged against the glass andthen fell on him. John was gone; hehad fled down the ladder.

Sam crawled out from underStrubewell. Four of his pilots weredead. All of the aides, except forStrubewell, who was only unconscious, were dead. Their necks hadbeen broken or their jaws, shattered by Joe. Mozart crouched,quivering, in a corner. Firebrassbled from cuts made by plastic fragments and Lothar, from itgash in his arm. One of the aideshad struck him with a knife just before Joe twisted his head 180 d~

grees.Sam ros~ shakily and looked

through the port. The crowd on the

deck had dispersed, but .not without leaving a dozen bodies behind.The marines were firing at menshooting at them from around the'sides of the main deck. Some of thefire seemed to be coming fromcabin ports in the ma.n deck.

Cyrano stood with his rapidlydwindling crew, shouting orders.Then John's men charged, firing.Cyrano went down. He was upagain instantly, his sword flashingsilver, then red. The enemy brokeand ran.

Cyrano ran after them.Sam shouted, UYou fool-go

~ack-" but he was hot heard, ofcourse.

H E TRI ED to struggle out ofhis shock. John had slipped

something into their drinks, a poison or a sedative. Only Joe's subhumanly sensitive nose had s.avedSam's people from drinking andallowing John to take over the. pilothouse with little trouble.

Sam looked out and ahead. Only a half-mile away was the hugebreakwater behind which the boatwas to anchor for the night. Thelong journey would officially begintomorrow.

He flicked off the automatic pilot toggle switch and took the control sticks in his hands.

41oJoe," he said, Ul'm going to runthis right up alongside the bank. Imay even ground us. Get out thebullhorn. I'll tell the peopleashore what's happened and we"l1get help." .

He pulled back on the starboardstick and advanced the port stick.

101oWhat''s happening?" he yelled.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

The boat was proceedingstraight on its course up The River, holding to a distance of abouta hundred yards off the shore.

He moved the sticks back andforth, frantically, but the boat didnot deviate.

.A voice came from the intercom, John's.

UIt's no ,use, Samuel, Boss, Captain, swine! I have control of theboat. My engineer, the man whowill be chief engineer, put in aduplicate set of controls in-nevermind where. I have cut off your.controls, and the boat will gowhere I want it to. So you don'thave any advantage at all. Nowmy men will storm the pilothouseand take you. But I would preferthat there be as little damage aspossible. So, if you win just get offthe boat I will let you go unharmed. Provided, that is, thatyou can swim a hundred yards."

Sam raged and swore andpounded his fists on the instrument panel. But the boat continued past the dock, while thecrowds gathered there waved~

cheered and wondered.[othar said, UThey're trying to

sneak up on us-" and fired at aman who had appeared around thefar end of the texas on the hurri·cane deck.

UWe can"t hold out long," Firebrass said. UWe don't have muchammunition. '"

Sam s'aw some men and womenon the boiler deck; they were trying to make a stand.

Livy was among them.She was firing a M'ark II.John's men charged. A man

thrust at Cyrano, who was en-

173

gaged in running his rapierthrough the man next to him. Livytried to knock the blade aside withher pistol and the sword went intoher stomach. She fell, the swordstill sticking out of her. The manwho had killed her died a secondlater-Cyrano's rapier wentthrough his throat.

Sam cried, ULivy! Livy!"He was out of the pilothouse and

running down the ladder. Bulletsscreamed past h.im, smashedagainst the bulkheads and the ladder. He felt a stinging, then hearda shouting behind him, but he didnot stop. He was vaguely awarethat Joe Miller and the others hadrun out after him.

Corpses and wounded wereeverywhere. The boat was turninginto shore,. its paddle"\vheelsoperating at full speed, the waterflying, the wheels chuff-chuffing,the deck trembling. John wasturning the boat into shore andSam saw why. A number ofheavily· armed men and womenhad been posted at this section ofThe Riverbank. They would bethe disaffected, Sam guessed.~ rec'ruited from among the peoplewho were angered bec'ause thelottery had cut them out of a placeon the ·crew. John had mobilizedthem. Once they got aboard, theywould mop up whatever resistancethey met.

SAM had run along the hurricane deck after leaving the pi

lothouse ladder. He gripped a pistol with two shots left in it in onehand and his rapier in the other. Hedid n<:>t know how they had gotten

174

into his hands; he had no memory.of having drawn either. ,

A face appeared at the edge ofthe 'deck. He fired and it dropped.He was on the edge· of the deckthen and shooting eveo as he leanedover to look down the, ladder.Sam's bullet did not mis.s thistime. The man's chest erupted redand he fell down the ladder, taking two companions with him.But others on the deck belo'wraised their pistols and he had tojump back. The volley missed him.

Joe Miller said behind him,UTham! Th~m! Ther~'th nothingto do but chump oV,erboard! Theygot uth thurrounded."

Below, Cyrano, still wielding hisrapier, holding off three men at onetime, backed to the railing. Hisblade pierced a throat, the man felland Cyrano whirled and leapedover the railing~ When he came uphe began to swim strongly to getaway from the starboard paddlewheel thrashing toward him.

Bullets struck the sides of thecabins behind Sam, and Lotharcried, uJump, Sam! JU'mp!"

Joe had already turned and wasrunning with his great axe towardthe men firing from behind the rearof the cabins along the hurricanedeck. Bullets sJreaked toward him,but he was depending upon his terrifying aspect and his prowess,~hich they well knew, to p~nic theshooters.

Sam and Lothar ran behind himuntil they came to the paddlewheelhousing, some ten feet from tbeedge of the hurricane deck. If theystood up on the railing and leapedout, they could grab hold of the bigiron eyes through which cables had

175

world is hell, Joe, genuine hell.You can't even commit a decentsuicide. You wake u·p the next dayand there you are with your problems stuck on you with glue-."

~·'Vhat do ve do now, Tham?"Sam did not reply for a long

time. If he couldn't have. Livy, Cyrano would not have her, either. Hecould endure the thought of havinglost her if she was not where hecould see her.

Later, the shame at exulting inCyrano's loss would come.

Not now. He was too stunned.The loss of the boat had ·been evena greater shock .than seeing Livykilled.

After all these years .of bardwork, of grief, of betrayal, of planning, of hurting, of-of~

It was too much to bear.Joe was grieved to see him cry,

but he sat patiently, by until Sam'stears had quit flowing. .

Then he asked, uDo ve thtartbuilding· another boat, Tham'?"

Sam Clemens rose to his feet.The ,gangplank was being drawn upby the electromechanical machinery of his fabulous Riverboat.Whistles were shrilling exultantly and bells were clanging. Johnwould still be laughing. He mighteven be watching Sam through atelescope.

Sam shook his fist, hoping thatJohn was watching him.

U I'll get you yet!" he howled."I'll build another boat and I'llcatch up with you. I'll run YO.U"down, John, and I'll blast yourstolen boat out of The River. Nobody, the Stranger, or his kind, nomatter what their ''Powers, is going to stoP. me!" •

JO'HN'S voice boomed from abullhorn: u Farewell, Sam!

Thanks for building the Riverboatfor me-I'll change its name to onethat'll suit me better! I'm going_to enjoy the fruits of your labors---think of me as often as youplease. Farewell!"

His laughter blasted Sam's ears.Sam came out of his hiding place

in a hut and climbed the wall on theedge of the water. The boat hadstopped and let down a long gangplank on cables to permit thetraitors to come aboard. He hearda vo.ice below him and lookeddown. There was Joe, his reddishhairs black with water exceptwhere blood streaked it.

"Lothar and Firebrath and Thyrano and Chohnthton made it," hesaid. .

"How you feel, Tham?"Sam sat down on the hard

packed dirt and said, "If it woulddo any good, rd kill .myself. This

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

~n secured when the ~ousing hadbeen placed over the .wheel by thecrane.

They jumped, .one after the other, while bullets screamed by. Eachgrabbed an eye, pulled himself tothe top of the housing a,nd hit thewater from there. The 'water wasthirty feet below, a height 'whichwould have made Sam hesitate' under different conditions. This time,he .went out, fell straight, holdinghis nose, and plunged into the water feet first.

Sam dove. Several of the steammachine guns had been depressedand .75 caliber bullets were probing for him.

••adlngRoom

enough scientific thinking for half adozen normal novels, only to setthe background for a test of socialtheories. We see all the humandrives in this microcosm, up anddown from the alphas to the

July 3-5, 1971. WESTERCOl'I 24. AtHilton Airport Inn, San Francisco,California. Guest-of-Honor: AvramDavidson; Fan Guest-of-Honor: Don·Simpson. Membership: $4.00 to JuneI, $5.00 thereafter. For information:Astrid Anderson, 3 Las Palomas, Orinda, Cal ifornia 94563.

•July 8-11, 1971. D-CON. At Statler-Hilton Hotel, Dallas, Texas. Guest-ofHonor: Robert Bloch; Fan Guest-ofHonor: Andy Offutt. Membership:$5.00 in advance; $6.00 at the door.For information: D-Con, Box 242,Lewisville, Texas 75067.

•August 7-9, 1971. PGHLANGE III.At Chatham Center Motor Inn, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Guest-of-Honor:Lester del Rey; Guest-of-HonorEmeritus: Robert Silverberg. For

(Continued from page 121 )

omegas in the pecking order. Thischallenge, obviously, is the realsurvival test-a test that the wholehuman race has not done too wellat to date, but one which theseearly adults must pass. •

information: Ginjer Buchanan, 5830Bartlett Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15217.

•August 26-28, 1971. DEEP SOUTH-CON. At Monteleone Hotel, 214 RueRoyale, New Orleans, Guest-ofHonor: Poul Anderson. Membership:$3.00 attending, $1.50 supporting.For information: Mrs. Rick Norwood, 5169 Wilton Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana 70122.

•August 27-28, 1971. NEW MEXI-CON III. At Ramada Inn East, Albuquerque, New Mexico. For information: Bob Yardman, P.O. Box11352, Albuquerque, New Mexico87112.

•September 3-6, 1971. NOREASCON:29th World Science Fiction Convention. At the Sheraton-Boston Hotel,Prudential Center, Boston, Massachusetts. Guest-of-Honor: Clifford D. Simake Fan Guest-of-Honor: HarryWarner Jr. For information: Noreascon, P.O. Box 547, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.

176

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