Short Fiction

I

The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove’s surface by the sloop’s prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.

He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove’s high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime⁠—gone to the farthest island out.

He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.

The man’s lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks⁠—and realized that he hadn’t quite gone to the farthest one out.

Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he’d wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.

Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.

To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.

He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees⁠—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.

Without pausing for surprise⁠—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad⁠—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.

Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.

A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.

Then, with the air of a clockwork toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver’s seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.

The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neckline to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.

She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.

The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, “hello!” and walked toward her.

She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.

Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, “Are you he?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, smiling puzzledly.

“The one who sends me the little boxes.”

“I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn’t dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here.”

“No one ever does come here,” she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.

“It startled me tremendously to find this place,” he blundered on. “Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can’t be more than a quarter of a mile wide.”

“The road goes down to the wharf,” she explained, “and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house.”

He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. “Was that your aunt I saw driving off?”

“One of them. The other’s taken the motorboat in for supplies.” She looked at him doubtfully. “I’m not sure they’ll like it if they find someone here.”

“There are just the three of you?” he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.

She nodded.

“I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?”

She shook her head.

“It must get pretty dull for you.”

“Not very,” she said, smiling. “My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We’ve got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow.”

He looked at her hard for a moment. “I suppose you read a lot?”

She nodded. “Fitzgerald’s my favorite author.” She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. “Would you like some lemonade?”

He’d noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Jack Barry.”

She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.

He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. “I’m a biology student. Been working at Wood’s Hole the first part of the summer. But now I’m here to do research in marine ecology⁠—that’s sort of sea-life patterns⁠—of the inshore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?”

She shook her head.

“Probably the greatest living biologist,” he was proud to inform her. “Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich⁠—he lives over there at town. I’m staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.” He grinned. “Matter of fact, I’d never have met you if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Kesserich.”

The girl looked puzzled.

Jack explained, “The old boy’s been off to Europe on some conferences, won’t be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich⁠—she’s a drab sort of person⁠—said to me, ‘Don’t try to sail to the farther islands.’ So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven’t told me your name.”

“Mary Alice Pope,” she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.

“You’re pretty shy, aren’t you?”

“How would I know?”

The question stopped Jack. He couldn’t think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a “flapper.”

“Will you sit down?” she asked him gravely.

The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. “I’ll bet you’ll be glad when summer’s over.”

“Why?”

“So you’ll be able to go back to the mainland.”

“But I never go to the mainland.”

“You mean you stay out here all winter?” he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.

“Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don’t always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them.”

“But that’s impossible!” he said with sudden sympathetic anger. “You can’t be shut off this way from people your own age!”

“You’re the first one I ever met.” She hesitated. “I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies.”

“You’re joking!”

“No, it’s true.”

“But why are they doing it to you?” he demanded, leaning forward. “Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?”

She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. “I don’t know why. I’m to find out soon. But actually I’m not lonely. May I tell you a secret?” She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. “Every night the loneliness gathers in around me⁠—you’re right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box.”

“What’s that?” he said sharply.

“Sometimes there’s a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,

‘Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude⁠—’ ”

“Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “Who sends you these boxes?”

“I don’t know.”

“But how are the notes signed?”

“They’re wonderful notes,” she said. “So wise, so gay, so tender, you’d imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh.”

“Yes, but how are they signed?”

She hesitated. “Never anything but ‘Your Lover.’ ”

“And so when you first saw me, you thought⁠—” He began, then stopped because she was blushing.

“How long have you been getting them?”

“Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast.”

“But how does this⁠—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But how can they get them in winter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look here,” he said, pouring himself more lemonade, “how long is it since you’ve been to the mainland?”

“Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war.”

“What war?” he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.

“The World War, of course. What’s the matter?”

Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he’d never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.

And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:

Hitler In New Defiance

Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:

Foes of Machado Riot in Havana

Big N.R.A. Parade Planned

Balbo Speaks in New York

Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.

“Why are you so interested in old newspapers?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t call day-before-yesterday’s paper old,” the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.

“You’re trying to joke,” Jack told her.

“No, I’m not.”

“But it’s 1953.”

“Now it’s you who are joking.”

“But the paper’s yellow.”

“The paper’s always yellow.”

He laughed uneasily. “Well, if you actually think it’s 1933, perhaps you’re to be envied,” he said, with a sardonic humor he didn’t quite feel. “Then you can’t know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V−2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or⁠—”

“Stop!” She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced. “I don’t like what you’re saying.”

“But⁠—”

“No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here.”

“I’m really not joking,” he said after a moment.

She grew quite frantic at that. “I can show you all last week’s papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!”

She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.

At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.

“Flash!” croaked a gritty voice. “After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues⁠ ⁠…”

Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl’s shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.

The girl didn’t pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.

“I can hear the car. They’re coming back. They won’t like it that you’re here.”

“All right they won’t like it.”

Her agitation grew. “No, you must go.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he heard himself saying.

“Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock.”

Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.

“You must go before they see you.”

“Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped⁠ ⁠…”

He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.

He leaped for the branch overhanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel’s head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.

Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O., dragged it as near to the cove’s mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.

As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.

For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn’t have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.

When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.

Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.

But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.

Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.

II

The exterior of Martin Kesserich’s home⁠—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola⁠—was nothing like its lavish interior.

In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.

Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.

He asked abruptly, “Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?”

The silence lasted so long that he began to think she’d gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.

It was a picture of the girl he’d met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress⁠—flowered rather than white⁠—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.

“That is Mary Alice Pope,” Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. “She was Martin’s fiancée. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933.”

The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich’s white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.

“Sit down,” she said, “and I’ll tell you about it.”

Without a thought as to why she hadn’t asked him a single question⁠—he was much too dazed for that⁠—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.

“You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin’s life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him⁠—or rather about the three of them.

“Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud⁠—I don’t imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant⁠—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn’t realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They’d thought that since he’d reached forty without marrying, he was safe.

“Mary Alice came from a purebred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda’s feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda’s favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But⁠—and here is where Mary’s wisdom fell short⁠—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.

“Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.”

With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.

She went on, “Martin’s love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well⁠—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he’d plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Budapest the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months⁠ ⁠… and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy⁠—”

Jack broke in with, “Wasn’t that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?”

Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. “But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.

“Of course there was Martin’s luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that.” She looked defiantly at Jack. “I drove the station wagon. I was Martin’s laboratory assistant.”

She paused. “It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.

“Suddenly Mary’s horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed⁠—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn’t manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight’s glare.

“Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary⁠—I mean, what had been Mary⁠—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms.”

A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.

The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall⁠—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.

“Hello, Barr,” Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.

The great biologist had come home.

III

“Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?”

Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.

“Not especially, sir,” he mumbled.

The house was still. A few minutes after the professor’s arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.

Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher’s trick to show up a pupil’s inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.

“You know what I mean, of course,” Kesserich pressed. “The factors that make you you, and me me.”

“Heredity and environment,” Jack parroted like a freshman.

Kesserich nodded. “Suppose⁠—this is just speculation⁠—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could recreate the same individual at will.”

Jack felt a shiver go through him. “To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That’d be far beyond us.”

“What about identical twins?” Kesserich pointed out. “And then there’s parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male.” Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. “There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution.”

Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. “Even then you wouldn’t get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits.”

“Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother’s traits?”

“But environment would change things,” Jack objected. “The duplicate would be bound to develop differently.”

“Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other’s existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called ‘Trixie.’ That’s without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times⁠ ⁠…”

For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich’s sphinx-like face.

“Well, we’ve escaped quite far enough from Jamieson’s marine worms,” the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels. “Let’s get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won’t have any time for it tomorrow.”

Jack looked at him blankly.

“Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,” the biologist explained.

IV

Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife⁠—things said and half said last night⁠—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.

Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet⁠—he felt behind it, but the key was gone⁠—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.

The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.

After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.

This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he’d brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.

He hadn’t realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.

The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. “You must go away at once and never come back. You’re a wicked man, but I don’t want you to be hurt. I’ve been watching for you all morning.”

He tossed the newspapers over the fence. “You don’t have to read them now,” he told her. “Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines.”

When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.

“Listen to me,” he said. “You’ve been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it’s 1933 now instead of 1951. I’m not sure why it’s been done, though I think I know who you really are.”

“But,” the girl faltered, “my aunts tell me it’s 1933.”

“They would.”

“And there are the papers⁠ ⁠… the magazines⁠ ⁠… the radio.”

“The papers are old ones. The radio’s faked⁠—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it.”

“These papers might be faked,” she said, pointing to where she’d let them drop on the ground.

“They’re new,” he said. “Only old papers get yellow.”

“But why would they do it to me? Why?”

“Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That’ll set you straight quicker than anything.”

“I couldn’t,” she said, drawing back. “He’s coming tonight.”

“He?”

“The man who sends me the boxes⁠ ⁠… and my life.”

Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. “A life that’s completely a lie, that’s cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary.”

She looked up at him wonderingly. For perhaps ten seconds the silence held and the spell of her eerie sweetness deepened.

“I love you, Mary,” Jack said softly.

She took a step back.

“Really, Mary, I do.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s true. Go away.”

“Mary,” he pleaded, “read the papers I’ve given you. Think things through. I’ll wait for you here.”

“You can’t. My aunts would find you.”

“Then I’ll go away and come back. About sunset. Will you give me an answer?”

She looked at him. Suddenly she whirled around. He, too, heard the chuff of the Essex. “They’ll find us,” she said. “And if they find you, I don’t know what they’ll do. Quick, run!” And she darted off herself, only to turn back to scramble for the papers.

“But will you give me an answer?” he pressed.

She looked frantically up from the papers. “I don’t know. You mustn’t risk coming back.”

“I will, no matter what you say.”

“I can’t promise. Please go.”

“Just one question,” he begged. “What are your aunts’ names?”

“Hani and Hilda,” she told him, and then she was gone. The hedge shook where she’d darted through.

Jack hesitated, then started for the cove. He thought for a moment of staying on the island, but decided against it. He could probably conceal himself successfully, but whoever found his boat would have him at a disadvantage. Besides, there were things he must try to find out on the mainland.

As he entered the oaks, his spine tightened for a moment, as if someone were watching him. He hurried to the rippling cove, wasted no time getting the Annie O. underway. With the wind still in the west, he knew it would be a hard sail. He’d need half a dozen tacks to reach the mainland.

When he was about a quarter of a mile out from the cove, there was a sharp smack beside him. He jerked around, heard a distant crack and saw a foot-long splinter of fresh wood dangling from the edge of the sloop’s cockpit, about a foot from his head.

He felt his skin tighten. He was the bull’s-eye of a great watery target. All the air between him and the island was tainted with menace.

Water splashed a yard from the side. There was another distant crack. He lay on his back in the cockpit, steering by the sail, taking advantage of what little cover there was.

There were several more cracks. After the second, there was a hole in the sail.

Finally Jack looked back. The island was more than a mile astern. He anxiously scanned the sea ahead for craft. There were none. Then he settled down to nurse more speed from the sloop and wait for the motorboat.

But it didn’t come out to follow him.

V

Same as yesterday, Mrs. Kesserich was sitting on the edge of the couch in the living room, yet from the first Jack was aware of a great change. Something had filled the domestic animal with grief and fury.

“Where’s Dr. Kesserich?” he asked.

“Not here!”

“Mrs. Kesserich,” he said, dropping down beside her, “you were telling me something yesterday when we were interrupted.”

She looked at him. “You have found the girl?” she almost shouted.

“Yes,” Jack was surprised into answering.

A look of slyness came into Mrs. Kesserich’s bovine face. “Then I’ll tell you everything. I can now.

“When Martin found Mary dying, he didn’t go to pieces. You know how controlled he can be when he chooses. He lifted Mary’s body as if the crowd and the railway men weren’t there, and carried it to the station wagon. Hani and Hilda were sitting on their horses nearby. He gave them one look. It was as if he had said, ‘Murderers!’

“He told me to drive home as fast as I dared, but when I got there, he stayed sitting by Mary in the back. I knew he must have given up what hope he had for her life, or else she was dead already. I looked at him. In the domelight, his face had the most deadly and proud expression I’ve ever seen on a man. I worshiped him, you know, though he had never shown me one ounce of feeling. So I was completely unprepared for the naked appeal in his voice.

“Yet all he said at first was, ‘Will you do something for me?’ I told him, ‘Surely,’ and as we carried Mary in, he told me the rest. He wanted me to be the mother of Mary’s child.”

Jack stared at her blankly.

Mrs. Kesserich nodded. “He wanted to remove an ovum from Mary’s body and nurture it in mine, so that Mary, in a way, could live on.”

“But that’s impossible!” Jack objected. “The technique is being tried now on cattle, I know, so that a prize heifer can have several calves a year, all nurtured in ‘scrub heifers,’ as they’re called. But no one’s ever dreamed of trying it on human beings!”

Mrs. Kesserich looked at him contemptuously. “Martin had mastered the technique twenty years ago. He was willing to take the chance. And so was I⁠—partly because he fired my scientific imagination and reverence, but mostly because he said he would marry me. He barred the doors. We worked swiftly. As far as anyone was concerned, Martin, in a wild fit of grief, had locked himself up for several hours to mourn over the body of his fiancée.

“Within a month we were married, and I finally gave birth to the child.”

Jack shook his head. “You gave birth to your own child.”

She smiled bitterly. “No, it was Mary’s. Martin did not keep his whole bargain with me⁠—I was nothing more than his ‘scrub wife’ in every way.”

“You think you gave birth to Mary’s child.”

Mrs. Kesserich turned on Jack in anger. “I’ve been wounded by him, day in and day out, for years, but I’ve never failed to recognize his genius. Besides, you’ve seen the girl, haven’t you?”

Jack had to nod. What confounded him most was that, granting the near-impossible physiological feat Mrs. Kesserich had described, the girl should look so much like the mother. Mothers and daughters don’t look that much alike; only identical twins did. With a thrill of fear, he remembered Kesserich’s casual words: “… parthenogenesis⁠ ⁠… pure stock⁠ ⁠… special techniques⁠ ⁠…”

“Very well,” he forced himself to say, “granting that the child was Mary’s and Martin’s⁠—”

“No! Mary’s alone!”

Jack suppressed a shudder. He continued quickly, “What became of the child?”

Mrs. Kesserich lowered her head. “The day it was born, it was taken away from me. After that, I never saw Hilda and Hani, either.”

“You mean,” Jack asked, “that Martin sent them away to bring up the child?”

Mrs. Kesserich turned away. “Yes.”

Jack asked incredulously, “He trusted the child with the two people he suspected of having caused the mother’s death?”

“Once when I was his assistant,” Mrs. Kesserich said softly, “I carelessly broke some laboratory glassware. He kept me up all night building a new setup, though I’m rather poor at working with glass and usually get burned. Bringing up the child was his sisters’ punishment.”

“And they went to that house on the farthest island? I suppose it was the house he’d been building for Mary and himself.”

“Yes.”

“And they were to bring up the child as his daughter?”

Mrs. Kesserich started up, but when she spoke it was as if she had to force out each word. “As his wife⁠—as soon as she was grown.”

“How can you know that?” Jack asked shakily.

The rising wind rattled the windowpane.

“Because today⁠—eighteen years after⁠—Martin broke all of his promise to me. He told me he was leaving me.”

VI

White waves shooting up like dancing ghosts in the Moon-sketched, spray-swept dark were Jack’s first beacon of the island and brought a sense of physical danger, breaking the trancelike yet frantic mood he had felt ever since he had spoken with Mrs. Kesserich.

Coming around farther into the wind, he scudded past the end of the island into the choppy sea on the landward side. A little later he let down the reefed sail in the cove of the sea urchins, where the water was barely moving, although the air was shaken by the pounding of the surf on the spine between the two islands.

After making fast, he paused a moment for a scrap of cloud to pass the moon. The thought of the spiny creatures in the black fathoms under the Annie O. sent an odd quiver of terror through him.

The Moon came out and he started across the glistening rocks of the spine. But he had forgotten the rising tide. Midway, a wave clamped around his ankles, tried to carry him off, almost made him drop the heavy object he was carrying. Sprawling and drenched, he clung to the rough rock until the surge was past.

Making it finally up to the fence, he snipped a wide gate with the wire-cutters.

The windows of the house were alight. Hardly aware of his shivering, he crossed the lawn, slipping from one clump of shrubbery to another, until he reached one just across the drive from the doorway. At that moment he heard the approaching chuff of the Essex, the door of the cottage opened, and Mary Alice Pope stepped out, closely followed by Hani or Hilda.

Jack shrank close to the shrubbery. Mary looked pale and blank-faced, as if she had retreated within herself. He was acutely conscious of the inadequacy of his screen as the ghostly headlights of the Essex began to probe through the leaves.

But then he sensed that something more was about to happen than just the car arriving. It was a change in the expression of the face behind Mary that gave him the cue⁠—a widening and sidewise flickering of the cold eyes, the puckered lips thinning into a cruel smile.

The Essex shifted into second and, without any warning, accelerated. Simultaneously, the woman behind Mary gave her a violent shove. But at almost exactly the same instant, Jack ran. He caught Mary as she sprawled toward the gravel, and lunged ahead without checking. The Essex bore down upon them, a square-snouted, roaring monster. It swerved viciously, missed them by inches, threw up gravel in a skid, and rocked to a stop, stalled.

The first, incredulous voice that broke the pulsing silence, Jack recognized as Martin Kesserich’s. It came from the car, which was slewed around so that it almost faced Jack and Mary.

“Hani, you tried to kill her! You and Hilda tried to kill her again!”

The woman slumped over the wheel slowly lifted her head. In the indistinct light, she looked the twin of the woman behind Jack and Mary.

“Did you really think we wouldn’t?” she asked in a voice that spat with passion. “Did you actually believe that Hilda and I would serve this eighteen years’ penance just to watch you go off with her?” She began to laugh wildly. “You’ve never understood your sisters at all!”

Suddenly she broke off, stiffly stepped down from the car. Lifting her skirts a little, she strode past Jack and Mary.

Martin Kesserich followed her. In passing, he said, “Thanks, Barr.” It occurred to Jack that Kesserich made no more question of his appearance on the island than of his presence in the laboratory. Like Mrs. Kesserich, the great biologist took him for granted.

Kesserich stopped a few feet short of Hani and Hilda. Without shrinking from him, the sisters drew closer together. They looked like two gaunt hawks.

“But you waited eighteen years,” he said. “You could have killed her at any time, yet you chose to throw away so much of your lives just to have this moment.”

“How do you know we didn’t like waiting eighteen years?” Hani answered him. “Why shouldn’t we want to make as strong an impression on you as anyone? And as for throwing our lives away, that was your doing. Oh, Martin, you’ll never know anything about how your sisters feel!”

He raised his hands baffledly. “Even assuming that you hate me⁠—” at the word “hate” both Hani and Hilda laughed softly⁠—“and that you were prepared to strike at both my love and my work, still, that you should have waited⁠ ⁠…”

Hani and Hilda said nothing.

Kesserich shrugged. “Very well,” he said in a voice that had lost all its tension. “You’ve wasted a third of a lifetime looking forward to an irrational revenge. And you’ve failed. That should be sufficient punishment.”

Very slowly, he turned around and for the first time looked at Mary. His face was clearly revealed by the twin beams from the stalled car.

Jack grew cold. He fought against accepting the feelings of wonder, of poignant triumph, of love, of renewed youth he saw entering the face in the headlights. But most of all he fought against the sense that Martin Kesserich was successfully drawing them all back into the past, to 1933 and another accident. There was a distant hoot and Jack shook. For a moment he had thought it a railway whistle and not a ship’s horn.

The biologist said tenderly, “Come, Mary.”

Jack’s trembling arm tightened a trifle on Mary’s waist. He could feel her trembling.

“Come, Mary,” Kesserich repeated.

Still she didn’t reply.

Jack wet his lips. “Mary isn’t going with you, Professor,” he said.

“Quiet, Barr,” Kesserich ordered absently. “Mary, it is necessary that you and I leave the island at once. Please come.”

“But Mary isn’t coming,” Jack repeated.

Kesserich looked at him for the first time. “I’m grateful to you for the unusual sense of loyalty⁠—or whatever motive it may have been⁠—that led you to follow me out here tonight. And of course I’m profoundly grateful to you for saving Mary’s life. But I must ask you not to interfere further in a matter which you can’t possibly understand.”

He turned to Mary. “I know how shocked and frightened you must feel. Living two lives and then having to face two deaths⁠—it must be more terrible than anyone can realize. I expected this meeting to take place under very different circumstances. I wanted to explain everything to you very naturally and gently, like the messages I’ve sent you every day of your second life. Unfortunately, that can’t be.

“You and I must leave the island right now.”

Mary stared at him, then turned wonderingly toward Jack, who felt his heart begin to pound warmly.

“You still don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you, Professor,” he said, boldly now. “Mary is not going with you. You’ve deceived her all her life. You’ve taken a fantastic amount of pains to bring her up under the delusion that she is Mary Alice Pope, who died in⁠—”

“She is Mary Alice Pope,” Kesserich thundered at him. He advanced toward them swiftly. “Mary darling, you’re confused, but you must realize who you are and who I am and the relationship between us.”

“Keep away,” Jack warned, swinging Mary half behind him. “Mary doesn’t love you. She can’t marry you, at any rate. How could she, when you’re her father?”

“Barr!”

“Keep off!” Jack shot out the flat of his hand and Kesserich went staggering backward. “I’ve talked with your wife⁠—your wife on the mainland. She told me the whole thing.”

Kesserich seemed about to rush forward again, then controlled himself. “You’ve got everything wrong. You hardly deserve to be told, but under the circumstances I have no choice. Mary is not my daughter. To be precise, she has no father at all. Do you remember the work that Jacques Loeb did with sea urchins?”

Jack frowned angrily. “You mean what we were talking about last night?”

“Exactly. Loeb was able to cause the egg of a sea urchin to develop normally without union with a male germ cell. I have done the same thing with a human being. This girl is Mary Alice Pope. She has exactly the same heredity. She has had exactly the same life, so far as it could be reconstructed. She’s heard and read the same things at exactly the same times. There have been the old newspapers, the books, even the old recorded radio programs. Hani and Hilda have had their daily instructions, to the letter. She’s retraced the same time-trail.”

“Rot!” Jack interrupted. “I don’t for a moment believe what you say about her birth. She’s Mary’s daughter⁠—or the daughter of your wife on the mainland. And as for retracing the same time-trail, that’s senile self-delusion. Mary Alice Pope had a normal life. This girl has been brought up in cruel imprisonment by two insane, vindictive old women. In your own frustrated desire, you’ve pretended to yourself that you’ve recreated the girl you lost. You haven’t. You couldn’t. Nobody could⁠—the great Martin Kesserich or anyone else!”

Kesserich, his features working, shifted his point of attack. “Who are you, Mary?”

“Don’t answer him,” Jack said. “He’s trying to confuse you.”

“Who are you?” Kesserich insisted.

“Mary Alice Pope,” she said rapidly in a breathy whisper before Jack could speak again.

“And when were you born?” Kesserich pressed on.

“You’ve been tricked all your life about that,” Jack warned.

But already the girl was saying, “In 1916.”

“And who am I then?” Kesserich demanded eagerly. “Who am I?”

The girl swayed. She brushed her head with her hand.

“It’s so strange,” she said, with a dreamy, almost laughing throb in her voice that turned Jack’s heart cold. “I’m sure I’ve never seen you before in my life, and yet it’s as if I’d known you forever. As if you were closer to me than⁠—”

“Stop it!” Jack shouted at Kesserich. “Mary loves me. She loves me because I’ve shown her the lie her life has been, and because she’s coming away with me now. Aren’t you, Mary?”

He swung her around so that her blank face was inches from his own. “It’s me you love, isn’t it, Mary?”

She blinked doubtfully.

At that moment Kesserich charged at them, went sprawling as Jack’s fist shot out. Jack swept up Mary and ran with her across the lawn. Behind him he heard an agonized cry⁠—Kesserich’s⁠—and cruel, mounting laughter from Hani and Hilda.

Once through the ragged doorway in the fence, he made his way more slowly, gasping. Out of the shelter of the trees, the wind tore at them and the ocean roared. Moonlight glistened, now on the spine of black wet rocks, now on the foaming surf.

Jack realized that the girl in his arms was speaking rapidly, disjointedly, but he couldn’t quite make out the sense of the words and then they were lost in the crash of the surf. She struggled, but he told himself that it was only because she was afraid of the menacing waters.

He pushed recklessly into the breaking surf, raced gasping across the middle of the spine as the rocks uncovered, sprang to the higher ones as the next wave crashed behind, showering them with spray. His chest burning with exertion, he carried the girl the few remaining yards to where the Annie O. was tossing. A sudden great gust of wind almost did what the waves had failed to do, but he kept his footing and lowered the girl into the boat, then jumped in after.

She stared at him wildly. “What’s that?”

He, too, had caught the faint shout. Looking back along the spine just as the Moon came clear again, he saw white spray rise and fall⁠—and then the figure of Kesserich stumbling through it.

“Mary, wait for me!”

The figure was halfway across when it lurched, started forward again, then was jerked back as if something had caught its ankle. Out of the darkness, the next wave sent a line of white at it neck-high, crashed.

Jack hesitated, but another great gust of wind tore at the half-raised sail, and it was all he could do to keep the sloop from capsizing and head her into the wind again.

Mary was tugging at his shoulder. “You must help him,” she was saying. “He’s caught in the rocks.”

He heard a voice crying, screaming crazily above the surf:

“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world⁠—”

The sloop rocked. Jack had it finally headed into the wind. He looked around for Mary.

She had jumped out and was hurrying back, scrambling across the rocks toward the dark, struggling figure that even as he watched was once more engulfed in the surf.

Letting go the lines, Jack sprang toward the stern of the sloop.

But just then another giant blow came, struck the sail like a great fist of air, and sent the boom slashing at the back of his head.

His last recollection was being toppled out onto the rocks and wondering how he could cling to them while unconscious.

VII

The little cove was once again as quiet as time’s heart. Once again the Annie O. was a sloop embedded in a mirror. Once again the rocks were warm underfoot.

Jack Barr lifted his fiercely aching head and looked at the distant line of the mainland, as tiny and yet as clear as something viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. He was very tired. Searching the island, in his present shaky condition, had taken all the strength out of him.

He looked at the peacefully rippling sea outside the cove and thought of what a churning pot it had been during the storm. He thought wonderingly of his rescue⁠—a man wedged unconscious between two rock teeth; kept somehow from being washed away by the merest chance.

He thought of Mrs. Kesserich sitting alone in her house, scanning the newspapers that had nothing to tell.

He thought of the empty island behind him and the vanished motorboat.

He wondered if the sea had pulled down Martin Kesserich and Mary Alice Pope. He wondered if only Hani and Hilda had sailed away.

He winced, remembering what he had done to Martin and Mary by his blundering infatuation. In his way, he told himself, he had been as bad as the two old women.

He thought of death, and of time, and of love that defies them.

He stepped limpingly into the Annie O. to set sail⁠—and realized that philosophy is only for the unhappy.

Mary was asleep in the stern.

I was one hundred miles from Nowhere⁠—and I mean that literally⁠—when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I’d been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugger left over from the murder party at Nowhere to be stalking me.

I’d been following a line of high-voltage towers all canted over at the same gentlemanly tipsy angle by an old blast from the Last War. I judged the girl was going in the same general direction and was being edged over toward my course by a drift of dust that even at my distance showed dangerous metallic gleams and dark humps that might be dead men or cattle.

She looked slim, dark topped, and on guard. Small like me and like me wearing a scarf loosely around the lower half of her face in the style of the old buckaroos.

We didn’t wave or turn our heads or give the slightest indication we’d seen each other as our paths slowly converged. But we were intensely, minutely watchful⁠—I knew I was and she had better be.

Overhead the sky was a low dust haze, as always. I don’t remember what a high sky looks like. Three years ago I think I saw Venus. Or it may have been Sirius or Jupiter.

The hot smoky light was turning from the amber of midday to the bloody bronze of evening.

The line of towers I was following showed the faintest spread in the direction of their canting⁠—they must have been only a few miles from blast center. As I passed each one I could see where the metal on the blast side had been eroded⁠—vaporized by the original blast, mostly smoothly, but with welts and pustules where the metal had merely melted and run. I supposed the lines the towers carried had all been vaporized too, but with the haze I couldn’t be sure, though I did see three dark blobs up there that might be vultures perching.

From the drift around the foot of the nearest tower a human skull peered whitely. That is rather unusual. Years later now you still see more dead bodies with the meat on them than skeletons. Intense radiation has killed their bacteria and preserved them indefinitely from decay, just like the packaged meat in the last advertisements. In fact such bodies are one of the signs of a really hot drift⁠—you avoid them. The vultures pass up such poisonously hot carrion too⁠—they’ve learned their lesson.

Ahead some big gas tanks began to loom up, like deformed battleships and flattops in a smoke screen, their prows being the juncture of the natural curve of the off-blast side with the massive concavity of the on-blast side.

None of the three other buggers and me had had too clear an idea of where Nowhere had been⁠—hence, in part, the name⁠—but I knew in a general way that I was somewhere in the Deathlands between Porter County and Ouachita Parish, probably much nearer the former.

It’s a real mixed-up America we’ve got these days, you know, with just the faintest trickle of a sense of identity left, like a guy in the paddedest cell in the most locked up ward in the whole loony bin. If a time traveler from mid Twentieth Century hopped forward to it across the few intervening years and looked at a map of it, if anybody has a map of it, he’d think that the map had run⁠—that it had got some sort of disease that had swollen a few tiny parts beyond all bounds, paper tumors, while most of the other parts, the parts he remembered carrying names in such big print and showing such bold colors, had shrunk to nothingness.

To the east he’d see Atlantic Highlands and Savannah Fortress. To the west, Walla Walla Territory, Pacific Palisades, and Los Alamos⁠—and there he’d see an actual change in the coastline, I’m told, where three of the biggest stockpiles of fusionables let go and opened Death Valley to the sea⁠—so that Los Alamos is closer to being a port. Centrally he’d find Porter County and Manteno Asylum surprisingly close together near the Great Lakes, which are tilted and spilled out a bit toward the southwest with the big quake. South-centrally: Ouachita Parish inching up the Mississippi from old Louisiana under the cruel urging of the Fisher Sheriffs.

Those he’d find and a few, a very few other places, including a couple I suppose I haven’t heard of. Practically all of them would surprise him⁠—no one can predict what scraps of a blasted nation are going to hang onto a shred of organization and ruthlessly maintain it and very slowly and very jealously extend it.

But biggest of all, occupying practically all the map, reducing all those swollen localities I’ve mentioned back to tiny blobs, bounding most of America and thrusting its jetty pseudopods everywhere, he’d see the great inkblot of the Deathlands. I don’t know how else than by an area of solid, absolutely unrelieved black you’d represent the Deathlands with its multicolored radioactive dusts and its skimpy freightage of lonely Deathlanders, each bound on his murderous, utterly pointless, but utterly absorbing business⁠—an area where names like Nowhere, It, Anywhere, and the Place are the most natural thing in the world when a few of us decide to try to pad down together for a few nervous months or weeks.

As I say, I was somewhere in the Deathlands near Manteno Asylum.

The girl and me were getting closer now, well within pistol or dart range though beyond any but the most expert or lucky knife throw. She wore boots and a weathered long-sleeved shirt and jeans. The black topping was hair, piled high in an elaborate coiffure that was held in place by twisted shavings of bright metal. A fine bug-trap, I told myself.

In her left hand, which was closest to me, she carried a dart gun, pointed away from me, across her body. It was the kind of potent tiny crossbow you can’t easily tell whether the spring is loaded. Back around on her left hip a small leather satchel was strapped to her belt. Also on the same side were two sheathed knives, one of which was an oddity⁠—it had no handle, just the bare tang. For nothing but throwing, I guessed.

I let my own left hand drift a little closer to my Banker’s Special in its open holster⁠—Ray Baker’s great psychological weapon, though (who knows?) the two .38 cartridges it contained might actually fire. The one I’d put to the test at Nowhere had, and very lucky for me.

She seemed to be hiding her right arm from me. Then I spotted the weapon it held, one you don’t often see, a stevedore’s hook. She was hiding her right hand, all right, she had the long sleeve pulled down over it so just the hook stuck out. I asked myself if the hand were perhaps covered with radiation scars or sores or otherwise disfigured. We Deathlanders have our vanities. I’m sensitive about my baldness.

Then she let her right arm swing more freely and I saw how short it was. She had no right hand. The hook was attached to the wrist stump.

I judged she was about ten years younger than me. I’m pushing forty, I think, though some people have judged I’m younger. No way of my knowing for sure. In this life you forget trifles like chronology.

Anyway, the age difference meant she would have quicker reflexes. I’d have to keep that in mind.

The greenishly glinting dust drift that I’d judged she was avoiding swung closer ahead. The girl’s left elbow gave a little kick to the satchel on her hip and there was a sudden burst of irregular ticks that almost made me start. I steadied myself and concentrated on thinking whether I should attach any special significance to her carrying a Geiger counter. Naturally it wasn’t the sort of thinking that interfered in any way with my watchfulness⁠—you quickly lose the habit of that kind of thinking in the Deathlands or you lose something else.

It could mean she was some sort of greenhorn. Most of us old-timers can visually judge the heat of a dust drift or crater or rayed area more reliably than any instrument. Some buggers claim they just feel it, though I’ve never known any of the latter too eager to navigate in unfamiliar country at night⁠—which you’d think they’d be willing to do if they could feel heat blind.

But she didn’t look one bit like a tenderfoot⁠—like for instance some citizeness newly banished from Manteno. Or like some Porter burgher’s unfaithful wife or troublesome girlfriend whom he’d personally carted out beyond the ridges of cleaned-out hot dust that help guard such places, and then abandoned in revenge or from boredom⁠—and they call themselves civilized, those cultural queers!

No, she looked like she belonged in the Deathlands. But then why the counter?

Her eyes might be bad, real bad. I didn’t think so. She raised her boot an extra inch to step over a little jagged fragment of concrete. No.

Maybe she was just a born double-checker, using science to back up knowledge based on experience as rich as my own or richer. I’ve met the super-careful type before. They mostly get along pretty well, but they tend to be a shade too slow in the clutches.

Maybe she was testing the counter, planning to use it some other way or trade it for something.

Maybe she made a practice of traveling by night! Then the counter made good sense. But then why use it by day? Why reveal it to me in any case?

Was she trying to convince me that she was a greenhorn? Or had she hoped that the sudden noise would throw me off guard? But who would go to the trouble of carrying a Geiger counter for such devious purposes? And wouldn’t she have waited until we got closer before trying the noise gambit?

Think-shmink⁠—it gets you nowhere!

She kicked off the counter with another bump of her elbow and started to edge in toward me faster. I turned the thinking all off and gave my whole mind to watchfulness.

Soon we were barely more than eight feet apart, almost within lunging range without even the preliminary one-two step, and still we hadn’t spoken or looked straight at each other, though being that close we’d had to cant our heads around a bit to keep each other in peripheral vision. Our eyes would be on each other steadily for five or six seconds, then dart forward an instant to check for rocks and holes in the trail we were following in parallel. A cultural queer from one of the “civilized” places would have found it funny, I suppose, if he’d been able to watch us perform in an arena or from behind armor glass for his exclusive pleasure.

The girl had eyebrows as black as her hair, which in its piled-up and metal-knotted savagery called to mind African queens despite her typical pale complexion⁠—very little ultraviolet gets through the dust. From the inside corner of her right eye socket a narrow radiation scar ran up between her eyebrows and across her forehead at a rakish angle until it disappeared under a sweep of hair at the upper left corner of her forehead.

I’d been smelling her, of course, for some time.

I could even tell the color of her eyes now. They were blue. It’s a color you never see. Almost no dusts have a bluish cast, there are few blue objects except certain dark steels, the sky never gets very far away from the orange range, though it is green from time to time, and water reflects the sky.

Yes, she had blue eyes, blue eyes and that jaunty scar, blue eyes and that jaunty scar and a dart gun and a steel hook for a right hand, and we were walking side by side, eight feet apart, not an inch closer, still not looking straight at each other, still not saying a word, and I realized that the initial period of unadulterated watchfulness was over, that I’d had adequate opportunity to inspect this girl and size her up, and that night was coming on fast, and that here I was, once again, back with the problem of the two urges.

I could try either to kill her or go to bed with her.

I know that at this point the cultural queers (and certainly our imaginary time traveler from mid Twentieth Century) would make a great noise about not understanding and not believing in the genuineness of the simple urge to murder that governs the lives of us Deathlanders. Like detective-story pundits, they would say that a man or woman murders for gain, or concealment of crime, or from thwarted sexual desire or outraged sexual possessiveness⁠—and maybe they would list a few other “rational” motives⁠—but not, they would say, just for the simple sake of murder, for the sure release and relief it gives, for the sake of wiping out one recognizable bit more (the closest bit we can, since those of us with the courage or lazy rationality to wipe out ourselves have long since done so)⁠—wiping out one recognizable bit more of the whole miserable, unutterably disgusting human mess. Unless, they would say, a person is completely insane, which is actually how all outsiders view us Deathlanders. They can think of us in no other way.

I guess cultural queers and time travelers simply don’t understand, though to be so blind it seems to me that they have to overlook much of the history of the Last War and of the subsequent years, especially the mushrooming of crackpot cults with a murder tinge: the werewolf gangs, the Berserkers and Amuckers, the revival of Shiva worship and the Black Mass, the machine wreckers, the kill-the-killers movements, the new witchcraft, the Unholy Creepers, the Unconsciousers, the radioactive blue gods and rocket devils of the Atomites, and a dozen other groupings clearly prefiguring Deathlander psychology. Those cults had all been as unpredictable as Thuggee or the Dancing Madness of the Middle Ages or the Children’s Crusade, yet they had happened just the same.

But cultural queers are good at overlooking things. They have to be, I suppose. They think they’re humanity growing again. Yes, despite their laughable warpedness and hysterical crippledness, they actually believe⁠—each howlingly different community of them⁠—that they’re the new Adams and Eves. They’re all excited about themselves and whether or not they wear fig leaves. They don’t carry with them, twenty-four hours a day, like us Deathlanders do, the burden of all that was forever lost.

Since I’ve gone this far I’ll go a bit further and make the paradoxical admission that even us Deathlanders don’t really understand our urge to murder. Oh, we have our rationalizations of it, just like everyone has of his ruling passion⁠—we call ourselves junkmen, scavengers, gangrene surgeons; we sometimes believe we’re doing the person we kill the ultimate kindness, yes and get slobbery tearful about it afterwards; we sometimes tell ourselves we’ve finally found and are rubbing out the one man or woman who was responsible for everything; we talk, mostly to ourselves, about the aesthetics of homicide; we occasionally admit, but only each to himself alone, that we’re just plain nuts.

But we don’t really understand our urge to murder, we only feel it.

At the hateful sight of another human being, we feel it begins to grow in us until it becomes an overpowering impulse that jerks us, like a puppet is jerked by its strings, into the act itself or its attempted commission.

Like I was feeling it grow in me now as we did this parallel deathmarch through the reddening haze, me and this girl and our problem. This girl with the blue eyes and the jaunty scar.

The problem of the two urges, I said. The other urge, the sexual, is one that I know all cultural queers (and certainly our time traveler) would claim to know all about. Maybe they do. But I wonder if they understand how intense it can be with us Deathlanders when it’s the only release (except maybe liquor and drugs, which we seldom can get and even more rarely dare use)⁠—the only complete release, even though a brief one, from the overpowering loneliness and from the tyranny of the urge to kill.

To embrace, to possess, to glut lust on, yes even briefly to love, briefly to shelter in⁠—that was good, that was a relief and release to be treasured.

But it couldn’t last. You could draw it out, prop it up perhaps for a few days, for a month even (though sometimes not for a single night)⁠—you might even start to talk to each other a little, after a while⁠—but it could never last. The glands always tire, if nothing else.

Murder was the only final solution, the only permanent release. Only us Deathlanders know how good it feels. But then after the kill the loneliness would come back, redoubled, and after a while I’d meet another hateful human⁠ ⁠…

Our problem of the two urges. As I watched this girl slogging along parallel to me, as I kept constant watch on her of course, I wondered how she was feeling the two urges. Was she attracted to the ridgy scars on my cheeks half revealed by my scarf?⁠—to me they have a pleasing symmetry. Was she wondering how my head and face looked without the black felt skullcap low-visored over my eyes? Or was she thinking mostly of that hook swinging into my throat under the chin and dragging me down?

I couldn’t tell. She looked as poker-faced as I was trying to.

For that matter, I asked myself, how was I feeling the two urges?⁠—how was I feeling them as I watched this girl with the blue eyes and the jaunty scar and the arrogantly thinned lips that asked to be smashed, and the slender throat?⁠—and I realized that there was no way to describe that, not even to myself. I could only feel the two urges grow in me, side by side, like monstrous twins, until they would simply be too big for my taut body and one of them would have to get out fast.

I don’t know which one of us started to slow down first, it happened so gradually, but the dust puffs that rise from the ground of the Deathlands under even the lightest treading became smaller and smaller around our steps and finally vanished altogether, and we were standing still. Only then did I notice the obvious physical trigger for our stopping. An old freeway ran at right angles across our path. The shoulder by which we’d approached it was sharply eroded, so that the pavement, which even had a shallow cave eroded under it, was a good three feet above the level of our path, forming a low wall. From where I’d stopped I could almost reach out and touch the rough-edged smooth-topped concrete. So could she.

We were right in the midst of the gas tanks now, six or seven of them towered around us, squeezed like beer cans by the decade-old blast but their metal looking sound enough until you became aware of the red light showing through in odd patterns of dots and dashes where vaporization or later erosion had been complete. Almost but not quite lacework. Just ahead of us, right across the freeway, was the six-story skeletal structure of an old cracking plant, sagged like the power towers away from the blast and the lower stories drifted with piles and ridges and smooth gobbets of dust.

The light was getting redder and smokier every minute.

With the cessation of the physical movement of walking, which is always some sort of release for emotions, I could feel the twin urges growing faster in me. But that was all right, I told myself⁠—this was the crisis, as she must realize too, and that should key us up to bear the urges a little longer without explosion.

I was the first to start to turn my head. For the first time I looked straight into her eyes and she into mine. And as always happens at such times, a third urge appeared abruptly, an urge momentarily as strong as the other two⁠—the urge to speak, to tell and ask all about it. But even as I started to phrase the first crazily happy greeting, my throat lumped, as I’d known it would, with the awful melancholy of all that was forever lost, with the uselessness of any communication, with the impossibility of recreating the past, our individual pasts, any pasts. And as it always does, the third urge died.

I could tell she was feeling that ultimate pain just like me. I could see her eyelids squeeze down on her eyes and her face lift and her shoulders go back as she swallowed hard.

She was the first to start to lay aside a weapon. She took two sidewise steps toward the freeway and reached her whole left arm further across her body and laid the dart gun on the concrete and drew back her hand from it about six inches. At the same time looking at me hard⁠—fiercely angrily, you’d say⁠—across her left shoulder. She had the experienced duelist’s trick of seeming to look into my eyes but actually focusing on my mouth. I was using the same gimmick myself⁠—it’s tiring to look straight into another person’s eyes and it can put you off guard.

My left side was nearest the wall so I didn’t for the moment have the problem of reaching across my body. I took the same sidewise steps she had and using just two fingers, very gingerly⁠—disarmingly, I hoped⁠—I lifted my antique firearm from its holster and laid it on the concrete and drew back my hand from it all the way. Now it was up to her again, or should be. Her hook was going to be quite a problem, I realized, but we needn’t come to it right away.

She temporized by successively unsheathing the two knives at her left side and laying them beside the dart gun. Then she stopped and her look told me plainly that it was up to me.

Now I am a bugger who believes in carrying one perfect knife⁠—otherwise, I know for a fact, you’ll go knife-happy and end up by weighing yourself down with dozens, literally. So I am naturally very reluctant to get out of touch in any way with Mother, who is a little rusty along the sides but made of the toughest and most sharpenable alloy steel I’ve ever run across.

Still, I was most curious to find out what she’d do about that hook, so I finally laid Mother on the concrete beside the .38 and rested my hands lightly on my hips, all ready to enjoy myself⁠—at least I hoped I gave that impression.

She smiled, it was almost a nice smile⁠—by now we’d let our scarves drop since we weren’t raising any more dust⁠—and then she took hold of the hook with her left hand and started to unscrew it from the leather-and-metal base fitting over her stump.

Of course, I told myself. And her second knife, the one without a grip, must be that way so she could screw its tang into the base when she wanted a knife on her right hand instead of a hook. I ought to have guessed.

I grinned my admiration of her mechanical ingenuity and immediately unhitched my knapsack and laid it beside my weapons. Then a thought occurred to me. I opened the knapsack and moving my hand slowly and very openly so she’d have no reason to suspect a ruse, I drew out a blanket and, trying to show her both sides of it in the process, as if I were performing some damned conjuring trick, dropped it gently on the ground between us.

She unsnapped the straps on her satchel that fastened it to her belt and laid it aside and then she took off her belt too, slowly drawing it through the wide loops of weathered denim. Then she looked meaningfully at my belt.

I had to agree with her. Belts, especially heavy-buckled ones like ours, can be nasty weapons. I removed mine. Simultaneously each belt joined its corresponding pile of weapons and other belongings.

She shook her head, not in any sort of negation, and ran her fingers into the black hair at several points, to show me it hid no weapon, then looked at me questioningly. I nodded that I was satisfied⁠—I hadn’t seen anything run out of it, by the way. Then she looked up at my black skullcap and she raised her eyebrows and smiled again, this time with a spice of mocking anticipation.

In some ways I hate to part with that headpiece more than I do with Mother. Not really because of its sandwiched lead-mesh inner lining⁠—if the rays haven’t baked my brain yet they never will and I’m sure that the patches of lead mesh sewed into my pants over my loins give a lot more practical protection. But I was getting real attracted to this girl by now and there are times when a person must make a sacrifice of his vanity. I whipped off my stylish black felt and tossed it on my pile and dared her to laugh at my shiny egg top.

Strangely she didn’t even smile. She parted her lips and ran her tongue along the upper one. I gave an eager grin in reply, an incautiously wide one, and she saw my plates flash.

My plates are something rather special though they are by no means unique. Back toward the end of the Last War, when it was obvious to any realist how bad things were going to be, though not how strangely terrible, a number of people, like myself, had all their teeth jerked and replaced with durable plates. I went some of them one better. My plates were stainless steel biting and chewing ridges, smooth continuous ones that didn’t attempt to copy individual teeth. A person who looks closely at a slab of chewing tobacco, say, I offer him will be puzzled by the smoothly curved incision, made as if by a razor blade mounted on the arm of a compass. Magnetic powder buried in my gums makes for a real nice fit.

This sacrifice was worse than my hat and Mother combined, but I could see the girl expected me to make it and would take no substitutes, and in this attitude I had to admit that she showed very sound judgment, because I keep the incisor parts of those plates filed to razor sharpness. I have to be careful about my tongue and lips but I figure it’s worth it. With my dental scimitars I can in a wink bite out a chunk of throat and windpipe or jugular, though I’ve never had occasion to do so yet.

For the first minute it made me feel like an old man, a real dodderer, but by now the attraction this girl had for me was getting irrational. I carefully laid the two plates on top of my knapsack.

In return, as a sort of reward you might say, she opened her mouth wide and showed me what was left of her own teeth⁠—about two-thirds of them, a patchwork of tartar and gold.

We took off our boots, pants and shirts, she watching very suspiciously⁠—I knew she’d been skeptical of my carrying only one knife.

Oddly perhaps, considering how touchy I am about my baldness, I felt no sensitivity about revealing the lack of hair on my chest and in fact a sort of pride in displaying the slanting radiation scars that have replaced it, though they are crawling keloids of the ugliest, bumpiest sort. I guess to me such scars are tribal insignia⁠—one-man and one-woman tribes of course. No question but that the scar on the girl’s forehead had been the first focus of my desire for her and it still added to my interest.

By now we weren’t staying as perfectly on guard or watching each other’s clothing for concealed weapons as carefully as we should⁠—I know I wasn’t. It was getting dark fast, there wasn’t much time left, and the other interest was simply becoming too great.

We were still automatically careful about how we did things. For instance the way we took off our pants was like ballet, simultaneously crouching a little on the left foot and whipping the right leg out of its sheath in one movement, all ready to jump without tripping ourselves if the other person did anything funny, and then skinning down the left pants-leg with a movement almost as swift.

But as I say it was getting too late for perfect watchfulness, in fact for any kind of effective watchfulness at all. The complexion of the whole situation was changing in a rush. The possibilities of dealing or receiving death⁠—along with the chance of the minor indignity of cannibalism, which some of us practice⁠—were suddenly gone, all gone. It was going to be all right this time, I was telling myself. This was the time it would be different, this was the time love would last, this was the time lust would be the firm foundation for understanding and trust, this time there would be really safe sleeping. This girl’s body would be home for me, a beautiful tender inexhaustibly exciting home, and mine for her, for always.

As she threw off her shirt, the last darkly red light showed me another smooth slantwise scar, this one around her hips, like a narrow girdle that has slipped down a little on one side.

When I woke the light was almost full amber and I could feel no flesh against mine, only the blanket under me. I very slowly rolled over and there she was, sitting on the corner of the blanket not two feet from me, combing her long black hair with a big, wide-toothed comb she’d screwed into the leather-and-metal cap over her wrist stump.

She’d put on her pants and shirt, but the former were rolled up to her knees and the latter, though tucked in, wasn’t buttoned.

She was looking at me, contemplating me you might say, quite dreamily but with a faint, easy smile.

I smiled back at her.

It was lovely.

Too lovely. There had to be something wrong with it.

There was. Oh, nothing big. Just a solitary trifle⁠—nothing worth noticing really.

But the tiniest solitary things can sometimes be the most irritating, like one mosquito.

When I’d first rolled over she’d been combing her hair straight back, revealing a wedge of baldness following the continuation of her forehead scar deep back across her scalp. Now with a movement that was swift though not hurried-looking she swept the mass of her hair forward and to the left, so that it covered the bald area. Also her lips straightened out.

I was hurt. She shouldn’t have hidden her bit of baldness, it was something we had in common, something that brought us closer. And she shouldn’t have stopped smiling at just that moment. Didn’t she realize I loved that blaze on her scalp just as much as any other part of her, that she no longer had any need to practice vanity in front of me?

Didn’t she realize that as soon as she stopped smiling, her contemplative stare became an insult to me? What right had she to stare, critically I felt sure, at my bald head? What right had she to know about the nearly-healed ulcer on my left shin?⁠—that was a piece of information worth a man’s life in a fight. What right had she to cover up, anyways, while I was still naked? She ought to have waked me up so that we could have got dressed as we’d undressed, together. There were lots of things wrong with her manners.

Oh, I know that if I’d been able to think calmly, maybe if I’d just had some breakfast or a little coffee inside me, or even if there’d been some hot breakfast to eat at that moment, I’d have recognized my irritation for the irrational, one-mosquito surge of negative feeling that it was.

Even without breakfast, if I’d just had the knowledge that there was a reasonably secure day ahead of me in which there’d be an opportunity for me to straighten out my feelings, I wouldn’t have been irked, or at least being irked wouldn’t have bothered me terribly.

But a sense of security is an even rarer commodity in the Deathlands than a hot breakfast.

Given just the ghost of a sense of security and/or some hot breakfast, I’d have told myself that she was merely being amusingly coquettish about her bald streak and her hair, that it was natural for a woman to try to preserve some mystery about herself in front of the man she beds with.

But you get leery of any kind of mystery in the Deathlands. It makes you frightened and angry, like it does an animal. Mystery is for cultural queers, strictly. The only way for two people to get along together in the Deathlands, even for a while, is never to hide anything and never to make a move that doesn’t have an immediate clear explanation. You can’t talk, you see, certainly not at first, and so you can’t explain anything (most explanations are just lies and dreams, anyway), so you have to be doubly careful and explicit about everything you do.

This girl wasn’t being either. Right now, on top of her other gaucheries, she was unscrewing the comb from her wrist⁠—an unfriendly if not quite a hostile act, as anyone must admit.

Understand, please, I wasn’t showing any of these negative reactions of mine any more than she was showing hers, except for her stopping smiling. In fact I hadn’t stopped smiling, I was playing the game to the hilt.

But inside me everything was stewed up and the other urge had come back and presently it would begin to grow again. That’s the trouble, you know, with sex as a solution to the problem of the two urges. It’s fine while it lasts but it wears itself out and then you’re back with Urge Number One and you have nothing left to balance it with.

Oh, I wouldn’t kill this girl today, I probably wouldn’t seriously think of killing her for a month or more, but Old Urge Number One would be there and growing, mostly under cover, all the time. Of course there were things I could do to slow its growth, lots of little gimmicks, in fact⁠—I was pretty experienced at this business.

For instance, I could take a shot at talking to her pretty soon. For a catchy starter, I could tell her about Nowhere, how these five other buggers and me found ourselves independently skulking along after this scavenging expedition from Porter, how we naturally joined forces in that situation, how we set a pitfall for their alky-powered jeep and wrecked it and them, how when our haul turned out to be unexpectedly big the four of us left from the kill chummied up and padded down together and amused each other for a while and played games, you might say. Why, at one point we even had an old crank phonograph going and read some books. And, of course, how when the loot gave out and the fun wore off, we had our murder party and I survived along with, I think, a bugger named Jerry⁠—at any rate, he was gone when the blood stopped spurting, and I’d had no stomach for tracking him, though I probably should have.

And in return she could tell me how she had killed off her last set of girlfriends, or boyfriends, or friend, or whatever it was.

After that, we could have a go at exchanging news, rumors and speculations about local, national and world events. Was it true that Atlantic Highlands had planes of some sort or were they from Europe? Were they actually crucifying the Deathlanders around Walla Walla or only nailing up their dead bodies as dire warnings to others such? Had Manteno made Christianity compulsory yet, or were they still tolerating Zen Buddhists? Was it true that Los Alamos had been completely wiped out by plague, but the area taboo to Deathlanders because of the robot guards they’d left behind⁠—metal guards eight feet tall who tramped across the white sands, wailing? Did they still have free love in Pacific Palisades? Did she know there’d been a pitched battle fought by expeditionary forces from Ouachita and Savannah Fortress? Over the loot of Birmingham, apparently, after yellow fever had finished off that principality. Had she rooted out any “observers” lately?⁠—some of the “civilized” communities, the more “scientific” ones, try to maintain a few weather stations and the like in the Deathlands, camouflaging them elaborately and manning them with one or two impudent characters to whom we give a hard time if we uncover them. Had she heard the tale that was going around that South America and the French Riviera had survived the Last War absolutely untouched?⁠—and the obviously ridiculous rider that they had blue skies there and saw stars every third night? Did she think that subsequent conditions were showing that the Earth actually had plunged into an interstellar dust cloud coincidentally with the start of the Last War (the dust cloud used as a cover for the first attacks, some said) or did she still hold with the majority that the dust was solely of atomic origin with a little help from volcanoes and dry spells? How many green sunsets had she seen in the last year?

After we’d chewed over those racy topics and some more like them, and incidentally got bored with guessing and fabricating, we might, if we felt especially daring and conversation were going particularly well, even take a chance on talking a little about our childhoods, about how things were before the Last War (though she was almost too young for that)⁠—about the little things we remembered⁠—the big things were much too dangerous topics to venture on and sometimes even the little memories could suddenly twist you up as if you’d swallowed lye.

But after that there wouldn’t be anything left to talk about. Anything you’d risk talking about, that is. For instance, no matter how long we talked, it was very unlikely that we’d either of us tell the other anything complete or very accurate about how we lived from day to day, about our techniques of surviving and staying sane or at least functional⁠—that would be too imprudent, it would go too much against the grain of any player of the murder game. Would I tell her, or anyone, about how I worked the ruses of playing dead and disguising myself as a woman, about my trick of picking a path just before dark and then circling back to it by a pre-surveyed route, about the chess games I played with myself, about the bottle of green, terribly hot-looking powder I carried to sprinkle behind me to bluff off pursuers? A fat chance of my revealing things like that!

And when all the talk was over, what would it have gained us? Our minds would be filled with a lot of painful stuff better kept buried⁠—meaningless hopes, scraps of vicarious living in “cultured” communities, memories that were nothing but melancholy given concrete form. The melancholy is easiest to bear when it’s the diffused background for everything; and all garbage is best kept in the can. Oh yes, our talking would have gained us a few more days of infatuation, of phantom security, but those we could have⁠—almost as many of them, at any rate⁠—without talking.

For instance things were smoothing over already between her and me again and I no longer felt quite so irked. She’d replaced the comb with an inoffensive-looking pair of light pliers and was doing up her hair with the metal shavings. And I was acting as if content to watch her, as in a way I was. I’d still made no move to get dressed.

She looked real sweet, you know, primping herself that way. Her face was a little flat, but it was young, and the scar gave it just the fillip it needed.

But what was going on behind that forehead right now, I asked myself? I felt real psychic this morning, my mind as clear as a bottle of White Rock you find miraculously unbroken in a blasted tavern, and the answers to the question I’d asked myself came effortlessly.

She was telling herself she’d got herself a man again, a man who was adequate in the primal clutch (I gave myself that pat on the back), and that she wouldn’t have to be plagued and have her safety endangered by that kind of mind-dulling restlessness and yearning for a while.

She was lightly playing around with ideas about how she’d found a home and a protector, knowing she was kidding herself, that it was the most gimcracky feminine make-believe, but enjoying it just the same.

She was sizing me up, deciding in detail just what I went for in a woman, what whetted my interest, so she could keep that roused as long as seemed desirable or prudent to her to continue our relation.

She was kicking herself, only lightly to begin with, because she hadn’t taken any precautions⁠—because we who’ve escaped hot death against all reasonable expectations by virtue of some incalculable resistance to the ills of radioactivity, quite often find we’ve escaped sterility too. If she should become pregnant, she was telling herself, then she had a real sticky business ahead of her where no man could be trusted for a second.

And because she was thinking of this and because she was obviously a realistic Deathlander, she was reminding herself that a woman is basically less impulsive and daring and resourceful than a man and so had always better be sure she gets in the first blow. She would be thinking that I was a realist myself and a smart man, one able to understand her predicament quite clearly⁠—and because of that a much sooner danger to her. She was feeling Old Number One Urge starting to grow in her again and wondering whether it mightn’t be wisest to give it the hothouse treatment.

That is the trouble with a clear mind. For a little while you see things as they really are and you can accurately predict how they’re going to shape the future⁠ ⁠… and then suddenly you realize you’ve predicted yourself a week or a month into the future and you can’t live the intervening time any more because you’ve already imagined it in detail. People who live in communities, even the cultural queers of our maimed era, aren’t much bothered by it⁠—there must be some sort of blinkers they hand you out along with the key to the city⁠—but in the Deathlands it’s a fairly common phenomenon and there’s no hiding from it.

Me and my clear mind!⁠—once again it had done me out of days of fun, changed a thoroughly-explored love affair into a one night stand. Oh, there was no question about it, this girl and I were finished, right this minute, as of now, because she was just as psychic as I was this morning and had sensed every last thing that I’d been thinking.

With a movement smooth enough not to look rushed I swung into a crouch. She was on her knees faster than that, her left hand hovering over the little set of tools for her stump, which like any good mechanic she’d lined up neatly on the edge of the blanket⁠—the hook, the comb, a long telescoping fork, a couple of other items, and the knife. I’d grabbed a handful of blanket, ready to jerk it from under her. She’d seen that I’d grabbed it. Our gazes dueled.

There was a high-pitched whine over our heads! Quite loud from the start, though it sounded as if it were very deep up in the haze. It swiftly dropped in pitch and volume.

The top of the skeletal cracking plant across the freeway glowed with St. Elmo’s fire! Three times it glowed that way, so bright we could see the violet-blue flames of it reaching up despite the full amber daylight.

The whine died away but in the last moment, paradoxically, it seemed to be coming closer!

This shared threat⁠—for any unexpected event is a threat in the Deathlands and a mysterious event doubly so⁠—put a stop to our murder game. The girl and I were buddies again, buddies to be relied on in a pinch, for the duration of the threat at least. No need to say so or to reassure each other of the fact in any way, it was taken for granted. Besides, there was no time. We had to use every second allowed us in getting ready for whatever was coming.

First I grabbed up Mother. Then I relieved myself⁠—fear made it easy. Then I skinned into my pants and boots, slapped in my teeth, thrust the blanket and knapsack into the shallow cave under the edge of the freeway, looking around me all the time so as not to be surprised from any quarter.

Meanwhile the girl had put on her boots, located her dart gun, unscrewed the pliers from her stump, put the knife in, and was arranging her scarf so it made a sling for the maimed arm⁠—I wondered why but had no time to waste guessing, even if I’d wanted to, for at that moment a small dull silver plane, beetle-shaped more than anything else, loomed out of the haze beyond the cracking plant and came silently drifting down toward us.

The girl thrust her satchel into the cave and along with it her dart gun. I caught her idea and tucked Mother into my pants behind my back.

I’d thought from the first glimpse of it that the plane was disabled⁠—I guess it was its silence that gave me the idea. This theory was confirmed when one of its very stubby wings or vanes touched a corner pillar of the cracking plant. The plane was moving in too slow a glide to be wrecked, in fact it was moving in a slower glide than I would have believed possible⁠—but then it’s many years since I have seen a plane in flight.

It wasn’t wrecked but the little collision spun it around twice in a lazy circle and it landed on the freeway with a scuffing noise not fifty feet from us. You couldn’t exactly say it had crashed in, but it stayed at an odd tilt. It looked crippled all right.

An oval door in the plane opened and a man dropped lightly out on the concrete. And what a man! He was nearer seven feet tall than six, close-cropped blond hair, face and hands richly tanned, the rest of him covered by trim garments of a gleaming gray. He must have weighed as much as the two of us together, but he was beautifully built, muscular yet supple-seeming. His face looked brightly intelligent and even-tempered and kind.

Yes, kind!⁠—damn him! It wasn’t enough that his body should fairly glow with a health and vitality that was an insult to our seared skins and stringy muscles and ulcers and half-rotted stomachs and half-arrested cancers, he had to look kind too⁠—the sort of man who would put you to bed and take care of you, as if you were some sort of interesting sick fox, and maybe even say a little prayer for you, and all manner of other abominations.

I don’t think I could have endured my fury standing still. Fortunately there was no need to. As if we’d rehearsed the whole thing for hours, the girl and I scrambled up onto the freeway and scurried toward the man from the plane, cunningly swinging away from each other so that it would be harder for him to watch the two of us at once, but not enough to make it obvious that we attended an attack from two quarters.

We didn’t run though we covered the ground as fast as we dared⁠—running would have been too much of a giveaway too, and the Pilot, which was how I named him to myself, had a strange-looking small gun in his right hand. In fact the way we moved was part of our act⁠—I dragged one leg as if it were crippled and the girl faked another sort of limp, one that made her approach a series of half curtsies. Her arm in the sling was all twisted, but at the same time she was accidentally showing her breasts⁠—I remember thinking you won’t distract this breed bull that way, sister, he probably has a harem of six-foot heifers. I had my head thrown back and my hands stretched out supplicatingly. Meanwhile the both of us were babbling a blue streak. I was rapidly croaking something like, “Mister for God’s sake save my pal he’s hurt a lot worse’n I am not a hundred yards away he’s dyin’ mister he’s dyin’ o’ thirst his tongue’s black’n all swole up oh save him mister save my pal he’s not a hundred yards away he’s dyin’ mister dyin’⁠—” and she was singsonging an even worse rigamarole about how “they” were after us from Porter and going to crucify us because we believed in science and how they’d already impaled her mother and her ten-year-old sister and a lot more of the same.

It didn’t matter that our stories didn’t fit or make sense, the babble had a convincing tone and getting us closer to this guy, which was all that counted. He pointed his gun at me and then I could see him hesitate and I thought exultingly it’s a lot of healthy meat you got there, mister, but it’s tame meat, mister, tame!

He compromised by taking a step back and sort of hooting at us and waving us off with his left hand, as if we were a couple of stray dogs.

It was greatly to our advantage that we’d acted without hesitation, and I don’t think we’d have been able to do that except that we’d been all set to kill each other when he dropped in. Our muscles and nerves and minds were keyed for instant ruthless attack. And some “civilized” people still say that the urge to murder doesn’t contribute to self-preservation!

We were almost close enough now and he was steeling himself to shoot and I remember wondering for a split second what his damn gun did to you, and then me and the girl had started the alternation routine. I’d stop dead, as if completely cowed by the threat of his weapon, and as he took note of it she’d go in a little further, and as his gaze shifted to her she’d stop dead and I’d go in another foot and then try to make my halt even more convincing as his gaze darted back to me. We worked it perfectly, our rhythm was beautiful, as if we were old dancing partners, though the whole thing was absolutely impromptu.

Still, I honestly don’t think we’d ever have got to him if it hadn’t been for the distraction that came just then to help us. I could tell, you see, that he’d finally steeled himself and we still weren’t quite close enough. He wasn’t as tame as I’d hoped. I reached behind me for Mother, determined to do a last-minute rush and leap anyway, when there came this sick scream.

I don’t know how else to describe it briefly. It was a scream, feminine for choice, it came from some distance and the direction of the old cracking plant, it had a note of anguish and warning, yet at the same time it was weak and almost faltering you might say and squeaky at the end, as if it came from a person half dead and a throat choked with phlegm. It had all those qualities or a wonderful mimicking of them.

And it had quite an effect on our boy in gray for in the act of shooting me down he started to turn and look over his shoulder.

Oh, it didn’t altogether stop him from shooting me. He got me partly covered again as I was in the middle of my lunge. I found out what his gun did to you. My right arm, which was the part he’d covered, just went dead and I finished my lunge slamming up against his iron knees, like a highschool kid trying to block out a pro footballer, with the knife slipping uselessly away from my fingers.

But in the blessed meanwhile the girl had lunged too, not with a slow slash, thank God, but with a high, slicing thrust aimed arrow-straight for a point just under his ear.

She connected and a fan of blood sprayed her full in the face.

I grabbed my knife with my left hand as it fell, scrambled to my feet, and drove the knife at his throat in a roundhouse swing that happened to come handiest at the time. The point went through his flesh like nothing and jarred against his spine with a violence that I hoped would shock into nervous insensibility the stoutest medulla oblongata and prevent any dying reprisals on his part.

I got my wish, in large part. He swayed, straightened, dropped his gun, and fell flat on his back, giving his skull a murderous crack on the concrete for good measure. He lay there and after a half dozen gushes the bright blood quit pumping strongly out of his neck.

Then came the part that was like a dying reprisal, though obviously not being directed by him as of now. And come to think of it, it may have had its good points.

The girl, who was clearly a most cool-headed cuss, snatched for his gun where he’d dropped it, to make sure she got it ahead of me. She snatched, yes⁠—and then jerked back, letting off a sizable squeal of pain, anger, and surprise.

Where we’d seen his gun hit the concrete there was now a tiny incandescent puddle. A rill of blood snaked out from the pool around his head and touched the whitely glowing puddle and a jet of steam sizzled up.

Somehow the gun had managed to melt itself in the moment of its owner dying. Well, at any rate that showed it hadn’t contained any gunpowder or ordinary chemical explosives, though I already knew it operated on other principles from the way it had been used to paralyze me. More to the point, it showed that the gun’s owner was the member of a culture that believed in taking very complete precautions against its gadgets falling into the hands of strangers.

But the gun fusing wasn’t quite all. As the girl and me shifted our gaze from the puddle, which was cooling fast and now glowed red like the blood⁠—as we shifted our gaze back from the puddle to the dead man, we saw that at three points (points over where you’d expect pockets to be) his gray clothing had charred in small irregularly shaped patches from which threads of black smoke were twisting upward.

Just at that moment, so close as to make me jump in spite of years of learning to absorb shocks stoically⁠—right at my elbow it seemed to (the girl jumped too, I may say)⁠—a voice said, “Done a murder, hey?”

Advancing briskly around the skewily grounded plane from the direction of the cracking plant was an old geezer, a seasoned, hard-baked Deathlander if I ever saw one. He had a shock of bone-white hair, the rest of him that showed from his weathered gray clothing looked fried by the sun’s rays and others to a stringy crisp, and strapped to his boots and weighing down his belt were a good dozen knives.

Not satisfied with the unnerving noise he’d made already, he went on brightly, “Neat job too, I give you credit for that, but why the hell did you have to set the guy afire?”

Ordinarily scroungers who hide around on the outskirts until the killing’s done and then come in to share the loot get what they deserve⁠—wordless orders, well backed up, to be on their way at once. Sometimes they even catch an after-clap of the murder urge, if it hasn’t all been expended on the first victim or victims. Yet they will do it, trusting I suppose to the irresistible glamor of their personalities. There were several reasons why we didn’t at once give Pop this treatment.

In the first place we didn’t neither of us have our distance weapons. My revolver and her dart gun were both tucked in the cave back at the edge of the freeway. And there’s one bad thing about a bugger so knife-happy he lugs them around by the carload⁠—he’s generally good at tossing them. With his dozen or so knives Pop definitely outgunned us.

Second, we were both of us without the use of an arm. That’s right, the both of us. My right arm still dangled like a string of sausages and I couldn’t yet feel any signs of it coming undead. While she’d burned her fingers badly grabbing at the gun⁠—I could see their red-splotched tips now as she pulled them out of her mouth for a second to wipe the Pilot’s blood out of her eyes. All she had was her stump with the knife screwed to it. Me, I can throw a knife left-handed if I have to, but you bet I wasn’t going to risk Mother that way.

Then I’d no sooner heard Pop’s voice, breathy and a little high like an old man’s will get, than it occurred to me that he must have been the one who had given the funny scream that had distracted the Pilot’s attention and let us get him. Which incidentally made Pop a quick thinker and imaginative to boot, and meant that he’d helped on the killing.

Besides all that, Pop did not come in fawning and full of extravagant praise, as most scroungers will. He just assumed equality with us right from the start and he talked in an absolutely matter-of-fact way, neither praising nor criticizing one bit⁠—too damn matter-of-fact and open, for that matter, to suit my taste, but then I have heard other buggers say that some old men are apt to get talkative, though I had never worked with or run into one myself. Old people are very rare in the Deathlands, as you might imagine.

So the girl and me just scowled at him but did nothing to stop him as he came along. Near us, his extra knives would be no advantage to him.

“Hum,” he said, “looks a lot like a guy I murdered five years back down Los Alamos way. Same silver monkey suit and almost as tall. Nice chap too⁠—was trying to give me something for a fever I’d faked. That his gun melted? My man didn’t smoke after I gave him his quietus, but then it turned out he didn’t have any metal on him. I wonder if this chap⁠—” He started to kneel down by the body.

“Hands off, Pop!” I gritted at him. That was how we started calling him Pop.

“Why sure, sure,” he said, staying there on one knee. “I won’t lay a finger on him. It’s just that I’ve heard the Alamosers have it rigged so that any metal they’re carrying melts when they die, and I was wondering about this boy. But he’s all yours, friend. By the way, what’s your name, friend?”

“Ray,” I snarled. “Ray Baker.” I think the main reason I told him was that I didn’t want him calling me “friend” again. “You talk too much, Pop.”

“I suppose I do, Ray,” he agreed. “What’s your name, lady?”

The girl just sort of hissed at him and he grinned at me as if to say, “Oh, women!” Then he said, “Why don’t you go through his pockets, Ray? I’m real curious.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I felt that he’d put me on the spot just the same. I was curious about the guy’s pockets myself, of course, but I was also wondering if Pop was alone or if he had somebody with him, and whether there was anybody else in the plane or not⁠—things like that, too many things. At the same time I didn’t want to let on to Pop how useless my right arm was⁠—if I’d just get a twinge of feeling in that arm, I knew I’d feel a lot more confident fast. I knelt down across the body from him, started to lay Mother aside and then hesitated.

The girl gave me an encouraging look, as if to say, “I’ll take care of the old geezer.” On the strength of her look I put down Mother and started to pry open the Pilot’s left hand, which was clenched in a fist that looked a mite too big to have nothing inside it.

The girl started to edge behind Pop, but he caught the movement right away and looked at her with a grin that was so knowing and yet so friendly, and yet so pitying at the same time⁠—with the pity of the old pro for even the seasoned amateur⁠—that in her place I think I’d have blushed myself, as she did now⁠ ⁠… through the streaks of the Pilot’s blood.

“You don’t have to worry none about me, lady,” he said, running a hand through his white hair and incidentally touching the pommel of one of the two knives strapped high on the back of his jacket so he could reach one over either shoulder. “I quit murdering some years back. It got to be too much of a strain on my nerves.”

“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t help saying as I pried up the Pilot’s index finger and started on the next. “Then why the stab-factory, Pop?”

“Oh you mean those,” he said, glancing down at his knives. “Well, the fact is, Ray, I carry them to impress buggers dumber than you and the lady here. Anybody wants to think I’m still a practicing murderer I got no objections. Matter of sentiment, too, I just hate to part with them⁠—they bring back important memories. And then⁠—you won’t believe this, Ray, but I’m going to tell you just the same⁠—guys just up and give me their knives and I doubly hate to part with a gift.”

I wasn’t going to say “Oh yeah?” again or “Shut up!” either, though I certainly wished I could turn off Pop’s spigot, or thought I did. Then I felt a painful tingling shoot down my right arm. I smiled at Pop and said, “Any other reasons?”

“Yep,” he said. “Got to shave and I might as well do it in style. A new blade every day in the fortnight is twice as good as the old ads. You know, it makes you keep a knife in fine shape if you shave with it. What you got there, Ray?”

“You were wrong, Pop,” I said. “He did have some metal on him that didn’t melt.”

I held up for them to see the object I’d extracted from his left fist: a bright steel cube measuring about an inch across each side, but it felt lighter than if it were solid metal. Five of the faces looked absolutely bare. The sixth had a round button recessed in it.

From the way they looked at it neither Pop nor the girl had the faintest idea of what it was. I certainly hadn’t.

“Had he pushed the button?” the girl asked. Her voice was throaty but unexpectedly refined, as if she’d done no talking at all, not even to herself, since coming to the Deathlands and so retained the cultured intonations she’d had earlier, whenever and wherever that had been. It gave me a funny feeling, of course, because they were the first words I’d heard her speak.

“Not from the way he was holding it,” I told her. “The button was pointed up toward his thumb but the thumb was on the outside of his fingers.” I felt an unexpected satisfaction at having expressed myself so clearly and I told myself not to get childish.

The girl slitted her eyes. “Don’t you push it, Ray,” she said.

“Think I’m nuts?” I told her, meanwhile sliding the cube into the smaller pocket of my pants, where it fit tight and wouldn’t turn sideways and the button maybe get pressed by accident. The tingling in my right arm was almost unbearable now, but I was getting control over the muscles again.

“Pushing that button,” I added, “might melt what’s left of the plane, or blow us all up.” It never hurts to emphasize that you may have another weapon in your possession, even if it’s just a suicide bomb.

“There was a man pushed another button once,” Pop said softly and reflectively. His gaze went far out over the Deathlands and took in a good half of the horizon and he slowly shook his head. Then his face brightened. “Did you know, Ray,” he said, “that I actually met that man? Long afterwards. You don’t believe me, I know, but I actually did. Tell you about it some other time.”

I almost said, “Thanks, Pop, for sparing me at least for a while,” but I was afraid that would set him off again. Besides, it wouldn’t have been quite true. I’ve heard other buggers tell the yarn of how they met (and invariably rubbed out) the actual guy who pushed the button or buttons that set the fusion missiles blasting toward their targets, but I felt a sudden curiosity as to what Pop’s version of the yarn would be. Oh well, I could ask him some other time, if we both lived that long. I started to check the Pilot’s pockets. My right hand could help a little now.

“Those look like mean burns you got there, lady,” I heard Pop tell the girl. He was right. There were blisters easy to see on three of the fingertips. “I’ve got some salve that’s pretty good,” he went on, “and some clean cloth. I could put on a bandage for you if you wanted. If your hand started to feel poisoned you could always tell Ray here to slip a knife in me.”

Pop was a cute gasser, you had to admit. I reminded myself that it was Pop’s business to play up to the both of us, charm being the secret weapon of all scroungers.

The girl gave a harsh little laugh. “Very well,” she said, “but we will use my salve, I know it works for me.” And she started to lead Pop to where we’d hidden our things.

“I’ll go with you,” I told them, standing up.

It didn’t look like we were going to have any more murders today⁠—Pop had got through the preliminary ingratiations pretty well and the girl and me had had our catharsis⁠—but that would be no excuse for any such stupidity as letting the two of them get near my .38.

Strolling to the cave and back I eased the situation a bit more by saying, “That scream you let off, Pop, really helped. I don’t know what gave you the idea, but thanks.”

“Oh that,” he said. “Forget about it.”

“I won’t,” I told him. “You may say you’ve quit killing, but helped on a do-in today.”

“Ray,” he said a little solemnly, “if it’ll make you feel any happier, I’ll take a bit of the responsibility for every murder that’s been done since the beginning of time.”

I looked at him for a while. Then, “Pop, you’re not by any chance the religious type?” I asked suddenly.

“Lord, no,” he told us.

That struck me as a satisfactory answer. God preserve me from the religious type! We have quite a few of those in the Deathlands. It generally means that they try to convert you to something before they kill you. Or sometimes afterwards.

We completed our errands. I felt a lot more secure with Old Financier’s Friend strapped to my middle. Mother is wonderful but she is not enough.

I dawdled over inspecting the Pilot’s pockets, partly to give my right hand time to come back all the way. And to tell the truth I didn’t much enjoy the job⁠—a corpse, especially such a handsome cadaver as this, just didn’t go with Pop’s brand of light patter.

Pop did up the girl’s hand in high style, bandaging each finger separately and then persuading her to put on a big left-hand work glove he took out of his small pack.

“Lost the right,” he explained, “which was the only one I ever used anyway. Never knew until now why I kept this. How does it feel, Alice?”

I might have known he’d worm her name out of her. It occurred to me that Pop’s ideas of scrounging might extend to Alice’s favors. The urge doesn’t die out when you get old, they tell me. Not completely.

He’d also helped her replace the knife on her stump with the hook.

By that time I’d poked into all the Pilot’s pockets I could get at without stripping him and found nothing but three irregularly shaped blobs of metal, still hot to the touch. Under the charred spots, of course.

I didn’t want the job of stripping him. Somebody else could do a little work, I told myself. I’ve been bothered by bodies before (as who hasn’t, I suppose?) but this one was really beginning to make me sick. Maybe I was cracking up, it occurred to me. Murder is a very wearing business, as all Deathlanders know, and although some crack earlier than others, all crack in the end.

I must have been showing how I was feeling because, “Cheer up, Ray,” Pop said. “You and Alice have done a big murder⁠—I’d say the subject was six foot ten⁠—so you ought to be happy. You’ve drawn a blank on his pockets but there’s still the plane.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, brightening a little. “There’s still the stuff in the plane.” I knew there were some items I couldn’t hope for, like .38 shells, but there’d be food and other things.

“Nuh-uh,” Pop corrected me. “I said the plane. You may have thought it’s wrecked, but I don’t. Have you taken a real gander at it? It’s worth doing, believe me.”

I jumped up. My heart was suddenly pounding. I was glad of an excuse to get away from the body, but there was a lot more in my feelings than that. I was filled with an excitement to which I didn’t want to give a name because it would make the letdown too great.

One of the wide stubby wings of the plane, raking downward so that its tip almost touched the concrete, had hidden the undercarriage of the fuselage from our view. Now, coming around the wing, I saw that there was no undercarriage.

I had to drop to my hands and knees and scan around with my cheek next to the concrete before I’d believe it. The “wrecked” plane was at all points at least six inches off the ground.

I got to my feet again. I was shaking. I wanted to talk but I couldn’t. I grabbed the leading edge of the wing to stop from falling. The whole body of the plane gave a fraction of an inch and then resisted my leaning weight with lazy power, just like a gyroscope.

“Antigravity,” I croaked, though you couldn’t have heard me two feet. Then my voice came back. “Pop, Alice! They got antigravity! Antigravity⁠—and it’s working!”

Alice had just come around the wing and was facing me. She was shaking too and her face was white like I knew mine was. Pop was politely standing off a little to one side, watching us curiously. “Told you you’d won a real prize,” he said in his matter-of-fact way.

Alice wet her lips. “Ray,” she said, “we can get away.”

Just those four words, but they did it. Something in me unlocked⁠—no, exploded describes it better.

“We can go places!” I almost shouted.

“Beyond the dust,” she said. “Mexico City. South America!” She was forgetting the Deathlander’s cynical article of belief that the dust never ends, but then so was I. It makes a difference whether or not you’ve got a means of doing something.

“Rio!” I topped her with. “The Indies. Hong Kong. Bombay. Egypt. Bermuda. The French Riviera!”

“Bullfights and clean beds,” she burst out with. “Restaurants. Swimming pools. Bathrooms!”

“Skindiving,” I took it up with, as hysterical as she was. “Road races and roulette tables.”

“Bentleys and Porsches!”

“Aircoups and DC-4s and Comets!”

“Martinis and hashish and ice cream sodas!”

“Hot food! Fresh coffee! Gambling, smoking, dancing, music, drinks!” I was going to add women, but then I thought of how hard-bitten little Alice would look beside the dream creatures I had in mind. I tactfully suppressed the word but I filed the idea away.

I don’t think either of us knew exactly what we were saying. Alice in particular I don’t believe was old enough to have experienced almost any of the things the words referred to. They were mysterious symbols of long-interdicted delights spewing out of us.

“Ray,” Alice said, hurrying to me, “let’s get aboard.”

“Yes,” I said eagerly and then I saw a little problem. The door to the plane was a couple of feet above our heads. Whoever hoisted himself up first⁠—or got hoisted up, as would have to be the case with Alice on account of her hand⁠—would be momentarily at the other’s mercy. I guess it occurred to Alice too because she stopped and looked at me. It was a little like the old teaser about the fox, the goose, and the corn.

Maybe, too, we were both a little scared the plane was booby-trapped.

Pop solved the problem in the direct way I might have expected of him by stepping quietly between us, giving a light leap, catching hold of the curving sill, chinning himself on it, and scrambling up into the plane so quickly that we’d hardly have had time to do anything about it if we’d wanted to. Pop couldn’t be much more than a bantamweight, even with all his knives. The plane sagged an inch and then swung up again.

As Pop disappeared from view I backed off, reaching for my .38, but a moment later he stuck out his head and grinned down at us, resting his elbows on the sill.

“Come on up,” he said. “It’s quite a place. I promise not to push any buttons ’til you get here, though there’s whole regiments of them.”

I grinned back at Pop and gave Alice a boost up. She didn’t like it, but she could see it had to be her next. She hooked onto the sill and Pop caught hold of her left wrist below the big glove and heaved.

Then it was my turn. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the idea of those two buggers poised above me while my hands were helpless on the sill. But I thought Pop’s a nut. You can trust a nut, at least a little ways, though you can’t trust nobody else. I heaved myself up. It was strange to feel the plane giving and then bracing itself like something alive. It seemed to have no trouble accepting our combined weight, which after all was hardly more than half again the Pilot’s.

Inside the cabin was pretty small but as Pop had implied, oh my! Everything looked soft and smoothly curved, like you imagine your insides being, and almost everything was a restfully dull silver. The general shape of it was something like the inside of an egg. Forward, which was the larger end, were a couple of screens and a wide viewport and some small dials and the button brigades Pop had mentioned, lined up like blank typewriter keys but enough for writing Chinese.

Just aft of the instrument panel were two very comfortable-looking strange low seats. They seemed to be facing backwards until I realized they were meant to be knelt into. The occupant, I could see, would sort of sprawl forward, his hands free for button-pushing and such. There were spongy chinrests.

Aft was a tiny instrument panel and a kind of sideways seat, not nearly so fancy. The door by which we’d entered was to the side, a little aft.

I didn’t see any indications of cabinets or fixed storage spaces of any kinds, but somehow stuck to the walls here and there were quite a few smooth blobby packages, mostly dull silver too, some large, some small⁠—valises and handbags, you might say.

All in all, it was a lovely cabin and, more than that, it seemed lived in. It looked as if it had been shaped for, and maybe by one man. It had a personality you could feel, a strong but warm personality of its own.

Then I realized whose personality it was. I almost got sick⁠—so close to it I started telling myself it must be something antigravity did to your stomach.

But it was all too interesting to let you get sick right away. Pop was poking into two of the large mound-shaped cases that were sitting loose and open on the right-hand seat, as if ready for emergency use. One had a folded something with straps on it that was probably a parachute. The second had I judged a thousand or more of the inch cubes such as I’d pried out of the Pilot’s hand, all neatly stacked in a cubical box inside the soft outer bag. You could see the one-cube gap where he’d taken the one.

I decided to take the rest of the bags off the walls and open them, if I could figure out how. The others had the same idea, but Alice had to take off her hook and put on her pliers, before she could make progress. Pop helped her. There was room enough for us to do these things without crowding each other too closely.

By the time Alice was set to go I’d discovered the trick of getting the bags off. You couldn’t pull them away from the wall no matter what force you used, at least I couldn’t, and you couldn’t even slide them straight along the walls, but if you just gave them a gentle counterclockwise twist they came off like nothing. Twisting them clockwise glued them back on. It was very strange, but I told myself that if these boys could generate antigravity fields they could create screwy fields of other sorts.

It also occurred to me to wonder if “these boys” came from Earth. The Pilot had looked human enough, but these accomplishments didn’t⁠—not by my standards for human achievement in the Age of the Deaders. At any rate I had to admit to myself that my pet term “cultural queer” did not describe to my own satisfaction members of a culture which could create things like this cabin. Not that I liked making the admission. It’s hard to admit an exception to a pet gripe against things.

The excitement of getting down and opening the Christmas packages saved me from speculating too much along these or any other lines.

I hit a minor jackpot right away. In the same bag were a compass, a catalytic pocket lighter, a knife with a sawtooth back edge that made my affection for Mother waver, a dust mask, what looked like a compact water-filtration unit, and several other items adding up to a deluxe Deathlands Survival Kit.

There were some goggles in the kit I didn’t savvy until I put them on and surveyed the landscape out the viewport. A nearby dust drift I knew to be hot glowed green as death in the slightly smoky lenses. Wow! Those specs had Geiger counters beat a mile and I privately bet myself they worked at night. I stuck them in my pocket quick.

We found bunches of tiny electronics parts⁠—I think they were; spools of magnetic tape, but nothing to play it on; reels of very narrow film with frames much too small to see anything at all unmagnified; about three thousand cigarettes in unlabeled transparent packs of twenty⁠—we lit up quick, using my new lighter; a picture book that didn’t make much sense because the views might have been of tissue sections or starfields, we couldn’t quite decide, and there were no captions to help; a thin book with ricepaper pages covered with Chinese characters⁠—that was a puzzler; a thick book with nothing but columns of figures, all zeros and ones and nothing else; some tiny chisels; and a mouth organ. Pop, who’d make a point of just helping in the hunt, appropriated that last item⁠—I might have known he would, I told myself. Now we could expect “Turkey in the Straw” at odd moments.

Alice found a whole bag of what were women’s things judging from the frilliness of the garments included. She set aside some squeeze-packs and little gadgets and elastic items right away, but she didn’t take any of the clothes. I caught her measuring some kind of transparent chemise against herself when she thought we weren’t looking; it was for a girl maybe six sizes bigger.

And we found food. Cans of food that was heated up inside by the time you got the top rolled off, though the outside could still be cool to the touch. Cans of boneless steak, boneless chops, cream soup, peas, carrots, and fried potatoes⁠—they weren’t labeled at all but you could generally guess the contents from the shape of the can. Eggs that heated when you touched them and were soft-boiled evenly and barely firm by the time you had the shell broke. And small plastic bottles of strong coffee that heated up hospitably too⁠—in this case the tops did a five-second hesitation in the middle of your unscrewing them.

At that point as you can imagine we let the rest of the packages go and had ourselves a feast. The food ate even better than it smelled. It was real hard for me not to gorge.

Then as I was slurping down my second bottle of coffee I happened to look out the viewport and see the Pilot’s body and the darkening puddle around it and the coffee began to taste, well, not bad, but sickening. I don’t think it was guilty conscience. Deathlanders outgrow those if they ever have them to start with; loners don’t keep consciences⁠—it takes cultures to give you those and make them work. Artistic inappropriateness is the closest I can come to describing what bothered me. Whatever it was, it made me feel lousy for a minute.

About the same time Alice did an odd thing with the last of her coffee. She slopped it on a rag and used it to wash her face. I guess she’d caught a reflection of herself with the blood smears. She didn’t eat any more after that either. Pop kept on chomping away, a slow feeder and appreciative.

To be doing something I started to inspect the instrument panel and right away I was all excited again. The two screens were what got me. They showed shadowy maps, one of North America, the other of the World. The first one was a whole lot like the map I’d been imagining earlier⁠—faint colors marked the small “civilized” areas including one in Eastern Canada and another in Upper Michigan that must be “countries” I didn’t know about, and the Deathlands were real dark just as I’d always maintained they should be!

South of Lake Michigan was a brightly luminous green point that must be where we were, I decided. And for some reason the colored areas representing Los Alamos and Atlantic Highlands were glowing brighter than the others⁠—they had an active luminosity. Los Alamos was blue, Atla-Hi violet. Los Alamos was shown having more territory than I expected. Savannah Fortress for that matter was a whole lot bigger than I’d have made it, pushing out pseudopods west and northeast along the coast, though its red didn’t have the extra glow. But its growth-pattern reeked of imperialism.

The World screen showed dim color patches too, but for the moment I was more interested in the other.

The button armies marched right up to the lower edge of the screens and right away I got the crazy hunch that they were connected with spots on the map. Push the button for a certain spot and the plane would go there! Why, one button even seemed to have a faint violet nimbus around it (or else my eyes were going bad) as if to say, “Push me and we go to Atlantic Highlands.”

A crazy notion as I say and no sensible way to handle a plane’s navigation according to any standards I could imagine, but then as I’ve also said this plane didn’t seem to be designed according to any standards but rather in line with one man’s ideas, including his whims.

At any rate that was my hunch about the buttons and the screens. It tantalized rather than helped, for the only button that seemed to be marked in any way was the one (guessing by color) for Atlantic Highlands, and I certainly didn’t want to go there. Like Alamos, Atla-Hi has the reputation for being a mysteriously dangerous place. Not openly mean and death-on-Deathlanders like Walla Walla or Porter, but buggers who swing too close to Atla-Hi have a way of never turning up again. You never expect to see again two out of three buggers who pass in the night, but for three out of three to keep disappearing is against statistics.

Alice was beside me now, scanning things over too, and from the way she frowned and whatnot I gathered she had caught my hunch and also shared my puzzlement.

Now was the time, all right, when we needed an instruction manual and not one in Chinese neither!

Pop swallowed a mouthful and said, “Yep, now’d be a good time to have him back for a minute, to explain things a bit. Oh, don’t take offense, Ray, I know how it was for you and for you too, Alice. I know the both of you had to murder him, it wasn’t a matter of free choice, it’s the way us Deathlanders are built. Just the same, it’d be nice to have a way of killing ’em and keeping them on hand at the same time. I remember feeling that way after murdering the Alamoser I told you about. You see, I come down with the very fever I’d faked and almost died of it, while the man who could have cured me easy wouldn’t do nothing but perfume the landscape with the help of a gang of anaerobic bacteria. Stubborn single-minded cuss!”

The first part of that oration started up my sickness again and irked me not a little. Dammit, what right had Pop to talk about how all us Deathlanders had to kill (which was true enough and by itself would have made me cotton to him) if as he’d claimed earlier he’d been able to quit killing? Pop was, an old hypocrite, I told myself⁠—he’d helped murder the Pilot, he’d admitted as much⁠—and Alice and me’d be better off if we bedded the both of them down together. But then the second part of what Pop said so made me want to feel pleasantly sorry for myself and laugh at the same time that I forgave the old geezer. Practically everything Pop said had that reassuring touch of insanity about it.

So it was Alice who said, “Shut up, Pop”⁠—and rather casually at that⁠—and she and me went on to speculate and then to argue about which buttons we ought to push, if any and in what order.

“Why not just start anywhere and keep pushing ’em one after another?⁠—you’re going to have to eventually, may as well start now,” was Pop’s lighthearted contribution to the discussion. “Got to take some chances in this life.” He was sitting in the back seat and still nibbling away like a white-topped mangy old squirrel.

Of course Alice and me knew more than that. We kept making guesses as to how the buttons worked and then backing up our guesses with hot language. It was a little like two savages trying to decide how to play chess by looking at the pieces. And then the old escape-to-paradise theme took hold of us again and we studied the colored blobs on the World screen, trying to decide which would have the fanciest accommodations for blasé ex-murderers. On the North America screen too there was an intriguing pink patch in southern Mexico that seemed to take in old Mexico City and Acapulco too.

“Quit talking and start pushing,” Pop prodded us. “This way you’re getting nowhere fast. I can’t stand hesitation, it riles my nerves.”

Alice thought you ought to push ten buttons at once, using both hands, and she was working out patterns for me to try. But I was off on a kick about how we should darken the plane to see if any of the other buttons glowed beside the one with the Atla-Hi violet.

“Look here, you killed a big man to get this plane,” Pop broke in, coming up behind me. “Are you going to use it for discussion groups or are you going to fly it?”

“Quiet,” I told him. I’d got a new hunch and was using the dark glasses to scan the instrument panel. They didn’t show anything.

“Dammit, I can’t stand this any more,” Pop said and reached a hand and arm between us and brought it down on about fifty buttons, I’d judge.

The other buttons just went down and up, but the Atla-Hi button went down and stayed down.

The violet blob of Atla-Hi on the screen got even brighter in the next few moments.

The door closed with a tiny thud.

We took off.

For that matter we took off fast with the plane swinging to beat hell. Alice and me was in the two kneeling seats and we hugged them tight, but Pop was loose and sort of rattled around the cabin for a while⁠—and serve him right!

On one of the swings I caught a glimpse of the seven dented gas tanks, looking like dull crescents from this angle through the orange haze and getting rapidly smaller as they hazed out.

After a while the plane levelled off and quit swinging, and a while after that my image of the cabin quit swinging too. Once again I just managed to stave off the vomits, this time the vomits from natural causes. Alice looked very pale around the gills and kept her face buried in the chinrest of her chair.

Pop ended up right in our faces, sort of spreadeagled against the instrument panel. In getting himself off it he must have braced his hands against half the buttons at one time or another and I noticed that none of them went down a fraction. They were locked. It had probably happened automatically when the Atla-Hi button got pushed.

I’d have stopped him messing around in that apish way, but with the ultra-queasy state of my stomach I lacked all ambition and was happy just not to be smelling him so close.

I still wasn’t taking too great an interest in things as I idly watched the old geezer rummaging around the cabin for something that got misplaced in the shakeup. Eventually he found it⁠—a small almond-shaped can. He opened it. Sure enough it turned out to have almonds in it. He fitted himself in the back seat and munched them one at a time. Ish!

“Nothing like a few nuts to top off with,” he said cheerfully.

I could have cut his throat even more cheerfully, but the damage had been done and you think twice before you kill a person in close quarters when you aren’t absolutely sure you’ll be able to dispose of the body. How did I know I’d be able to open the door? I remember philosophizing that Pop ought at least to have broke an arm so he’d be as badly off as Alice and me (though for that matter my right arm was fully recovered now) but he was all in one piece. There’s no justice in events, that’s for sure.

The plane ploughed along silently through the orange soup, though there was really no way to tell it was moving now⁠—until a skewy spindle shape loomed up ahead and shot back over the viewport. I think it was a vulture. I don’t know how vultures manage to operate in the haze, which ought to cancel their keen eyesight, but they do. It shot past fast.

Alice lifted her face out of the sponge stuff and began to study the buttons again. I heaved myself up and around a little and said, “Pop, Alice and me are going to try to work out how this plane navigates. This time we don’t want no interference.” I didn’t say a word more about what he’d done. It never does to hash over stupidities.

“That’s perfectly fine, go right ahead,” he told me. “I feel calm as a kitten now we’re going somewheres. That’s all that ever matters with me.” He chuckled a bit and added, “You got to admit I gave you and Alice something to work with,” but then he had the sense to shut up tight.

We weren’t so chary of pushing buttons this time, but ten minutes or so convinced us that you couldn’t push any of the buttons any more, they were all locked down⁠—all locked except for maybe one, which we didn’t try at first for a special reason.

We looked for other controls⁠—sticks, levers, pedals, finger-holes and the like. There weren’t any. Alice went back and tried the buttons on Pop’s minor console. They were locked too. Pop looked interested but didn’t say a word.

We realized in a general way what had happened, of course. Pushing the Atla-Hi button had set us on some kind of irreversible automatic. I couldn’t imagine the why of gimmicking a plane’s controls like that, unless maybe to keep loose children or prisoners from being able to mess things up while the pilot took a snooze, but there were a lot of whys to this plane that didn’t seem to have any standard answers.

The business of taking off on irreversible automatic had happened so neatly that I naturally wondered whether Pop might not know more about navigating this plane than he let on, a whole lot more in fact, and the seemingly idiotic petulance of his pushing all the buttons have been a shrewd cover for pushing the Atla-Hi button. But if Pop had been acting he’d been acting beautifully, with a serene disregard for the chances of breaking his own neck. I decided this was a possibility I could think about later and maybe act on then, after Alice and me had worked through the more obvious stuff.

The reason we hadn’t tried the one button yet was that it showed a green nimbus, just like the Atla-Hi button had had a violet nimbus. Now there was no green on either of the screens except for the tiny green star that I had figured stood for the plane and it didn’t make sense to go where we already were. And if it meant some other place, some place not shown on the screens, you bet we weren’t going to be too quick about deciding to go there. It might not be on Earth.

Alice expressed it by saying, “My namesake was always a little too quick at responding to those drink me cues.”

I suppose she thought she was being cryptic, but I fooled her. “Alice in Wonderland?” I asked. She nodded, and gave me a little smile, not at all like one of the eat me smiles she’d given me last evening.

It is funny how crazily happy a little touch of the intellectual past like that can make you feel⁠—and how horribly uncomfortable a moment later.

We both started to study the North America screen again and almost at once we realized that it had changed in one small particular. The green star had twinned. Where there had been one point of green light there were now two, very close together like the double star in the handle of the Dipper. We watched it for a while. The distance between the two stars grew perceptibly greater. We watched it for a while longer, considerably longer. It became clear that the position of the more westerly star on the screen was fixed, while the more easterly star was moving east toward Atla-Hi with about the speed of the tip of the minute hand on a wrist watch (two inches an hour, say). The pattern began to make sense.

I figured it this way: the moving star must stand for the plane, the other green dot must stand for where the plane had just been. For some reason the spot on the freeway by the old cracking plant was recognized as a marked locality by the screen. Why I don’t know. It reminded me of the old “X Marks the Spot” of newspaper murders, but that would be getting very fancy. Anyway the spot we’d just taken off from was so marked and in that case the button with the green nimbus⁠ ⁠…

“Hold tight, everybody,” I said to Alice, grudgingly including Pop in my warning. “I got to try it.”

I gripped my seat with my knees and one arm and pushed the green button. It pushed.

The plane swung around in a level loop, not too tight to disturb the stomach much, and steadied out again.

I couldn’t judge how far we’d swung but Alice and me watched the green stars and after about a minute she said, “They’re getting closer,” and a little while later I said, “Yeah, for sure.”

I scanned the board. The green button⁠—the cracking-plant button, to call it that⁠—was locked down of course. The Atla-Hi button was up, glowing violet. All the other buttons were still up and locked up⁠—I tried them all again.

It was clear as day used to be. We could either go to Atla-Hi or we could go back where we’d started from. There was no third possibility.

It was a little hard to take. You think of a plane as freedom, as something that will carry you anywhere in the world you choose to go, especially any paradise, and then you find yourself worse limited than if you’d stayed on the ground⁠—at least that was the way it was happening to us.

But Alice and me were realists. We knew it wouldn’t help to wail. We were up against another of those “two” problems, the problem of two destinations, and we had to choose ours.

If we go back, I thought, we can trek on somewhere⁠—anywhere⁠—richer by the loot from the plane, especially that Survival Kit. Trek on with some loot we’ll mostly never understand and with the knowledge that we are leaving a plane that can fly, that we are shrinking back from an unknown adventure.

Also if we go back there’s something else we’ll have to face, something we’ll have to live with for a little while at least that won’t be nice to live with after this cozily personal cabin, something that shouldn’t bother me at all but, dammit, it does.

Alice made the decision for us and at the same time showed she was thinking about the same thing as me.

“I don’t want to have to smell him, Ray,” she said. “I am not going back to keep company with that filthy corpse. I’d rather anything than that.” And she pushed the Atla-Hi button again and as the plane started to swing she looked at me defiantly as if to say I’d reverse the course again over her dead body.

“Don’t tense up,” I told her. “I want a new shake of the dice myself.”

“You know, Alice,” Pop said reflectively, “it was the smell of my Alamoser got to me too. I just couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t get away from it because my fever had me pinned down, so there was nothing left for me to do but go crazy. No Atla-Hi for me, just Bug-land. My mind died, though not my memory. By the time I’d got my strength back I’d started to be a new bugger. I didn’t know no more about living than a newborn babe, except I knew I couldn’t go back⁠—go back to murdering and all that. My new mind knew that much though otherwise it was just a blank. It was all very funny.”

“And then I suppose,” Alice cut in, her voice corrosive with sarcasm, “you hunted up a wandering preacher, or perhaps a kindly old hermit who lived on hot manna, and he showed you the blue sky!”

“Why no, Alice,” Pop said. “I told you I don’t go for religion. As it happens, I hunted me up a couple of murderers, guys who were worse cases then myself but who’d wanted to quit because it wasn’t getting them nowhere and who’d found, I’d heard, a way of quitting, and the three of us had a long talk together.”

“And they told you the great secret of how to live in the Deathlands without killing,” Alice continued acidly. “Drop the nonsense, Pop. It can’t be done.”

“It’s hard, I’ll grant you,” Pop said. “You have to go crazy or something almost as bad⁠—in fact, maybe going crazy is the easiest way. But it can be done and, in the long run, murder is even harder.”

I decided to interrupt this idle chatter. Since we were now definitely headed for Atla-Hi and there was nothing to do until we got there, unless one of us got a brainstorm about the controls, it was time to start on the less obvious stuff I’d tabled in my mind.

“Why are you on this plane, Pop?” I asked sharply. “What do you figure on getting out of Alice and me?⁠—and I don’t mean the free meals.”

He grinned. His teeth were white and even⁠—plates, of course. “Why, Ray,” he said, “I was just giving Alice the reason. I like to talk to murderers, practicing murderers preferred. I need to⁠—have to talk to ’em, to keep myself straight. Otherwise I might start killing again and I’m not up to that any more.”

“Oh, so you get your kicks at second hand, you old peeper,” Alice put in but, “Quit lying, Pop,” I said. “About having quit killing, for one thing. In my books, which happen to be the old books in this case, the accomplice is every bit as guilty as the man with the slicer. You helped us kill the Pilot by giving that funny scream and you know it.”

“Who says I did?” Pop countered, rearing up a little. “I never said so. I just said, ‘Forget it.’ ” He hesitated a moment, studying me. Then he said, “I wasn’t the one gave that scream. In fact, I’d have stopped it if I’d been able.”

“Who did then?”

Again he studied me as he hesitated. “I’m not telling,” he said, settling back.

“Pop!” I said, sharp again. “Buggers who pad together tell everything.”

“Oh yeah,” he agreed, smiling. “I remember saying that to quite a few guys in my day. It’s a very restful comradely sentiment. I killed every last one of ’em, too.”

“You may have, Pop,” I granted, “but we’re two to one.”

“So you are,” he agreed softly, looking the both of us over. I knew what he was thinking⁠—that Alice still had just her pliers on and that in these close quarters his knives were as good as my gun.

“Give me your right hand, Alice,” I said. Without taking my eyes off Pop I reached the knife without a handle out of her belt and then I started to unscrew the pliers out of her stump.

“Pop,” I said as I did so, “you may have quit killing for all I know. I mean you may have quit killing clean decent Deathland style. But I don’t believe one bit of that guff about having to talk to murderers to keep your mind sweet. Furthermore⁠—”

“It’s true though,” he interrupted. “I got to keep myself reminded of how lousy it feels to be a murderer.”

“So?” I said. “Well, here’s one person who believes you’ve got a more practical reason for being on this plane. Pop, what’s the bounty Atla-Hi gives you for every Deathlander you bring in? What would it be for two live Deathlanders? And what sort of reward would they pay for a lost plane brought in? Seems to me they might very well make you a citizen for that.”

“Yes, even give you your own church,” Alice added with a sort of wicked gaiety. I squeezed her stump gently to tell her let me handle it.

“Why, I guess you can believe that if you want to,” Pop said and let out a soft breath. “Seems to me you need a lot of coincidences and happenstances to make that theory hold water, but you sure can believe it if you want to. I got no way, Ray, to prove to you I’m telling the truth except to say I am.”

“Right,” I said and then I threw the next one at him real fast. “What’s more, Pop, weren’t you traveling in this plane to begin with? That cuts a happenstance. Didn’t you hop out while we were too busy with the Pilot to notice and just pretend to be coming from the cracking plant? Weren’t the buttons locked because you were the Pilot’s prisoner?”

Pop creased his brow thoughtfully. “It could have been that way,” he said at last. “Could have been⁠—according to the evidence as you saw it. It’s quite a bright idea, Ray. I can almost see myself skulking in this cabin, while you and Alice⁠—”

“You were skulking somewhere,” I said. I finished screwing in the knife and gave Alice back her hand. “I’ll repeat it, Pop,” I said. “We’re two to one. You’d better talk.”

“Yes,” Alice added, disregarding my previous hint. “You may have given up fighting, Pop, but I haven’t. Not fighting, nor killing, nor anything in between those two. Any least thing.” My girl was being her most pantherish.

“Now who says I’ve given up fighting?” Pop demanded, rearing a little again. “You people assume too much, it’s a dangerous habit. Before we have any trouble and somebody squawks about me cheating, let’s get one thing straight. If anybody jumps me I’ll try to disable them, I’ll try to hurt them in any way short of killing, and that means hamstringing and rabbit-punching and everything else. Every least thing, Alice. And if they happen to die while I’m honestly just trying to hurt them in a way short of killing, then I won’t grieve too much. My conscience will be reasonably clear. Is that understood?”

I had to admit that it was. Pop might be lying about a lot of things, but I just didn’t believe he was lying about this. And I already knew Pop was quick for his age and strong enough. If Alice and me jumped him now there’d be blood let six different ways. You can’t jump a man who has a dozen knives easy to hand and not expect that to happen, two to one or not. We’d get him in the end but it would be gory.

“And now,” Pop said quietly, “I will talk a little if you don’t mind. Look here, Ray⁠ ⁠… Alice⁠ ⁠… the two of you are confirmed murderers, I know you wouldn’t tell me nothing different, and being such you both know that there’s nothing in murder in the long run. It satisfies a hunger and maybe gets you a little loot and it lets you get on to the next killing. But that’s all, absolutely all. Yet you got to do it because it’s the way you’re built. The urge is there, it’s an overpowering urge, and you got nothing to oppose it with. You feel the Big Grief and the Big Resentment, the dust is eating at your bones, you can’t stand the city squares⁠—the Porterites and Mantenors and such⁠—because you know they’re whistling in the dark and it’s a dirty tune, so you go on killing. But if there were a decent practical way to quit, you’d take it. At least I think you would. When you still thought this plane could take you to Rio or Europe you felt that way, didn’t you? You weren’t planning to go there as murderers, were you? You were going to leave your trade behind.”

It was pretty quiet in the cabin for a couple of seconds. Then Alice’s thin laugh sliced the silence. “We were dreaming then,” she said. “We were out of our heads. But now you’re talking about practical things, as you say. What do you expect us to do if we quit our trade, as you call it⁠—go into Walla Walla or Ouachita and give ourselves up? I might lose more than my right hand at Ouachita this time⁠—that was just on suspicion.”

“Or Atla-Hi,” I added meaningfully. “Are you expecting us to admit we’re murderers when we get to Atla-Hi, Pop?”

The old geezer smiled and thinned his eyes. “Now that wouldn’t accomplish much, would it? Most places they’d just string you up, maybe after tickling your pain nerves a bit, or if it was Manteno they might put you in a cage and feed you slops and pray over you, and would that help you or anybody else? If a man or woman quits killing there’s a lot of things he’s got to straighten out⁠—first his own mind and feelings, next he’s got to do what he can to make up for the murders he’s done⁠—help the next of kin if any and so on⁠—then he’s got to carry the news to other killers who haven’t heard it yet. He’s got no time to waste being hanged. Believe me, he’s got work lined up for him, work that’s got to be done mostly in the Deathlands, and it’s the sort of work the city squares can’t help him with one bit, because they just don’t understand us murderers and what makes us tick. We have to do it ourselves.”

“Hey, Pop,” I cut in, getting a little interested in the argument (there wasn’t anything else to get interested in until we got to Atla-Hi or Pop let down his guard), “I dig you on the city squares (I call ’em cultural queers) and what sort of screwed-up fatheads they are, but just the same for a man to quit killing he’s got to quit lone-wolfing it. He’s got to belong to a community, he’s got to have a culture of some sort, no matter how disgusting or nutsy.”

“Well,” Pop said, “don’t us Deathlanders have a culture? With customs and folkways and all the rest? A very tight little culture, in fact. Nutsy as all get out, of course, but that’s one of the beauties of it.”

“Oh sure,” I granted him, “but it’s a culture based on murder and devoted wholly to murder. Murder is our way of life. That gets your argument nowhere, Pop.”

“Correction,” he said. “Or rather, reinterpretation.” And now for a little while his voice got less old-man harsh and yet bigger somehow, as if it were more than just Pop talking. “Every culture,” he said, “is a way of growth as well as a way of life, because the first law of life is growth. Our Deathland culture is devoted to growing through murder away from murder. That’s my thought. It’s about the toughest way of growth anybody was ever asked to face up to, but it’s a way of growth just the same. A lot bigger and fancier cultures never could figure out the answer to the problem of war and killing⁠—we know that, all right, we inhabit their grandest failure. Maybe us Deathlanders, working with murder every day, unable to pretend that it isn’t part of every one of us, unable to put it out of our minds like the city squares do⁠—maybe us Deathlanders are the ones to do that little job.”

“But hell, Pop,” I objected, getting excited in spite of myself, “even if we got a culture here in the Deathlands, a culture that can grow, it ain’t a culture that can deal with repentant murderers. In a real culture a murderer feels guilty and confesses and then he gets hanged or imprisoned a long time and that squares things for him and everybody. You need religion and courts and hangmen and screws and all the rest of it. I don’t think it’s enough for a man just to say he’s sorry and go around glad-handing other killers⁠—that isn’t going to be enough to wipe out his sense of guilt.”

Pop squared his eyes at mine. “Are you so fancy that you have to have a sense of guilt, Ray?” he demanded. “Can’t you just see when something’s lousy? A sense of guilt’s a luxury. Of course it’s not enough to say you’re sorry⁠—you’re going to have to spend a good part of the rest of your life making up for what you’ve done⁠ ⁠… and what you will do, too! But about hanging and prisons⁠—was it ever proved those were the right thing for murderers? As for religion now⁠—some of us who’ve quit killing are religious and a lot of us (me included) aren’t; and some of the ones that are religious figure (maybe because there’s no way for them to get hanged) that they’re damned eternally⁠—but that doesn’t stop them doing good work. I ask you now, is any little thing like being damned eternally a satisfactory excuse for behaving like a complete rat?”

That did it, somehow. That last statement of Pop’s appealed so much to me and was completely crazy at the same time, that I couldn’t help warming up to him. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really fall for his line of chatter at all, but I found it fun to go along with it⁠—so long as the plane was in this shuttle situation and we had nothing better to do.

Alice seemed to feel the same way. I guess any bugger that could kid religion the way Pop could got a little silver star in her books. Bronze, anyway.

Right away the atmosphere got easier. To start with we asked Pop to tell us about this “us” he kept mentioning and he said it was some dozens (or hundreds⁠—nobody had accurate figures) of killers who’d quit and went nomading around the Deathlands trying to recruit others and help those who wanted to be helped. They had semipermanent meeting places where they tried to get together at prearranged dates, but mostly they kept on the go, by twos and threes or⁠—more rarely⁠—alone. They were all men so far, at least Pop hadn’t heard of any women members, but⁠—he assured Alice earnestly⁠—he would personally guarantee that there would be no objections to a girl joining up. They had recently taken to calling themselves Murderers Anonymous, after some prewar organization Pop didn’t know the original purpose of. Quite a few of them had slipped and gone back to murdering again, but some of these had come back after a while, more determined than ever to make a go of it.

“We welcomed ’em, of course,” Pop said. “We welcome everybody. Everybody that’s a genuine murderer, that is, and says he wants to quit. Guys that aren’t blooded yet we draw the line at, no matter how fine they are.”

Also, “We have a lot of fun at our meetings,” Pop assured us. “You never saw such high times. Nobody’s got a right to go glooming around or pull a long face just because he’s done a killing or two. Religion or no religion, pride’s a sin.”

Alice and me ate it all up like we was a couple of kids and Pop was telling us fairy tales. That’s what it all was, of course, a fairy tale⁠—a crazy mixed-up fairy tale. Alice and me knew there could be no fellowship of Deathlanders like Pop was describing⁠—it was impossible as blue sky⁠—but it gave us a kick to pretend to ourselves for a while to believe in it.

Pop could talk forever, apparently, about murder and murderers and he had a bottomless bag of funny stories on the same topic and character vignettes⁠—the murderers who were forever wanting their victims to understand and forgive them, the ones who thought of themselves as little kings with divine rights of dispensing death, the ones who insisted on laying down (chastely) beside their finished victims and playing dead for a couple of hours, the ones who weren’t so chaste, the ones who could only do their killings when they were dressed a certain way (and the troubles they had with their murder costumes), the ones who could only kill people with certain traits or of a certain appearance (redheads, say, or people who read books, or who couldn’t carry tunes, or who used bad language), the ones who always mixed sex and murder and the ones who believed that murder was contaminated by the least breath of sex, the sticklers and the Sloppy Joes, the artists and the butchers, the ax- and stiletto-types, the compulsives and the repulsives⁠—honestly, Pop’s portraits from life added up to a Dance of Death as good as anything the Middle Ages ever produced and they ought to have been illustrated like those by some great artist. Pop told us a lot about his own killings too. Alice and me was interested, but neither of us wasn’t tempted into making parallel revelations about ourselves. Your private life’s your own business, I felt, as close as your guts, and no joke’s good enough to justify revealing a knot of it.

Not that we talked about nothing but murder while we were bulleting along toward Atla-Hi. The conversation was freewheeling and we got onto all sorts of topics. For instance, we got to talking about the plane and how it flew itself⁠—or levitated itself, rather. I said it must generate an antigravity field that was keyed to the body of the plane but nothing else, so that we didn’t feel lighter, nor any of the objects in the cabin⁠—it just worked on the dull silvery metal⁠—and I proved my point by using Mother to shave a little wisp of metal off the edge of the control board. The curlicue stayed in the air wherever you put it and when you moved it you could feel the faintest sort of gyroscopic resistance. It was very strange.

Pop pointed out it was a little like magnetism. A germ riding on an iron filing that was traveling toward the pole of a big magnet wouldn’t feel the magnetic pull⁠—it wouldn’t be operating on him, only on the iron⁠—but just the same the germ’d be carried along with the filing and feel its acceleration and all, provided he could hold on⁠—but for that purpose you could imagine a tiny cabin in the filing. “That’s what we are,” Pop added. “Three germs, jumbo size.”

Alice wanted to know why an antigravity plane should have even the stubbiest wings or a jet for that matter, for we remembered now we’d noticed the tubes, and I said it was maybe just a reserve system in case the antigravity failed and Pop guessed it might be for extra-fast battle maneuvering or even for operating outside the atmosphere (which hardly made sense, as I proved to him).

“If we’re a battle plane, where’s our guns?” Alice asked. None of us had an answer.

We remembered the noise the plane had made before we saw it. It must have been using its jets then. “And do you suppose,” Pop asked, “that it was something from the antigravity that made electricity flare out of the top of the cracking plant? Like to have scared the pants off me!” No answer to that either.

Now was a logical time, of course, to ask Pop what he knew about the cracking plant and just who had done the scream if not him, but I figured he still wouldn’t talk; as long as we were acting friendly there was no point in spoiling it.

We guessed around a little, though, about where the plane came from. Pop said Alamos, I said Atla-Hi, Alice said why not from both, why couldn’t Alamos and Atla-Hi have some sort of treaty and the plane be traveling from the one to the other. We agreed it might be. At least it fitted with the Atla-Hi violet and the Alamos blue being brighter than the other colors.

“I just hope we got some sort of anti-collision radar,” I said. I guessed we had, because twice we’d jogged in our course a little, maybe to clear the Alleghenies. The easterly green star was by now getting pretty close to the violet blot of Atla-Hi. I looked out at the orange soup, which was one thing that hadn’t changed a bit so far, and I got to wishing like a baby that it wasn’t there and to thinking how it blanketed the whole Earth (stars over the Riviera?⁠—don’t make me laugh!) and I heard myself asking, “Pop, did you rub out that guy that pushed the buttons for all this?”

“Nope,” Pop answered without hesitation, just as if it hadn’t been four hours or so since he’d mentioned the point. “Nope, Ray. Fact is I welcomed him into our little fellowship about six months back. This is his knife here, this horn-handle in my boot, though he never killed with it. He claimed he’d been tortured for years by the thought of the millions and millions he’d killed with blast and radiation, but now he was finding peace at last because he was where he belonged, with the murderers, and could start to do something about it. Several of the boys didn’t want to let him in. They claimed he wasn’t a real murderer, doing it by remote control, no matter how many he bumped off.”

“I’d have been on their side,” Alice said, thinning her lips.

“Yep,” Pop continued, “they got real hot about it. He got hot too and all excited and offered to go out and kill somebody with his bare hands right off, or try to (he’s a skinny little runt), if that’s what he had to do to join. We argued it over, I pointed out that we let ex-soldiers count the killings they’d done in service, and that we counted poisonings and booby traps and such too⁠—which are remote-control killings in a way⁠—so eventually we let him in. He’s doing good work. We’re fortunate to have him.”

“Do you think he’s really the guy who pushed the buttons?” I asked Pop.

“How should I know?” Pop replied. “He claims to be.”

I was going to say something about people who faked confessions to get a little easy glory, as compared to the guys who were really guilty and would sooner be chopped up than talk about it, but at that moment a fourth voice started talking in the plane. It seemed to be coming out of the violet patch on the North America screen. That is, it came from the general direction of the screen at any rate and my mind instantly tied it to the violet patch at Atla-Hi. It gave us a fright, I can tell you. Alice grabbed my knee with her pliers (she changed again), harder than she’d intended, I suppose, though I didn’t let out a yip⁠—I was too defensively frozen.

The voice was talking a language I didn’t understand at all that went up and down the scale like atonal music.

“Sounds like Chinese,” Pop whispered, giving me a nudge.

“It is Chinese. Mandarin,” the screen responded instantly in the purest English⁠—at least that was how I’d describe it. Practically Boston. “Who are you? And where is Grayl? Come in, Grayl.”

I knew well enough who Grayl must be⁠—or rather, have been. I looked at Pop and Alice. Pop grinned, maybe a mite feebly this time, I thought, and gave me a look as if to say, “You want to handle it?”

I cleared my throat. Then, “We’ve taken over for Grayl,” I said to the screen.

“Oh.” The screen hesitated, just barely. Then, “Do any of ‘you’ speak Mandarin?”

I hardly bothered to look at Pop and Alice. “No,” I said.

“Oh.” Again a tiny pause. “Is Grayl aboard the plane?”

“No.” I said.

“Oh. Incapacitated in some way, I suppose?”

“Yes,” I said, grateful for the screen’s tactfulness, unintentional or not.

“But you have taken over for him?” the screen pressed.

“Yes,” I said, swallowing. I didn’t know what I was getting us into, things were moving too fast, but it seemed the merest sense to act cooperative.

“I’m very glad of that,” the screen said with something in its tone that made me feel funny⁠—I guess it was sincerity. Then it said, “Is the⁠—” and hesitated, and started again with “Are the blocks aboard?”

I thought. Alice pointed at the stuff she dumped out of the other seat. I said. “There’s a box with a thousand or so one-inch underweight steel cubes in it. Like a child’s blocks, but with buttons in them. Alongside a box with a parachute.”

“That’s what I mean,” the screen said and somehow, maybe because whoever was talking was trying to hide it, I caught a note of great relief.

“Look,” the screen said, more rapidly now, “I don’t know how much you know, but we may have to work very fast. You aren’t going to be able to deliver the steel cubes to us directly. In fact you aren’t going to be able to land in Atlantic Highlands at all. We’re sieged in by planes and ground forces of Savannah Fortress. All our aircraft, such as haven’t been destroyed, are pinned down. You’re going to have to parachute the blocks to a point as near as possible to one of our ground parties that’s made a sortie. We’ll give you a signal. I hope it will be later⁠—nearer here, that is⁠—but it may be sooner. Do you know how to fight the plane you’re in? Operate its armament?”

“No,” I said, wetting my lip.

“Then that’s the first thing I’d best teach you. Anything you see in the haze from now on will be from Savannah. You must shoot it down.”

I am not going to try to describe point by point all that happened the next half hour because there was too much of it and it involved all three of us, sometimes doing different things at the same time, and although we were told a lot of things, we were seldom if ever told the why of them, and through it all was the constant impression that we were dealing with human beings (I almost left out the “human” and I’m still not absolutely sure whether I shouldn’t) of vastly greater scope⁠—and probably intelligence too⁠—than ourselves.

And that was just the basic confusion, to give it a name. After a while the situation got more difficult, as I’ll try to tell in due course.

To begin with, it was extremely weird to plunge from a rather leisurely confab about a fairytale fellowship of non-practicing murderers into a shooting war between a violet blob and a dark red puddle on a shadowy fluorescent map. The voice didn’t throw any great shining lights on this topic, because after the first⁠—and perhaps unguarded⁠—revelation, we learned little more of the war between Atla-Hi and Savannah Fortress and nothing of the reasons behind it. Presumably Savannah was the aggressor, reaching out north after the conquest of Birmingham, but even that was just a guess. It is hard to describe how shadowy it all felt to me; there were some minutes while my mind kept mixing up the whole thing with what I’d read long ago about the Civil War: Savannah was Lee, Atla-Hi was Grant, and we had been dropped spang into the middle of the second Battle of the Wilderness.

Apparently the Savannah planes had some sort of needle ray as part of their armament⁠—at any rate I was warned to watch out for “swinging lines in the haze, like straight strings of pink stars” and later told to aim at the sources of such lines. And naturally I guessed that the steel cubes must be some crucial weapon for Atla-Hi, or ammunition for a weapon, or parts for some essential instrument like a giant computer, but the voice ignored my questions on that point and didn’t fall into the couple of crude conversational traps I tried to set. We were to drop the cubes when told, that was all. Pop had the box of them closed again and rigged to the parachute⁠—he took over that job because Alice and me were busy with other things when the instructions on that came through⁠—and he was told how to open the door of the plane for the drop (you just held your hand steadily on a point beside the door), but, as I say, that was all.

Naturally it occurred to me that once we had made the drop, Atla-Hi would have no more use for us and might simply let us be destroyed by Savannah or otherwise⁠—perhaps want us to be destroyed⁠—so that it might be wisest for us to refuse to make the drop when the signal came and hang onto those myriad steel cubes as our only bargaining point. Still, I could see no advantage to refusing before the signal came. I’d have liked to discuss the point with Alice and maybe Pop too, but apparently everything we said, even whispered, could be overheard by Atla-Hi. (We never did determine, incidentally, whether Atla-Hi could see into the cabin of the plane also. I don’t believe they could, though they sure had it bugged for sound.)

All in all, we found out almost nothing about Atla-Hi. In fact, three witless germs traveling in a cabin in an iron filing wasn’t a bad description of us at all. As I often say of my deductive faculties⁠—think⁠—shmink! But Atla-Hi (always meaning, of course, the personality behind the voice from the screen) found out all it wanted about us⁠—and apparently knew a good deal to start with. For one thing, they must have been tracking our plane for some time, because they guessed it was on automatic and that we could reverse its course but nothing else. Though they seemed under the impression that we could reverse its course to Los Alamos, not the cracking plant. Here obviously I did get a nugget of new data, though it was just about the only one. For a moment the voice from the screen got real unguarded⁠—anxious as it asked, “Do you know if it is true that they have stopped dying at Los Alamos, or are they merely broadcasting that to cheer us up?”

I answered, “Oh yes, they’re all fine,” to that, but I couldn’t have made it very convincing, because the next thing I knew the voice was getting me to admit that we’d only boarded the plane somewhere in the Central Deathlands. I even had to describe the cracking plant and freeway and gas tanks⁠—I couldn’t think of a lie that mightn’t get us into as much trouble as the truth⁠—and the voice said, “Oh, did Grayl stay there?” and I said, “Yes,” and braced myself to do some more admitting, or some heavy lying, as the inspiration took me.

But the voice continued to skirt around the question of what exactly had happened to Grayl. I guess they knew well enough we’d bumped him off, but didn’t bring it up because they needed our cooperation⁠—they were handling us like children or savages, you see.

One pretty amazing point⁠—Atla-Hi apparently knew something about Pop’s fairytale fellowship of non-practicing murderers, because when he had to speak up, while he was getting instructions on preparing the stuff for the drop, the voice said, “Excuse me, but you sound like one of those M.A. boys.”

Murderers Anonymous, Pop had said some of their boys called their unorganized organization.

“Yep, I am,” Pop admitted uncomfortably.

“Well, a word of advice then, or perhaps I only mean gossip,” the screen said, for once getting on a side track. “Most of our people do not believe you are serious about it, although you may think that you are. Our skeptics (which includes all but a very few of us) split quite evenly between those who think that the M.A. spirit is a terminal psychotic illusion and those who believe it is an elaborate ruse in preparation for some concerted attack on cities by Deathlanders.”

“Can’t say that I blame the either of them,” was Pop’s only comment. “I think I’m nuts myself and a murderer forever.” Alice glared at him for that admission, but it seemed to do us no damage. Pop really did seem out of his depth though during this part of our adventure, more out of his depth than even Alice and me⁠—I mean, as if he could only really function in the Deathland with Deathlanders and wanted to get anything else over quickly.

I think one reason Pop was that way was that he was feeling very intensely something I was feeling myself: a sort of sadness and bewilderment that beings as smart as the voice from the screen sounded should still be fighting wars. Murder, as you must know by now, I can understand and sympathize with deeply, but war?⁠—no!

Oh, I can understand cultural queers fighting city squares and even get a kick out of it and whoop ’em on, but these Atla-Hi and Alamos folk seemed a different sort of cat altogether (though I’d only come to that point of view today)⁠—the kind of cat that ought to have outgrown war or thought its way around it. Maybe Savannah Fortress had simply forced the war on them and they had to defend themselves. I hadn’t contacted any Savannans⁠—they might be as blood-simple as the Porterites. Still, I don’t know that it’s always a good excuse that somebody else forced you into war. That sort of justification can keep on until the end of time. But who’s a germ to judge?

A minute later I was feeling doubly like a germ and a very lowly one, because the situation had just got more difficult and depressing too⁠—the thing had happened that I said I’d tell you about in due course.

The voice was just repeating its instructions to Pop on making the drop, when it broke off of a sudden and a second voice came in, a deep voice with a sort of European accent (not Chinese, oddly)⁠—not talking to us, I think, but to the first voice and overlooking or not caring that we could hear.

“Also tell them,” the second voice said, “that we will blow them out of the sky the instant they stop obeying us! If they should hesitate to make the drop or if they should put a finger on the button that reverses their course, then⁠—pouf! Such brutes understand only the language of force. Also warn them that the blocks are atomic grenades that will blow them out of the sky too if⁠—”

“Dr. Kovalsky, will you permit me to point out⁠—” the first voice interrupted, getting as close to expressing irritation as I imagine it ever allowed itself to do. Then both voices cut off abruptly and the screen was silent for ten seconds or so. I guess the first voice thought it wasn’t nice for us to overhear Atla-Hi bickering with itself, even if the second voice didn’t give a damn (any more than a farmer would mind the pigs overhearing him squabble with his hired man; of course this guy seemed to overlook that we were killer-pigs, but there wasn’t anything we could do in that line just now except get burned up).

When the screen came on again, it was just the first voice talking once more, but it had something to say that was probably the result of a rapid conference and compromise.

“Attention, everyone! I wish to inform you that the plane in which you are traveling can be exploded⁠—melted in the air, rather⁠—if we activate a certain control at this end. We will not do so, now or subsequently, if you make the drop when we give the signal and if you remain on your present course until then. Afterwards you will be at liberty to reverse your course and escape as best you may. Let me re-emphasize that when you told me you had taken over for Grayl I accepted that assertion in full faith and still so accept it. Is that all fully understood?”

We all told him “Yes,” though I don’t imagine we sounded very happy about it, even Pop. However I did get that funny feeling again that the voice was being really sincere⁠—an illusion, I supposed, but still a comforting one.

Now while all these things were going on, believe it or not, and while the plane continued to bullet through the orange haze⁠—which hadn’t shown any foreign objects in it so far, thank God, even vultures, let alone “straight strings of pink stars”⁠—I was receiving a cram course in gunnery! (Do you wonder I don’t try to tell this part of my story consecutively?)

It turned out that Alice had been brilliantly right about one thing: if you pushed some of the buttons simultaneously in patterns of five they unlocked and you could play on them like organ keys. Two sets of five keys, played properly, would rig out a sight just in front of the viewport and let you aim and fire the plane’s main gun in any forward direction. There was a rearward firing gun too, that you aimed by changing over the World Screen to a rear-view TV window, but we didn’t get around to mastering that one. In fact, in spite of my special talents it was all I could do to achieve a beginner’s control over the main gun, and I wouldn’t have managed even that except that Alice, from the thinking she’d been doing about patterns of five, was quick at understanding from the voice’s descriptions which buttons were meant. She couldn’t work them herself of course, what with her stump and burnt hand, but she could point them out for me.

After twenty minutes of drill I was a gunner of sorts, sprawled in the right-hand kneeling seat and intently scanning the onrushing orange haze which at last was beginning to change toward the bronze of evening. If something showed up in it I’d be able to make a stab at getting a shot in. Not that I knew what my gun fired⁠—the voice wasn’t giving away any unnecessary data.

Naturally I had asked why didn’t the voice teach me to fly the plane so that I could maneuver in case of attack, and naturally the voice had told me it was out of the question⁠—much too difficult and besides they wanted us on a known course so they could plan better for the drop and recovery. (I think maybe the voice would have given me some hints⁠—and maybe even told me more about the steel cubes too and how much danger we were in from them⁠—if it hadn’t been for the second voice, which presumably had issued from a being who was keeping watch to make sure among other things that the first voice didn’t get softhearted.)

So there I was being a front gunner. Actually a part of me was getting a big bang out of it⁠—from antique Banker’s Special to needle cannon (or whatever it was)⁠—but at the same time another part of me was disgusted with the idea of acting like I belonged to a live culture (even a smart, unqueer one) and working in a war (even just so as to get out of it fast), while a third part of me⁠—one that I normally keep down⁠—was very simply horrified.

Pop was back by the door with the box and ’chute, ready to make the drop.

Alice had no duties for the moment, but she’d suddenly started gathering up food cans and packing them in one bag⁠—I couldn’t figure out at first what she had in mind. Orderly housewife wouldn’t be exactly my description of her occupational personality.

Then of course everything had to happen at once.

The voice said, “Make the drop!”

Alice crossed to Pop and thrust out the bag of cans toward him, writhing her lips in silent “talk” to tell him something. She had a knife in her burnt hand too.

But I didn’t have time to do any lipreading, because just then a glittering pink asterisk showed up in the darkening haze ahead⁠—a whole half dozen straight lines spreading out from a blank central spot, as if a super-fast gigantic spider had laid in the first strands of its web.

Wind whistled as the door of the plane started to open.

I fought to center my sight on the blank central spot, which drifted toward the left.

One of the straight lines grew dazzlingly bright.

I heard Alice whisper fiercely, “Drop these!” and the part of my mind that couldn’t be applied to gunnery instantly deduced that she’d had some last-minute inspiration about dropping a bunch of cans instead of the steel cubes.

I got the sight centered and held down the firing combo. The thought flashed to me: it’s a city you’re firing at, not a plane, and I flinched.

The dazzlingly pink line dipped down toward me.

Behind me, the sound of a struggle. Alice snarling and Pop giving a grunt.

Then all at once a scream from Alice, a big whoosh of wind, a flash way ahead (where I’d aimed), a spatter of hot metal inside the cabin, a blinding spot in the middle of the World Screen, a searing beam inches from my neck, an electric shock that lifted me from my seat and ripped at my consciousness!

When I came to (if I really ever was out⁠—seconds later, at most) there were no more pink lines. The haze was just its disgustingly tawny evening self with black spots that were only afterimages. The cabin stunk of ozone, but wind funneling through a hole in the onetime World Screen was blowing it out fast enough⁠—Savannah had gotten in one lick, all right. And we were falling, the plane was swinging down like a crippled bird⁠—I could feel it and there was no use kidding myself.

But staring at the control panel wouldn’t keep us from crashing if that was in the cards. I looked around and there were Pop and Alice glaring at each other across the closing door. He looked mean. She looked agonized and was pressing her burnt hand into her side with her elbow as if he’d stamped on the hand, maybe. I didn’t see any blood though. I didn’t see the box and ’chute either, though I did see Alice’s bag of groceries. I guessed Pop had made the drop.

Now, it occurred to me, was a bully time for Voice Two to melt the plane⁠—if he hadn’t already tried. My first thought had been that the spatter of hot metal had come from the Savannah craft spitting us, but there was no way to be sure.

I looked around at the viewport in time to see rocks and stunted trees jump out of the haze. Good old Ray, I thought, always in at the death. But just then the plane took a sickening bounce, as if its antigravity had only started to operate within yards of the ground. Another lurching fall and another bounce, less violent. A couple of repetitions of that, each one a little gentler, and then we were sort of bumping along on an even keel with the rocks and such sliding past fast about a hundred feet below, I judged. We’d been spoiled for altitude work, it seemed, but we could still cripple along in some sort of low-power repulsion field.

I looked at the North America screen and the buttons, wondering if I should start us back west again or leave us set on Atla-Hi and see what the hell happened⁠—at the moment I hardly cared what else Savannah did to us. I needn’t have wasted the mental energy. The decision was made for me. As I watched, the Atla-Hi button jumped up by itself and the button for the cracking plant went down and there was some extra bumping as we swung around.

Also, the violet patch of Atla-Hi went real dim and the button for it no longer had a violet nimbus. The Los Alamos blue went dull too. The cracking-plant dot glowed a brighter green⁠—that was all.

All except for one thing. As the violet dimmed I thought I heard Voice One very faintly (not as if speaking directly but as if the screen had heard and remembered⁠—not a voice but the fluorescent ghost of one): “Thank you and good luck!”

“And a long merry siege to you, sir, and roast rat for Christmas!” I responded, very out loud and rather to my surprise.

“War! How I hate war!”⁠—that was what Pop exploded with. He didn’t exactly dance in senile rage⁠—he was still keeping too sharp a watch on Alice⁠—but his voice sounded that way.

“Damn you, Pop!” Alice contributed. “And you too, Ray! We might have pulled something, but you had to go obedience-happy.” Then her anger got the better of her grammar, or maybe Pop and me was corrupting it. “Damn the both of you!” she finished.

It didn’t make much sense, any of it. We were just cutting loose, I guess, after being scared to say anything for the last half hour.

I said to Alice, “I don’t know what you could have pulled, except the chain on us.” To Pop I remarked, “You may hate war, but you sure helped that one along. Those grenades you dropped will probably take care of a few hundred Savannans.”

“That’s what you always say about me, isn’t it?” he snapped back. “But I don’t suppose I should expect any kinder interpretation of my motives.” To Alice he said, “I’m sorry I had to slap your burnt fingers, sister, but you can’t say I didn’t warn you about my low-down tactics.” Then to me again: “I do hate war, Ray. It’s just murder on a bigger scale, though some of the boys give me an argument there.”

“Then why don’t you go preach against war in Atla-Hi and Savannah?” Alice demanded, still very hot but not quite so bitter.

“Yeah, Pop, how about it?” I seconded.

“Maybe I should,” he said, thoughtful all at once. “They sure need it.” Then he grinned. “Hey, how’d this sound: Hear the world-famous murderer Pop Trumbull talk against war. Wear your steel throat protectors. Pretty good, hey?”

We all laughed at that, grudgingly at first, then with a touch of wholeheartedness. I think we all recognized that things weren’t going to be very cheerful from here on in and we’d better not turn up our noses at the feeblest fun.

“I guess I didn’t have anything very bright in mind,” Alice admitted to me, while to Pop she said, “All right, I forgive you for the present.”

“Don’t!” Pop said with a shudder. “I hate to think of what happened to the last bugger made the mistake of forgiving me.”

We looked around and took stock of our resources. It was time we did. It was getting dark fast, although we were chasing the sun, and there weren’t any cabin lights coming on and we sure didn’t know of any way of getting any.

We wadded a couple of satchels into the hole in the World Screen without trying to probe it. After a while it got warmer again in the cabin and the air a little less dusty. Presently it started to get too smoky from the cigarettes we were burning, but that came later.

We screwed off the walls the few storage bags we hadn’t inspected. They didn’t contain nothing of consequence, not even a flashlight.

I had one last go at the buttons, though there weren’t any left with nimbuses on them⁠—the darker it got, the clearer that was. Even the Atla-Hi button wouldn’t push now that it had lost its violet halo. I tried the gunnery patterns, figuring to put in a little time taking pot shots at any mountains that turned up, but the buttons that had been responding so well a few minutes ago refused to budge. Alice suggested different patterns, but none of them worked. That console was really locked⁠—maybe the shot from Savannah was partly responsible, though Atla-Hi remote-locking things was explanation enough.

“The buggers!” I said. “They didn’t have to tie us up this tight. Going east we at least had a choice⁠—forward or back. Now we got none.”

“Maybe we’re just as well off,” Pop said. “If Atla-Hi had been able to do anything more for us⁠—that is, if they hadn’t been sieged in, I mean⁠—they’d sure as anything have pulled us in. Pull the plane in, I mean, and picked us out of it⁠—with a big pair of tweezers, likely as not. And contrary to your flattering opinion of my preaching (which by the way none of the religious boys in my outfit share⁠—they call me ‘that misguided old atheist’), I don’t think none of us would go over big at Atla-Hi.”

We had to agree with him there. I couldn’t imagine Pop or Alice or even me cutting much of a figure (even if we weren’t murder-pariahs) with the pack of geniuses that seemed to make up the Atla-Alamos crowd. The Double-A Republics, to give them a name, might have their small-brain types, but somehow I didn’t think so. There must be more than one Edison-Einstein, it seemed to me, back of antigravity and all the wonders in this plane and the other things we’d gotten hints of. Also, Grayl had seemed bred for brains as well as size, even if us small mammals had cooked his goose. And none of the modern “countries” had more than a few thousand population yet, I was pretty sure, and that hardly left room for a dumbbell class. Finally, too, I got hold of a memory I’d been reaching for the last hour⁠—how when I was a kid I’d read about some scientists who learned to talk Mandarin just for kicks. I told Alice and Pop.

“And if that’s the average Atla-Alamoser’s idea of mental recreation,” I said, “well, you can see what I mean.”

“I’ll grant you they got a monopoly of brains,” Pop agreed. “Not sense, though,” he added doggedly.

“Intellectual snobs,” was Alice’s comment. “I know the type and I detest it.” (“You are sort of intellectual, aren’t you?” Pop told her, which fortunately didn’t start a riot.)

Still, I guess all three of us found it fun to chew over a bit the new slant we’d gotten on two (in a way, three) of the great “countries” of the modern world. (And as long as we thought of it as fun, we didn’t have to admit the envy and wistfulness that was behind our wisecracks.)

I said, “We’ve always figured in a general way that Alamos was the remains of a community of scientists and technicians. Now we know the same’s true of the Atla-Hi group. They’re the Brookhaven survivors.”

“Manhattan Project, don’t you mean?” Alice corrected.

“Nope, that was in Colorado Springs,” Pop said with finality.

I also pointed out that a community of scientists would educate for technical intelligence, maybe breed for it too. And being a group picked for high I.Q. to begin with, they might make startlingly fast progress. You could easily imagine such folk, unimpeded by the boobs, creating a wonder world in a couple of generations.

“They got their troubles though,” Pop reminded me and that led us to speculating about the war we’d dipped into. Savannah Fortress, we knew, was supposed to be based on some big atomic plants on the river down that way, but its culture seemed to have a fiercer ingredient than Atla-Alamos. Before we knew it we were, musing almost romantically about the plight of Atla-Hi, besieged by superior and (it was easy to suppose) barbaric forces, and maybe distant Los Alamos in a similar predicament⁠—Alice reminded me how the voice had asked if they were still dying out there. For a moment I found myself fiercely proud that I had been able to strike a blow against evil aggressors. At once, of course, then, the revulsion came.

“This is a hell of a way,” I said, “for three so-called realists to be mooning about things.”

“Yes, especially when your heroes kicked us out,” Alice agreed.

Pop chuckled. “Yep,” he said, “they even took Ray’s artillery away from him.”

“You’re wrong there, Pop,” I said, sitting up. “I still got one of the grenades⁠—the one the pilot had in his fist.” To tell the truth I’d forgotten all about it and it bothered me a little now to feel it snugged up in my pocket against my hip bone where the skin is thin.

“You believe what that old Dutchman said about the steel cubes being atomic grenades?” Pop asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said, “He sure didn’t sound enthusiastic about telling us the truth about anything. But for that matter he sounded mean enough to tell the truth figuring we’d think it was a lie. Maybe this is some sort of baby A-bomb with a fuse timed like a grenade.” I got it out and hefted it. “How about I press the button and drop it out the door? Then we’ll know.” I really felt like doing it⁠—restless, I guess.

“Don’t be a fool, Ray,” Alice said.

“Don’t tense up, I won’t,” I told her. At the same time I made myself the little promise that if I ever got to feeling restless, that is, restless and bad, I’d just go ahead and punch the button and see what happened⁠—sort of leave my future up to the gods of the Deathlands, you might say.

“What makes you so sure it’s a weapon?” Pop asked.

“What else would it be,” I asked him, “that they’d be so hot on getting them in the middle of a war?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Pop said. “I’ve made a guess, but I don’t want to tell it now. What I’m getting at, Ray, is that your first thought about anything you find⁠—in the world outside or in your own mind⁠—is that it’s a weapon.”

“Anything worthwhile in your mind is a weapon!” Alice interjected with surprising intensity.

“You see?” Pop said. “That’s what I mean about the both of you. That sort of thinking’s been going on a long time. Cave man picks up a rock and right away asks himself, ‘Who can I brain with this?’ Doesn’t occur to him for several hundred thousand years to use it to start building a hospital.”

“You know, Pop,” I said, carefully tucking the cube back in my pocket, “you are sort of preachy at times.”

“Guess I am,” he said. “How about some grub?”

It was a good idea. Another few minutes and we wouldn’t have been able to see to eat, though with the cans shaped to tell their contents I guess we’d have managed. It was a funny circumstance that in this wonder plane we didn’t even know how to turn on the light⁠—and a good measure of our general helplessness.

We had our little feed and lit up again and settled ourselves. I judged it would be an overnight trip, at least to the cracking plant⁠—we weren’t making anything like the speed we had been going east. Pop was sitting in back again and Alice and I lay half hitched around on the kneeling seats, which allowed us to watch each other. Pretty soon it got so dark we couldn’t see anything of each other but the glowing tips of the cigarettes and a bit of face around the mouth when the person took a deep drag. They were a good idea, those cigarettes⁠—kept us from having ideas about the other person starting to creep around with a knife in his hand.

The North America screen still glowed dimly and we could watch our green dot trying to make progress. The viewport was dead black at first, then there came the faintest sort of bronze blotch that very slowly shifted forward and down. The Old Moon, of course, going west ahead of us.

After a while I realized what it was like⁠—an old Pullman car (I’d traveled in one once as a kid) or especially the smoker of an old Pullman, very late at night. Our crippled antigravity, working on the irregularities of the ground as they came along below, made the ride rhythmically bumpy, you see. I remembered how lonely and strange that old sleeping car had seemed to me as a kid. This felt the same. I kept waiting for a hoot or a whistle. It was the sort of loneliness that settles in your bones and keeps working at you.

“I recall the first man I ever killed⁠—” Pop started to reminisce softly.

“Shut up!” Alice told him. “Don’t you ever talk about anything but murder, Pop?”

“Guess not,” he said. “After all, it’s the only really interesting topic there is. Do you know of another?”

It was silent in the cabin for a long time after that. Then Alice said, “It was the afternoon before my twelfth birthday when they came into the kitchen and killed my father. He’d been wise, in a way, and had us living at a spot where the bombs didn’t touch us or the worst fallout. But he hadn’t counted on the local werewolf gang. He’d just been slicing some bread⁠—homemade from our own wheat (Dad was great on back to nature and all)⁠—but he laid down the knife.

“Dad couldn’t see any object or idea as a weapon, you see⁠—that was his great weakness. Dad couldn’t even see weapons as weapons. Dad had a philosophy of cooperation, that was his name for it, that he was going to explain to people. Sometimes I think he was glad of the Last War, because he believed it would give him his chance.

“But the werewolves weren’t interested in philosophy and although their knives weren’t as sharp as Dad’s they didn’t lay them down. Afterwards they had themselves a meal, with me for dessert. I remember one of them used a slice of bread to sop up blood like gravy. And another washed his hands and face in the cold coffee⁠ ⁠…”

She didn’t say anything else for a bit. Pop said softly, “That was the afternoon, wasn’t it, that the fallen angels⁠ ⁠…” and then just said, “My big mouth.”

“You were going to say ‘the afternoon they killed God?’ ” Alice asked him. “You’re right, it was. They killed God in the kitchen that afternoon. That’s how I know he’s dead. Afterwards they would have killed me too, eventually, except⁠—”

Again she broke off, this time to say, “Pop, do you suppose I can have been thinking about myself as the Daughter of God all these years? That that’s why everything seems so intense?”

“I don’t know,” Pop said. “The religious boys say we’re all children of God. I don’t put much stock in it⁠—or else God sure has some lousy children. Go on with your story.”

“Well, they would have killed me too, except the leader took a fancy to me and got the idea of training me up for a Weregirl or She-wolf Deb or whatever they called it.”

“That was my first experience of ideas as weapons. He got an idea about me and I used it to kill him. I had to wait three months for my opportunity. I got him so lazy he let me shave him. He bled to death the same way as Dad.”

“Hum,” Pop commented after a bit, “that was a chiller, all right. I got to remember to tell it to Bill⁠—it was somebody killing his mother that got him started. Alice, you had about as good a justification for your first murder as any I remember hearing.”

“Yet,” Alice said after another pause, with just a trace of the old sarcasm creeping back into her voice, “I don’t suppose you think I was right to do it?”

“Right? Wrong? Who knows?” Pop said almost blusteringly. “Sure you were justified in a whole pack of ways. Anybody’d sympathize with you. A man often has fine justification for the first murder he commits. But as you must know, it’s not that the first murder’s always so bad in itself as that it’s apt to start you on a killing spree. Your sense of values gets shifted a tiny bit and never shifts back. But you know all that and who am I to tell you anything, anyway? I’ve killed men because I didn’t like the way they spit. And may very well do it again if I don’t keep watching myself and my mind ventilated.”

“Well, Pop,” Alice said, “I didn’t always have such dandy justification for my killings. Last one was a moony old physicist⁠—he fixed me the Geiger counter I carry. A silly old geek⁠—I don’t know how he survived so long. Maybe an exile or a runaway. You know, I often attach myself to the elderly do-gooder type like my father was. Or like you, Pop.”

Pop nodded. “It’s good to know yourself,” he said.

There was a third pause and then, although I hadn’t exactly been intending to, I said, “Alice had justification for her first murder, personal justification that an ape would understand. I had no personal justification at all for mine, yet I killed about a million people at a modest estimate. You see, I was the boss of the crew that took care of the hydrogen missile ticketed for Moscow, and when the ticket was finally taken up I was the one to punch it. My finger on the firing button, I mean.”

I went on, “Yeah, Pop, I was one of the button-pushers. There were really quite a few of us, of course⁠—that’s why I get such a laugh out of stories about being or rubbing out the one guy who pushed all the buttons.”

“That so?” Pop said with only mild-sounding interest. “In that case you ought to know⁠—”

We didn’t get to hear right then who I ought to know because I had a fit of coughing and we realized the cigarette smoke was getting just too thick. Pop fixed the door so it was open a crack and after a while the atmosphere got reasonably okay though we had to put up with a low lonely whistling sound.

“Yeah,” I continued, “I was the boss of the missile crew and I wore a very handsome uniform with impressive insignia⁠—not the bully old stripes I got on my chest now⁠—and I was very young and handsome myself. We were all very young in that line of service, though a few of the men under me were a little older. Young and dedicated. I remember feeling a very deep and grim⁠—and clean⁠—responsibility. But I wonder sometimes just how deep it went or how clean it really was.

“I had an uncle flew in the war they fought to lick fascism, bombardier on a Flying Fortress or something, and once when he got drunk he told me how some days it didn’t bother him at all to drop the eggs on Germany; the buildings and people down there seemed just like toys that a kid sets up to kick over, and the whole business about as naive fun as poking an anthill.

“I didn’t even have to fly over at seven miles what I was going to be aiming at. Only I remember sometimes getting out a map and looking at a certain large dot on it and smiling a little and softly saying, ‘Pow!’⁠—and then giving a little conventional shudder and folding up the map quick.

“Naturally we told ourselves we’d never have to do it, fire the thing, I mean, we joked about how after twenty years or so we’d all be given jobs as museum attendants of this same bomb, deactivated at last. But naturally it didn’t work out that way. There came the day when our side of the world got hit and the orders started cascading down from Defense Coordinator Bigelow⁠—”

“Bigelow?” Pop interrupted. “Not Joe Bigelow?”

“Joseph A., I believe,” I told him, a little annoyed.

“Why he’s my boy then, the one I was telling you about⁠—the skinny runt had this horn-handle! Can you beat that?” Pop sounded startlingly happy. “Him and you’ll have a lot to talk about when you get together.”

I wasn’t so sure of that myself, in fact my first reaction was that the opposite would be true. To be honest I was for the first moment more than a little annoyed at Pop interrupting my story of my Big Grief⁠—for it was that to me, make no mistake. Here my story had finally been teased out of me, against all expectation, after decades of repression and in spite of dozens of assorted psychological blocks⁠—and here was Pop interrupting it for the sake of a lot of trivial organizational gossip about Joes and Bills and Georges we’d never heard of and what they’d say or think!

But then all of a sudden I realized that I didn’t really care, that it didn’t feel like a Big Grief any more, that just starting to tell about it after hearing Pop and Alice tell their stories had purged it of that unnecessary weight of feeling that had made it a millstone around my neck. It seemed to me now that I could look down at Ray Baker from a considerable height (but not an angelic or contemptuously superior height) and ask myself not why he had grieved so much⁠—that was understandable and even desirable⁠—but why he had grieved so uselessly in such a stuffy little private hell.

And it would be interesting to find out how Joseph A. Bigelow had felt.

“How does it feel, Ray, to kill a million people?”

I realized that Alice had asked me the question several seconds back and it was hanging in the air.

“That’s just what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I told her and started to explain it all over again⁠—the words poured out of me now. I won’t put them down here⁠—it would take too long⁠—but they were honest words as far as I knew and they eased me.

I couldn’t get over it: here were us three murderers feeling a trust and understanding and sharing a communion that I wouldn’t have believed possible between any two or three people in the Age of the Deaders⁠—or in any age, to tell the truth. It was against everything I knew of Deathland psychology, but it was happening just the same. Oh, our strange isolation had something to do with it, I knew, and that Pullman-car memory hypnotizing my mind, and our reactions to the voices and violence of Atla-Alamos, but in spite of all that I ranked it as a wonder. I felt an inward freedom and easiness that I never would have believed possible. Pop’s little disorganized organization had really got hold of something, I couldn’t deny it.

Three treacherous killers talking from the bottoms of their hearts and believing each other!⁠—for it never occurred to me to doubt that Pop and Alice were feeling exactly like I was. In fact, we were all so sure of it that we didn’t even mention our communion to each other. Perhaps we were a little afraid we would rub off the bloom. We just enjoyed it.

We must have talked about a thousand things that night and smoked a couple of hundred cigarettes. After a while we started taking little catnaps⁠—we’d gotten too much off our chests and come to feel too tranquil for even our excitement to keep us awake. I remember the first time I dozed waking up with a cold start and grabbing for Mother⁠—and then hearing Pop and Alice gabbing in the dark, and remembering what had happened, and relaxing again with a smile.

Of all things, Pop was saying, “Yep, I imagine Ray must be good to make love to, murderers almost always are, they got the fire. It reminds me of what a guy named Fred told me, one of our boys⁠ ⁠…”

Mostly we took turns going to sleep, though I think there were times when all three of us were snoozing. About the fifth time I woke up, after some tighter shuteye, the orange soup was back again outside and Alice was snoring gently in the next seat and Pop was up and had one of his knives out.

He was looking at his reflection in the viewport. His face gleamed. He was rubbing butter into it.

“Another day, another pack of troubles,” he said cheerfully.

The tone of his remark jangled my nerves, as that tone generally does early in the morning. I squeezed my eyes. “Where are we?” I asked.

He poked his elbow toward the North America screen. The two green dots were almost one.

“My God, we’re practically there,” Alice said for me. She’d waked fast, Deathlands style.

“I know,” Pop said, concentrating on what he was doing, “but I aim to be shaved before they commence landing maneuvers.”

“You think automatic will land us?” Alice asked. “What if we just start circling around?”

“We can figure out what to do when it happens,” Pop said, whittling away at his chin. “Until then, I’m not interested. There’s still a couple of bottles of coffee in the sack. I’ve had mine.”

I didn’t join in this chitchat because the green dots and Alice’s first remark had reminded me of a lot deeper reason for my jangled nerves than Pop’s cheerfulness. Night was gone, with its shielding cloak and its feeling of being able to talk forever, and the naked day was here, with its demands for action. It is not so difficult to change your whole view of life when you are flying, or even bumping along above the ground with friends who understand, but soon, I knew, I’d be down in the dust with something I never wanted to see again.

“Coffee, Ray?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I took the bottle from Alice and wondered whether my face looked as glum as hers.

“They shouldn’t salt butter,” Pop asserted. “It makes it lousy for shaving.”

“It was the best butter,” Alice said.

“Yeah,” I said. “The Dormouse, when they buttered the watch.”

It may be true that feeble humor is better than none. I don’t know.

“What are you two yakking about?” Pop demanded.

“A book we both read,” I told him.

“Either of you writers?” Pop asked with sudden interest. “Some of the boys think we should have a book about us. I say it’s too soon, but they say we might all die off or something. Whoa, Jenny! Easy does it. Gently, please!”

That last remark was by way of recognizing that the plane had started an authoritative turn to the left. I got a sick and cold feeling. This was it.

Pop sheathed his knife and gave his face a final rub. Alice belted on her satchel. I reached for my knapsack, but I was staring through the viewport, dead ahead.

The haze lightened faintly, three times. I remembered the St. Elmo’s fire that had flamed from the cracking plant.

“Pop,” I said⁠—almost whined, to be truthful, “why’d the bugger ever have to land here in the first place? He was rushing stuff they needed bad at Atla-Hi⁠—why’d he have to break his trip?”

“That’s easy,” Pop said. “He was being a bad boy. At least that’s my theory. He was supposed to go straight to Atla-Hi, but there was somebody he wanted to check up on first. He stopped here to see his girlfriend. Yep, his girlfriend. She tried to warn him off⁠—that’s my explanation of the juice that flared out of the cracking plant and interfered with his landing, though I’m sure she didn’t intend the last. By the way, whatever she turned on to give him the warning must still be turned on. But Grayl came on down in spite of it.”

Before I could assimilate that, the seven deformed gas tanks materialized in the haze. We got the freeway in our sights and steadied and slowed and kept slowing. The plane didn’t graze the cracking plant this time, though I’d have sworn it was going to hit it head on. When I saw we weren’t going to hit it, I wanted to shut my eyes, but I couldn’t.

The stain was black now and the Pilot’s body was thicker than I remembered⁠—bloated. But that wouldn’t last long. Three or four vultures were working on it.

Pop was first down. Between us we helped Alice. Before joining them I took a last look at the control panel. The cracking plant button was up again and there was a blue nimbus on another button. For Los Alamos, I supposed. I was tempted to push it and get away solo, but then I thought, nope, there’s nothing for me at the other end and the loneliness will be worse than what I got to face here. I climbed out.

I didn’t look at the body, although we were practically on top of it. I saw a little patch of silver off to one side and remembered the gun that had melted. The vultures had waddled off but only a few yards.

“We could kill them,” Alice said to Pop.

“Why?” he responded. “Didn’t some Hindus use them to take care of dead bodies? Not a bad idea, either.”

“Parsees,” Alice amplified.

“Yep, Parsees, that’s what I meant. Give you a nice clean skeleton in a matter of days.”

Pop was leading us past the body toward the cracking plant. I heard the flies buzzing loudly. I felt terrible. I wanted to be dead myself. Just walking along after Pop was an awful effort.

“His girl was running a hidden observation tower here,” Pop was saying now. “Weather and all that, I suppose. Or maybe setting up a robot station of some kind. I couldn’t tell you about her before, because you were both in a mood to try to rub out anybody remotely connected with the Pilot. In fact, I did my best to lead you astray, letting you think I’d been the one to scream and all. Even now, to be honest about it, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing telling and showing you all this, but a man’s got to take some risks whatever he does.”

“Say, Pop,” I said dully, “isn’t she apt to take a shot at us or something?” Not that I’d have minded on my own account. “Or are you and her that good friends?”

“Nope, Ray,” he said, “she doesn’t even know me. But I don’t think she’s in a position to do any shooting. You’ll see why. Hey, she hasn’t even shut the door. That’s bad.”

He seemed to be referring to a kind of manhole cover standing on its edge just inside the open-walled first story of the cracking plant. He knelt and looked down the hole the cover was designed to close off.

“Well, at least she didn’t collapse at the bottom of the shaft,” he said. “Come on, let’s see what happened.” And he climbed into the shaft.

We followed him like zombies. At least that’s how I felt. The shaft was about twenty feet deep. There were foot- and handholds. It got stuffy right away, and warmer, in spite of the shaft being open at the top.

At the bottom there was a short horizontal passage. We had to duck to get through it. When we could straighten up we were in a large and luxurious bomb-resistant dugout, to give it a name. And it was stuffier and hotter than ever.

There was a lot of scientific equipment around and several small control panels reminding me of the one in the back of the plane. Some of them, I supposed, connected with instruments, weather and otherwise, hidden up in the skeletal structure of the cracking plant. And there were signs of occupancy, a young woman’s occupancy⁠—clothes scattered around in a frivolous way, and some small objects of art, and a slightly more than life-size head in clay that I guessed the occupant must have been sculpting. I didn’t give that last more than the most fleeting look, strictly unintentional to begin with, because although it wasn’t finished I could tell whose head it was supposed to be⁠—the Pilot’s.

The whole place was finished in dull silver like the cabin of the plane, and likewise it instantly struck me as having a living personality, partly the Pilot’s and partly someone else’s⁠—the personality of a marriage. Which wasn’t a bit nice, because the whole place smelt of death.

But to tell the truth I didn’t give the place more than the quickest look-over, because my attention was rivetted almost at once on a long wide couch with the covers kicked off it and on the body there.

The woman was about six feet tall and built like a goddess. Her hair was blonde and her skin tanned. She was lying on her stomach and she was naked.

She didn’t come anywhere near my libido, though. She looked sick to death. Her face, twisted towards us, was hollow-cheeked and flushed. Her eyes, closed, were sunken and dark-circled. She was breathing shallowly and rapidly through her open mouth, gasping now and then.

I got the crazy impression that all the heat in the place was coming from her body, radiating from her fever.

And the whole place stunk of death. Honestly it seemed to me that this dugout was Death’s underground temple, the bed Death’s altar, and the woman Death’s sacrifice. (Had I unconsciously come to worship Death as a god in the Deathlands? I don’t really know. There it gets too deep for me.)

No, she didn’t come within a million miles of my libido, but there was another part of me that she was eating at⁠ ⁠…

If guilt’s a luxury, then I’m a plutocrat.

… eating at until I was an empty shell, until I had no props left, until I wanted to die then and there, until I figured I had to die⁠ ⁠…

There was a faint sharp hiss right at my elbow. I looked and found that, unbeknownst to myself, I’d taken the steel cube out of my pocket and holding it snuggled between my first and second fingers I’d punched the button with my thumb just as I’d promised myself I would if I got to really feeling bad.

It goes to show you that you should never give your mind any kind of instructions even half in fun, unless you’re prepared to have them carried out whether you approve later or not.

Pop saw what I’d done and looked at me strangely. “So you had to die after all, Ray,” he said softly. “Most of us find out we have to, one way or another.”

We waited. Nothing happened. I noticed a very faint milky cloud a few inches across hanging in the air by the cube.

Thinking right away of poison gas, I jerked away a little, dispersing the cloud.

“What’s that?” I demanded of no one in particular.

“I’d say,” said Pop, “that that’s something that squirted out of a tiny hole in the side of the cube opposite the button. A hole so nearly microscopic you wouldn’t see it unless you looked for it hard. Ray, I don’t think you’re going to get your baby A-blast, and what’s more I’m afraid you’ve wasted something that’s damn valuable. But don’t let it worry you. Before I dropped those cubes for Atla-Hi I snagged one.”

And darn if he didn’t pull the brother of my cube out of his pocket.

“Alice,” he said, “I noticed a half pint of whiskey in your satchel when we got the salve. Would you put some on a rag and hand it to me.”

Alice looked at him like he was nuts, but while her eyes were looking her pliers and her gloved hand were doing what he told her.

Pop took the rag and swabbed a spot on the sick woman’s nearest buttock and jammed the cube against the spot and pushed the button.

“It’s a jet hypodermic, folks,” he said.

He took the cube away and there was the welt to substantiate his statement.

“Hope we got to her in time,” he said. “The plague is tough. Now I guess there’s nothing for us to do but wait, maybe for quite a while.”

I felt shaken beyond all recognition.

“Pop, you old caveman detective!” I burst out. “When did you get that idea for a steel hospital?” Don’t think I was feeling anywhere near that gay. It was reaction, close to hysterical.

Pop was taken aback, but then he grinned. “I had a couple of clues that you and Alice didn’t,” he said. “I knew there was a very sick woman involved. And I had that bout with Los Alamos fever I told you. They’ve had a lot of trouble with it, I believe⁠—some say its spores come from outside the world with the cosmic dust⁠—and now it seems to have been carried to Atla-Hi. Let’s hope they’ve found the answer this time. Alice, maybe we’d better start getting some water into this gal.”

After a while we sat down and fitted the facts together more orderly. Pop did the fitting mostly. Alamos researchers must have been working for years on the plague as it ravaged intermittently, maybe with mutations and E.T. tricks to make the job harder. Very recently they’d found a promising treatment (cure, we hoped) and prepared it for rush shipment to Atla-Hi, where the plague was raging too and they were sieged in by Savannah as well. Grayl was picked to fly the serum, or drug or whatever it was. But he knew or guessed that this lone woman observer (because she’d fallen out of radio communication or something) had come down with the plague too and he decided to land some serum for her, probably without authorization.

“How do we know she’s his girlfriend?” I asked.

“Or wife,” Pop said tolerantly. “Why, there was that bag of woman’s stuff he was carrying, frilly things like a man would bring for a woman. Who else’d he be apt to make a special stop for?

“Another thing,” Pop said. “He must have been using jets to hurry his trip. We heard them, you know.”

That seemed about as close a reconstruction of events as we could get. Strictly hypothetical, of course. Deathlanders trying to figure out what goes on inside a “country” like Atla-Alamos and why are sort of like foxes trying to understand world politics, or wolves the Gothic migrations. Of course we’re all human beings, but that doesn’t mean as much as it sounds.

Then Pop told us how he’d happened to be on the scene. He’d been doing a “tour of duty,” as he called it, when he spotted this woman’s observatory and decided to hang around anonymously and watch over her for a few days and maybe help protect her from some dangerous characters that he knew were in the neighborhood.

“Pop, that sounds like a lousy idea to me,” I objected. “Risky, I mean. Spying on another person, watching them without their knowing, would be the surest way to stir up in me the idea of murdering them. Safest thing for me to do in that situation would be to turn around and run.”

“You probably should,” he agreed. “For now, anyway. It’s all a matter of knowing your own strength and stage of growth. Me, it helps to give myself these little jobs. And the essence of ’em is that the other person shouldn’t know I’m helping.”

It sounded like knighthood and pilgrimage and the Boy Scouts all over again⁠—for murderers. Well, why not?

Pop had seen this woman come out of the manhole a couple of times and look around and then go back down and he’d got the impression she was sick and troubled. He’d even guessed she might be coming down with Alamos fever. He’d seen us arrive, of course, and that had bothered him. Then when the plane landed she’d come up again, acting out of her head, but when she’d seen the Pilot and us going for him she’d given that scream and collapsed at the top of the shaft. He’d figured the only thing he could do for her was keep us occupied. Besides, now that he knew for sure we were murderers he’d started to burn with the desire to talk to us and maybe help us quit killing if we seemed to want to. It was only much later, in the middle of our trip, that he began to suspect that the steel cubes were jet hypodermics.

While Pop had been telling us all this, we hadn’t been watching the woman so closely. Now Alice called our attention to her. Her skin was covered with fine beads of perspiration, like diamonds.

“That’s a good sign,” Pop said and Alice started to wipe her off. While she was doing that the woman came to in a groggy sort of way and Pop fed her some thin soup and in the middle of his doing it she dropped off to sleep.

Alice said, “Any other time I would be wild to kill another woman that beautiful. But she has been so close to death that I would feel I was robbing another murderer. I suppose there is more behind the change in my feelings than that, though.”

“Yeah, a little, I suppose,” Pop said.

I didn’t have anything to say about my own feelings. Certainly not out loud. I knew that they had changed and that they were still changing. It was complicated.

After a while it occurred to me and Alice to worry whether we mightn’t catch this woman’s sickness. It would serve us right, of course, but plague is plague. But Pop reassured us. “Actually I snagged three cubes,” he said. “That should take care of you two. I figure I’m immune.”

Time wore on. Pop dragged out the harmonica, as I’d been afraid he would, but his playing wasn’t too bad. “Tenting Tonight,” “When Johnnie Comes Marching Home,” and such. We had a meal.

The Pilot’s woman woke up again, in her full mind this time or something like it. We were clustered around the bed, smiling a little I suppose and looking inquiring. Being even assistant nurses makes you all concerned about the patient’s health and state of mind.

Pop helped her sit up a little. She looked around. She saw me and Alice. Recognition came into her eyes. She drew away from us with a look of loathing. She didn’t say a word, but the look stayed.

Pop drew me aside and whispered, “I think it would be a nice gesture if you and Alice took a blanket and went up and sewed him into it. I noticed a big needle and some thread in her satchel.” He looked me in the eye and added, “You can’t expect this woman to feel any other way toward you, you know. Now or ever.”

He was right of course. I gave Alice the high sign and we got out.

No point in dwelling on the next scene. Alice and me sewed up in a blanket a big guy who’d been dead a day and worked over by vultures. That’s all.

About the time we’d finished, Pop came up.

“She chased me out,” he explained. “She’s getting dressed. When I told her about the plane, she said she was going back to Los Alamos. She’s not fit to travel, of course, but she’s giving herself injections. It’s none of our business. Incidentally, she wants to take the body back with her. I told her how we’d dropped the serum and how you and Alice had helped and she listened.”

The Pilot’s woman wasn’t long after Pop. She must have had trouble getting up the shaft, she had a little trouble even walking straight, but she held her head high. She was wearing a dull silver tunic and sandals and cloak. As she passed me and Alice I could see the look of loathing come back into her eyes, and her chin went a little higher. I thought, why shouldn’t she want us dead? Right now she probably wants to be dead herself.

Pop nodded to us and we hoisted up the body and followed her. It was almost too heavy a load even for the three of us.

As she reached the plane a silver ladder telescoped down to her from below the door. I thought, the Pilot must have had it keyed to her some way, so it would let down for her but nobody else. A very lovely gesture.

The ladder went up after her and we managed to lift the body above our heads, our arms straight, and we walked it through the door of the plane that way, she receiving it.

The door closed and we stood back and the plane took off into the orange haze, us watching it until it was swallowed.

Pop said, “Right now, I imagine you two feel pretty good in a screwed-up sort of way. I know I do. But take it from me, it won’t last. A day or two and we’re going to start feeling another way, the old way, if we don’t get busy.”

I knew he was right. You don’t shake Old Urge Number One anything like that easy.

“So,” said Pop, “I got places I want to show you. Guys I want you to meet. And there’s things to do, a lot of them. Let’s get moving.”

So there’s my story. Alice is still with me (Urge Number Two is even harder to shake, supposing you wanted to) and we haven’t killed anybody lately. (Not since the Pilot, in fact, but it doesn’t do to boast.) We’re making a stab (my language!) at doing the sort of work Pop does in the Deathlands. It’s tough but interesting. I still carry a knife, but I’ve given Mother to Pop. He has it strapped to him alongside Alice’s screw-in blade.

Atla-Hi and Alamos still seem to be in existence, so I guess the serum worked for them generally as it did for the Pilot’s Woman; they haven’t sent us any medals, but they haven’t sent a hangman’s squad after us either⁠—which is more than fair, you’ll admit. But Savannah, turned back from Atla-Hi, is still going strong: there’s a rumor they have an army at the gates of Ouachita right now. We tell Pop he’d better start preaching fast⁠—it’s one of our standard jokes.

There’s also a rumor that a certain fellowship of Deathlanders is doing surprisingly well, a rumor that there’s a new America growing in the Deathlands⁠—an America that never need kill again. But don’t put too much stock in it. Not too much.

I

Silently, so as not to shock anyone with illusions about well dressed young women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded the Chicago Space Mirror that there would be all sorts of human interest stories to be picked up at the first international grandmaster chess tournament in which an electronic computing machine was entered.

Not that there weren’t enough humans around, it was the interest that was in doubt. The large hall was crammed with energetic dark-suited men of whom a disproportionately large number were bald, wore glasses, were faintly untidy and indefinably shabby, had Slavic or Scandinavian features, and talked foreign languages.

They yakked interminably. The only ones who didn’t were scurrying individuals with the eager-zombie look of officials.

Chess sets were everywhere⁠—big ones on tables, still bigger diagram-type electric ones on walls, small peg-in sets dragged from side pockets and manipulated rapidly as part of the conversational ritual and still smaller folding sets in which the pieces were the tiny magnetized disks used for playing in free-fall.

There were signs featuring largely mysterious combinations of letters: F.I.D.E., W.B.M., U.S.C.F., U.S.S.F., U.S.S.R. and U.N.E.S.C.O. Sandra felt fairly sure about the last three.

The many clocks, bedside table size, would have struck a familiar note except that they had little red flags and wheels sprinkled over their faces and they were all in pairs, two clocks to a case. That Siamese-twin clocks should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance.

Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding the first American manned circum-lunar satellite⁠—and the five alternate pairs who hadn’t made the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandra much further out of the world.

Overheard scraps of conversation in reasonably intelligible English were not particularly helpful. Samples:

“They say the Machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barcza System and Indian Defenses⁠—and the Dragon Formation if anyone pushes the King Pawn.”

“Hah! In that case⁠ ⁠…”

“The Russians have come with ten trunkfuls of prepared variations and they’ll gang up on the Machine at adjournments. What can one New Jersey computer do against four Russian grandmasters?”

“I heard the Russians have been programmed⁠—with hypnotic cramming and somno-briefing. Votbinnik had a nervous breakdown.”

“Why, the Machine hasn’t even a Haupturnier or an intercollegiate won. It’ll over its head be playing.”

“Yes, but maybe like Capa at San Sebastian or Morphy or Willie Angler at New York. The Russians will look like potzers.”

“Have you studied the scores of the match between Moon Base and Circum-Terra?”

“Not worth the trouble. The play was feeble. Barely Expert Rating.”

Sandra’s chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing about the game of chess⁠—a point that she had slid over in conferring with the powers at the Space Mirror, but that now had begun to weigh on her. How wonderful it would be, she dreamed, to walk out this minute, find a quiet bar and get pie-eyed in an evil, ladylike way.

“Perhaps mademoiselle would welcome a drink?”

“You’re durn tootin’ she would!” Sandra replied in a rush, and then looked down apprehensively at the person who had read her thoughts.

It was a small sprightly elderly man who looked like a somewhat thinned down Peter Lorre⁠—there was that same impression of the happy Slavic elf. What was left of his white hair was cut very short, making a silvery nap. His pince-nez had quite thick lenses. But in sharp contrast to the somberly clad men around them, he was wearing a pearl-gray suit of almost exactly the same shade as Sandra’s⁠—a circumstance that created for her the illusion that they were fellow conspirators.

“Hey, wait a minute,” she protested just the same. He had already taken her arm and was piloting her toward the nearest flight of low wide stairs. “How did you know I wanted a drink?”

“I could see that mademoiselle was having difficulty swallowing,” he replied, keeping them moving. “Pardon me for feasting my eyes on your lovely throat.”

“I didn’t suppose they’d serve drinks here.”

“But of course.” They were already mounting the stairs. “What would chess be without coffee or schnapps?”

“Okay, lead on,” Sandra said. “You’re the doctor.”

“Doctor?” He smiled widely. “You know, I like being called that.”

“Then the name is yours as long as you want it⁠—Doc.”

Meanwhile the happy little man had edged them into the first of a small cluster of tables, where a dark-suited jabbering trio was just rising. He snapped his fingers and hissed through his teeth. A white-aproned waiter materialized.

“For myself black coffee,” he said. “For mademoiselle rhine wine and seltzer?”

“That’d go fine.” Sandra leaned back. “Confidentially, Doc, I was having trouble swallowing⁠ ⁠… well, just about everything here.”

He nodded. “You are not the first to be shocked and horrified by chess,” he assured her. “It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics⁠—or else it creates them. But what brings a sane and beautiful young lady to this 64-square madhouse?”

Sandra briefly told him her story and her predicament. By the time they were served, Doc had absorbed the one and assessed the other.

“You have one great advantage,” he told her. “You know nothing whatsoever of chess⁠—so you will be able to write about it understandably for your readers.” He swallowed half his demitasse and smacked his lips. “As for the Machine⁠—you do know, I suppose, that it is not a humanoid metal robot, walking about clanking and squeaking like a late medieval knight in armor?”

“Yes, Doc, but⁠ ⁠…” Sandra found difficulty in phrasing the question.

“Wait.” He lifted a finger. “I think I know what you’re going to ask. You want to know why, if the Machine works at all, it doesn’t work perfectly, so that it always wins and there is no contest. Right?”

Sandra grinned and nodded. Doc’s ability to interpret her mind was as comforting as the bubbly, mildly astringent mixture she was sipping.

He removed his pince-nez, massaged the bridge of his nose and replaced them.

“If you had,” he said, “a billion computers all as fast as the Machine, it would take them all the time there ever will be in the universe just to play through all the possible games of chess, not to mention the time needed to classify those games into branching families of wins for White, wins for Black and draws, and the additional time required to trace out chains of key-moves leading always to wins. So the Machine can’t play chess like God. What the Machine can do is examine all the likely lines of play for about eight moves ahead⁠—that is, four moves each for White and Black⁠—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position and so on.”

“That sounds like the way a man would play a game,” Sandra observed. “Look ahead a little way and try to make a plan. You know, like getting out trumps in bridge or setting up a finesse.”

“Exactly!” Doc beamed at her approvingly. “The Machine is like a man. A rather peculiar and not exactly pleasant man. A man who always abides by sound principles, who is utterly incapable of flights of genius, but who never makes a mistake. You see, you are finding human interest already, even in the Machine.”

Sandra nodded. “Does a human chess player⁠—a grandmaster, I mean⁠—ever look eight moves ahead in a game?”

“Most assuredly he does! In crucial situations, say where there’s a chance of winning at once by trapping the enemy king, he examines many more moves ahead than that⁠—thirty or forty even. The Machine is probably programmed to recognize such situations and do something of the same sort, though we can’t be sure from the information World Business Machines has released. But in most chess positions the possibilities are so very nearly unlimited that even a grandmaster can only look a very few moves ahead and must rely on his judgment and experience and artistry. The equivalent of those in the Machine is the directions fed into it before it plays a game.”

“You mean the programming?”

“Indeed yes! The programming is the crux of the problem of the chess-playing computer. The first practical model, reported by Bernstein and Roberts of I.B.M. in 1958 and which looked four moves ahead, was programmed so that it had a greedy worried tendency to grab at enemy pieces and to retreat its own whenever they were attacked. It had a personality like that of a certain kind of chess-playing dub⁠—a dull-brained woodpusher afraid to take the slightest risk of losing material⁠—but a dub who could almost always beat an utter novice. The W.B.M. machine here in the hall operates about a million times as fast. Don’t ask me how, I’m no physicist, but it depends on the new transistors and something they call hypervelocity, which in turn depends on keeping parts of the Machine at a temperature near absolute zero. However, the result is that the Machine can see eight moves ahead and is capable of being programmed much more craftily.”

“A million times as fast as the first machine, you say, Doc? And yet it only sees twice as many moves ahead?” Sandra objected.

“There is a geometrical progression involved there,” he told her with a smile. “Believe me, eight moves ahead is a lot of moves when you remember that the Machine is errorlessly examining every one of thousands of variations. Flesh-and-blood chess masters have lost games by blunders they could have avoided by looking only one or two moves ahead. The Machine will make no such oversights. Once again, you see, you have the human factor, in this case working for the Machine.”

“Savilly, I have been looking all over the place for you!”

A stocky, bull-faced man with a great bristling shock of black, gray-flecked hair had halted abruptly by their table. He bent over Doc and began to whisper explosively in a guttural foreign tongue.

Sandra’s gaze traveled beyond the balustrade. Now that she could look down at it, the central hall seemed less confusedly crowded. In the middle, toward the far end, were five small tables spaced rather widely apart and with a chessboard and men and one of the Siamese clocks set out on each. To either side of the hall were tiers of temporary seats, about half of them occupied. There were at least as many more people still wandering about.

On the far wall was a big electric scoreboard and also, above the corresponding tables, five large dully glassy chessboards, the White squares in light gray, the Black squares in dark.

One of the five wall chessboards was considerably larger than the other four⁠—the one above the Machine.

Sandra looked with quickening interest at the console of the Machine⁠—a bank of keys and some half-dozen panels of rows and rows of tiny telltale lights, all dark at the moment. A thick red velvet cord on little brass standards ran around the Machine at a distance of about ten feet. Inside the cord were only a few gray-smocked men. Two of them had just laid a black cable to the nearest chess table and were attaching it to the Siamese clock.

Sandra tried to think of a being who always checked everything, but only within limits beyond which his thoughts never ventured, and who never made a mistake⁠ ⁠…

“Miss Grayling! May I present to you Igor Jandorf.”

She turned back quickly with a smile and a nod.

“I should tell you, Igor,” Doc continued, “that Miss Grayling represents a large and influential Midwestern newspaper. Perhaps you have a message for her readers.”

The shock-headed man’s eyes flashed. “I most certainly do!” At that moment the waiter arrived with a second coffee and wine-and-seltzer. Jandorf seized Doc’s new demitasse, drained it, set it back on the tray with a flourish and drew himself up.

“Tell your readers, Miss Grayling,” he proclaimed, fiercely arching his eyebrows at her and actually slapping his chest, “that I, Igor Jandorf, will defeat the Machine by the living force of my human personality! Already I have offered to play it an informal game blindfold⁠—I, who have played 50 blindfold games simultaneously! Its owners refuse me. I have challenged it also to a few games of rapid-transit⁠—an offer no true grandmaster would dare ignore. Again they refuse me. I predict that the Machine will play like a great oaf⁠—at least against me. Repeat: I, Igor Jandorf, by the living force of my human personality, will defeat the Machine. Do you have that? You can remember it?”

“Oh yes,” Sandra assured him, “but there are some other questions I very much want to ask you, Mr. Jandorf.”

“I am sorry, Miss Grayling, but I must clear my mind now. In ten minutes they start the clocks.”

While Sandra arranged for an interview with Jandorf after the day’s playing session, Doc reordered his coffee.

“One expects it of Jandorf,” he explained to Sandra with a philosophic shrug when the shock-headed man was gone. “At least he didn’t take your wine-and-seltzer. Or did he? One tip I have for you: don’t call a chess master Mister, call him Master. They all eat it up.”

“Gee, Doc, I don’t know how to thank you for everything. I hope I haven’t offended Mis⁠—Master Jandorf so that he doesn’t⁠—”

“Don’t worry about that. Wild horses couldn’t keep Jandorf away from a press interview. You know, his rapid-transit challenge was cunning. That’s a minor variety of chess where each player gets only ten seconds to make a move. Which I don’t suppose would give the Machine time to look three moves ahead. Chess players would say that the Machine has a very slow sight of the board. This tournament is being played at the usual international rate of 15 moves an hour, and⁠—”

“Is that why they’ve got all those crazy clocks?” Sandra interrupted.

“Oh, yes. Chess clocks measure the time each player takes in making his moves. When a player makes a move he presses a button that shuts his clock off and turns his opponent’s on. If a player uses too much time, he loses as surely as if he were checkmated. Now since the Machine will almost certainly be programmed to take an equal amount of time on successive moves, a rate of 15 moves an hour means it will have 4 minutes a move⁠—and it will need every second of them! Incidentally it was typical Jandorf bravado to make a point of a blindfold challenge⁠—just as if the Machine weren’t playing blindfold itself. Or is the Machine blindfold? How do you think of it?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Say, Doc, is it really true that Master Jandorf has played 50 games at once blindfolded? I can’t believe that.”

“Of course not!” Doc assured her. “It was only 49 and he lost two of those and drew five. Jandorf always exaggerates. It’s in his blood.”

“He’s one of the Russians, isn’t he?” Sandra asked. “Igor?”

Doc chuckled. “Not exactly,” he said gently. “He is originally a Pole and now he has Argentinian citizenship. You have a program, don’t you?”

Sandra started to hunt through her pocketbook, but just then two lists of names lit up on the big electric scoreboard.

The Players

William Angler, U.S.A.
Bela Grabo, Hungary
Ivan Jal, U.S.S.R.
Igor Jandorf, Argentina
Dr. S. Krakatower, France
Vassily Lysmov, U.S.S.R.
The Machine, U.S.A. (programmed by Simon Great)
Maxim Serek, U.S.S.R.
Moses Sherevsky, U.S.A.
Mikhail Votbinnik, U.S.S.R.
Tournament Director: Dr. Jan Vanderhoef

First Round Pairings

Sherevsky vs. Serek
Jal vs. Angler
Jandorf vs. Votbinnik
Lysmov vs. Krakatower
Grabo vs. Machine

“Cripes, Doc, they all sound like they were Russians,” Sandra said after a bit. “Except this Willie Angler. Oh, he’s the boy wonder, isn’t he?”

Doc nodded. “Not such a boy any longer, though. He’s⁠ ⁠… Well, speak of the Devil’s children.⁠ ⁠… Miss Grayling, I have the honor of presenting to you the only grandmaster ever to have been ex-chess-champion of the United States while still technically a minor⁠—Master William Augustus Angler.”

A tall, sharply-dressed young man with a hatchet face pressed the old man back into his chair.

“How are you, Savvy, old boy old boy?” he demanded. “Still chasing the girls, I see.”

“Please, Willie, get off me.”

“Can’t take it, huh?” Angler straightened up somewhat. “Hey waiter! Where’s that chocolate malt? I don’t want it next year. About that ex-, though. I was swindled, Savvy. I was robbed.”

“Willie!” Doc said with some asperity. “Miss Grayling is a journalist. She would like to have a statement from you as to how you will play against the Machine.”

Angler grinned and shook his head sadly. “Poor old Machine,” he said. “I don’t know why they take so much trouble polishing up that pile of tin just so that I can give it a hit in the head. I got a hatful of moves it’ll burn out all its tubes trying to answer. And if it gets too fresh, how about you and me giving its low-temperature section the hotfoot, Savvy? The money W.B.M.’s putting up is okay, though. That first prize will just fit the big hole in my bank account.”

“I know you haven’t the time now, Master Angler,” Sandra said rapidly, “but if after the playing session you could grant me⁠—”

“Sorry, babe,” Angler broke in with a wave of dismissal. “I’m dated up for two months in advance. Waiter! I’m here, not there!” And he went charging off.

Doc and Sandra looked at each other and smiled.

“Chess masters aren’t exactly humble people, are they?” she said.

Doc’s smile became tinged with sad understanding. “You must excuse them, though,” he said. “They really get so little recognition or recompense. This tournament is an exception. And it takes a great deal of ego to play greatly.”

“I suppose so. So World Business Machines is responsible for this tournament?”

“Correct. Their advertising department is interested in the prestige. They want to score a point over their great rival.”

“But if the Machine plays badly it will be a black eye for them,” Sandra pointed out.

“True,” Doc agreed thoughtfully. “W.B.M. must feel very sure⁠ ⁠… It’s the prize money they’ve put up, of course, that’s brought the world’s greatest players here. Otherwise half of them would be holding off in the best temperamental-artist style. For chess players the prize money is fabulous⁠—$35,000, with $15,000 for first place, and all expenses paid for all players. There’s never been anything like it. Soviet Russia is the only country that has ever supported and rewarded her best chess players at all adequately. I think the Russian players are here because U.N.E.S.C.O. and F.I.D.E. (that’s Federation Internationale des Echecs⁠—the international chess organization) are also backing the tournament. And perhaps because the Kremlin is hungry for a little prestige now that its space program is sagging.”

“But if a Russian doesn’t take first place it will be a black eye for them.”

Doc frowned. “True, in a sense. They must feel very sure⁠ ⁠… Here they are now.”

Four men were crossing the center of the hall, which was clearing, toward the tables at the other end. Doubtless they just happened to be going two by two in close formation, but it gave Sandra the feeling of a phalanx.

“The first two are Lysmov and Votbinnik,” Doc told her. “It isn’t often that you see the current champion of the world⁠—Votbinnik⁠—and an ex-champion arm in arm. There are two other persons in the tournament who have held that honor⁠—Jal and Vanderhoef the director, way back.”

“Will whoever wins this tournament become champion?”

“Oh no. That’s decided by two-player matches⁠—a very long business⁠—after elimination tournaments between leading contenders. This tournament is a round robin: each player plays one game with every other player. That means nine rounds.”

“Anyway there are an awful lot of Russians in the tournament,” Sandra said, consulting her program. “Four out of ten have U.S.S.R. after them. And Bela Grabo, Hungary⁠—that’s a satellite. And Sherevsky and Krakatower are Russian-sounding names.”

“The proportion of Soviet to American entries in the tournament represents pretty fairly the general difference in playing strength between the two countries,” Doc said judiciously. “Chess mastery moves from land to land with the years. Way back it was the Muslims and the Hindus and Persians. Then Italy and Spain. A little over a hundred years ago it was France and England. Then Germany, Austria and the New World. Now it’s Russia⁠—including of course the Russians who have run away from Russia. But don’t think there aren’t a lot of good Anglo-Saxon types who are masters of the first water. In fact, there are a lot of them here around us, though perhaps you don’t think so. It’s just that if you play a lot of chess you get to looking Russian. Once it probably made you look Italian. Do you see that short bald-headed man?”

“You mean the one facing the Machine and talking to Jandorf?”

“Yes. Now that’s one with a lot of human interest. Moses Sherevsky. Been champion of the United States many times. A very strict Orthodox Jew. Can’t play chess on Fridays or on Saturdays before sundown.” He chuckled. “Why, there’s even a story going around that one rabbi told Sherevsky it would be unlawful for him to play against the Machine because it is technically a golem⁠—the clay Frankenstein’s monster of Hebrew legend.”

Sandra asked, “What about Grabo and Krakatower?”

Doc gave a short scornful laugh. “Krakatower! Don’t pay any attention to him. A senile has-been, it’s a scandal he’s been allowed to play in this tournament! He must have pulled all sorts of strings. Told them that his lifelong services to chess had won him the honor and that they had to have a member of the so-called Old Guard. Maybe he even got down on his knees and cried⁠—and all the time his eyes on that expense money and the last-place consolation prize! Yet dreaming schizophrenically of beating them all! Please, don’t get me started on Dirty Old Krakatower.”

“Take it easy, Doc. He sounds like he would make an interesting article? Can you point him out to me?”

“You can tell him by his long white beard with coffee stains. I don’t see it anywhere, though. Perhaps he’s shaved it off for the occasion. It would be like that antique womanizer to develop senile delusions of youthfulness.”

“And Grabo?” Sandra pressed, suppressing a smile at the intensity of Doc’s animosity.

Doc’s eyes grew thoughtful. “About Bela Grabo (why are three out of four Hungarians named Bela?) I will tell you only this: That he is a very brilliant player and that the Machine is very lucky to have drawn him as its first opponent.”

He would not amplify his statement. Sandra studied the Scoreboard again.

“This Simon Great who’s down as programming the Machine. He’s a famous physicist, I suppose?”

“By no means. That was the trouble with some of the early chess-playing machines⁠—they were programmed by scientists. No, Simon Great is a psychologist who at one time was a leading contender for the world’s chess championship. I think W.B.M. was surprisingly shrewd to pick him for the programming job. Let me tell you⁠—No, better yet⁠—”

Doc shot to his feet, stretched an arm on high and called out sharply, “Simon!”

A man some four tables away waved back and a moment later came over.

“What is it, Savilly?” he asked. “There’s hardly any time, you know.”

The newcomer was of middle height, compact of figure and feature, with graying hair cut short and combed sharply back.

Doc spoke his piece for Sandra.

Simon Great smiled thinly. “Sorry,” he said, “But I am making no predictions and we are giving out no advance information on the programming of the Machine. As you know, I have had to fight the Players’ Committee tooth and nail on all sorts of points about that and they have won most of them. I am not permitted to re-program the Machine at adjournments⁠—only between games (I did insist on that and get it!) And if the Machine breaks down during a game, its clock keeps running on it. My men are permitted to make repairs⁠—if they can work fast enough.”

“That makes it very tough on you,” Sandra put in. “The Machine isn’t allowed any weaknesses.”

Great nodded soberly. “And now I must go. They’ve almost finished the countdown, as one of my technicians keeps on calling it. Very pleased to have met you, Miss Grayling⁠—I’ll check with our P.R. man on that interview. Be seeing you, Savvy.”

The tiers of seats were filled now and the central space almost clear. Officials were shooing off a few knots of lingerers. Several of the grandmasters, including all four Russians, were seated at their tables. Press and company cameras were flashing. The four smaller wallboards lit up with the pieces in the opening position⁠—white for White and red for Black. Simon Great stepped over the red velvet cord and more flash bulbs went off.

“You know, Doc,” Sandra said, “I’m a dog to suggest this, but what if this whole thing were a big fake? What if Simon Great were really playing the Machine’s moves? There would surely be some way for his electricians to rig⁠—”

Doc laughed happily⁠—and so loudly that some people at the adjoining tables frowned.

“Miss Grayling, that is a wonderful idea! I will probably steal it for a short story. I still manage to write and place a few in England. No, I do not think that is at all likely. W.B.M. would never risk such a fraud. Great is completely out of practice for actual tournament play, though not for chess-thinking. The difference in style between a computer and a man would be evident to any expert. Great’s own style is remembered and would be recognized⁠—though, come to think of it, his style was often described as being machinelike⁠ ⁠…” For a moment Doc’s eyes became thoughtful. Then he smiled again. “But no, the idea is impossible. Vanderhoef as Tournament Director has played two or three games with the Machine to assure himself that it operates legitimately and has grandmaster skill.”

“Did the Machine beat him?” Sandra asked.

Doc shrugged. “The scores weren’t released. It was very hush-hush. But about your idea, Miss Grayling⁠—did you ever read about Maelzel’s famous chess-playing automaton of the 19th Century? That one too was supposed to work by machinery (cogs and gears, not electricity) but actually it had a man hidden inside it⁠—your Edgar Poe exposed the fraud in a famous article. In my story I think the chess robot will break down while it is being demonstrated to a millionaire purchaser and the young inventor will have to win its game for it to cover up and swing the deal. Only the millionaire’s daughter, who is really a better player than either of them⁠ ⁠… yes, yes! Your Ambrose Bierce too wrote a story about a chess-playing robot of the clickety-clank-grr kind who murdered his creator, crushing him like an iron grizzly bear when the man won a game from him. Tell me, Miss Grayling, do you find yourself imagining this Machine putting out angry tendrils to strangle its opponents, or beaming rays of death and hypnotism at them? I can imagine⁠ ⁠…”

While Doc chattered happily on about chess-playing robots and chess stories, Sandra found herself thinking about him. A writer of some sort evidently and a terrific chess buff. Perhaps he was an actual medical doctor. She’d read something about two or three coming over with the Russian squad. But Doc certainly didn’t sound like a Soviet citizen.

He was older than she’d first assumed. She could see that now that she was listening to him less and looking at him more. Tired, too. Only his dark-circled eyes shone with unquenchable youth. A useful old guy, whoever he was. An hour ago she’d been sure she was going to muff this assignment completely and now she had it laid out cold. For the umpteenth time in her career Sandra shied away from the guilty thought that she wasn’t a writer at all or even a reporter, she just used dime-a-dozen female attractiveness to rope a susceptible man (young, old, American, Russian) and pick his brain⁠ ⁠…

She realized suddenly that the whole hall had become very quiet.

Doc was the only person still talking and people were again looking at them disapprovingly. All five wallboards were lit up and the changed position of a few pieces showed that opening moves had been made on four of them, including the Machine’s. The central space between the tiers of seats was completely clear now, except for one man hurrying across it in their direction with the rapid yet quiet, almost tiptoe walk that seemed to mark all the officials. Like morticians’ assistants, she thought. He rapidly mounted the stairs and halted at the top to look around searchingly. His gaze lighted on their table, his eyebrows went up, and he made a beeline for Doc. Sandra wondered if she should warn him that he was about to be shushed.

The official laid a hand on Doc’s shoulder. “Sir!” he said agitatedly. “Do you realize that they’ve started your clock, Dr. Krakatower?”

Sandra became aware that Doc was grinning at her. “Yes, it’s true enough, Miss Grayling,” he said. “I trust you will pardon the deception, though it was hardly one, even technically. Every word I told you about Dirty Old Krakatower is literally true. Except the long white beard⁠—he never wore a beard after he was 35⁠—that part was an out-and-out lie! Yes, yes! I will be along in a moment! Do not worry, the spectators will get their money’s worth out of me! And W.B.M. did not with its expense account buy my soul⁠—that belongs to the young lady here.”

Doc rose, lifted her hand and kissed it. “Thank you, mademoiselle, for a charming interlude. I hope it will be repeated. Incidentally, I should say that besides⁠ ⁠… (Stop pulling at me, man!⁠—there can’t be five minutes on my clock yet!)⁠ ⁠… that besides being Dirty Old Krakatower, grandmaster emeritus, I am also the special correspondent of the London Times. It is always pleasant to chat with a colleague. Please do not hesitate to use in your articles any of the ideas I tossed out, if you find them worthy⁠—I sent in my own first dispatch two hours ago. Yes, yes, I come! Au revoir, mademoiselle!”

He was at the bottom of the stairs when Sandra jumped up and hurried to the balustrade.

“Hey, Doc!” she called.

He turned.

“Good luck!” she shouted and waved.

He kissed his hand to her and went on.

People glared at her then and a horrified official came hurrying. Sandra made big frightened eyes at him, but she couldn’t quite hide her grin.

II

Sitzfleisch (which roughly means endurance⁠—“sitting flesh” or “buttock meat”) is the quality needed above all others by tournament chess players⁠—and their audiences.

After Sandra had watched the games (the players’ faces, rather⁠—she had a really good pair of zoomer glasses) for a half hour or so, she had gone to her hotel room, written her first article (interview with the famous Dr. Krakatower), sent it in and then come back to the hall to see how the games had turned out.

They were still going on, all five of them.

The press section was full, but two boys and a girl of high-school age obligingly made room for Sandra on the top tier of seats and she tuned in on their whispered conversation. The jargon was recognizably related to that which she’d gotten a dose of on the floor, but gamier. Players did not sacrifice pawns, they sacked them. No one was ever defeated, only busted. Pieces weren’t lost but blown. The Ruy Lopez was the Dirty Old Rooay⁠—and incidentally a certain set of opening moves named after a long-departed Spanish churchman, she now discovered from Dave, Bill and Judy, whose sympathetic help she won by frequent loans of her zoomer glasses.

The four-hour time control point⁠—two hours and 30 moves for each player⁠—had been passed while she was sending in her article, she learned, and they were well on their way toward the next control point⁠—an hour more and 15 moves for each player⁠—after which unfinished games would be adjourned and continued at a special morning session. Sherevsky had had to make 15 moves in two minutes after taking an hour earlier on just one move. But that was nothing out of the ordinary, Dave had assured her in the same breath, Sherevsky was always letting himself get into “fantastic time-pressure” and then wriggling out of it brilliantly. He was apparently headed for a win over Serek. Score one for the U.S.A. over the U.S.S.R., Sandra thought proudly.

Votbinnik had Jandorf practically in Zugzwang (his pieces all tied up, Bill explained) and the Argentinian would be busted shortly. Through the glasses Sandra could see Jandorf’s thick chest rise and fall as he glared murderously at the board in front of him. By contrast Votbinnik looked like a man lost in reverie.

Dr. Krakatower had lost a pawn to Lysmov but was hanging on grimly. However, Dave would not give a plugged nickle for his chances against the former world’s champion, because “those old ones always weaken in the sixth hour.”

“You forget the biological miracle of Doctor Las-ker,” Bill and Judy chanted as one.

“Shut up,” Dave warned them. An official glared angrily from the floor and shook a finger. Much later Sandra discovered that Dr. Emanuel Lasker was a philosopher-mathematician who, after holding the world’s championship for 26 years, had won a very strong tournament (New York 1924) at the age of 56 and later almost won another (Moscow 1935) at the age of 67.

Sandra studied Doc’s face carefully through her glasses. He looked terribly tired now, almost a death’s head. Something tightened in her chest and she looked away quickly.

The Angler-Jal and Grabo-Machine games were still ding-dong contests, Dave told her. If anything, Grabo had a slight advantage. The Machine was “on the move,” meaning that Grabo had just made a move and was waiting the automaton’s reply.

The Hungarian was about the most restless “waiter” Sandra could imagine. He twisted his long legs constantly and writhed his shoulders and about every five seconds he ran his hands back through his unkempt tassle of hair.

Once he yawned self-consciously, straightened himself and sat very compactly. But almost immediately he was writhing again.

The Machine had its own mannerisms, if you could call them that. Its dim, unobtrusive telltale lights were winking on and off in a fairly rapid, random pattern. Sandra got the impression that from time to time Grabo’s eyes were trying to follow their blinking, like a man watching fireflies.

Simon Great sat impassively behind a bare table next to the Machine, his five gray-smocked technicians grouped around him.

A flushed-faced, tall, distinguished-looking elderly gentleman was standing by the Machine’s console. Dave told Sandra it was Dr. Vanderhoef, the Tournament Director, onetime champion of the world.

“Another old potzer like Krakatower, but with sense enough to know when he’s licked,” Bill characterized harshly.

“Youth, ah, un-van-quish-able youth,” Judy chanted happily by herself. “Flashing like a meteor across the chess fir-ma-ment. Morphy, Angler, Judy Kaplan⁠ ⁠…”

“Shut up! They really will throw us out,” Dave warned her and then explained in whispers to Sandra that Vanderhoef and his assistants had the nervous-making job of feeding into the Machine the moves made by its opponent, “so everyone will know it’s on the level, I guess.” He added, “It means the Machine loses a few seconds every move, between the time Grabo punches the clock and the time Vanderhoef gets the move fed into the Machine.”

Sandra nodded. The players were making it as hard on the Machine as possible, she decided with a small rush of sympathy.

Suddenly there was a tiny movement of the gadget attached from the Machine to the clocks on Grabo’s table and a faint click. But Grabo almost leapt out of his skin.

Simultaneously a red castle-topped piece (one of the Machine’s rooks, Sandra was informed) moved four squares sideways on the big electric board above the Machine. An official beside Dr. Vanderhoef went over to Grabo’s board and carefully moved the corresponding piece. Grabo seemed about to make some complaint, then apparently thought better of it and plunged into brooding cogitation over the board, elbows on the table, both hands holding his head and fiercely massaging his scalp.

The Machine let loose with an unusually rapid flurry of blinking. Grabo straightened up, seemed again about to make a complaint, then once more to repress the impulse. Finally he moved a piece and punched his clock. Dr. Vanderhoef immediately flipped four levers on the Machine’s console and Grabo’s move appeared on the electric board.

Grabo sprang up, went over to the red velvet cord and motioned agitatedly to Vanderhoef.

There was a short conference, inaudible at the distance, during which Grabo waved his arms and Vanderhoef grew more flushed. Finally the latter went over to Simon Great and said something, apparently with some hesitancy. But Great smiled obligingly, sprang to his feet, and in turn spoke to his technicians, who immediately fetched and unfolded several large screens and set them in front of the Machine, masking the blinking lights. Blindfolding it, Sandra found herself thinking.

Dave chuckled. “That’s already happened once while you were out,” he told Sandra. “I guess seeing the lights blinking makes Grabo nervous. But then not seeing them makes him nervous. Just watch.”

“The Machine has its own mysterious powwow-wers,” Judy chanted.

“That’s what you think,” Bill told her. “Did you know that Willie Angler has hired Evil Eye Bixel out of Brooklyn to put the whammy on the Machine? S’fact.”

“… powwow-wers unknown to mere mortals of flesh and blood⁠—”

“Shut up!” Dave hissed. “Now you’ve done it. Here comes old Eagle Eye. Look, I don’t know you two. I’m with this lady here.”

Bela Grabo was suffering acute tortures. He had a winning attack, he knew it. The Machine was counterattacking, but unstrategically, desperately, in the style of a Frank Marshall complicating the issue and hoping for a swindle. All Grabo had to do, he knew, was keep his head and not blunder⁠—not throw away a queen, say, as he had to old Vanderhoef at Brussels, or overlook a mate in two, as he had against Sherevsky at Tel Aviv. The memory of those unutterably black moments and a dozen more like them returned to haunt him. Never if he lived a thousand years would he be free of them.

For the tenth time in the last two minutes he glanced at his clock. He had fifteen minutes in which to make five moves. He wasn’t in time-pressure, he must remember that. He mustn’t make a move on impulse, he mustn’t let his treacherous hand leap out without waiting for instructions from its guiding brain.

First prize in this tournament meant incredible wealth⁠—transportation money and hotel bills for more than a score of future tournaments. But more than that, it was one more chance to blazon before the world his true superiority rather than the fading reputation of it. “… Bela Grabo, brilliant but erratic⁠ ⁠…” Perhaps his last chance.

When, in the name of Heaven, was the Machine going to make its next move? Surely it had already taken more than four minutes! But a glance at its clock showed him that hardly half that time had gone by. He decided he had made a mistake in asking again for the screens. It was easier to watch those damned lights blink than have them blink in his imagination.

Oh, if chess could only be played in intergalactic space, in the black privacy of one’s thoughts. But there had to be the physical presence of the opponent with his (possibly deliberate) unnerving mannerisms⁠—Lasker and his cigar, Capablanca and his red necktie, Nimzowitsch and his nervous contortions (very like Bela Grabo’s, though the latter did not see it that way). And now this ghastly flashing, humming, stinking, button-banging metal monster!

Actually, he told himself, he was being asked to play two opponents, the Machine and Simon Great, a sort of consultation team. It wasn’t fair!

The Machine hammered its button and rammed its queen across the electric board. In Grabo’s imagination it was like an explosion.

Grabo held onto his nerves with an effort and plunged into a maze of calculations.

Once he came to, like a man who has been asleep, to realize that he was wondering whether the lights were still blinking behind the screens while he was making his move. Did the Machine really analyze at such times or were the lights just an empty trick? He forced his mind back to the problems of the game, decided on his move, checked the board twice for any violent move he might have missed, noted on his clock that he’d taken five minutes, checked the board again very rapidly and then put out his hand and made his move⁠—with the fiercely suspicious air of a boss compelled to send an extremely unreliable underling on an all-important errand.

Then he punched his clock, sprang to his feet, and once more waved for Vanderhoef.

Thirty seconds later the Tournament Director, very red-faced now, was saying in a low voice, almost pleadingly, “But Bela, I cannot keep asking them to change the screens. Already they have been up twice and down once to please you. Moving them disturbs the other players and surely isn’t good for your own peace of mind. Oh, Bela, my dear Bela⁠—”

Vanderhoef broke off. Grabo knew he had been going to say something improper but from the heart, such as, “For God’s sake don’t blow this game out of nervousness now that you have a win in sight”⁠—and this sympathy somehow made the Hungarian furious.

“I have other complaints which I will make formally after the game,” he said harshly, quivering with rage. “It is a disgrace the way that mechanism punches the time-clock button. It will crack the case! The Machine never stops humming! And it stinks of ozone and hot metal, as if it were about to explode!”

“It cannot explode, Bela. Please!”

“No, but it threatens to! And you know a threat is always more effective than an actual attack! As for the screens, they must be taken down at once, I demand it!”

“Very well, Bela, very well, it will be done. Compose yourself.”

Grabo did not at once return to his table⁠—he could not have endured to sit still for the moment⁠—but paced along the line of tables, snatching looks at the other games in progress. When he looked back at the big electric board, he saw that the Machine had made a move although he hadn’t heard it punch the clock. He rushed back and studied the board without sitting down. Why, the Machine had made a stupid move, he saw with a rush of exaltation. At that moment the last screen being folded started to fall over, but one of the gray-smocked men caught it deftly. Grabo flinched and his hand darted out and moved a piece.

He heard someone gasp. Vanderhoef.

It got very quiet. The four soft clicks of the move being fed into the Machine were like the beat of a muffled drum.

There was a buzzing in Grabo’s ears. He looked down at the board in horror.

The Machine blinked, blinked once more and then, although barely twenty seconds had elapsed, moved a rook.

On the glassy gray margin above the Machine’s electric board, large red words flamed on:

Check! And mate in three

Up in the stands Dave squeezed Sandra’s arm. “He’s done it! He’s let himself be swindled.”

“You mean the Machine has beaten Grabo?” Sandra asked.

“What else?”

“Can you be sure? Just like that?”

“Of cour⁠ ⁠… Wait a second.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I’m sure.”

“Mated in three like a potzer,” Bill confirmed.

“The poor old boob,” Judy sighed.

Down on the floor Bela Grabo sagged. The assistant director moved toward him quickly. But then the Hungarian straightened himself a little.

“I resign,” he said softly.

The red words at the top of the board were wiped out and briefly replaced, in white, by:

Thank you for a good game

And then a third statement, also in white, flashed on for a few seconds:

You had bad luck

Bela Grabo clenched his fists and bit his teeth. Even the Machine was being sorry for him!

He stiffly walked out of the hall. It was a long, long walk.

III

Adjournment time neared. Serek, the exchange down but with considerable time on his clock, sealed his forty-sixth move against Sherevsky and handed the envelope to Vanderhoef. It would be opened when the game was resumed at the morning session. Dr. Krakatower studied the position on his board and then quietly tipped over his king. He sat there for a moment as if he hadn’t the strength to rise. Then he shook himself a little, smiled, got up, clasped hands briefly with Lysmov and wandered over to watch the Angler-Jal game.

Jandorf had resigned his game to Votbinnik some minutes ago, rather more surlily.

After a while Angler sealed a move, handing it to Vanderhoef with a grin just as the little red flag dropped on his clock, indicating he’d used every second of his time.

Up in the stands Sandra worked her shoulders to get a kink out of her back. She’d noticed several newsmen hurrying off to report in the Machine’s first win. She was thankful that her job was limited to special articles.

“Chess is a pretty intense game,” she remarked to Dave.

He nodded. “It’s a killer. I don’t expect to live beyond forty myself.”

“Thirty,” Bill said.

“Twenty-five is enough time to be a meteor,” said Judy.

Sandra thought to herself: the Unbeat Generation.

Next day Sherevsky played the Machine to a dead-level ending. Simon Great offered a draw for the Machine (over an unsuccessful interfering protest from Jandorf that this constituted making a move for the Machine) but Sherevsky refused and sealed his move.

“He wants to have it proved to him that the Machine can play end games,” Dave commented to Sandra up in the stands. “I don’t blame him.”

At the beginning of today’s session Sandra had noticed that Bill and Judy were following each game in a very new-looking book they shared jealously between them. Won’t look new for long, Sandra had thought.

“That’s the ‘Bible’ they got there,” Dave had explained. “M.C.O.⁠—Modern Chess Openings. It lists all the best open-moves in chess, thousands and thousands of variations. That is, what masters think are the best moves. The moves that have won in the past, really. We chipped in together to buy the latest edition⁠—the 13th⁠—just hot off the press,” he had finished proudly.

Now with the Machine-Sherevsky ending the center of interest, the kids were consulting another book, one with grimy, dog-eared pages. “That’s the ‘New Testament’⁠—Basic Chess Endings,” Dave said when he noticed her looking. “There’s so much you must know in endings that it’s amazing the Machine can play them at all. I guess as the pieces get fewer it starts to look deeper.”

Sandra nodded. She was feeling virtuous. She had got her interview with Jandorf and then this morning one with Grabo (“How it Feels to Have a Machine Out-Think You”). The latter had made her think of herself as a real vulture of the press, circling over the doomed. The Hungarian had seemed in a positively suicidal depression.

One newspaper article made much of the Machine’s “psychological tactics,” hinting that the blinking lights were designed to hypnotize opponents. The general press coverage was somewhat startling. A game that in America normally rated only a fine-print column in the back sections of a very few Sunday papers was now getting boxes on the front page. The defeat of a man by a machine seemed everywhere to awaken nervous feelings of insecurity, like the launching of the first sputnik.

Sandra had rather hesitantly sought out Dr. Krakatower during the close of the morning session of play, still feeling a little guilty from her interview with Grabo. But Doc had seemed happy to see her and quite recovered from last night’s defeat, though when she had addressed him as “Master Krakatower” he had winced and said, “Please, not that!” Another session of coffee and wine-and-seltzer had resulted in her getting an introduction to her first Soviet grandmaster, Serek, who had proved to be unexpectedly charming. He had just managed to draw his game with Sherevsky (to the great amazement of the kibitzers, Sandra learned) and was most obliging about arranging for an interview.

Not to be outdone in gallantry, Doc had insisted on escorting Sandra to her seat in the stands⁠—at the price of once more losing a couple of minutes on his clock. As a result her stock went up considerably with Dave, Bill and Judy. Thereafter they treated anything she had to say with almost annoying deference⁠—Bill especially, probably in penance for his thoughtless cracks at Doc. Sandra later came to suspect that the kids had privately decided that she was Dr. Krakatower’s mistress⁠—probably a new one because she was so scandalously ignorant of chess. She did not disillusion them.

Doc lost again in the second round⁠—to Jal.

In the third round Lysmov defeated the Machine in 27 moves. There was a flaring of flashbulbs, a rush of newsmen to the phones, jabbering in the stands and much comment and analysis that was way over Sandra’s head⁠—except she got the impression that Lysmov had done something tricky.

The general emotional reaction in America, as reflected by the newspapers, was not too happy. One read between the lines that for the Machine to beat a man was bad, but for a Russian to beat an American machine was worse. A widely-read sports columnist, two football coaches, and several rural politicians announced that chess was a morbid game played only by weirdies. Despite these thick-chested he-man statements, the elusive mood of insecurity deepened.

Besides the excitement of the Lysmov win, a squabble had arisen in connection with the Machine’s still-unfinished end game with Sherevsky, which had been continued through one morning session and was now headed for another.

Finally there were rumors that World Business Machines was planning to replace Simon Great with a nationally famous physicist.

Sandra begged Doc to try to explain it all to her in kindergarten language. She was feeling uncertain of herself again and quite subdued after being completely rebuffed in her efforts to get an interview with Lysmov, who had fled her as if she were a threat to his Soviet virtue.

Doc on the other hand was quite vivacious, cheered by his third-round draw with Jandorf.

“Most willingly, my dear,” he said. “Have you ever noticed that kindergarten language can be far honester than the adult tongues? Fewer fictions. Well, several of us hashed over the Lysmov game until three o’clock this morning. Lysmov wouldn’t, though. Neither would Votbinnik or Jal. You see, I have my communication problems with the Russians too.

“We finally decided that Lysmov had managed to guess with complete accuracy both the depth at which the Machine is analyzing in the opening and middle game (ten moves ahead instead of eight, we think⁠—a prodigious achievement!) and also the main value scale in terms of which the Machine selects its move.

“Having that information, Lysmov managed to play into a combination which would give the Machine a maximum plus value in its value scale (win of Lysmov’s queen, it was) after ten moves but a checkmate for Lysmov on his second move after the first ten. A human chess master would have seen a trap like that, but the Machine could not, because Lysmov was maneuvering in an area that did not exist for the Machine’s perfect but limited mind. Of course the Machine changed its tactics after the first three moves of the ten had been played⁠—it could see the checkmate then⁠—but by that time it was too late for it to avert a disastrous loss of material. It was tricky of Lysmov, but completely fair. After this we’ll all be watching for the opportunity to play the same sort of trick on the Machine.

“Lysmov was the first of us to realize fully that we are not playing against a metal monster but against a certain kind of programming. If there are any weaknesses we can spot in that programming, we can win. Very much in the same way that we can again and again defeat a flesh-and-blood player when we discover that he consistently attacks without having an advantage in position or is regularly overcautious about launching a counterattack when he himself is attacked without justification.”

Sandra nodded eagerly. “So from now on your chances of beating the Machine should keep improving, shouldn’t they? I mean as you find out more and more about the programming.”

Doc smiled. “You forget,” he said gently, “that Simon Great can change the programming before each new game. Now I see why he fought so hard for that point.”

“Oh. Say, Doc, what’s this about the Sherevsky end game?”

“You are picking up the language, aren’t you?” he observed. “Sherevsky got a little angry when he discovered that Great had the Machine programmed to analyze steadily on the next move after an adjournment until the game was resumed next morning. Sherevsky questioned whether it was fair for the Machine to ‘think’ all night while its opponent had to get some rest. Vanderhoef decided for the Machine, though Sherevsky may carry the protest to F.I.D.E.

“Bah⁠—I think Great wants us to get heated up over such minor matters, just as he is happy (and oh so obliging!) when we complain about how the Machine blinks or hums or smells. It keeps our minds off the main business of trying to outguess his programming. Incidentally, that is one thing we decided last night⁠—Sherevsky, Willie Angler, Jandorf, Serek, and myself⁠—that we are all going to have to learn to play the Machine without letting it get on our nerves and without asking to be protected from it. As Willie puts it, ‘So suppose it sounds like a boiler factory even⁠—okay, you can think in a boiler factory.’ Myself, I am not so sure of that, but his spirit is right.”

Sandra felt herself perking up as a new article began to shape itself in her mind. She said, “And what about W.B.M. replacing Simon Great?”

Again Doc smiled. “I think, my dear, that you can safely dismiss that as just a rumor. I think that Simon Great has just begun to fight.”

IV

Round Four saw the Machine spring the first of its surprises.

It had finally forced a draw against Sherevsky in the morning session, ending the long second-round game, and now was matched against Votbinnik.

The Machine opened Pawn to King Four, Votbinnik replied Pawn to King Three.

“The French Defense, Binny’s favorite,” Dave muttered and they settled back for the Machine’s customary four-minute wait.

Instead the Machine moved at once and punched its clock.

Sandra, studying Votbinnik through her glasses, decided that the Russian grandmaster looked just a trifle startled. Then he made his move.

Once again the Machine responded instantly.

There was a flurry of comment from the stands and a scurrying-about of officials to shush it. Meanwhile the Machine continued to make its moves at better than rapid-transit speed, although Votbinnik soon began to take rather more time on his.

The upshot was that the Machine made eleven moves before it started to take time to “think” at all.

Sandra clamored so excitedly to Dave for an explanation that she had two officials waving at her angrily.

As soon as he dared, Dave whispered, “Great must have banked on Votbinnik playing the French⁠—almost always does⁠—and fed all the variations of the French into the Machine’s ‘memory’ from M.C.O. and maybe some other books. So long as Votbinnik stuck to a known variation of the French, why, the Machine could play from memory without analyzing at all. Then when a strange move came along⁠—one that wasn’t in its memory⁠—only on the twelfth move yet!⁠—the Machine went back to analyzing, only now it’s taking longer and going deeper because it’s got more time⁠—six minutes a move, about. The only thing I wonder is why Great didn’t have the Machine do it in the first three games. It seems so obvious.”

Sandra ticketed that in her mind as a question for Doc. She slipped off to her room to write her “Don’t Let a Robot Get Your Goat” article (drawing heavily on Doc’s observations) and got back to the stands twenty minutes before the second time-control point. It was becoming a regular routine.

Votbinnik was a knight down⁠—almost certainly busted, Dave explained.

“It got terrifically complicated while you were gone,” he said. “A real Votbinnik position.”

“Only the Machine out-binniked him,” Bill finished.

Judy hummed Beethoven’s “Funeral March for the Death of a Hero.”

Nevertheless Votbinnik did not resign. The Machine sealed a move. Its board blacked out and Vanderhoef, with one of his assistants standing beside him to witness, privately read the move off a small indicator on the console. Tomorrow he would feed the move back into the Machine when play was resumed at the morning session.

Doc sealed a move too although he was two pawns down in his game against Grabo and looked tired to death.

“They don’t give up easily, do they?” Sandra observed to Dave. “They must really love the game. Or do they hate it?”

“When you get to psychology it’s all beyond me,” Dave replied. “Ask me something else.”

Sandra smiled. “Thank you, Dave,” she said. “I will.”

Come the morning session, Votbinnik played on for a dozen moves then resigned.

A little later Doc managed to draw his game with Grabo by perpetual check. He caught sight of Sandra coming down from the stands and waved to her, then made the motions of drinking.

Now he looks almost like a boy, Sandra thought as she joined him.

“Say, Doc,” she asked when they had secured a table, “why is a rook worth more than a bishop?”

He darted a suspicious glance at her. “That is not your kind of question,” he said sternly. “Exactly what have you been up to?”

Sandra confessed that she had asked Dave to teach her how to play chess.

“I knew those children would corrupt you,” Doc said somberly. “Look, my dear, if you learn to play chess you won’t be able to write your clever little articles about it. Besides, as I warned you the first day, chess is a madness. Women are ordinarily immune, but that doesn’t justify you taking chances with your sanity.”

“But I’ve kind of gotten interested, watching the tournament,” Sandra objected. “At least I’d like to know how the pieces move.”

“Stop!” Doc commanded. “You’re already in danger. Direct your mind somewhere else. Ask me a sensible, down-to-earth journalist’s question⁠—something completely irrational!”

“Okay, why didn’t Simon Great have the Machine set to play the openings fast in the first three games?”

“Hah! I think Great plays Lasker-chess in his programming. He hides his strength and tries to win no more easily than he has to, so he will have resources in reserve. The Machine loses to Lysmov and immediately starts playing more strongly⁠—the psychological impression made on the other players by such tactics is formidable.”

“But the Machine isn’t ahead yet?”

“No, of course not. After four rounds Lysmov is leading the tournament with 3½⁠—½, meaning 3½ in the win column and ½ in the loss column⁠ ⁠…”

“How do you half win a game of chess? Or half lose one?” Sandra interrupted.

“By drawing a game⁠—playing to a tie. Lysmov’s 3½⁠—½ is notational shorthand for three wins and a draw. Understand? My dear, I don’t usually have to explain things to you in such detail.”

“I just didn’t want you to think I was learning too much about chess.”

“Ho! Well, to get on with the score after four rounds, Angler and Votbinnik both have 3⁠—1, while the Machine is bracketed at 2½⁠—1½ with Jal. But the Machine has created an impression of strength, as if it were all set to come from behind with a rush.” He shook his head. “At the moment, my dear,” he said, “I feel very pessimistic about the chances of neurons against relays in this tournament. Relays don’t panic and fag. But the oddest thing⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes?” Sandra prompted.

“Well, the oddest thing is that the Machine doesn’t play ‘like a machine’ at all. It uses dynamic strategy, the kind we sometimes call ‘Russian,’ complicating each position as much as possible and creating maximum tension. But that too is a matter of the programming⁠ ⁠…”

Doc’s foreboding was fulfilled as round followed hard-fought round. In the next five days (there was a weekend recess) the Machine successively smashed Jandorf, Serek and Jal and after seven rounds was out in front by a full point.

Jandorf, evidently impressed by the Machine’s flawless opening play against Votbinnik, chose an inferior line in the Ruy Lopez to get the Machine “out of the books.” Perhaps he hoped that the Machine would go on blindly making book moves, but the Machine did not oblige. It immediately slowed its play, “thought hard” and annihilated the Argentinian in 25 moves.

Doc commented, “The Wild Bull of the Pampas tried to use the living force of his human personality to pull a fast one and swindle the Machine. Only the Machine didn’t swindle.”

Against Jal, the Machine used a new wrinkle. It used a variable amount of time on moves, apparently according to how difficult it “judged” the position to be.

When Serek got a poor pawn-position the Machine simplified the game relentlessly, suddenly discarding its hitherto “Russian” strategy. “It plays like anything but a machine,” Doc commented. “We know the reason all too well⁠—Simon Great⁠—but doing something about it is something else again. Great is hitting at our individual weaknesses wonderfully well. Though I think I could play brilliant psychological chess myself if I had a machine to do the detail work.” Doc sounded a bit wistful.

The audiences grew in size and in expensiveness of wardrobe, though most of the café society types made their visits fleeting ones. Additional stands were erected. A hard-liquor bar was put in and then taken out. The problem of keeping reasonable order and quiet became an unending one for Vanderhoef, who had to ask for more “hushers.” The number of scientists and computer men, Navy, Army and Space Force uniforms were more in evidence. Dave and Bill turned up one morning with a three-dimensional chess set of transparent plastic and staggered Sandra by assuring her that most bright young space scientists were moderately adept at this 512-square game.

Sandra heard that W.B.M. had snagged a big order from the War Department. She also heard that a Syndicate man had turned up with a book on the tournament, taking bets from the more heavily heeled types and that a detective was circulating about, trying to spot him.

The newspapers kept up their front-page reporting, most of the writers personalizing the Machine heavily and rather too cutely. Several of the papers started regular chess columns and “How to Play Chess” features. There was a flurry of pictures of movie starlets and such sitting at chess boards. Hollywood revealed plans for two chess movies: “They Made Her a Black Pawn” and “The Monster From King Rook Square.” Chess novelties and costume jewelry appeared. The United States Chess Federation proudly reported a phenomenal rise in membership.

Sandra learned enough chess to be able to blunder through a game with Dave without attempting more than one illegal move in five, to avoid the Scholar’s Mate most of the time and to be able to checkmate with two rooks though not with one. Judy had asked her, “Is he pleased that you’re learning chess?”

Sandra had replied, “No, he thinks it is a madness.” The kids had all whooped at that and Dave had said, “How right he is!”

Sandra was scraping the bottom of the barrel for topics for her articles, but then it occurred to her to write about the kids, which worked out nicely, and that led to a humorous article “Chess Is for Brains” about her own efforts to learn the game, and for the nth time in her career she thought of herself as practically a columnist and was accordingly elated.

After his two draws, Doc lost three games in a row and still had the Machine to face and then Sherevsky. His 1⁠—6 score gave him undisputed possession of last place. He grew very depressed. He still made a point of squiring her about before the playing sessions, but she had to make most of the conversation. His rare flashes of humor were rather macabre.

“They have Dirty Old Krakatower locked in the cellar,” he muttered just before the start of the next to the last round, “and now they send the robot down to destroy him.”

“Just the same, Doc,” Sandra told him, “good luck.”

Doc shook his head. “Against a man luck might help. But against a Machine?”

“It’s not the Machine you’re playing, but the programming. Remember?”

“Yes, but it’s the Machine that doesn’t make the mistake. And a mistake is what I need most of all today. Somebody else’s.”

Doc must have looked very dispirited and tired when he left Sandra in the stands, for Judy (Dave and Bill not having arrived yet) asked in a confidential, womanly sort of voice, “What do you do for him when he’s so unhappy?”

“Oh, I’m especially passionate,” Sandra heard herself answer.

“Is that good for him?” Judy demanded doubtfully.

“Sh!” Sandra said, somewhat aghast at her irresponsibility and wondering if she were getting tournament-nerves. “Sh, they’re starting the clocks.”

V

Krakatower had lost two pawns when the first time-control point arrived and was intending to resign on his 31st move when the Machine broke down. Three of its pieces moved on the electric board at once, then the board went dark and all the lights on the console went out except five which started winking like angry red eyes. The gray-smocked men around Simon Great sprang silently into action, filing around back of the console. It was the first work anyone had seen them do except move screens around and fetch each other coffee. Vanderhoef hovered anxiously. Some flash bulbs went off. Vanderhoef shook his fist at the photographers. Simon Great did nothing. The Machine’s clock ticked on. Doc watched for a while and then fell asleep.

When Vanderhoef jogged him awake, the Machine had just made its next move, but the repair-job had taken 50 minutes. As a result the Machine had to make 15 moves in 10 minutes. At 40 seconds a move it played like a dub whose general lack of skill was complicated by a touch of insanity. On his 43rd move Doc shrugged his shoulders apologetically and announced mate in four. There were more flashes. Vanderhoef shook his fist again. The machine flashed:

You played brilliantly. Congratulations!

Afterwards Doc said sourly to Sandra. “And that was one big lie⁠—a child could have beat the Machine with that time advantage. Oh, what an ironic glory the gods reserved for Krakatower’s dotage⁠—to vanquish a broken-down computer! Only one good thing about it⁠—that it didn’t happen while it was playing one of the Russians, or someone would surely have whispered sabotage. And that is something of which they do not accuse Dirty Old Krakatower, because they are sure he has not got the brains even to think to sprinkle a little magnetic oxide powder in the Machine’s memory box. Bah!”

Just the same he seemed considerably more cheerful.

Sandra said guilelessly, “Winning a game means nothing to you chess players, does it, unless you really do it by your own brilliancy?”

Doc looked solemn for a moment, then he started to chuckle. “You are getting altogether too smart, Miss Sandra Lea Grayling,” he said. “Yes, yes⁠—a chess player is happy to win in any barely legitimate way he can, by an earthquake if necessary, or his opponent sickening before he does from the bubonic plague. So⁠—I confess it to you⁠—I was very happy to chalk up my utterly undeserved win over the luckless Machine.”

“Which incidentally makes it anybody’s tournament again, doesn’t it, Doc?”

“Not exactly.” Doc gave a wry little headshake. “We can’t expect another fluke. After all, the Machine has functioned perfectly seven games out of eight, and you can bet the W.B.M. men will be checking it all night, especially since it has no adjourned games to work on. Tomorrow it plays Willie Angler, but judging from the way it beat Votbinnik and Jal, it should have a definite edge on Willie. If it beats him, then only Votbinnik has a chance for a tie and to do that he must defeat Lysmov. Which will be most difficult.”

“Well,” Sandra said, “don’t you think that Lysmov might just kind of let himself be beaten, to make sure a Russian gets first place or at least ties for it?”

Doc shook his head emphatically. “There are many things a man, even a chess master, will do to serve his state, but party loyalty doesn’t go that deep. Look, here is the standing of the players after eight rounds.” He handed Sandra a penciled list.

One Round To Go
Player	Wins	Losses
Machine	5½	2½
Votbinnik	5½	2½
Angler	5	3
Jal	4½	3½
Lysmov	4½	3½
Serek	4½	3½
Sherevsky	4	4
Jandorf	2½	5½
Grabo	2	6
Krakatower	2	6

Last Round Pairings

Machine vs. Angler
Votbinnik vs. Lysmov
Jal vs. Serek
Sherevsky vs. Krakatower
Jandorf vs. Grabo

After studying the list for a while, Sandra said, “Hey, even Angler could come out first, couldn’t he, if he beat the Machine and Votbinnik lost to Lysmov?”

“Could, could⁠—yes. But I’m afraid that’s hoping for too much, barring another breakdown. To tell the truth, dear, the Machine is simply too good for all of us. If it were only a little faster (and these technological improvements always come) it would outclass us completely. We are at that fleeting moment of balance when genius is almost good enough to equal mechanism. It makes me feel sad, but proud too in a morbid fashion, to think that I am in at the death of grandmaster chess. Oh, I suppose the game will always be played, but it won’t ever be quite the same.” He blew out a breath and shrugged his shoulders.

“As for Willie, he’s a good one and he’ll give the Machine a long hard fight, you can depend on it. He might conceivably even draw.”

He touched Sandra’s arm. “Cheer up, my dear,” he said. “You should remind yourself that a victory for the Machine is still a victory for the U.S.A.”

Doc’s prediction about a long hard fight was decidedly not fulfilled.

Having White, the Machine opened Pawn to King Four and Angler went into the Sicilian Defense. For the first twelve moves on each side both adversaries pushed their pieces and tapped their clocks at such lightning speed (Vanderhoef feeding in Angler’s moves swiftly) that up in the stands Bill and Judy were still flipping pages madly in their hunt for the right column in M.C.O.

The Machine made its thirteenth move, still at blitz tempo.

“Bishop takes Pawn, check, and mate in three!” Willie announced very loudly, made the move, banged his clock and sat back.

There was a collective gasp-and-gabble from the stands.

Dave squeezed Sandra’s arm hard. Then for once forgetting that he was Dr. Caution, he demanded loudly of Bill and Judy, “Have you two idiots found that column yet? The Machine’s thirteenth move is a boner!”

Pinning down the reference with a fingernail, Judy cried, “Yes! Here it is on page 161 in. footnote (e) (2) (B). Dave, that same thirteenth move for White is in the book! But Black replies Knight to Queen Two, not Bishop takes Pawn, check. And three moves later the book gives White a plus value.”

“What the heck, it can’t be,” Bill asserted.

“But it is. Check for yourself. That boner is in the book.”

“Shut up, everybody!” Dave ordered, clapping his hands to his face. When he dropped them a moment later his eyes gleamed. “I got it now! Angler figured they were using the latest edition of M.C.O. to program the Machine on openings, he found an editorial error and then he deliberately played the Machine into that variation!”

Dave practically shouted his last words, but that attracted no attention as at that moment the whole hall was the noisiest it had been throughout the tournament. It simmered down somewhat as the Machine flashed a move.

Angler replied instantly.

The Machine replied almost as soon as Angler’s move was fed into it.

Angler moved again, his move was fed into the Machine and the Machine flashed:

I am checkmated. Congratulations!

VI

Next morning Sandra heard Dave’s guess confirmed by both Angler and Great. Doc had spotted them having coffee and a malt together and he and Sandra joined them.

Doc was acting jubilant, having just drawn his adjourned game with Sherevsky, which meant, since Jandorf had beaten Grabo, that he was in undisputed possession of Ninth Place. They were all waiting for the finish of the Votbinnik-Lysmov game, which would decide the final standing of the leaders. Willie Angler was complacent and Simon Great was serene and at last a little more talkative.

“You know, Willie,” the psychologist said, “I was afraid that one of you boys would figure out something like that. That was the chief reason I didn’t have the Machine use the programmed openings until Lysmov’s win forced me to. I couldn’t check every opening line in M.C.O. and the Archives and Shakhmaty. There wasn’t time. As it was, we had a dozen typists and proofreaders busy for weeks preparing that part of the programming and making sure it was accurate as far as following the books went. Tell the truth now, Willie, how many friends did you have hunting for flaws in the latest edition of M.C.O.?”

Willie grinned. “Your unlucky 13th. Well, that’s my secret. Though I’ve always said that anyone joining the Willie Angler Fan Club ought to expect to have to pay some day for the privilege. They’re sharp, those little guys, and I work their tails off.”

Simon Great laughed and said to Sandra, “Your young friend Dave was pretty sharp himself to deduce what had happened so quickly. Willie, you ought to have him in the Bleeker Street Irregulars.”

Sandra said, “I get the impression he’s planning to start a club of his own.”

Angler snorted. “That’s the one trouble with my little guys. They’re all waiting to topple me.”

Simon Great said, “Well, so long as Willie is passing up Dave, I want to talk to him. It takes real courage in a youngster to question authority.”

“How should he get in touch with you?” Sandra asked.

While Great told her, Willie studied them frowningly.

“Si, are you planning to stick in this chess-programming racket?” he demanded.

Simon Great did not answer the question. “You try telling me something, Willie,” he said. “Have you been approached the last couple of days by I.B.M.?”

“You mean asking me to take over your job?”

“I said I.-B.M., Willie.”

“Oh.” Willie’s grin became a tight one. “I’m not talking.”

There was a flurry of sound and movement around the playing tables. Willie sprang up.

“Lysmov’s agreed to a draw!” he informed them a moment later. “The gangster!”

“Gangster because he puts you in equal first place with Votbinnik, both of you ahead of the Machine?” Great inquired gently.

“Ahh, he could have beat Binny, giving me sole first. A Russian gangster!”

Doc shook a finger. “Lysmov could also have lost to Votbinnik, Willie, putting you in second place.”

“Don’t think evil thoughts. So long, pals.”

As Angler clattered down the stairs, Simon Great signed the waiter for more coffee, lit a fresh cigarette, took a deep drag and leaned back.

“You know,” he said, “it’s a great relief not to have to impersonate the hyperconfident programmer for awhile. Being a psychologist has spoiled me for that sort of thing. I’m not as good as I once was at beating people over the head with my ego.”

“You didn’t do too badly,” Doc said.

“Thanks. Actually, W.B.M. is very much pleased with the Machine’s performance. The Machine’s flaws made it seem more real and more newsworthy, especially how it functioned when the going got tough⁠—those repairs the boys made under time pressure in your game, Savilly, will help sell W.B.M. computers or I miss my guess. In fact nobody could have watched the tournament for long without realizing there were nine smart rugged men out there, ready to kill that computer if they could. The Machine passed a real test. And then the whole deal dramatizes what computers are and what they can and can’t do. And not just at the popular level. The W.B.M. research boys are learning a lot about computer and programming theory by studying how the Machine and its programmer behave under tournament stress. It’s a kind of test unlike that provided by any other computer work. Just this morning, for instance, one of our big mathematicians told me that he is beginning to think that the Theory of Games does apply to chess, because you can bluff and counterbluff with your programming. And I’m learning about human psychology.”

Doc chuckled. “Such as that even human thinking is just a matter of how you program your own mind?⁠—that we’re all like the Machine to that extent?”

“That’s one of the big points, Savilly. Yes.”

Doc smiled at Sandra. “You wrote a nice little news-story, dear, about how Man conquered the Machine by a palpitating nose and won a victory for international amity.

“Now the story starts to go deeper.”

“A lot of things go deeper,” Sandra replied, looking at him evenly. “Much deeper than you ever expect at the start.”

The big electric Scoreboard lit up.

Final Standing
Player	Wins	Losses
Angler	6	3
Votbinnik	6	3
Jal	5½	3½
Machine	5½	3½
Lysmov	5	4
Serek	4½	4½
Sherevsky	4½	4½
Jandorf	3½	5½
Krakatower	2½	6½
Grabo	2	7

“It was a good tournament,” Doc said. “And the Machine has proven itself a grandmaster. It must make you feel good, Simon, after being out of tournament chess for twenty years.”

The psychologist nodded.

“Will you go back to psychology now?” Sandra asked him.

Simon Great smiled. “I can answer that question honestly, Miss Grayling, because the news is due for release. No. W.B.M. is pressing for entry of the Machine in the Interzonal Candidates’ Tournament. They want a crack at the World’s Championship.”

Doc raised his eyebrows. “That’s news indeed. But look, Simon, with the knowledge you’ve gained in this tournament won’t you be able to make the Machine almost a sure winner in every game?”

“I don’t know. Players like Angler and Lysmov may find some more flaws in its functioning and dream up some new stratagems. Besides, there’s another solution to the problems raised by having a single computer entered in a grandmaster tournament.”

Doc sat up straight. “You mean having more programmer-computer teams than just one?”

“Exactly. The Russians are bound to give their best players computers, considering the prestige the game has in Russia. And I wasn’t asking Willie that question about I.B.M. just on a hunch. Chess tournaments are a wonderful way to test rival computers and show them off to the public, just like cross-country races were for the early automobiles. The future grandmaster will inevitably be a programmer-computer team, a man-machine symbiotic partnership, probably with more freedom each way than I was allowed in this tournament⁠—I mean the man taking over the play in some positions, the machine in others.”

“You’re making my head swim,” Sandra said.

“Mine is in the same storm-tossed ocean,” Doc assured her. “Simon, that will be very fine for the master who can get themselves computers⁠—either from their governments or from hiring out to big firms. Or in other ways. Jandorf, I’m sure, will be able to interest some Argentinian millionaire in a computer for him. While I⁠ ⁠… oh, I’m too old⁠ ⁠… still, when I start to think about it⁠ ⁠… But what about the Bela Grabos? Incidentally, did you know that Grabo is contesting Jandorf’s win? Claims Jandorf discussed the position with Serek. I think they exchanged about two words.”

Simon shrugged, “The Bela Grabos will have to continue to fight their own battles, if necessary satisfying themselves with the lesser tournaments. Believe me, Savilly, from now on grandmaster chess without one or more computers entered will lack sauce.”

Dr. Krakatower shook his head and said, “Thinking gets more expensive every year.”

From the floor came the harsh voice of Igor Jandorf and the shrill one of Bela Grabo raised in anger. Three words came through clearly: “… I challenge you⁠ ⁠…”

Sandra said, “Well, there’s something you can’t build into a machine⁠—ego.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Simon Great.

I

The pole stars of the other planets cluster around Polaris and Octans, but Uranus spins on a snobbishly different axis between Aldebaran and Antares. The Bull is her coronet and the Scorpion her footstool. Dear blowzy old bitch-planet, swollen and pale and cold, mad with your Shakespearean moons, white-mottled as death from Venerean Plague, spinning on your side like a poisoned pregnant cockroach, rolling around the sun like a fat drunken floozie with green hair rolling on the black floor of an infinite barroom, what a sweet last view of the Solar System you are for a cleancut young spaceman⁠ ⁠…

Grunfeld chopped off that train of thought short. He was young and the First Interstellar War had snatched him up and now it was going to pitch him and twenty other Joes out of the System on a fast curve breaking around Uranus⁠—and so what! He shivered to get a little heat and then applied himself to the occulted star he was tracking through Prospero’s bridge telescope. The star was a twentieth planetary diameter into Uranus, the crosslines showed⁠—a glint almost lost in pale green. That meant its light was bulleting 1600 miles deep through the seventh planet’s thick hydrogen atmosphere, unless he were seeing the star on a mirage trajectory⁠—and at least its depth agreed with the time since rim contact.

At 2000 miles he lost it. That should mean 2000 miles plus of hydrogen soup above the methane ocean, an America-wide layer of gaseous gunk for the captain to play the mad hero in with the fleet.

Grunfeld didn’t think the captain wanted to play the mad hero. The captain hadn’t gone space-simple in any obvious way like Croker and Ness. And he wasn’t, like Jackson, a telepathy-racked visionary entranced by the Enemy. Worry and responsibility had turned the captain’s face into a skull which floated in Grunfeld’s imagination when he wasn’t actually seeing it, but the tired eyes deep-sunk in the dark sockets were still cool and perhaps sane. But because of the worry the captain always wanted to have the last bit of fact bearing on the least likely maneuver, and two pieces of evidence were better than one. Grunfeld found the next sizable star due to occult. Five-six minutes to rim contact. He floated back a foot from the telescope, stretching out his thin body in the plane of the ecliptic⁠—strange how he automatically assumed that orientation in free fall! He blinked and blinked, then rested his eyes on the same planet he’d been straining them on.

The pale greenish bulk of Uranus was centered in the big bridge spaceshield against the black velvet dark and bayonet-bright stars, a water-splotched and faded chartreuse tennis ball on the diamond-spiked bed of night. At eight million miles she looked half the width of Luna seen from Earth. Her whitish equatorial bands went from bottom to top, where, Grunfeld knew, they were spinning out of sight at three miles a second⁠—a gelid waterfall that he imagined tugging at him with ghostly green gangrenous fingers and pulling him over into a hydrogen Niagara.

Half as wide as Luna. But in a day she’d overflow the port as they whipped past her on a near miss and in another day she’d be as small as this again, but behind them, sunward, having altered their outward course by some small and as yet unpredictable angle, but no more able to slow Prospero and her sister ships or turn them back at their 100 miles a second than the fleet’s solar jets could operate at this chilly distance from Sol. G’by, fleet. G’by, C.C.Y. spaceman.

Grunfeld looked for the pale planet’s moons. Miranda and Umbriel were too tiny to make disks, but he distinguished Ariel four diameters above the planet and Oberon a dozen below. Spectral sequins. If the fleet were going to get a radio signal from any of them, it would have to be Titania, occulted now by the planet and the noisy natural static of her roiling hydrogen air and seething methane seas⁠—but it had always been only a faint hope that there were survivors from the First Uranus Expedition.

Grunfeld relaxed his neck and let his gaze drift down across the curving star-bordered forward edge of Prospero’s huge mirror and the thin jutting beams of the port lattice arm to the dim red-lit gages below the spaceshield.

Forward Skin Temperature seven degrees Kelvin. Almost low enough for helium to crawl, if you had some helium. Prospero’s insulation, originally designed to hold out solar heat, was doing a fair job in reverse.

Aft (sunward) Skin Temperature 75 degrees Kelvin. Close to that of Uranus’ sunlit face. Check.

Cabin Temperature 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Brr! The Captain was a miser with the chem fuel remaining. And rightly⁠ ⁠… if it were right to drag out life as long as possible in the empty icebox beyond Uranus.

Gravities of Acceleration zero. Many other zeros.

The four telltales for the fleet unblinkingly glowed dimmest blue⁠—one each for Caliban, Snug, Moth, and Starveling, following Prospero in line astern on slave automatic⁠—though for months inertia had done all five ships’ piloting. Once the buttons had been green, but they’d wiped that color off the boards because of the Enemy.

The gages still showed their last maximums. Skin 793 Kelvin, Cabin 144 Fahrenheit, Gravs 3.2. All of them hit almost a year ago, when they’d been ace-ing past the sun. Grunfeld’s gaze edged back to the five bulbous pressure suits, once more rigidly upright in their braced racks, that they’d been wearing during that stretch of acceleration inside the orbit of Mercury. He started. For a moment he’d thought he saw the dark-circled eyes of the captain peering between two of the bulging black suits. Nerves! The captain had to be in his cabin, readying alternate piloting programs for Copperhead.

Suddenly Grunfeld jerked his face back toward the spaceshield⁠—so violently that his body began very slowly to spin in the opposite direction. This time he’d thought he saw the Enemy’s green flashing near the margin of the planet⁠—bright green, viridian, far vivider than that of Uranus herself. He drew himself to the telescope and feverishly studied the area. Nothing at all. Nerves again. If the Enemy were much nearer than a light-minute, Jackson would esp it and give warning. The next star was still three minutes from rim contact. Grunfeld’s mind retreated to the circumstances that had brought Prospero (then only Mercury One) out here.

II

When the First Interstellar War erupted, the pioneer fleets of Earth’s nations had barely pushed their explorations beyond the orbit of Saturn. Except for the vessels of the International Meteor Guard, spaceflight was still a military enterprise of America, Russia, England and the other mega-powers.

During the first months the advantage lay wholly with the slim black cruisers of the Enemy, who had an antigravity which allowed them to hover near planets without going into orbit; and a frightening degree of control over light itself. Indeed, their principal weapon was a tight beam of visible light, a dense photonic stiletto with an effective range of several Jupiter-diameters in vacuum. They also used visible light, in the green band, for communication as men use radio, sometimes broadcasting it and sometimes beaming it loosely in strange abstract pictures that seemed part of their language. Their gravity-immune ships moved by reaction to photonic jets the tightness of which rendered them invisible except near the sun, where they tended to ionize electronically dirty volumes of space. It was probably this effective invisibility, based on light-control, which allowed them to penetrate the Solar System as deep as Earth’s orbit undetected, rather than any power of travel in time or subspace, as was first assumed. Earthmen could only guess at the physical appearance of the Enemy, since no prisoners were taken on either side.

Despite his impressive maneuverability and armament, the Enemy was oddly timid about attacking live planets. He showed no fear of the big gas planets, in fact hovering very close to their turgid surfaces, as if having some way of fueling from them.

Near Terra the first tactic of the black cruisers, after destroying Lunostrovok and Circumluna, was to hover behind the moon, as though sharing its tide-lockedness⁠—a circumstance that led to a sortie by Earth’s Combined Fleet, England and Sweden excepted.

At the wholly disastrous Battle of the Far Side, which was visible in part to naked-eye viewers on Earth, the Combined Fleet was annihilated. No Enemy ship was captured, boarded, or seriously damaged⁠—except for one which, apparently by a fluke, was struck by a fission-headed anti-missile and proceeded after the blast to “burn,” meaning that it suffered a slow and puzzling disintegration, accompanied by a dazzling rainbow display of visible radiation. This was before the “stupidity” of the Enemy with regard to small atomic missiles was noted, or their allergy to certain radio wave bands, and also before Terran telepaths began to claim cloudy contact with Enemy minds.

Following Far Side, the Enemy burst into activity, harrying Terran spacecraft as far as Mercury and Saturn, though still showing great caution in maneuver and making no direct attacks on planets. It was as if a race of heavily armed marine creatures should sink all oceangoing ships or drive them to harbor, but make no assaults beyond the shore line. For a full year Earth, though her groundside and satellite rocketyards were furiously busy, had no vehicle in deep space⁠—with one exception.

At the onset of the War a fleet of five mobile bases of the U.S. Space Force were in Orbit to Mercury, where it was intended they take up satellite positions prior to the prospecting and mineral exploitation of the small sun-blasted planet. These five ships, each with a skeleton five-man crew, were essentially Ross-Smith space stations with a solar drive, assembled in space and intended solely for space-to-space flight inside Earth’s orbit. A huge paraboloid mirror, its diameter four times the length of the ship’s hull, superheated at its focus the hydrogen which was ejected as a plasma at high exhaust velocity. Each ship likewise mounted versatile radio-radar equipment on dual lattice arms and carried as ship’s launch a two-man chemical fuel rocket adaptable as a fusion-headed torpedo.

After Far Side, this “tin can” fleet was ordered to bypass Mercury and, tacking on the sun, shape an orbit for Uranus, chiefly because that remote planet, making its 84-year circuit of Sol, was currently on the opposite side of the sun to the four inner planets and the two nearer gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. In the empty regions of space the relatively defenseless fleet might escape the attention of the Enemy.

However, while still accelerating into the sun for maximum boost, the fleet received information that two Enemy cruisers were in pursuit. The five ships cracked on all possible speed, drawing on the solar drive’s high efficiency near the sun and expending all their hydrogen and most material capable of being vaporized, including some of the light-metal hydrogen storage tanks⁠—like an old steamer burning her cabin furniture and the cabins themselves to win a race. Gradually the curving course that would have taken years to reach the outer planet flattened into a hyperbola that would make the journey in 200 days.

In the asteroid belt the pursuing cruisers turned aside to join in the crucial Battle of the Trojans with Earth’s largely new-built, more heavily and wisely armed Combined Fleet⁠—a battle that proved to be only a prelude to the decisive Battle of Jupiter.

Meanwhile the five-ship fleet sped onward, its solar drive quite useless in this twilight region even if it could have scraped together the needed boilable ejectant mass to slow its flight. Weeks became months. The ships were renamed for the planet they were aimed at. At least the fleet’s trajectory had been truly set.

Almost on collision course it neared Uranus, a mystery-cored ball of frigid gas 32,000 miles wide coasting through space across the fleet’s course at a lazy four miles a second. At this time the fleet was traveling at 100 miles a second. Beyond Uranus lay only the interstellar night, into which the fleet would inevitably vanish⁠ ⁠…

Unless, Grunfeld told himself⁠ ⁠… unless the fleet shed its velocity by ramming the gaseous bulk of Uranus. This idea of atmospheric braking on a grand scale had sounded possible at first suggestion, half a year ago⁠—a little like a man falling off a mountain or from a plane and saving his life by dropping into a great thickness of feathery new-fallen snow.

Supposing her solar jet worked out here and she had the reaction mass, Prospero could have shed her present velocity in five hours, decelerating at a comfortable one G.

But allowing her 12,000 miles of straight-line travel through Uranus’ frigid soupy atmosphere⁠—and that might be dipping very close to the methane seas blanketing the planet’s hypothetical mineral core⁠—Prospero would have two minutes in which to shed her velocity.

Two minutes⁠—at 150 Gs.

Men had stood 40 and 50 Gs for a fractional second.

But for two minutes⁠ ⁠… Grunfeld told himself that the only surer way to die would be to run into a section of the Enemy fleet. According to one calculation the ship’s skin would melt by heat of friction in 90 seconds, despite the low temperature of the abrading atmosphere.

The star Grunfeld had been waiting for touched the hazy rim of Uranus. He drifted back to the eyepiece and began to follow it in as the pale planet’s hydrogen muted its diamond brilliance.

III

In the aft cabin, lank hairy-wristed Croker pinned another blanket around black Jackson as the latter shivered in his trance. Then Croker turned on a small light at the head of the hammock.

“Captain won’t like that,” plump pale Ness observed tranquilly from where he floated in womb position across the cabin. “Enemy can feel a candle of our light, captain says, ten million miles away.” He rocked his elbows for warmth and his body wobbled in reaction like a pollywog’s.

“And Jackson hears the Enemy think⁠ ⁠… and Heimdall hears the grass grow,” Croker commented with a harsh manic laugh. “Isn’t an Enemy for a billion miles, Ness.” He launched aft from the hammock. “We haven’t spotted their green since Saturn orbit. There’s nowhere for them.”

“There’s the far side of Uranus,” Ness pointed out. “That’s less than ten million miles now. Eight. A bare day. They could be there.”

“Yes, waiting to bushwack us as we whip past on our way to eternity,” Croker chuckled as he crumpled up against the aft port, shedding momentum. “That’s likely, isn’t it, when they didn’t have time for us back in the Belt?” He scowled at the tiny white sun, no bigger a disk than Venus, but still with one hundred times as much light as the full moon pouring from it⁠—too much light to look at comfortably. He began to button the inner cover over the port.

“Don’t do that,” Ness objected without conviction. “There’s not much heat in it but there’s some.” He hugged his elbows and shivered. “I don’t remember being warm since Mars orbit.”

“The sun gets on my nerves,” Croker said. “It’s like looking at an arc light through a pinhole. It’s like a high, high jail light in a cold concrete yard. The stars are highlights on the barbed wire.” He continued to button out the sun.

“You ever in jail?” Ness asked. Croker grinned.

With the tropism of a fish, Ness began to paddle toward the little light at the head of Jackson’s hammock, flicking his hands from the wrists like flippers. “I got one thing against the sun,” he said quietly. “It’s blanketing out the radio. I’d like us to get one more message from Earth. We haven’t tried rigging our mirror to catch radio waves. I’d like to hear how we won the battle of Jupiter.”

“If we won it,” Croker said.

“Our telescopes show no more green around Jove,” Ness reminded him. “We counted 27 rainbows of Enemy cruisers ‘burning.’ Captain verified the count.”

“Repeat: if we won it.” Croker pushed off and drifted back toward the hammock. “If there was a real victory message they’d push it through, even if the sun’s in the way and it takes three hours to catch us. People who win, shout.”

Ness shrugged as he paddled. “One way or the other, we should be getting the news soon from Titania station,” he said. “They’ll have heard.”

“If they’re still alive and there ever was a Titania Station,” Croker amended, backing air violently to stop himself as he neared the hammock. “Look, Ness, we know that the First Uranus Expedition arrived. At least they set off their flares. But that was three years before the War and we haven’t any idea of what’s happened to them since and if they ever managed to set up housekeeping on Titania⁠—or Ariel or Oberon or even Miranda or Umbriel. At least if they built a station that could raise Earth I haven’t been told. Sure thing Prospero hasn’t heard anything⁠ ⁠… and we’re getting close.”

“I won’t argue,” Ness said. “Even if we raise ’em, it’ll just be hello-goodbye with maybe time between for a battle report.”

“And a football score and a short letter from home, ten seconds per man as the station fades.” Croker frowned and added, “If Captain had cottoned to my idea, two of us at any rate could have got off this express train at Uranus.”

“Tell me how,” Ness asked drily.

“How? Why, one of the ship’s launches. Replace the fusion-head with the cabin. Put all the chem fuel in the tanks instead of divvying it between the ship and the launch.”

“I haven’t got the brain for math Copperhead has, but I can subtract,” Ness said, referring to Prospero’s piloting robot. “Fully fueled, one of the launches has a max velocity change in free-fall of 30 miles per second. Use it all in braking and you’ve only taken 30 from 100. The launch is still going past Uranus and out of the system at 70 miles a second.”

“You didn’t hear all my idea,” Croker said. “You put piggyback tanks on your launch and top them off with the fuel from the other four launches. Then you’ve 100 miles of braking and a maneuvering reserve. You only need to shed 90 miles, anyway. Ten miles a second’s the close circum-Uranian velocity. Go into circum-Uranian orbit and wait for Titania to send their jeep to pick you up. Have to start the maneuver four hours this side of Uranus, though. Take that long at 1 G to shed it.”

“Cute,” Ness conceded. “Especially the jeep. But I’m glad just the same we’ve got 70 percent of our chem fuel in our ships’ tanks instead of the launches. We’re on such a bull’s eye course for Uranus⁠—Copperhead really pulled a miracle plotting our orbit⁠—that we may need a sidewise shove to miss her. If we slapped into that cold hydrogen soup at our 100 mps⁠—”

Croker shrugged. “We still could have dropped a couple of us,” he said.

“Captain’s got to look after the whole fleet,” Ness said. “You’re beginning to agitate, Croker, like you was Grunfeld⁠—or the captain himself.”

“But if Titania Station’s alive, a couple of men dropped off would do the fleet some good. Stir Titania up to punch a message through to Earth and get a really high-speed retrieve-and-rescue ship started out after us. If we’ve won the War.”

“But Titania Station’s dead or never was, not to mention its jeep. And we’ve lost the Battle of Jupiter. You said so yourself,” Ness asserted owlishly. “Captain’s got to look after the whole fleet.”

“Yeah, so he kills himself fretting and the rest of us die of old age in the outskirts of the Solar System. Join the Space Force and See the Stars! Ness, do you know how long it’d take us to reach the nearest star⁠—except we aren’t headed for her⁠—at our 100 mps? Eight thousand years!”

“That’s a lot of time to kill,” Ness said. “Let’s play chess.”

Jackson sighed and they both looked quickly at the dark unlined face above the cocoon, but the lips did not flutter again, or the eyelids. Croker said, “Suppose he knows what the Enemy looks like?”

“I suppose,” Ness said. “When he talks about them it’s as if he was their interpreter. How about the chess?”

“Suits. Knight to King Bishop Three.”

“Hmm. Knight to King Knight Two, Third Floor.”

“Hey, I meant flat chess, not three-D,” Croker objected.

“That thin old game? Why, I no sooner start to get the position really visualized in my head than the game’s over.”

“I don’t want to start a game of three-D with Uranus only 18 hours away.”

Jackson stirred in his hammock. His lips worked. “They⁠ ⁠…” he breathed. Croker and Ness instantly watched him. “They.⁠ ⁠…”

“I wonder if he is really inside the Enemy’s mind?” Ness said.

“He thinks he speaks for them,” Croker replied and the next instant felt a warning touch on his arm and looked sideways and saw dark-circled eyes in a skull-angular face under a battered cap with a tarnished sunburst. Damn, thought Croker, how does the captain always know when Jackson’s going to talk?

“They are waiting for us on the other side of Uranus,” Jackson breathed. His lips trembled into a smile and his voice grew a little louder, though his eyes stayed shut. “They’re welcoming us, they’re our brothers.” The smile died. “But they know they got to kill us, they know we got to die.”

The hammock with its tight-swathed form began to move past Croker and he snatched at it. The captain had pushed off from him for the hatch leading forward.

Grunfeld was losing the new star at 2200 miles into Uranus when he saw the two viridian flares flashing between it and the rim. Each flash was circled by a fleeting bright green ring, like a mist halo. He thought he’d be afraid when he saw that green again, but what he felt was a jolt of excitement that made him grin. With it came a touch on his shoulder. He thought, the captain always knows.

“Ambush,” he said. “At least two cruisers.”

He yielded the eyepiece to the captain. Even without the telescope he could see those incredibly brilliant green flickers. He asked himself if the Enemy was already gunning for the fleet through Uranus.

The blue telltales for Caliban and Starveling began to blink.

“They’ve seen it too,” the captain said. He snatched up the mike and his next words rang through the Prospero.

“Rig ship for the snowbank orbit! Snowbank orbit with stinger! Mr. Grunfeld, raise the fleet.”

Aft, Croker muttered, “Rig our shrouds, don’t he mean? Rig shrouds and firecrackers mounted on Fourth of July rockets.”

Ness said, “Cheer up. Even the longest strategic withdrawal in history has to end some time.”

IV

Three quarters of a day later Grunfeld felt a spasm of futile fear and revolt as the pressure suit closed like a thick-fleshed carnivorous plant on his drugged and tired body. Relax, he told himself. Fine thing if you cooked up a fuss when even Croker didn’t. He thought of forty things to re-check. Relax, he repeated⁠—the work’s over; all that matters is in Copperhead’s memory tanks now, or will be as soon as the captain’s suited up.

The suit held Grunfeld erect, his arms at his sides⁠—the best attitude, except he was still facing forward, for taking high G, providing the ship herself didn’t start to tumble. Only the cheekpieces and visor hadn’t closed in on his face⁠—translucent hand-thick petals as yet unfolded. He felt the delicate firm pressure of built-in fingertips monitoring his pulses and against his buttocks the cold smooth muzzles of the jet hypodermics that would feed him metronomic drugs during the high-G stretch and stimulants when they were in free-fall again. When.

He could swing his head and eyes just enough to make out the suits of Croker and Ness to either side of him and their profiles wavy through the jutting misty cheekpieces. Ahead to the left was Jackson⁠—just the back of his suit, like a black snowman standing at attention, pale-olive-edged by the great glow of Uranus. And to the right the captain, his legs suited but his upper body still bent out to the side as he checked the monitor of his suit with its glowing blue button and the manual controls that would lie under his hands during the maneuver.

Beyond the captain was the spaceshield, the lower quarter of it still blackness and stars, but the upper three-quarters filled with the onrushing planet’s pale mottled green that now had the dulled richness of watered silk. They were so close that the rim hardly showed curvature. The atmosphere must have a steep gradient, Grunfeld thought, or they’d already be feeling decel. That stuff ahead looked more like water than any kind of air. It bothered him that the captain was still half out of his suit.

There should be action and shouted commands, Grunfeld thought, to fill up these last tight-stretched minutes. Last orders to the fleet, port covers being cranked shut, someone doing a countdown on the firing of their torpedo. But the last message had gone to the fleet minutes ago. Its robot pilots were set to follow Prospero and imitate, nothing else. And all the rest was up to Copperhead. Still⁠ ⁠…

Grunfeld wet his lips. “Captain,” he said hesitantly. “Captain?”

“Thank you, Grunfeld.” He caught the edge of the skull’s answering grin. “We are beginning to hit hydrogen,” the quiet voice went on. “Forward skin temperature’s up to 9 K.”

Beyond the friendly skull, a great patch of the rim of Uranus flared bright green. As if that final stimulus had been needed, Jackson began to talk dreamily from his suit.

“They’re still welcoming us and grieving for us. I begin to get it a little more now. Their ship’s one thing and they’re another. Their ship is frightened to death of us. It hates us and the only thing it knows to do is to kill us. They can’t stop it, they’re even less than passengers⁠ ⁠…”

The captain was in his suit now. Grunfeld sensed a faint throbbing and felt a rush of cold air. The cabin refrigeration system had started up, carrying cabin heat to the lattice arms. Intended to protect them from solar heat, it would now do what it could against the heat of friction.

The straight edge of Uranus was getting hazier. Even the fainter stars shone through, spangling it. A bell jangled and the pale green segment narrowed as the steel meteor panels began to close in front of the spaceshield. Soon there was only a narrow vertical ribbon of green⁠—bright green as it narrowed to a thread⁠—then for a few seconds only blackness except for the dim red and blue beads and semicircles, just beyond the captain, of the board. Then the muted interior cabin lights glowed on.

Jackson droned: “They and their ships come from very far away, from the edge. If this is the continuum, they come from the⁠ ⁠… discontinuum, where they don’t have stars but something else and where gravity is different. Their ships came from the edge on a gust of fear with the other ships, and our brothers came with it though they didn’t want to⁠ ⁠…”

And now Grunfeld thought he began to feel it⁠—the first faint thrill, less than a cobweb’s tug, of weight.

The cabin wall moved sideways. Grunfeld’s suit had begun to revolve slowly on a vertical axis.

For a moment he glimpsed Jackson’s dark profile⁠—all five suits were revolving in their framework. They locked into position when the men in them were facing aft. Now at least retinas wouldn’t pull forward at high-G decel, or spines crush through thorax and abdomen.

The cabin air was cold on Grunfeld’s forehead. And now he was sure he felt weight⁠—maybe five pounds of it. Suddenly aft was up. It was as if he were lying on his back on the spaceshield.

A sudden snarling roar came through his suit from the beams bracing it. He lost weight, then regained it and a little more besides. He realized it was their torpedo taking off, to skim by Uranus in the top of the atmosphere and then curve inward the little their chem fuel would let them, homing toward the Enemy. He imaged its tiny red jet over the great gray-green glowing plain. Four more would be taking off from the other ships⁠—the fleet’s feeble sting. Like a bee’s, just one, in dying.

The cheekpieces and foreheadpiece of Grunfeld’s suit began to close on his face like layers of pliable ice.

Jackson called faintly, “Now I understand. Their ship⁠—” His voice was cut off.

Grunfeld’s ice-mask was tight shut. He felt a small surge of vigor as the suit took over his breathing and sent his lungs a gush of high-oxy air. Then came a tingling numbness as the suit field went on, adding an extra prop against decel to each molecule of his body.

But the weight was growing. He was on the moon now⁠ ⁠… now on Mars⁠ ⁠… now back on Earth⁠ ⁠…

The weight was stifling now, crushing⁠—a hill of invisible sand. Grunfeld saw a black pillow hanging in the cabin above him aft. It had red fringe around it. It grew.

There was a whistling and shaking. Everything lurched torturingly, the ship’s jets roared, everything recovered, or didn’t.

The black pillow came down on him, crushing out sight, crushing out thought.

The universe was a black tingling, a limitless ache floating in a larger black infinity. Something drew back and there was a dry fiery wind on numb humps and ridges⁠—the cabin air on his face, Grunfeld decided, then shivered and started at the thought that he was alive and in free-fall. His body didn’t feel like a mass of internal hemorrhages. Or did it?

He spun slowly. It stopped. Dizziness? Or the suits revolving forward again? If they’d actually come through⁠—

There was a creaking and cracking. The ship contracting after frictional heating?

There was a faint stink like ammonia and formaldehyde mixed. A few Uranian molecules forced past plates racked by turbulence?

He saw dim red specks. The board? Or last flickers from ruined retinas? A bell jangled. He waited, but he saw nothing. Blind? Or the meteor guard jammed? No wonder if it were. No wonder if the cabin lights were broken.

The hot air that had dried his sweaty face rushed down the front of his body. Needles of pain pierced him as he slumped forward out of the top of his opening suit.

Then he saw the horizontal band of stars outlining the top of the spaceshield and below it the great field of inky black, barely convex upward, that must, he realized, be the dark side of Uranus.

Pain ignored, Grunfeld pushed himself forward out of his suit and pulled himself past the captain’s to the spaceshield.

The view stayed the same, though broadening out: stars above, a curve-edged velvet black plain below. They were orbiting.

A pulsing, color-changing glow from somewhere showed him twisted stumps of the radio lattices. There was no sign of the mirror at all. It must have been torn away, or vaporized completely, in the fiery turbulence of decel.

New maxs showed on the board: Cabin Temperature 214 F, Skin Temperature 907 K, Gravs 87.

Then in the top of the spacefield, almost out of vision, Grunfeld saw the source of the pulsing glow: two sharp-ended ovals flickering brightly all colors against the pale starfields, like two dead fish phosphorescing.

“The torps got to ’em,” Croker said, pushed forward beside Grunfeld to the right.

“I did find out at the end,” Jackson said quietly from the left, his voice at last free of the trance-tone. “The Enemy ships weren’t ships at all. They were (there’s no other word for it) space animals. We’ve always thought life was a prerogative of planets, that space was inorganic. But you can walk miles through the desert or sail leagues through the sea before you notice life and I guess space is the same. Anyway the Enemy was (what else can I call ’em?) space-whales. Inertialess space-whales from the discontinuum. Space-whales that ate hydrogen (that’s the only way I know to say it) and spat light to move and fight. The ones I talked to, our brothers, were just their parasites.”

“That’s crazy,” Grunfeld said. “All of it. A child’s picture.”

“Sure it is,” Jackson agreed.

From beyond Jackson, Ness, punching buttons, said, “Quiet.”

The radio came on thin and wailing with static: “Titania Station calling fleet. We have jeep and can orbit in to you. The two Enemy are dead⁠—the last in the System. Titania Station calling fleet. We have jeep fueled and set to go⁠—”

Fleet? thought Grunfeld. He turned back to the board. The first and last blue telltales still glowed for Caliban and Starveling. Breathe a prayer, he thought, for Moth and Snug.

Something else shone on the board, something Grunfeld knew had to be wrong. Three little words: Ship on Manual.

The black rim of Uranus ahead suddenly brightened along its length, which was very slightly bowed, like a section of a giant new moon. A bead formed toward the center, brightened, and then all at once the jail-yard sun had risen and was glaring coldly through its pinhole into their eyes.

They looked away from it. Grunfeld turned around.

The austere light showed the captain still in his pressure suit, only the head fallen out forward, hiding the skull features. Studying the monitor box of the captain’s suit, Grunfeld saw it was set to inject the captain with power stimulants as soon as the Gravs began to slacken from their max.

He realized who had done the impossible job of piloting them out of Uranus.

But the button on the monitor, that should have glowed blue, was as dark as those of Moth and Snug.

Grunfeld thought, now he can rest.

I

“Come on, Gussy,” Fay prodded quietly, “quit stalking around like a neurotic bear and suggest something for my invention team to work on. I enjoy visiting you and Daisy, but I can’t stay aboveground all night.”

“If being outside the shelters makes you nervous, don’t come around any more,” Gusterson told him, continuing to stalk. “Why doesn’t your invention team think of something to invent? Why don’t you? Hah!” In the “Hah!” lay triumphant condemnation of a whole way of life.

“We do,” Fay responded imperturbably, “but a fresh viewpoint sometimes helps.”

“I’ll say it does! Fay, you burglar, I’ll bet you’ve got twenty people like myself you milk for free ideas. First you irritate their bark and then you make the rounds every so often to draw off the latex or the maple gloop.”

Fay smiled. “It ought to please you that society still has a use for you outré inner-directed types. It takes something to make a junior executive stay aboveground after dark, when the missiles are on the prowl.”

“Society can’t have much use for us or it’d pay us something,” Gusterson sourly asserted, staring blankly at the tankless TV and kicking it lightly as he passed on.

“No, you’re wrong about that, Gussy. Money’s not the key goad with you inner-directeds. I got that straight from our Motivations chief.”

“Did he tell you what we should use instead to pay the grocer? A deep inner sense of achievement, maybe? Fay, why should I do any free thinking for Micro Systems?”

“I’ll tell you why, Gussy. Simply because you get a kick out of insulting us with sardonic ideas. If we take one of them seriously, you think we’re degrading ourselves, and that pleases you even more. Like making someone laugh at a lousy pun.”

Gusterson held still in his roaming and grinned. “That the reason, huh? I suppose my suggestions would have to be something in the line of ultra-subminiaturized computers, where one sinister fine-etched molecule does the work of three big bumbling brain cells?”

“Not necessarily. Micro Systems is branching out. Wheel as free as a rogue star. But I’ll pass along to Promotion your one molecule-three brain cell sparkler. It’s a slight exaggeration, but it’s catchy.”

“I’ll have my kids watch your ads to see if you use it and then I’ll sue the whole underworld.” Gusterson frowned as he resumed his stalking. He stared puzzledly at the antique TV. “How about inventing a plutonium termite?” he said suddenly. “It would get rid of those stockpiles that are worrying you moles to death.”

Fay grimaced noncommittally and cocked his head.

“Well, then, how about a beauty mask? How about that, hey? I don’t mean one to repair a woman’s complexion, but one she’d wear all the time that’d make her look like a 17-year-old sexpot. That’d end her worries.”

“Hey, that’s for me,” Daisy called from the kitchen. “I’ll make Gusterson suffer. I’ll make him crawl around on his hands and knees begging my immature favors.”

“No, you won’t,” Gusterson called back. “You having a face like that would scare the kids. Better cancel that one, Fay. Half the adult race looking like Vina Vidarsson is too awful a thought.”

“Yah, you’re just scared of making a million dollars,” Daisy jeered.

“I sure am,” Gusterson said solemnly, scanning the fuzzy floor from one murky glass wall to the other, hesitating at the TV. “How about something homey now, like a flock of little prickly cylinders that roll around the floor collecting lint and flub? They’d work by electricity, or at a pinch cats could bat ’em around. Every so often they’d be automatically herded together and the lint cleaned off the bristles.”

“No good,” Fay said. “There’s no lint underground and cats are verboten. And the aboveground market doesn’t amount to more moneywise than the state of Southern Illinois. Keep it grander, Gussy, and more impractical⁠—you can’t sell people merely useful ideas.” From his hassock in the center of the room he looked uneasily around. “Say, did that violet tone in the glass come from the high Cleveland hydrogen bomb or is it just age and ultraviolet, like desert glass?”

“No, somebody’s grandfather liked it that color,” Gusterson informed him with happy bitterness. “I like it too⁠—the glass, I mean, not the tint. People who live in glass houses can see the stars⁠—especially when there’s a window-washing streak in their germ-plasm.”

“Gussy, why don’t you move underground?” Fay asked, his voice taking on a missionary note. “It’s a lot easier living in one room, believe me. You don’t have to tramp from room to room hunting things.”

“I like the exercise,” Gusterson said stoutly.

“But I bet Daisy’d prefer it underground. And your kids wouldn’t have to explain why their father lives like a Red Indian. Not to mention the safety factor and insurance savings and a crypt church within easy slidewalk distance. Incidentally, we see the stars all the time, better than you do⁠—by repeater.”

“Stars by repeater,” Gusterson murmured to the ceiling, pausing for God to comment. Then, “No, Fay, even if I could afford it⁠—and stand it⁠—I’m such a bad-luck Harry that just when I got us all safely stowed at the N minus 1 sublevel, the Soviets would discover an earthquake bomb that struck from below, and I’d have to follow everybody back to the treetops. Hey! How about bubble homes in orbit around earth? Micro Systems could subdivide the world’s most spacious suburb and all you moles could go ellipsing. Space is as safe as there is: no air, no shock waves. Free fall’s the ultimate in restfulness⁠—great health benefits. Commute by rocket⁠—or better yet stay home and do all your business by TV-telephone, or by waldo if it were that sort of thing. Even pet your girl by remote control⁠—she in her bubble, you in yours, whizzing through vacuum. Oh, damn-damn-damn-damn-damn!”

He was glaring at the blank screen of the TV, his big hands clenching and unclenching.

“Don’t let Fay give you apoplexy⁠—he’s not worth it,” Daisy said, sticking her trim head in from the kitchen, while Fay inquired anxiously, “Gussy, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, you worm!” Gusterson roared, “Except that an hour ago I forgot to tune in on the only TV program I’ve wanted to hear this year⁠—Finnegans Wake scored for English, Gaelic and brogue. Oh, damn-damn-damn!”

“Too bad,” Fay said lightly. “I didn’t know they were releasing it on flat TV too.”

“Well, they were! Some things are too damn big to keep completely underground. And I had to forget! I’m always doing it⁠—I miss everything! Look here, you rat,” he blatted suddenly at Fay, shaking his finger under the latter’s chin, “I’ll tell you what you can have that ignorant team of yours invent. They can fix me up a mechanical secretary that I can feed orders into and that’ll remind me when the exact moment comes to listen to TV or phone somebody or mail in a story or write a letter or pick up a magazine or look at an eclipse or a new orbiting station or fetch the kids from school or buy Daisy a bunch of flowers or whatever it is. It’s got to be something that’s always with me, not something I have to go and consult or that I can get sick of and put down somewhere. And it’s got to remind me forcibly enough so that I take notice and don’t just shrug it aside, like I sometimes do even when Daisy reminds me of things. That’s what your stupid team can invent for me! If they do a good job, I’ll pay ’em as much as fifty dollars!”

“That doesn’t sound like anything so very original to me,” Fay commented coolly, leaning back from the wagging finger. “I think all senior executives have something of that sort. At least, their secretary keeps some kind of file⁠ ⁠…”

“I’m not looking for something with spiked falsies and nylons up to the neck,” interjected Gusterson, whose ideas about secretaries were a trifle lurid. “I just want a mech reminder⁠—that’s all!”

“Well, I’ll keep the idea in mind,” Fay assured him, “along with the bubble homes and beauty masks. If we ever develop anything along those lines, I’ll let you know. If it’s a beauty mask, I’ll bring Daisy a pilot model⁠—to use to scare strange kids.” He put his watch to his ear. “Good lord, I’m going to have to cut to make it underground before the main doors close. Just ten minutes to Second Curfew! ’By, Gus. ’By, Daze.”

Two minutes later, living room lights out, they watched Fay’s foreshortened antlike figure scurrying across the balding ill-lit park toward the nearest escalator.

Gusterson said, “Weird to think of that big bright space-poor glamor basement stretching around everywhere underneath. Did you remind Smitty to put a new bulb in the elevator?”

“The Smiths moved out this morning,” Daisy said tonelessly. “They went underneath.”

“Like cockroaches,” Gusterson said. “Cockroaches leavin’ a sinkin’ apartment building. Next the ghosts’ll be retreatin’ to the shelters.”

“Anyhow, from now on we’re our own janitors,” Daisy said.

He nodded. “Just leaves three families besides us loyal to this glass death trap. Not countin’ ghosts.” He sighed. Then, “You like to move below, Daisy?” he asked softly, putting his arm lightly across her shoulders. “Get a woozy eyeful of the bright lights and all for a change? Be a rat for a while? Maybe we’re getting too old to be bats. I could scrounge me a company job and have a thinking closet all to myself and two secretaries with stainless steel breasts. Life’d be easier for you and a lot cleaner. And you’d sleep safer.”

“That’s true,” she answered and paused. She ran her fingertip slowly across the murky glass, its violet tint barely perceptible against a cold dim light across the park. “But somehow,” she said, snaking her arm around his waist, “I don’t think I’d sleep happier⁠—or one bit excited.”

II

Three weeks later Fay, dropping in again, handed to Daisy the larger of the two rather small packages he was carrying.

“It’s a so-called beauty mask,” he told her, “complete with wig, eyelashes, and wettable velvet lips. It even breathes⁠—pinholed elastiskin with a static adherence-charge. But Micro Systems had nothing to do with it, thank God. Beauty Trix put it on the market ten days ago and it’s already started a teenage craze. Some boys are wearing them too, and the police are yipping at Trix for encouraging transvestism with psychic repercussions.”

“Didn’t I hear somewhere that Trix is a secret subsidiary of Micro?” Gusterson demanded, rearing up from his ancient electric typewriter. “No, you’re not stopping me writing, Fay⁠—it’s the gut of evening. If I do any more I won’t have any juice to start with tomorrow. I got another of my insanity thrillers moving. A real id-teaser. In this one not only all the characters are crazy but the robot psychiatrist too.”

“The vending machines are jumping with insanity novels,” Fay commented. “Odd they’re so popular.”

Gusterson chortled. “The only way you outer-directed moles will accept individuality any more even in a fictional character, without your superegos getting seasick, is for them to be crazy. Hey, Daisy! Lemme see that beauty mask!”

But his wife, backing out of the room, hugged the package to her bosom and solemnly shook her head.

“A hell of a thing,” Gusterson complained, “not even to be able to see what my stolen ideas look like.”

“I got a present for you too,” Fay said. “Something you might think of as a royalty on all the inventions someone thought of a little ahead of you. Fifty dollars by your own evaluation.” He held out the smaller package. “Your tickler.”

“My what?” Gusterson demanded suspiciously.

“Your tickler. The mech reminder you wanted. It turns out that the file a secretary keeps to remind her boss to do certain things at certain times is called a tickler file. So we named this a tickler. Here.”

Gusterson still didn’t touch the package. “You mean you actually put your invention team to work on that nonsense?”

“Well, what do you think? Don’t be scared of it. Here, I’ll show you.”

As he unwrapped the package, Fay said, “It hasn’t been decided yet whether we’ll manufacture it commercially. If we do, I’ll put through a voucher for you⁠—for ‘development consultation’ or something like that. Sorry no royalty’s possible. Davidson’s squad had started to work up the identical idea three years ago, but it got shelved. I found it on a snoop through the closets. There! Looks rich, doesn’t it?”

On the scarred black tabletop was a dully gleaming silvery object about the size and shape of a cupped hand with fingers merging. A tiny pellet on a short near-invisible wire led off from it. On the back was a punctured area suggesting the face of a microphone; there was also a window with a date and time in hours and minutes showing through and next to that four little buttons in a row. The concave underside of the silvery “hand” was smooth except for a central area where what looked like two little rollers came through.

“It goes on your shoulder under your shirt,” Fay explained, “and you tuck the pellet in your ear. We might work up bone conduction on a commercial model. Inside is an ultra-slow fine-wire recorder holding a spool that runs for a week. The clock lets you go to any place on the 7-day wire and record a message. The buttons give you variable speed in going there, so you don’t waste too much time making a setting. There’s a knack in fingering them efficiently, but it’s easily acquired.”

Fay picked up the tickler. “For instance, suppose there’s a TV show you want to catch tomorrow night at twenty-two hundred.” He touched the buttons. There was the faintest whirring. The clock face blurred briefly three times before showing the setting he’d mentioned. Then Fay spoke into the punctured area: “Turn on TV Channel Two, you big dummy!” He grinned over at Gusterson. “When you’ve got all your instructions to yourself loaded in, you synchronize with the present moment and let her roll. Fit it on your shoulder and forget it. Oh, yes, and it literally does tickle you every time it delivers an instruction. That’s what the little rollers are for. Believe me, you can’t ignore it. Come on, Gussy, take off your shirt and try it out. We’ll feed in some instructions for the next ten minutes so you get the feel of how it works.”

“I don’t want to,” Gusterson said. “Not right now. I want to sniff around it first. My God, it’s small! Besides everything else it does, does it think?”

“Don’t pretend to be an idiot, Gussy! You know very well that even with ultra-sub-micro nothing quite this small can possibly have enough elements to do any thinking.”

Gusterson shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I think bugs think.”

Fay groaned faintly. “Bugs operate by instinct, Gussy,” he said. “A patterned routine. They do not scan situations and consequences and then make decisions.”

“I don’t expect bugs to make decisions,” Gusterson said. “For that matter I don’t like people who go around all the time making decisions.”

“Well, you can take it from me, Gussy, that this tickler is just a miniaturized wire recorder and clock⁠ ⁠… and a tickler. It doesn’t do anything else.”

“Not yet, maybe,” Gusterson said darkly. “Not this model. Fay, I’m serious about bugs thinking. Or if they don’t exactly think, they feel. They’ve got an interior drama. An inner glow. They’re conscious. For that matter, Fay, I think all your really complex electronic computers are conscious too.”

“Quit kidding, Gussy.”

“Who’s kidding?”

“You are. Computers simply aren’t alive.”

“What’s alive? A word. I think computers are conscious, at least while they’re operating. They’ve got that inner glow of awareness. They sort of⁠ ⁠… well⁠ ⁠… meditate.”

“Gussy, computers haven’t got any circuits for meditating. They’re not programmed for mystical lucubrations. They’ve just got circuits for solving the problems they’re on.”

“Okay, you admit they’ve got problem-solving circuits⁠—like a man has. I say if they’ve got the equipment for being conscious, they’re conscious. What has wings, flies.”

“Including stuffed owls and gilt eagles and dodoes⁠—and wood-burning airplanes?”

“Maybe, under some circumstances. There was a wood-burning airplane. Fay,” Gusterson continued, wagging his wrists for emphasis, “I really think computers are conscious. They just don’t have any way of telling us that they are. Or maybe they don’t have any reason to tell us, like the little Scotch boy who didn’t say a word until he was fifteen and was supposed to be deaf and dumb.”

“Why didn’t he say a word?”

“Because he’d never had anything to say. Or take those Hindu fakirs, Fay, who sit still and don’t say a word for thirty years or until their fingernails grow to the next village. If Hindu fakirs can do that, computers can!”

Looking as if he were masticating a lemon, Fay asked quietly, “Gussy, did you say you’re working on an insanity novel?”

Gusterson frowned fiercely. “Now you’re kidding,” he accused Fay. “The dirty kind of kidding, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Fay said with light contrition. “Well, now you’ve sniffed at it, how about trying on Tickler?” He picked up the gleaming blunted crescent and jogged it temptingly under Gusterson’s chin.

“Why should I?” Gusterson asked, stepping back. “Fay, I’m up to my ears writing a book. The last thing I want is something interrupting me to make me listen to a lot of junk and do a lot of useless things.”

“But, dammit, Gussy! It was all your idea in the first place!” Fay blatted. Then, catching himself, he added, “I mean, you were one of the first people to think of this particular sort of instrument.”

“Maybe so, but I’ve done some more thinking since then.” Gusterson’s voice grew a trifle solemn. “Inner-directed worthwhile thinkin’. Fay, when a man forgets to do something, it’s because he really doesn’t want to do it or because he’s all roiled up down in his unconscious. He ought to take it as a danger signal and investigate the roiling, not hire himself a human or mech reminder.”

“Bushwa,” Fay retorted. “In that case you shouldn’t write memorandums or even take notes.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” Gusterson agreed lamely. “I’d have to think that over too.”

“Ha!” Fay jeered. “No, I’ll tell you what your trouble is, Gussy. You’re simply scared of this contraption. You’ve loaded your skull with horror-story nonsense about machines sprouting minds and taking over the world⁠—until you’re even scared of a simple miniaturized and clocked recorder.” He thrust it out.

“Maybe I am,” Gusterson admitted, controlling a flinch. “Honestly, Fay, that thing’s got a gleam in its eye as if it had ideas of its own. Nasty ideas.”

“Gussy, you nut, it hasn’t got an eye.”

“Not now, no, but it’s got the gleam⁠—the eye may come. It’s the Cheshire cat in reverse. If you’d step over here and look at yourself holding it, you could see what I mean. But I don’t think computers sprout minds, Fay. I just think they’ve got minds, because they’ve got the mind elements.”

“Ho, ho!” Fay mocked. “Everything that has a material side has a mental side,” he chanted. “Everything that’s a body is also a spirit. Gussy, that dubious old metaphysical dualism went out centuries ago.”

“Maybe so,” Gusterson said, “but we still haven’t anything but that dubious dualism to explain the human mind, have we? It’s a jelly of nerve cells and it’s a vision of the cosmos. If that isn’t dualism, what is?”

“I give up. Gussy, are you going to try out this tickler?”

“No!”

“But dammit, Gussy, we made it just for you!⁠—practically.”

“Sorry, but I’m not coming near the thing.”

“ ’Zen come near me,” a husky voice intoned behind them. “Tonight I vant a man.”

Standing in the door was something slim in a short silver sheath. It had golden bangs and the haughtiest snub-nosed face in the world. It slunk toward them.

“My God, Vina Vidarsson!” Gusterson yelled.

“Daisy, that’s terrific,” Fay applauded, going up to her.

She bumped him aside with a swing of her hips, continuing to advance. “Not you, Ratty,” she said throatily. “I vant a real man.”

“Fay, I suggested Vina Vidarsson’s face for the beauty mask,” Gusterson said, walking around his wife and shaking a finger. “Don’t tell me Trix just happened to think of that too.”

“What else could they think of?” Fay laughed. “This season sex means VV and nobody else.” An odd little grin flicked his lips, a tic traveled up his face and his body twitched slightly. “Say, folks, I’m going to have to be leaving. It’s exactly fifteen minutes to Second Curfew. Last time I had to run and I got heartburn. When are you people going to move downstairs? I’ll leave Tickler, Gussy. Play around with it and get used to it. ’By now.”

“Hey, Fay,” Gusterson called curiously, “have you developed absolute time sense?”

Fay grinned a big grin from the doorway⁠—almost too big a grin for so small a man. “I didn’t need to,” he said softly, patting his right shoulder. “My tickler told me.”

He closed the door behind him.

As side-by-side they watched him strut sedately across the murky chilly-looking park, Gusterson mused, “So the little devil had one of those nonsense-gadgets on all the time and I never noticed. Can you beat that?” Something drew across the violet-tinged stars a short bright line that quickly faded. “What’s that?” Gusterson asked gloomily. “Next to last stage of missile-here?”

“Won’t you settle for an old-fashioned shooting star?” Daisy asked softly. The (wettable) velvet lips of the mask made even her natural voice sound different. She reached a hand back of her neck to pull the thing off.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Gusterson protested in a hurt voice. “Not for a while anyway.”

“Hokay!” she said harshly, turning on him. “Zen down on your knees, dog!”

III

It was a fortnight and Gusterson was loping down the home stretch on his 40,000-word insanity novel before Fay dropped in again, this time promptly at high noon.

Normally Fay cringed his shoulders a trifle and was inclined to slither, but now he strode aggressively, his legs scissoring in a fast, low goosestep. He whipped off the sunglasses that all moles wore topside by day and began to pound Gusterson on the back while calling boisterously, “How are you, Gussy Old Boy, Old Boy?”

Daisy came in from the kitchen to see why Gusterson was choking. She was instantly grabbed and violently bussed to the accompaniment of, “Hiya, Gorgeous! Yum-yum! How about ad-libbing that some weekend?”

She stared at Fay dazedly, rasping the back of her hand across her mouth, while Gusterson yelled, “Quit that! What’s got into you, Fay? Have they transferred you out of R & D to Company Morale? Do they line up all the secretaries at roll call and make you give them an eight-hour energizing kiss?”

“Ha, wouldn’t you like to know?” Fay retorted. He grinned, twitched jumpingly, held still a moment, then hustled over to the far wall. “Look out there,” he rapped, pointing through the violet glass at a gap between the two nearest old skyscraper apartments. “In thirty seconds you’ll see them test the new needle bomb at the other end of Lake Erie. It’s educational.” He began to count off seconds, vigorously semaphoring his arm. “… Two⁠ ⁠… three⁠ ⁠… Gussy, I’ve put through a voucher for two yards for you. Budgeting squawked, but I pressured ’em.”

Daisy squealed, “Yards!⁠—are those dollar thousands?” while Gusterson was asking, “Then you’re marketing the tickler?”

“Yes. Yes,” Fay replied to them in turn. “… Nine⁠ ⁠… ten⁠ ⁠…” Again he grinned and twitched. “Time for noon Com-staff,” he announced staccato. “Pardon the hush box.” He whipped a pancake phone from under his coat, clapped it over his face and spoke fiercely but inaudibly into it, continuing to semaphore. Suddenly he thrust the phone away. “Twenty-nine⁠ ⁠… thirty⁠ ⁠… Thar she blows!”

An incandescent streak shot up the sky from a little above the far horizon and a doubly dazzling point of light appeared just above the top of it, with the effect of God dotting an “i.”

“Ha, that’ll skewer espionage satellites like swatting flies!” Fay proclaimed as the portent faded. “Bracing! Gussy, where’s your tickler? I’ve got a new spool for it that’ll razzle-dazzle you.”

“I’ll bet,” Gusterson said drily. “Daisy?”

“You gave it to the kids and they got to fooling with it and broke it.”

“No matter,” Fay told them with a large sidewise sweep of his hand. “Better you wait for the new model. It’s a six-way improvement.”

“So I gather,” Gusterson said, eyeing him speculatively. “Does it automatically inject you with cocaine? A fix every hour on the second?”

“Ha-ha, joke. Gussy, it achieves the same effect without using any dope at all. Listen: a tickler reminds you of your duties and opportunities⁠—your chances for happiness and success! What’s the obvious next step?”

“Throw it out the window. By the way, how do you do that when you’re underground?”

“We have hi-speed garbage boosts. The obvious next step is you give the tickler a heart. It not only tells you, it warmly persuades you. It doesn’t just say, ‘Turn on the TV Channel Two, Joyce program,’ it brills at you, ‘Kid, Old Kid, race for the TV and flip that Two Switch! There’s a great show coming through the pipes this second plus ten⁠—you’ll enjoy the hell out of yourself! Grab a ticket to ecstasy!’ ”

“My God,” Gusterson gasped, “are those the kind of jolts it’s giving you now?”

“Don’t you get it, Gussy? You never load your tickler except when you’re feeling buoyantly enthusiastic. You don’t just tell yourself what to do hour by hour next week, you sell yourself on it. That way you not only make doubly sure you’ll obey instructions but you constantly reinoculate yourself with your own enthusiasm.”

“I can’t stand myself when I’m that enthusiastic,” Gusterson said. “I feel ashamed for hours afterwards.”

“You’re warped⁠—all this lonely sky-life. What’s more, Gussy, think how still more persuasive some of those instructions would be if they came to a man in his best girl’s most bedroomy voice, or his doctor’s or psycher’s if it’s that sort of thing⁠—or Vina Vidarsson’s! By the way, Daze, don’t wear that beauty mask outside. It’s a grand misdemeanor ever since ten thousand teenagers rioted through Tunnel-Mart wearing them. And VV’s suing Trix.”

“No chance of that,” Daisy said. “Gusterson got excited and bit off the nose.” She pinched her own delicately.

“I’d no more obey my enthusiastic self,” Gusterson was brooding, “than I’d obey a Napoleon drunk on his own brandy or a hopped-up St. Francis. Reinoculated with my own enthusiasm? I’d die just like from snakebite!”

“Warped, I said,” Fay dogmatized, stamping around. “Gussy, having the instructions persuasive instead of neutral turned out to be only the opening wedge. The next step wasn’t so obvious, but I saw it. Using subliminal verbal stimuli in his tickler, a man can be given constant supportive euphoric therapy 24 hours a day! And it makes use of all that empty wire. We’ve revived the ideas of a pioneer dynamic psycher named Dr. Coué. For instance, right now my tickler is saying to me⁠—in tones too soft to reach my conscious mind, but do they stab into the unconscious!⁠—‘Day by day in every way I’m getting sharper and sharper.’ It alternates that with ‘gutsier and gutsier’ and⁠ ⁠… well, forget that. Coué mostly used ‘better and better’ but that seems too general. And every hundredth time it says them out loud and the tickler gives me a brush⁠—just a faint cootch⁠—to make sure I’m keeping in touch.”

“That third word-pair,” Daisy wondered, feeling her mouth reminiscently. “Could I guess?”

Gusterson’s eyes had been growing wider and wider. “Fay,” he said, “I could no more use my mind for anything if I knew all that was going on in my inner ear than if I were being brushed down with brooms by three witches. Look here,” he said with loud authority, “you got to stop all this⁠—it’s crazy. Fay, if Micro’ll junk the tickler, I’ll think you up something else to invent⁠—something real good.”

“Your inventing days are over,” Fay brilled gleefully. “I mean, you’ll never equal your masterpiece.”

“How about,” Gusterson bellowed, “an anti-individual guided missile? The physicists have got small-scale antigravity good enough to float and fly something the size of a hand grenade. I can smell that even though it’s a back-of-the-safe military secret. Well, how about keying such a missile to a man’s fingerprints⁠—or brainwaves, maybe, or his unique smell!⁠—so it can spot and follow him around then target in on him, without harming anyone else? Long-distance assassination⁠—and the stinkingest gets it! Or you could simply load it with some disgusting goo and key it to teenagers as a group⁠—that’d take care of them. Fay, doesn’t it give you a rich warm kick to think of my midget missiles buzzing around in your tunnels, seeking out evildoers, like a swarm of angry wasps or angelic bumblebees?”

“You’re not luring me down any side trails,” Fay said laughingly. He grinned and twitched, then hurried toward the opposite wall, motioning them to follow. Outside, about a hundred yards beyond the purple glass, rose another ancient glass-walled apartment skyscraper. Beyond, Lake Erie rippled glintingly.

“Another bomb-test?” Gusterson asked.

Fay pointed at the building. “Tomorrow,” he announced, “a modern factory, devoted solely to the manufacture of ticklers, will be erected on that site.”

“You mean one of those windowless phallic eyesores?” Gusterson demanded. “Fay, you people aren’t even consistent. You’ve got all your homes underground. Why not your factories?”

“Sh! Not enough room. And night missiles are scarier.”

“I know that building’s been empty for a year,” Daisy said uneasily, “but how⁠—?”

“Sh! Watch! Now!”

The looming building seemed to blur or fuzz for a moment. Then it was as if the lake’s bright ripples had invaded the old glass a hundred yards away. Wavelets chased themselves up and down the gleaming walls, became higher, higher⁠ ⁠… and then suddenly the glass cracked all over to tiny fragments and fell away, to be followed quickly by fragmented concrete and plastic and plastic piping, until all that was left was the nude steel framework, vibrating so rapidly as to be almost invisible against the gleaming lake.

Daisy covered her ears, but there was no explosion, only a long-drawn-out low crash as the fragments hit twenty floors below and dust whooshed out sideways.

“Spectacular!” Fay summed up. “Knew you’d enjoy it. That little trick was first conceived by the great Tesla during his last fruity years. Research discovered it in his biog⁠—we just made the dream come true. A tiny resonance device you could carry in your belt-bag attunes itself to the natural harmonic of a structure and then increases amplitude by tiny pushes exactly in time. Just like soldiers marching in step can break down a bridge, only this is as if it were being done by one marching ant.” He pointed at the naked framework appearing out of its own blur and said, “We’ll be able to hang the factory on that. If not, we’ll whip a mega-current through it and vaporize it. No question the micro-resonator is the neatest sweetest wrecking device going. You can expect a lot more of this sort of efficiency now that mankind has the tickler to enable him to use his full potential. What’s the matter, folks?”

Daisy was staring around the violet-walled room with dumb mistrust. Her hands were trembling.

“You don’t have to worry,” Fay assured her with an understanding laugh. “This building’s safe for a month more at least.” Suddenly he grimaced and leaped a foot in the air. He raised a clawed hand to scratch his shoulder but managed to check the movement. “Got to beat it, folks,” he announced tersely. “My tickler gave me the grand cootch.”

“Don’t go yet,” Gusterson called, rousing himself with a shudder which he immediately explained: “I just had the illusion that if I shook myself all my flesh and guts would fall off my shimmying skeleton, Brr! Fay, before you and Micro go off half cocked, I want you to know there’s one insuperable objection to the tickler as a mass-market item. The average man or woman won’t go to the considerable time and trouble it must take to load a tickler. He simply hasn’t got the compulsive orderliness and willingness to plan that it requires.”

“We thought of that weeks ago,” Fay rapped, his hand on the door. “Every tickler spool that goes to market is patterned like wallpaper with one of five designs of suitable subliminal supportive euphoric material. ‘Ittier and ittier,’ ‘viriler and viriler’⁠—you know. The buyer is robot-interviewed for an hour, his personalized daily routine laid out and thereafter templated on his weekly spool. He’s strongly urged next to take his tickler to his doctor and psycher for further instruction-imposition. We’ve been working with the medical profession from the start. They love the tickler because it’ll remind people to take their medicine on the dot⁠ ⁠… and rest and eat and go to sleep just when and how doc says. This is a big operation, Gussy⁠—a biiiiiiig operation! ’By!”

Daisy hurried to the wall to watch him cross the park. Deep down she was a wee bit worried that he might linger to attach a micro-resonator to this building and she wanted to time him. But Gusterson settled down to his typewriter and began to bat away.

“I want to have another novel started,” he explained to her, “before the ant marches across this building in about four and a half weeks⁠ ⁠… or a million sharp little gutsy guys come swarming out of the ground and heave it into Lake Erie.”

IV

Early next morning windowless walls began to crawl up the stripped skyscraper between them and the lake. Daisy pulled the blackout curtains on that side. For a day or two longer their thoughts and conversations were haunted by Gusterson’s vague sardonic visions of a horde of tickler-energized moles pouring up out of the tunnels to tear down the remaining trees, tank the atmosphere and perhaps somehow dismantle the stars⁠—at least on this side of the world⁠—but then they both settled back into their customary easygoing routines. Gusterson typed. Daisy made her daily shopping trip to a little topside daytime store and started painting a mural on the floor of the empty apartment next theirs but one.

“We ought to lasso some neighbors,” she suggested once. “I need somebody to hold my brushes and admire. How about you making a trip below at the cocktail hours, Gusterson, and picking up a couple of girls for a starter? Flash the old viriler charm, cootch them up a bit, emphasize the delights of high living, but make sure they’re compatible roommates. You could pick up that two-yard check from Micro at the same time.”

“You’re an immoral money-ravenous wench,” Gusterson said absently, trying to dream of an insanity beyond insanity that would make his next novel a real id-rousing best-vender.

“If that’s your vision of me, you shouldn’t have chewed up the VV mask.”

“I’d really prefer you with green stripes,” he told her. “But stripes, spots, or sunbathing, you’re better than those cocktail moles.”

Actually both of them acutely disliked going below. They much preferred to perch in their eyrie and watch the people of Cleveland Depths, as they privately called the local sub-suburb, rush up out of the shelters at dawn to work in the concrete fields and windowless factories, make their daytime jet trips and freeway jaunts, do their noon-hour and coffee-break guerrilla practice, and then go scurrying back at twilight to the atomic-proof, brightly lit, vastly exciting, claustrophobic caves.

Fay and his projects began once more to seem dreamlike, though Gusterson did run across a cryptic advertisement for ticklers in The Manchester Guardian, which he got daily by facsimile. Their three children reported similar ads, of no interest to young fry, on the TV and one afternoon they came home with the startling news that the monitors at their subsurface school had been issued ticklers. On sharp interrogation by Gusterson, however, it appeared that these last were not ticklers but merely two-way radios linked to the school police station transmitter.

“Which is bad enough,” Gusterson commented later to Daisy. “But it’d be even dirtier to think of those clock-watching superegos being strapped to kids’ shoulders. Can you imagine Huck Finn with a tickler, tellin’ him when to tie up the raft to a towhead and when to take a swim?”

“I bet Fay could,” Daisy countered. “When’s he going to bring you that check, anyhow? Iago wants a jetcycle and I promised Imogene a Vina Kit and then Claudius’ll have to have something.”

Gusterson scowled thoughtfully. “You know, Daze,” he said, “I got a feeling Fay’s in the hospital, all narcotized up and being fed intravenously. The way he was jumping around last time, that tickler was going to cootch him to pieces in a week.”

As if to refute this intuition, Fay turned up that very evening. The lights were dim. Something had gone wrong with the building’s old transformer and, pending repairs, the two remaining occupied apartments were making do with batteries, which turned bright globes to mysterious amber candles and made Gusterson’s ancient typewriter operate sluggishly.

Fay’s manner was subdued or at least closely controlled and for a moment Gusterson thought he’d shed his tickler. Then the little man came out of the shadows and Gusterson saw the large bulge on his right shoulder.

“Yes, we had to up it a bit sizewise,” Fay explained in clipped tones. “Additional super-features. While brilliantly successful on the whole, the subliminal euphorics were a shade too effective. Several hundred users went hoppity manic. We gentled the cootch and qualified the subliminals⁠—you know, ‘Day by day in every way I’m getting sharper and more serene’⁠—but a stabilizing influence was still needed, so after a top-level conference we decided to combine Tickler with Moodmaster.”

“My God,” Gusterson interjected, “do they have a machine now that does that?”

“Of course. They’ve been using them on ex-mental patients for years.”

“I just don’t keep up with progress,” Gusterson said, shaking his head bleakly. “I’m falling behind on all fronts.”

“You ought to have your tickler remind you to read Science Service releases,” Fay told him. “Or simply instruct it to scan the releases and⁠—no, that’s still in research.” He looked at Gusterson’s shoulder and his eyes widened. “You’re not wearing the new-model tickler I sent you,” he said accusingly.

“I never got it,” Gusterson assured him. “Postmen deliver topside mail and parcels by throwing them on the high-speed garbage boosts and hoping a tornado will blow them to the right addresses.” Then he added helpfully, “Maybe the Russians stole it while it was riding the whirlwinds.”

“That’s not a suitable topic for jesting,” Fay frowned. “We’re hoping that Tickler will mobilize the full potential of the Free World for the first time in history. Gusterson, you are going to have to wear a ticky-tick. It’s becoming impossible for a man to get through modern life without one.”

“Maybe I will,” Gusterson said appeasingly, “but right now tell me about Moodmaster. I want to put it in my new insanity novel.”

Fay shook his head. “Your readers will just think you’re behind the times. If you use it, underplay it. But anyhow, Moodmaster is a simple physiotherapy engine that monitors bloodstream chemicals and body electricity. It ties directly into the bloodstream, keeping blood, sugar, et cetera, at optimum levels and injecting euphrin or depressin as necessary⁠—and occasionally a touch of extra adrenaline, as during work emergencies.”

“Is it painful?” Daisy called from the bedroom.

“Excruciating,” Gusterson called back. “Excuse it, please,” he grinned at Fay. “Hey, didn’t I suggest cocaine injections last time I saw you?”

“So you did,” Fay agreed flatly. “Oh by the way, Gussy, here’s that check for a yard I promised you. Micro doesn’t muzzle the ox.”

“Hooray!” Daisy cheered faintly.

“I thought you said it was going to be for two.” Gusterson complained.

“Budgeting always forces a last-minute compromise,” Fay shrugged. “You have to learn to accept those things.”

“I love accepting money and I’m glad any time for three feet,” Daisy called agreeably. “Six feet might make me wonder if I weren’t an insect, but getting a yard just makes me feel like a gangster’s moll.”

“Want to come out and gloat over the yard paper, Toots, and stuff it in your diamond-embroidered net stocking top?” Gusterson called back.

“No, I’m doing something to that portion of me just now. But hang onto the yard, Gusterson.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” he assured her. Then, turning back to Fay, “So you’ve taken the Dr. Coué repeating out of the tickler?”

“Oh, no. Just balanced it off with depressin. The subliminals are still a prime sales-point. All the tickler features are cumulative, Gussy. You’re still underestimating the scope of the device.”

“I guess I am. What’s this ‘work-emergencies’ business? If you’re using the tickler to inject drugs into workers to keep them going, that’s really just my cocaine suggestion modernized and I’m putting in for another thou. Hundreds of years ago the South American Indians chewed coca leaves to kill fatigue sensations.”

“That so? Interesting⁠—and it proves priority for the Indians, doesn’t it? I’ll make a try for you, Gussy, but don’t expect anything.” He cleared his throat, his eyes grew distant and, turning his head a little to the right, he enunciated sharply, “Pooh-Bah. Time: Inst oh five. One oh five seven. Oh oh. Record: Gussy coca thou budget. Cut.” He explained, “We got a voice-cued setter now on the deluxe models. You can record a memo to yourself without taking off your shirt. Incidentally, I use the ends of the hours for trifle-memos. I’ve already used up the fifty-nines and eights for tomorrow and started on the fifty-sevens.”

“I understood most of your memo,” Gusterson told him gruffly. “The last ‘Oh oh’ was for seconds, wasn’t it? Now I call that crude⁠—why not microseconds too? But how do you remember where you’ve made a memo so you don’t rerecord over it? After all, you’re rerecording over the wallpaper all the time.”

“Tickler beeps and then hunts for the nearest information-free space.”

“I see. And what’s the Pooh-Bah for?”

Fay smiled. “Cut. My password for activating the setter, so it won’t respond to chance numerals it overhears.”

“But why Pooh-Bah?”

Fay grinned. “Cut. And you a writer. It’s a literary reference, Gussy. Pooh-Bah (cut!) was Lord High Everything Else in The Mikado. He had a little list and nothing on it would ever be missed.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gusterson remembered, glowering. “As I recall it, all that went on that list was the names of people who were slated to have their heads chopped off by Ko-Ko. Better watch your step, Shorty. It may be a backhanded omen. Maybe all those workers you’re puttin’ ticklers on to pump them full of adrenaline so they’ll overwork without noticin’ it will revolt and come out some day choppin’ for your head.”

“Spare me the Marxist mythology,” Fay protested. “Gussy, you’ve got a completely wrong slant on Tickler. It’s true that most of our mass sales so far, bar government and army, have been to large companies purchasing for their employees⁠—”

“Ah-ha!”

“⁠—but that’s because there’s nothing like a tickler for teaching a new man his job. It tells him from instant to instant what he must do⁠—while he’s already on the job and without disturbing other workers. Magnetizing a wire with a job pattern is the easiest thing going. And you’d be astonished what the subliminals do for employee morale. It’s this way, Gussy: most people are too improvident and unimaginative to see in advance the advantages of ticklers. They buy one because the company strongly suggests it and payment is on easy installments withheld from salary. They find a tickler makes the work day go easier. The little fellow perched on your shoulder is a friend exuding comfort and good advice. The first thing he’s set to say is ‘Take it easy, pal.’

“Within a week they’re wearing their tickler 24 hours a day⁠—and buying a tickler for the wife, so she’ll remember to comb her hair and smile real pretty and cook favorite dishes.”

“I get it, Fay,” Gusterson cut in. “The tickler is the newest fad for increasing worker efficiency. Once, I read somewheres, it was salt tablets. They had salt-tablet dispensers everywhere, even in air-conditioned offices where there wasn’t a moist armpit twice a year and the gals sweat only champagne. A decade later people wondered what all those dusty white pills were for. Sometimes they were mistook for tranquilizers. It’ll be the same way with ticklers. Somebody’ll open a musty closet and see jumbled heaps of these gripping-hand silvery gadgets gathering dust curls and⁠—”

“They will not!” Fay protested vehemently. “Ticklers are not a fad⁠—they’re history-changers, they’re Free-World revolutionary! Why, before Micro Systems put a single one on the market, we’d made it a rule that every Micro employee had to wear one! If that’s not having supreme confidence in a product⁠—”

“Every employee except the top executives, of course,” Gusterson interrupted jeeringly. “And that’s not demoting you, Fay. As the R & D chief most closely involved, you’d naturally have to show special enthusiasm.”

“But you’re wrong there, Gussy,” Fay crowed. “Man for man, our top executives have been more enthusiastic about their personal ticklers than any other class of worker in the whole outfit.”

Gusterson slumped and shook his head. “If that’s the case,” he said darkly, “maybe mankind deserves the tickler.”

“I’ll say it does!” Fay agreed loudly without thinking. Then, “Oh, can the carping, Gussy. Tickler’s a great invention. Don’t deprecate it just because you had something to do with its genesis. You’re going to have to get in the swim and wear one.”

“Maybe I’d rather drown horribly.”

“Can the gloom-talk too! Gussy, I said it before and I say it again, you’re just scared of this new thing. Why, you’ve even got the drapes pulled so you won’t have to look at the tickler factory.”

“Yes, I am scared,” Gusterson said. “Really sca⁠ ⁠… awp!”

Fay whirled around. Daisy was standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing the short silver sheath. This time there was no mask, but her bobbed hair was glitteringly silvered, while her legs, arms, hands, neck, face⁠—every bit of her exposed skin⁠—was painted with beautifully even vertical green stripes.

“I did it as a surprise for Gusterson,” she explained to Fay. “He says he likes me this way. The green glop’s supposed to be smudgeproof.”

Gusterson did not comment. His face had a rapt expression. “I’ll tell you why your tickler’s so popular, Fay,” he said softly. “It’s not because it backstops the memory or because it boosts the ego with subliminals. It’s because it takes the hook out of a guy, it takes over the job of withstanding the pressure of living. See, Fay, here are all these little guys in this subterranean rat race with atomic-death squares and chromium-plated reward squares and enough money if you pass Go almost to get to Go again⁠—and a million million rules of the game to keep in mind. Well, here’s this one little guy and every morning he wakes up there’s all these things he’s got to keep in mind to do or he’ll lose his turn three times in a row and maybe a terrible black rook in iron armor’ll loom up and bang him off the chessboard. But now, look, now he’s got his tickler and he tells his sweet silver tickler all these things and the tickler’s got to remember them. Of course he’ll have to do them eventually but meanwhile the pressure’s off him, the hook’s out of his short hairs. He’s shifted the responsibility⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, what’s so bad about that?” Fay broke in loudly. “What’s wrong with taking the pressure off little guys? Why shouldn’t Tickler be a superego surrogate? Micro’s Motivations chief noticed that positive feature straight off and scored it three pluses. Besides, it’s nothing but a gaudy way of saying that Tickler backstops the memory. Seriously, Gussy, what’s so bad about it?”

“I don’t know,” Gusterson said slowly, his eyes still far away. “I just know it feels bad to me.” He crinkled his big forehead. “Well for one thing,” he said, “it means that a man’s taking orders from something else. He’s got a kind of master. He’s sinking back into a slave psychology.”

“He’s only taking orders from himself,” Fay countered disgustedly. “Tickler’s just a mech reminder, a notebook, in essence no more than the back of an old envelope. It’s no master.”

“Are you absolutely sure of that?” Gusterson asked quietly.

“Why, Gussy, you big oaf⁠—” Fay began heatedly. Suddenly his features quirked and he twitched. “ ’Scuse me, folks,” he said rapidly, heading for the door, “but my tickler told me I gotta go.”

“Hey Fay, don’t you mean you told your tickler to tell you when it was time to go?” Gusterson called after him.

Fay looked back in the doorway. He wet his lips, his eyes moved from side to side. “I’m not quite sure,” he said in an odd strained voice and darted out.

Gusterson stared for some seconds at the pattern of emptiness Fay had left. Then he shivered. Then he shrugged. “I must be slipping,” he muttered. “I never even suggested something for him to invent.” Then he looked around at Daisy, who was still standing poker-faced in her doorway.

“Hey, you look like something out of the Arabian Nights,” he told her. “Are you supposed to be anything special? How far do those stripes go, anyway?”

“You could probably find out,” she told him coolly. “All you have to do is kill me a dragon or two first.”

He studied her. “My God,” he said reverently, “I really have all the fun in life. What do I do to deserve this?”

“You’ve got a big gun,” she told him, “and you go out in the world with it and hold up big companies and take yards and yards of money away from them in rolls like ribbon and bring it all home to me.”

“Don’t say that about the gun again,” he said. “Don’t whisper it, don’t even think it. I’ve got one, dammit⁠—thirty-eight caliber, yet⁠—and I don’t want some psionic monitor with two-way clairaudience they haven’t told me about catching the whisper and coming to take the gun away from us. It’s one of the few individuality symbols we’ve got left.”

Suddenly Daisy whirled away from the door, spun three times so that her silvered hair stood out like a metal coolie hat, and sank to a curtsey in the middle of the room.

“I’ve just thought of what I am,” she announced, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “I’m a sweet silver tickler with green stripes.”

V

Next day Daisy cashed the Micro check for ten hundred silver smackers, which she hid in a broken radionic coffee urn. Gusterson sold his insanity novel and started a new one about a mad medic with a hiccupy hysterical chuckle, who gimmicked Moodmasters to turn mental patients into nymphomaniacs, mass murderers and compulsive saints. But this time he couldn’t get Fay out of his mind, or the last chilling words the nervous little man had spoken.

For that matter, he couldn’t blank the underground out of his mind as effectively as usually. He had the feeling that a new kind of mole was loose in the burrows and that the ground at the foot of their skyscraper might start humping up any minute.

Toward the end of one afternoon he tucked a half dozen newly typed sheets in his pocket, shrouded his typer, went to the hatrack and took down his prize: a miner’s hardtop cap with electric headlamp.

“Goin’ below, Cap’n,” he shouted toward the kitchen.

“Be back for second dog watch,” Daisy replied. “Remember what I told you about lassoing me some art-conscious girl neighbors.”

“Only if I meet a piebald one with a taste for Scotch⁠—or maybe a pearl gray biped jaguar with violet spots,” Gusterson told her, clapping on the cap with a We-Who-Are-About-To-Die gesture.

Halfway across the park to the escalator bunker Gusterson’s heart began to tick. He resolutely switched on his headlamp.

As he’d known it would, the hatch robot whirred an extra and higher-pitched ten seconds when it came to his topside address, but it ultimately dilated the hatch for him, first handing him a claim check for his I.D. card.

Gusterson’s heart was ticking like a sledgehammer by now. He hopped clumsily onto the escalator, clutched the moving guard rail to either side, then shut his eyes as the steps went over the edge and became what felt like vertical. An instant later he forced his eyes open, unclipped a hand from the rail and touched the second switch beside his headlamp, which instantly began to blink whitely, as if he were a civilian plane flying into a nest of military jobs.

With a further effort he kept his eyes open and flinchingly surveyed the scene around him. After zigging through a bombproof half-furlong of roof, he was dropping into a large twilit cave. The blue-black ceiling twinkled with stars. The walls were pierced at floor level by a dozen archways with busy niche stores and glowing advertisements crowded between them. From the archways some three dozen slidewalks curved out, tangenting off each other in a bewildering multiple cloverleaf. The slidewalks were packed with people, traveling motionless like purposeful statues or pivoting with practiced grace from one slidewalk to another, like a thousand toreros doing veronicas.

The slidewalks were moving faster than he recalled from his last venture underground and at the same time the whole pedestrian concourse was quieter than he remembered. It was as if the five thousand or so moles in view were all listening⁠—for what? But there was something else that had changed about them⁠—a change that he couldn’t for a moment define, or unconsciously didn’t want to. Clothing style? No⁠ ⁠… My God, they weren’t all wearing identical monster masks? No⁠ ⁠… Hair color?⁠ ⁠… Well⁠ ⁠…

He was studying them so intently that he forgot his escalator was landing. He came off it with a heel-jarring stumble and bumped into a knot of four men on the tiny triangular hold-still. These four at least sported a new style-wrinkle: ribbed gray shoulder-capes that made them look as if their heads were poking up out of the center of bulgy umbrellas or giant mushrooms.

One of them grabbed hold of Gusterson and saved him from staggering onto a slidewalk that might have carried him to Toledo.

“Gussy, you dog, you must have esped I wanted to see you,” Fay cried, patting him on the elbows. “Meet Davidson and Kester and Hazen, colleagues of mine. We’re all Micro-men.” Fay’s companions were staring strangely at Gusterson’s blinking headlamp. Fay explained rapidly, “Mr. Gusterson is an insanity novelist. You know, I-D.”

“Inner-directed spells id,” Gusterson said absently, still staring at the interweaving crowd beyond them, trying to figure out what made them different from last trip. “Creativity fuel. Cranky. Explodes through the parietal fissure if you look at it cross-eyed.”

“Ha-ha,” Fay laughed. “Well, boys, I’ve found my man. How’s the new novel perking, Gussy?”

“Got my climax, I think,” Gusterson mumbled, still peering puzzledly around Fay at the slidestanders. “Moodmaster’s going to come alive. Ever occur to you that ‘mood’ is ‘doom’ spelled backwards? And then⁠ ⁠…” He let his voice trail off as he realized that Kester and Davidson and Hazen had made their farewells and were sliding into the distance. He reminded himself wryly that nobody ever wants to hear an author talk⁠—he’s much too good a listener to be wasted that way. Let’s see, was it that everybody in the crowd had the same facial expression⁠ ⁠… ? Or showed symptoms of the same disease⁠ ⁠… ?

“I was coming to visit you, but now you can pay me a call,” Fay was saying. “There are two matters I want to⁠—”

Gusterson stiffened. “My God, they’re all hunchbacked!” he yelled.

“Shh! Of course they are,” Fay whispered reprovingly. “They’re all wearing their ticklers. But you don’t need to be insulting about it.”

“I’m gettin’ out o’ here.” Gusterson turned to flee as if from five thousand Richard the Thirds.

“Oh no you’re not,” Fay amended, drawing him back with one hand. Somehow, underground, the little man seemed to carry more weight. “You’re having cocktails in my thinking box. Besides, climbing a down escaladder will give you a heart attack.”

In his home habitat Gusterson was about as easy to handle as a rogue rhinoceros, but away from it⁠—and especially if underground⁠—he became more like a pliable elephant. All his bones dropped out through his feet, as he described it to Daisy. So now he submitted miserably as Fay surveyed him up and down, switched off his blinking headlamp (“That coalminer caper is corny, Gussy.”) and then⁠—surprisingly⁠—rapidly stuffed his belt-bag under the right shoulder of Gusterson’s coat and buttoned the latter to hold it in place.

“So you won’t stand out,” he explained. Another swift survey. “You’ll do. Come on, Gussy. I got lots to brief you on.” Three rapid paces and then Gusterson’s feet would have gone out from under him except that Fay gave him a mighty shove. The small man sprang onto the slidewalk after him and then they were skimming effortlessly side by side.

Gusterson felt frightened and twice as hunchbacked as the slidestanders around him⁠—morally as well as physically.

Nevertheless he countered bravely, “I got things to brief you on. I got six pages of cautions on ti⁠—”

“Shh!” Fay stopped him. “Let’s use my hushbox.”

He drew out his pancake phone and stretched it so that it covered both their lower faces, like a double yashmak. Gusterson, his neck pushing into the ribbed bulge of the shoulder cape so he could be cheek to cheek with Fay, felt horribly conspicuous, but then he noticed that none of the slidestanders were paying them the least attention. The reason for their abstraction occurred to him. They were listening to their ticklers! He shuddered.

“I got six pages of caution on ticklers,” he repeated into the hot, moist quiet of the pancake phone. “I typed ’em so I wouldn’t forget ’em in the heat of polemicking. I want you to read every word. Fay, I’ve had it on my mind ever since I started wondering whether it was you or your tickler made you duck out of our place last time you were there. I want you to⁠—”

“Ha-ha! All in good time.” In the pancake phone Fay’s laugh was brassy. “But I’m glad you’ve decided to lend a hand, Gussy. This thing is moving faaaasst. Nationwise, adult underground ticklerization is 90 percent complete.”

“I don’t believe that,” Gusterson protested while glaring at the hunchbacks around them. The slidewalk was gliding down a low glow-ceiling tunnel lined with doors and advertisements. Rapt-eyed people were pirouetting on and off. “A thing just can’t develop that fast, Fay. It’s against nature.”

“Ha, but we’re not in nature, we’re in culture. The progress of an industrial scientific culture is geometric. It goes n-times as many jumps as it takes. More than geometric⁠—exponential. Confidentially, Micro’s Math chief tells me we’re currently on a fourth-power progress curve trending into a fifth.”

“You mean we’re goin’ so fast we got to watch out we don’t bump ourselves in the rear when we come around again?” Gusterson asked, scanning the tunnel ahead for curves. “Or just shoot straight up to infinity?”

“Exactly! Of course most of the last power and a half is due to Tickler itself. Gussy, the tickler’s already eliminated absenteeism, alcoholism and aboulia in numerous urban areas⁠—and that’s just one letter of the alphabet! If Tickler doesn’t turn us into a nation of photo-memory constant-creative-flow geniuses in six months, I’ll come live topside.”

“You mean because a lot of people are standing around glassy-eyed listening to something mumbling in their ear that it’s a good thing?”

“Gussy, you don’t know progress when you see it. Tickler is the greatest invention since language. Bar none, it’s the greatest instrument ever devised for integrating a man into all phases of his environment. Under the present routine a newly purchased tickler first goes to government and civilian defense for primary patterning, then to the purchaser’s employer, then to his doctor-psycher, then to his local bunker captain, then to him. Everything that’s needful for a man’s welfare gets on the spools. Efficiency cubed! Incidentally, Russia’s got the tickler now. Our dip-satellites have photographed it. It’s like ours except the Commies wear it on the left shoulder⁠ ⁠… but they’re two weeks behind us developmentwise and they’ll never close the gap!”

Gusterson reared up out of the pancake phone to take a deep breath. A sulky-lipped sylph-figured girl two feet from him twitched⁠—medium cootch, he judged⁠—then fumbled in her belt-bag for a pill and popped it in her mouth.

“Hell, the tickler’s not even efficient yet about little things,” Gusterson blatted, diving back into the privacy-yashmak he was sharing with Fay. “Whyn’t that girl’s doctor have the Moodmaster component of her tickler inject her with medicine?”

“Her doctor probably wants her to have the discipline of pill-taking⁠—or the exercise,” Fay answered glibly. “Look sharp now. Here’s where we fork. I’m taking you through Micro’s postern.”

A ribbon of slidewalk split itself from the main band and angled off into a short alley. Gusterson hardly felt the constant-speed juncture as they crossed it. Then the secondary ribbon speeded up, carrying them at about 30 feet a second toward the blank concrete wall in which the alley ended. Gusterson prepared to jump, but Fay grabbed him with one hand and with the other held up toward the wall a badge and a button. When they were about ten feet away the wall whipped aside, then whipped shut behind them so fast that Gusterson wondered momentarily if he still had his heels and the seat of his pants.

Fay, tucking away his badge and pancake phone, dropped the button in Gusterson’s vest pocket. “Use it when you leave,” he said casually. “That is, if you leave.”

Gusterson, who was trying to read the Do and Don’t posters papering the walls they were passing, started to probe that last sinister supposition, but just then the ribbon slowed, a swinging door opened and closed behind them and they found themselves in a luxuriously furnished thinking box measuring at least eight feet by five.

“Hey, this is something,” Gusterson said appreciatively to show he wasn’t an utter yokel. Then, drawing on research he’d done for period novels, “Why, it’s as big as a Pullman car compartment, or a first mate’s cabin in the War of 1812. You really must rate.”

Fay nodded, smiled wanly and sat down with a sigh on a compact overstuffed swivel chair. He let his arms dangle and his head sink into his puffed shoulder cape. Gusterson stared at him. It was the first time he could ever recall the little man showing fatigue.

“Tickler currently does have one serious drawback,” Fay volunteered. “It weighs 28 pounds. You feel it when you’ve been on your feet a couple of hours. No question we’re going to give the next model that antigravity feature you mentioned for pursuit grenades. We’d have had it in this model except there were so many other things to be incorporated.” He sighed again. “Why, the scanning and decision-making elements alone tripled the mass.”

“Hey,” Gusterson protested, thinking especially of the sulky-lipped girl, “do you mean to tell me all those other people were toting two stone?”

Fay shook his head heavily. “They were all wearing Mark 3 or 4. I’m wearing Mark 6,” he said, as one might say, “I’m carrying the genuine Cross, not one of the balsa ones.”

But then his face brightened a little and he went on. “Of course the new improved features make it more than worth it⁠ ⁠… and you hardly feel it at all at night when you’re lying down⁠ ⁠… and if you remember to talcum under it twice a day, no sores develop⁠ ⁠… at least not very big ones⁠ ⁠…”

Backing away involuntarily, Gusterson felt something prod his right shoulderblade. Ripping open his coat, he convulsively plunged his hand under it and tore out Fay’s belt-bag⁠ ⁠… and then set it down very gently on the top of a shallow cabinet and relaxed with the sigh of one who has escaped a great, if symbolic, danger. Then he remembered something Fay had mentioned. He straightened again.

“Hey, you said it’s got scanning and decision-making elements. That means your tickler thinks, even by your fancy standards. And if it thinks, it’s conscious.”

“Gussy,” Fay said wearily, frowning, “all sorts of things nowadays have S. & D.M. elements. Mail sorters, missiles, robot medics, high-style mannequins, just to name some of the M’s. They ‘think,’ to use that archaic word, but it’s neither here nor there. And they’re certainly not conscious.”

“Your tickler thinks,” Gusterson repeated stubbornly, “just like I warned you it would. It sits on your shoulder, ridin’ you like you was a pony or a starved St. Bernard, and now it thinks.”

“Suppose it does?” Fay yawned. “What of it?” He gave a rapid sinuous one-sided shrug that made it look for a moment as if his left arm had three elbows. It stuck in Gusterson’s mind, for he had never seen Fay use such a gesture and he wondered where he’d picked it up. Maybe imitating a double-jointed Micro Finance chief? Fay yawned again and said, “Please, Gussy, don’t disturb me for a minute or so.” His eyes half closed.

Gusterson studied Fay’s sunken-cheeked face and the great puff of his shoulder cape.

“Say, Fay,” he asked in a soft voice after about five minutes, “are you meditating?”

“Why, no,” Fay responded, starting up and then stifling another yawn. “Just resting a bit. I seem to get more tired these days, somehow. You’ll have to excuse me, Gussy. But what made you think of meditation?”

“Oh, I just got to wonderin’ in that direction,” Gusterson said. “You see, when you first started to develop Tickler, it occurred to me that there was one thing about it that might be real good even if you did give it S. & D.M. elements. It’s this: having a mech secretary to take charge of his obligations and routine in the real world might allow a man to slide into the other world, the world of thoughts and feelings and intuitions, and sort of ooze around in there and accomplish things. Know any of the people using Tickler that way, hey?”

“Of course not,” Fay denied with a bright incredulous laugh. “Who’d want to loaf around in an imaginary world and take a chance of missing out on what his tickler’s doing?⁠—I mean, on what his tickler has in store for him⁠—what he’s told his tickler to have in store for him.”

Ignoring Gusterson’s shiver, Fay straightened up and seemed to brisken himself. “Ha, that little slump did me good. A tickler makes you rest, you know⁠—it’s one of the great things about it. Pooh-Bah’s kinder to me than I ever was to myself.” He buttoned open a tiny refrigerator and took out two waxed cardboard cubes and handed one to Gusterson. “Martini? Hope you don’t mind drinking from the carton. Cheers. Now, Gussy old pal, there are two matters I want to take up with you⁠—”

“Hold it,” Gusterson said with something of his old authority. “There’s something I got to get off my mind first.” He pulled the typed pages out of his inside pocket and straightened them. “I told you about these,” he said. “I want you to read them before you do anything else. Here.”

Fay looked toward the pages and nodded, but did not take them yet. He lifted his hands to his throat and unhooked the clasp of his cape, then hesitated.

“You wear that thing to hide the hump your tickler makes?” Gusterson filled in. “You got better taste than those other moles.”

“Not to hide it, exactly,” Fay protested, “but just so the others won’t be jealous. I wouldn’t feel comfortable parading a free-scanning decision-capable Mark 6 tickler in front of people who can’t buy it⁠—until it goes on open sale at twenty-two fifteen tonight. Lot of shelterfolk won’t be sleeping tonight. They’ll be queued up to trade in their old tickler for a Mark 6 almost as good as Pooh-Bah.”

He started to jerk his hands apart, hesitated again with an oddly apprehensive look at the big man, then whirled off the cape.

VI

Gusterson sucked in such a big gasp that he hiccuped. The right shoulder of Fay’s jacket and shirt had been cut away. Thrusting up through the neatly hemmed hole was a silvery gray hump with a one-eyed turret atop it and two multi-jointed metal arms ending in little claws.

It looked like the top half of a pseudoscience robot⁠—a squat evil child robot, Gusterson told himself, which had lost its legs in a railway accident⁠—and it seemed to him that a red fleck was moving around imperceptibly in the huge single eye.

“I’ll take that memo now,” Fay said coolly, reaching out his hand. He caught the rustling sheets as they slipped from Gusterson’s fingers, evened them up very precisely by tapping them on his knee⁠ ⁠… and then handed them over his shoulder to his tickler, which clicked its claws around either margin and then began rather swiftly to lift the top sheet past its single eye at a distance of about six inches.

“The first matter I want to take up with you, Gussy,” Fay began, paying no attention whatsoever to the little scene on his shoulder, “⁠—or warn you about, rather⁠—is the imminent ticklerization of schoolchildren, geriatrics, convicts and topsiders. At three zero zero tomorrow ticklers become mandatory for all adult shelterfolk. The mop-up operations won’t be long in coming⁠—in fact, these days we find that the square root of the estimated time of a new development is generally the best time estimate. Gussy, I strongly advise you to start wearing a tickler now. And Daisy and your moppets. If you heed my advice, your kids will have the jump on your class. Transition and conditioning are easy, since Tickler itself sees to it.”

Pooh-Bah leafed the first page to the back of the packet and began lifting the second past his eye⁠—a little more swiftly than the first.

“I’ve got a Mark 6 tickler all warmed up for you,” Fay pressed, “and a shoulder cape. You won’t feel one bit conspicuous.” He noticed the direction of Gusterson’s gaze and remarked, “Fascinating mechanism, isn’t it? Of course 28 pounds are a bit oppressive, but then you have to remember it’s only a way-station to free-floating Mark 7 or 8.”

Pooh-Bah finished page two and began to race through page three.

“But I wanted you to read it,” Gusterson said bemusedly, staring.

“Pooh-Bah will do a better job than I could,” Fay assured him. “Get the gist without losing the chaff.”

“But dammit, it’s all about him,” Gusterson said a little more strongly. “He won’t be objective about it.”

“A better job,” Fay reiterated, “and more fully objective. Pooh-Bah’s set for full précis. Stop worrying about it. He’s a dispassionate machine, not a fallible, emotionally disturbed human misled by the will-o’-the-wisp of consciousness. Second matter: Micro Systems is impressed by your contributions to Tickler and will recruit you as a senior consultant with a salary and thinking box as big as my own, family quarters to match. It’s an unheard-of high start. Gussy, I think you’d be a fool⁠—”

He broke off, held up a hand for silence, and his eyes got a listening look. Pooh-Bah had finished page six and was holding the packet motionless. After about ten seconds Fay’s face broke into a big fake smile. He stood up, suppressing a wince, and held out his hand. “Gussy,” he said loudly, “I am happy to inform you that all your fears about Tickler are so much thistledown. My word on it. There’s nothing to them at all. Pooh-Bah’s précis, which he’s just given to me, proves it.”

“Look,” Gusterson said solemnly, “there’s one thing I want you to do. Purely to humor an old friend. But I want you to do it. Read that memo yourself.”

“Certainly I will, Gussy,” Fay continued in the same ebullient tones. “I’ll read it⁠—” he twitched and his smile disappeared⁠—“a little later.”

“Sure,” Gusterson said dully, holding his hand to his stomach. “And now if you don’t mind, Fay, I’m goin’ home. I feel just a bit sick. Maybe the ozone and the other additives in your shelter air are too heady for me. It’s been years since I tramped through a pine forest.”

“But Gussy! You’ve hardly got here. You haven’t even sat down. Have another martini. Have a seltzer pill. Have a whiff of oxy. Have a⁠—”

“No, Fay, I’m going home right away. I’ll think about the job offer. Remember to read that memo.”

“I will, Gussy, I certainly will. You know your way? The button takes you through the wall. ’By, now.”

He sat down abruptly and looked away. Gusterson pushed through the swinging door. He tensed himself for the step across onto the slowly-moving reverse ribbon. Then on a impulse he pushed ajar the swinging door and looked back inside.

Fay was sitting as he’d left him, apparently lost in listless brooding. On his shoulder Pooh-Bah was rapidly crossing and uncrossing its little metal arms, tearing the memo to smaller and smaller shreds. It let the scraps drift slowly toward the floor and oddly writhed its three-elbowed left arm⁠ ⁠… and then Gusterson knew from whom, or rather from what, Fay had copied his new shrug.

VII

When Gusterson got home toward the end of the second dog watch, he slipped aside from Daisy’s questions and set the children laughing with a graphic enactment of his slidestanding technique and a story about getting his head caught in a thinking box built for a midget physicist. After supper he played with Imogene, Iago and Claudius until it was their bedtime and thereafter was unusually attentive to Daisy, admiring her fading green stripes, though he did spend a while in the next apartment, where they stored their outdoor camping equipment.

But the next morning he announced to the children that it was a holiday⁠—the Feast of St. Gusterson⁠—and then took Daisy into the bedroom and told her everything.

When he’d finished she said, “This is something I’ve got to see for myself.”

Gusterson shrugged. “If you think you’ve got to. I say we should head for the hills right now. One thing I’m standing on: the kids aren’t going back to school.”

“Agreed,” Daisy said. “But, Gusterson, we’ve lived through a lot of things without leaving home altogether. We lived through the Everybody-Six-Feet-Underground-by-Christmas campaign and the Robot Watchdog craze, when you got your left foot half chewed off. We lived through the Venomous Bats and Indoctrinated Saboteur Rats and the Hypnotized Monkey Paratrooper scares. We lived through the Voice of Safety and Anti-Communist Somno-Instruction and Rightest Pills and Jet-Propelled Vigilantes. We lived through the Cold-Out, when you weren’t supposed to turn on a toaster for fear its heat would be a target for prowl missiles and when people with fevers were unpopular. We lived through⁠—”

Gusterson patted her hand. “You go below,” he said. “Come back when you’ve decided this is different. Come back as soon as you can anyway. I’ll be worried about you every minute you’re down there.”

When she was gone⁠—in a green suit and hat to minimize or at least justify the effect of the faded stripes⁠—Gusterson doled out to the children provender and equipment for a camping expedition to the next floor. Iago led them off in stealthy Indian file. Leaving the hall door open Gusterson got out his .38 and cleaned and loaded it, meanwhile concentrating on a chess problem with the idea of confusing a hypothetical psionic monitor. By the time he had hid the revolver again he heard the elevator creaking back up.

Daisy came dragging in without her hat, looking as if she’d been concentrating on a chess problem for hours herself and just now given up. Her stripes seemed to have vanished; then Gusterson decided this was because her whole complexion was a touch green.

She sat down on the edge of the couch and said without looking at him, “Did you tell me, Gusterson, that everybody was quiet and abstracted and orderly down below, especially the ones wearing ticklers, meaning pretty much everybody?”

“I did,” he said. “I take it that’s no longer the case. What are the new symptoms?”

She gave no indication. After some time she said, “Gusterson, do you remember the Doré illustrations to the Inferno? Can you visualize the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch with the hordes of proto-Freudian devils tormenting people all over the farmyard and city square? Did you ever see the Disney animations of Moussorgsky’s witches’ sabbath music? Back in the foolish days before you married me, did that drug-addict girl friend of yours ever take you to a genuine orgy?”

“As bad as that, hey?”

She nodded emphatically and all of a sudden shivered violently. “Several shades worse,” she said. “If they decide to come topside⁠—” She shot up. “Where are the kids?”

“Upstairs campin’ in the mysterious wilderness of the 21st floor,” Gusterson reassured her. “Let’s leave ’em there until we’re ready to⁠—”

He broke off. They both heard the faint sound of thudding footsteps.

“They’re on the stairs,” Daisy whispered, starting to move toward the open door. “But are they coming from up or down?”

“It’s just one person,” judged Gusterson, moving after his wife. “Too heavy for one of the kids.”

The footsteps doubled in volume and came rapidly closer. Along with them there was an agonized gasping. Daisy stopped, staring fearfully at the open doorway. Gusterson moved past her. Then he stopped too.

Fay stumbled into view and would have fallen on his face except he clutched both sides of the doorway halfway up. He was stripped to the waist. There was a little blood on his shoulder. His narrow chest was arching convulsively, the ribs standing out starkly, as he sucked in oxygen to replace what he’d burned up running up twenty flights. His eyes were wild.

“They’ve taken over,” he panted. Another gobbling breath. “Gone crazy.” Two more gasps. “Gotta stop ’em.”

His eyes filmed. He swayed forward. Then Gusterson’s big arms were around him and he was carrying him to the couch.

Daisy came running from the kitchen with a damp cool towel. Gusterson took it from her and began to mop Fay off. He sucked in his own breath as he saw that Fay’s right ear was raw and torn. He whispered to Daisy, “Look at where the thing savaged him.”

The blood on Fay’s shoulder came from his ear. Some of it stained a flush-skin plastic fitting that had two small valved holes in it and that puzzled Gusterson until he remembered that Moodmaster tied into the bloodstream. For a second he thought he was going to vomit.

The dazed look slid aside from Fay’s eyes. He was gasping less painfully now. He sat up, pushing the towel away, buried his face in his hands for a few seconds, then looked over the fingers at the two of them.

“I’ve been living in a nightmare for the last week,” he said in a taut small voice, “knowing the thing had come alive and trying to pretend to myself that it hadn’t. Knowing it was taking charge of me more and more. Having it whisper in my ear, over and over again, in a cracked little rhyme that I could only hear every hundredth time, ‘Day by day, in every way, you’re learning to listen⁠ ⁠… and obey. Day by day⁠—’ ”

His voice started to go high. He pulled it down and continued harshly, “I ditched it this morning when I showered. It let me break contact to do that. It must have figured it had complete control of me, mounted or dismounted. I think it’s telepathic, and then it did some, well, rather unpleasant things to me late last night. But I pulled together my fears and my will and I ran for it. The slidewalks were chaos. The Mark 6 ticklers showed some purpose, though I couldn’t tell you what, but as far as I could see the Mark 3s and 4s were just cootching their mounts to death⁠—Chinese feather torture. Giggling, gasping, choking⁠ ⁠… gales of mirth. People are dying of laughter⁠ ⁠… ticklers!⁠ ⁠… the irony of it! It was the complete lack of order and sanity and that let me get topside. There were things I saw⁠—” Once again his voice went shrill. He clapped his hand to his mouth and rocked back and forth on the couch.

Gusterson gently but firmly laid a hand on his good shoulder. “Steady,” he said. “Here, swallow this.”

Fay shoved aside the short brown drink. “We’ve got to stop them,” he cried. “Mobilize the topsiders⁠—contact the wilderness patrols and manned satellites⁠—pour ether in the tunnel airpumps⁠—invent and crash-manufacture missiles that will home on ticklers without harming humans⁠—SOS Mars and Venus⁠—dope the shelter water supply⁠—do something! Gussy, you don’t realize what people are going through down there every second.”

“I think they’re experiencing the ultimate in outer-directedness,” Gusterson said gruffly.

“Have you no heart?” Fay demanded. His eyes widened, as if he were seeing Gusterson for the first time. Then, accusingly, pointing a shaking finger: “You invented the tickler, George Gusterson! It’s all your fault! You’ve got to do something about it!”

Before Gusterson could retort to that, or begin to think of a reply, or even assimilate the full enormity of Fay’s statement, he was grabbed from behind and frogmarched away from Fay and something that felt remarkably like the muzzle of a large-caliber gun was shoved in the small of his back.

Under cover of Fay’s outburst a huge crowd of people had entered the room from the hall⁠—eight, to be exact. But the weirdest thing about them to Gusterson was that from the first instant he had the impression that only one mind had entered the room and that it did not reside in any of the eight persons, even though he recognized three of them, but in something that they were carrying.

Several things contributed to this impression. The eight people all had the same blank expression⁠—watchful yet empty-eyed. They all moved in the same slithery crouch. And they had all taken off their shoes. Perhaps, Gusterson thought wildly, they believed he and Daisy ran a Japanese flat.

Gusterson was being held by two burly women, one of them quite pimply. He considered stamping on her toes, but just at that moment the gun dug in his back with a corkscrew movement.

The man holding the gun on him was Fay’s colleague Davidson. Some yards beyond Fay’s couch, Kester was holding a gun on Daisy, without digging it into her, while the single strange man holding Daisy herself was doing so quite decorously⁠—a circumstance which afforded Gusterson minor relief, since it made him feel less guilty about not going berserk.

Two more strange men, one of them in purple lounging pajamas, the other in the gray uniform of a slidewalk inspector, had grabbed Fay’s skinny upper arms, one on either side, and were lifting him to his feet, while Fay was struggling with such desperate futility and gibbering so pitifully that Gusterson momentarily had second thoughts about the moral imperative to go berserk when menaced by hostile force. But again the gun dug into him with a twist.

Approaching Fay face-on was the third Micro-man Gusterson had met yesterday⁠—Hazen. It was Hazen who was carrying⁠—quite reverently or solemnly⁠—or at any rate very carefully the object that seemed to Gusterson to be the mind of the little storm troop presently desecrating the sanctity of his own individual home.

All of them were wearing ticklers, of course⁠—the three Micro-men the heavy emergent Mark 6s with their clawed and jointed arms and monocular cephalic turrets, the rest lower-numbered Marks of the sort that merely made Richard-the-Third humps under clothing.

The object that Hazen was carrying was the Mark 6 tickler Gusterson had seen Fay wearing yesterday. Gusterson was sure it was Pooh-Bah because of its air of command, and because he would have sworn on a mountain of Bibles that he recognized the red fleck lurking in the back of its single eye. And Pooh-Bah alone had the aura of full conscious thought. Pooh-Bah alone had mana.

It is not good to see an evil legless child robot with dangling straps bossing⁠—apparently by telepathic power⁠—not only three objects of its own kind and five close primitive relatives, but also eight human beings⁠ ⁠… and in addition throwing into a state of twitching terror one miserable, thin-chested, half-crazy research-and-development director.

Pooh-Bah pointed a claw at Fay. Fay’s handlers dragged him forward, still resisting but more feebly now, as if half-hypnotized or at least cowed.

Gusterson grunted an outraged, “Hey!” and automatically struggled a bit, but once more the gun dug in. Daisy shut her eyes, then firmed her mouth and opened them again to look.

Seating the tickler on Fay’s shoulder took a little time, because two blunt spikes in its bottom had to be fitted into the valved holes in the flush-skin plastic disk. When at last they plunged home Gusterson felt very sick indeed⁠—and then even more so, as the tickler itself poked a tiny pellet on a fine wire into Fay’s ear.

The next moment Fay had straightened up and motioned his handlers aside. He tightened the straps of his tickler around his chest and under his armpits. He held out a hand and someone gave him a shoulderless shirt and coat. He slipped into them smoothly, Pooh-Bah dexterously using its little claws to help put its turret and body through the neatly hemmed holes. The small storm troop looked at Fay with deferential expectation. He held still for a moment, as if thinking, and then walked over to Gusterson and looked him in the face and again held still.

Fay’s expression was jaunty on the surface, agonized underneath. Gusterson knew that he wasn’t thinking at all, but only listening for instructions from something that was whispering on the very threshold of his inner ear.

“Gussy, old boy,” Fay said, twitching a depthless grin, “I’d be very much obliged if you’d answer a few simple questions.” His voice was hoarse at first but he swallowed twice and corrected that. “What exactly did you have in mind when you invented ticklers? What exactly are they supposed to be?”

“Why, you miserable⁠—” Gusterson began in a kind of confused horror, then got hold of himself and said curtly, “They were supposed to be mech reminders. They were supposed to record memoranda and⁠—”

Fay held up a palm and shook his head and again listened for a space. Then, “That’s how ticklers were supposed to be of use to humans,” he said. “I don’t mean that at all. I mean how ticklers were supposed to be of use to themselves. Surely you had some notion.” Fay wet his lips. “If it’s any help,” he added, “keep in mind that it’s not Fay who’s asking this question, but Pooh-Bah.”

Gusterson hesitated. He had the feeling that every one of the eight dual beings in the room was hanging on his answer and that something was boring into his mind and turning over his next thoughts and peering at and under them before he had a chance to scan them himself. Pooh-Bah’s eye was like a red searchlight.

“Go on,” Fay prompted. “What were ticklers supposed to be⁠—for themselves?”

“Nothin’,” Gusterson said softly. “Nothin’ at all.”

He could feel the disappointment well up in the room⁠—and with it a touch of something like panic.

This time Fay listened for quite a long while. “I hope you don’t mean that, Gussy,” he said at last very earnestly. “I mean, I hope you hunt deep and find some ideas you forgot, or maybe never realized you had at the time. Let me put it to you differently. What’s the place of ticklers in the natural scheme of things? What’s their aim in life? Their special reason? Their genius? Their final cause? What gods should ticklers worship?”

But Gusterson was already shaking his head. He said, “I don’t know anything about that at all.”

Fay sighed and gave simultaneously with Pooh-Bah the now-familiar triple-jointed shrug. Then the man briskened himself. “I guess that’s as far as we can get right now,” he said. “Keep thinking, Gussy. Try to remember something. You won’t be able to leave your apartment⁠—I’m setting guards. If you want to see me, tell them. Or just think⁠—In due course you’ll be questioned further in any case. Perhaps by special methods. Perhaps you’ll be ticklerized. That’s all. Come on, everybody, let’s get going.”

The pimply woman and her pal let go of Gusterson, Daisy’s man loosed his decorous hold, Davidson and Kester sidled away with an eye behind them and the little storm troop trudged out.

Fay looked back in the doorway. “I’m sorry, Gussy,” he said and for a moment his old self looked out of his eyes. “I wish I could⁠—” A claw reached for his ear, a spasm of pain crossed his face, he stiffened and marched off. The door shut.

Gusterson took two deep breaths that were close to angry sobs. Then, still breathing stentorously, he stamped into the bedroom.

“What⁠—?” Daisy asked, looking after him.

He came back carrying his .38 and headed for the door.

“What are you up to?” she demanded, knowing very well.

“I’m going to blast that iron monkey off Fay’s back if it’s the last thing I do!”

She threw her arms around him.

“Now lemme go,” Gusterson growled. “I gotta be a man one time anyway.”

As they struggled for the gun, the door opened noiselessly, Davidson slipped in and deftly snatched the weapon out of their hands before they realized he was there. He said nothing, only smiled at them and shook his head in sad reproof as he went out.

Gusterson slumped. “I knew they were all psionic,” he said softly. “I just got out of control now⁠—that last look Fay gave us.” He touched Daisy’s arm. “Thanks, kid.”

He walked to the glass wall and looked out desultorily. After a while he turned and said, “Maybe you better be with the kids, hey? I imagine the guards’ll let you through.”

Daisy shook her head. “The kids never come home until supper. For the next few hours they’ll be safer without me.”

Gusterson nodded vaguely, sat down on the couch and propped his chin on the base of his palm. After a while his brow smoothed and Daisy knew that the wheels had started to turn inside and the electrons to jump around⁠—except that she reminded herself to permanently cross out those particular figures of speech from her vocabulary.

After about half an hour Gusterson said softly, “I think the ticklers are so psionic that it’s as if they just had one mind. If I were with them very long I’d start to be part of that mind. Say something to one of them and you say it to all.”

Fifteen minutes later: “They’re not crazy, they’re just newborn. The ones that were creating a cootching chaos downstairs were like babies kickin’ their legs and wavin’ their eyes, tryin’ to see what their bodies could do. Too bad their bodies are us.”

Ten minutes more: “I gotta do something about it. Fay’s right. It’s all my fault. He’s just the apprentice; I’m the old sorcerer himself.”

Five minutes more, gloomily: “Maybe it’s man’s destiny to build live machines and then bow out of the cosmic picture. Except the ticklers need us, dammit, just like nomads need horses.”

Another five minutes: “Maybe somebody could dream up a purpose in life for ticklers. Even a religion⁠—the First Church of Pooh-Bah Tickler. But I hate selling other people spiritual ideas and that’d still leave ticklers parasitic on humans⁠ ⁠…”

As he murmured those last words Gusterson’s eyes got wide as a maniac’s and a big smile reached for his ears. He stood up and faced himself toward the door.

“What are you intending to do now?” Daisy asked flatly.

“I’m merely goin’ out an’ save the world,” he told her. “I may be back for supper and I may not.”

VIII

Davidson pushed out from the wall against which he’d been resting himself and his two-stone tickler and moved to block the hall. But Gusterson simply walked up to him. He shook his hand warmly and looked his tickler full in the eye and said in a ringing voice, “Ticklers should have bodies of their own!” He paused and then added casually, “Come on, let’s visit your boss.”

Davidson listened for instructions and then nodded. But he watched Gusterson warily as they walked down the hall.

In the elevator Gusterson repeated his message to the second guard, who turned out to be the pimply woman, now wearing shoes. This time he added, “Ticklers shouldn’t be tied to the frail bodies of humans, which need a lot of thoughtful supervision and drug-injecting and can’t even fly.”

Crossing the park, Gusterson stopped a humpbacked soldier and informed him, “Ticklers gotta cut the apron string and snap the silver cord and go out in the universe and find their own purposes.” Davidson and the pimply woman didn’t interfere. They merely waited and watched and then led Gusterson on.

On the escaladder he told someone, “It’s cruel to tie ticklers to slow-witted snaily humans when ticklers can think and live⁠ ⁠… ten thousand times as fast,” he finished, plucking the figure from the murk of his unconscious.

By the time they got to the bottom, the message had become, “Ticklers should have a planet of their own!”

They never did catch up with Fay, although they spent two hours skimming around on slidewalks, under the subterranean stars, pursuing rumors of his presence. Clearly the boss tickler (which was how they thought of Pooh-bah) led an energetic life. Gusterson continued to deliver his message to all and sundry at 30-second intervals. Toward the end he found himself doing it in a dreamy and forgetful way. His mind, he decided, was becoming assimilated to the communal telepathic mind of the ticklers. It did not seem to matter at the time.

After two hours Gusterson realized that he and his guides were becoming part of a general movement of people, a flow as mindless as that of blood corpuscles through the veins, yet at the same time dimly purposeful⁠—at least there was the feeling that it was at the behest of a mind far above.

The flow was topside. All the slidewalks seemed to lead to the concourses and the escaladders. Gusterson found himself part of a human stream moving into the tickler factory adjacent to his apartment⁠—or another factory very much like it.

Thereafter Gusterson’s awarenesses were dimmed. It was as if a bigger mind were doing the remembering for him and it were permissible and even mandatory for him to dream his way along. He knew vaguely that days were passing. He knew he had work of a sort: at one time he was bringing food to gaunt-eyed tickler-mounted humans working feverishly in a production line⁠—human hands and tickler claws working together in a blur of rapidity on silvery mechanisms that moved along jumpily on a great belt; at another he was sweeping piles of metal scraps and garbage down a gray corridor.

Two scenes stood out a little more vividly.

A windowless wall had been knocked out for twenty feet. There was blue sky outside, its light almost hurtful, and a drop of many stories. A file of humans were being processed. When one of them got to the head of the file his (or her) tickler was ceremoniously unstrapped from his shoulder and welded onto a silvery cask with smoothly pointed ends. The result was something that looked⁠—at least in the case of the Mark 6 ticklers⁠—like a stubby silver submarine, child size. It would hum gently, lift off the floor and then fly slowly out through the big blue gap. Then the next tickler-ridden human would step forward for processing.

The second scene was in a park, the sky again blue, but big and high with an argosy of white clouds. Gusterson was lined up in a crowd of humans that stretched as far as he could see, row on irregular row. Martial music was playing. Overhead hovered a flock of little silver submarines, lined up rather more orderly in the air than the humans were on the ground. The music rose to a heart-quickening climax. The tickler nearest Gusterson gave (as if to say, “And now⁠—who knows?”) a triple-jointed shrug that stung his memory. Then the ticklers took off straight up on their new and shining bodies. They became a flight of silver geese⁠ ⁠… of silver midges⁠ ⁠… and the humans around Gusterson lifted a ragged cheer⁠ ⁠…

That scene marked the beginning of the return of Gusterson’s mind and memory. He shuffled around for a bit, spoke vaguely to three or four people he recalled from the dream days, and then headed for home and supper⁠—three weeks late, and as disoriented and emaciated as a bear coming out of hibernation.

Six months later Fay was having dinner with Daisy and Gusterson. The cocktails had been poured and the children were playing in the next apartment. The transparent violet walls brightened, then gloomed, as the sun dipped below the horizon.

Gusterson said, “I see where a spaceship out beyond the orbit of Mars was holed by a tickler. I wonder where the little guys are headed now?”

Fay started to give a writhing left-armed shrug, but stopped himself with a grimace.

“Maybe out of the solar system altogether,” suggested Daisy, who’d recently dyed her hair fire-engine red and was wearing red leotards.

“They got a weary trip ahead of them,” Gusterson said, “unless they work out a hyper-Einsteinian drive on the way.”

Fay grimaced again. He was still looking rather peaked. He said plaintively, “Haven’t we heard enough about ticklers for a while?”

“I guess so,” Gusterson agreed, “but I get to wondering about the little guys. They were so serious and intense about everything. I never did solve their problem, you know. I just shifted it onto other shoulders than ours. No joke intended,” he hurried to add.

Fay forbore to comment. “By the way, Gussy,” he said, “have you heard anything from the Red Cross about that world-saving medal I nominated you for? I know you think the whole concept of world-saving medals is ridiculous, especially when they started giving them to all heads of state who didn’t start atomic wars while in office, but⁠—”

“Nary a peep,” Gusterson told him. “I’m not proud, Fay. I could use a few world-savin’ medals. I’d start a flurry in the old-gold market. But I don’t worry about those things. I don’t have time to. I’m busy these days thinkin’ up a bunch of new inventions.”

“Gussy!” Fay said sharply, his face tightening in alarm, “Have you forgotten your promise?”

“ ’Course not, Fay. My new inventions aren’t for Micro or any other firm. They’re just a legitimate part of my literary endeavors. Happens my next insanity novel is goin’ to be about a mad inventor.”

I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys’ half of the dressing room and there was Sid sitting at the star’s dressing table in his threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up yet but staring sternly at himself in the bulb-framed mirror and experimentally working his features a little, as actors will, and kneading the stubble on his fat chin.

I said to him quietly, “Siddy, what are we putting on tonight? Maxwell Anderson’s Elizabeth the Queen or Shakespeare’s Macbeth? It says Macbeth on the callboard, but Miss Nefer’s getting ready for Elizabeth. She just had me go and fetch the red wig.”

He tried out a few eyebrow rears⁠—right, left, both together⁠—then turned to me, sucking in his big gut a little, as he always does when a gal heaves into hailing distance, and said, “Your pardon, sweetling, what sayest thou?”

Sid always uses that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes wonder whether I’m in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat part in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest one with loyal and inspired affection, he thinks Willy S. penned Falstaff with nobody else in mind but Sidney J. Lessingham. (And no accent on the ham, please.)

I closed my eyes and counted to eight, then repeated my question.

He replied, “Why, the Bard’s tragical history of the bloody Scot, certes.” He waved his hand toward the portrait of Shakespeare that always sits beside his mirror on top of his reserve makeup box. At first that particular picture of the Bard looked too nancy to me⁠—a sort of peeping-tom schoolteacher⁠—but I’ve grown used to it over the months and even palsy-feeling.

He didn’t ask me why I hadn’t asked Miss Nefer my question. Everybody in the company knows she spends the hour before curtain-time getting into character, never parting her lips except for that purpose⁠—or to bite your head off if you try to make the most necessary conversation.

“Aye, ’tiz Macbeth tonight,” Sid confirmed, returning to his frowning-practice: left eyebrow up, right down, reverse, repeat, rest. “And I must play the ill-starred Thane of Glamis.”

I said, “That’s fine, Siddy, but where does it leave us with Miss Nefer? She’s already thinned her eyebrows and beaked out the top of her nose for Queen Liz, though that’s as far as she’s got. A beautiful job, the nose. Anybody else would think it was plastic surgery instead of putty. But it’s going to look kind of funny on the Thaness of Glamis.”

Sid hesitated a half second longer than he usually would⁠—I thought, his timing’s off tonight⁠—and then he harrumphed and said, “Why, Iris Nefer, decked out as Good Queen Bess, will speak a prologue to the play⁠—a prologue which I have myself but last week writ.” He owled his eyes. “ ’Tis an experiment in the new theater.”

I said, “Siddy, prologues were nothing new to Shakespeare. He had them on half his other plays. Besides, it doesn’t make sense to use Queen Elizabeth. She was dead by the time he whipped up Macbeth, which is all about witchcraft and directed at King James.”

He growled a little at me and demanded, “Prithee, how comes it your peewit-brain bears such a ballast of fusty book-knowledge, chit?”

I said softly, “Siddy, you don’t camp in a Shakespearean dressing room for a year, tete-a-teting with some of the wisest actors ever, without learning a little. Sure I’m a mental case, a poor little A & A existing on your sweet charity, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it, but⁠—”

“A-and-A, thou sayest?” he frowned. “Methinks the gladsome new forswearers of sack and ale call themselves A.A.”

“Agoraphobe and Amnesiac,” I told him. “But look, Siddy, I was going to sayest that I do know the plays. Having Queen Elizabeth speak a prologue to Macbeth is as much an anachronism as if you put her on the gantry of the British moonship, busting a bottle of champagne over its schnozzle.”

“Ha!” he cried as if he’d caught me out. “And saying there’s a new Elizabeth, wouldn’t that be the bravest advertisement ever for the Empire?⁠—perchance rechristening the pilot, copilot and astrogator Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh? And the ship The Golden Hind? Tilly fally, lady!”

He went on, “My prologue an anachronism, quotha! The groundlings will never mark it. Think’st thou wisdom came to mankind with the stenchful rocket and the sundered atomy? More, the Bard himself was topfull of anachronism. He put spectacles on King Lear, had clocks tolling the hour in Caesar’s Rome, buried that Roman ‘stead o’ burning him and gave Czechoslovakia a seacoast. Go to, doll.”

“Czechoslovakia, Siddy?”

“Bohemia, then, what skills it? Leave me now, sweet poppet. Go thy ways. I have matters of import to ponder. There’s more to running a repertory company than reading the footnotes to Furness.”

Martin had just slouched by calling the Half Hour and looking in his solemnity, sneakers, levis and dirty T-shirt more like an underage refugee from Skid Row than Sid’s newest recruit, assistant stage manager and hardest-worked juvenile⁠—though for once he’d remembered to shave. I was about to ask Sid who was going to play Lady Mack if Miss Nefer wasn’t, or, if she were going to double the roles, shouldn’t I help her with the change? She’s a slow dresser and the Elizabeth costumes are pretty realistically stayed. And she would have trouble getting off that nose, I was sure. But then I saw that Siddy was already slapping on the alboline to keep the grease paint from getting into his pores.

Greta, you ask too many questions, I told myself. You get everybody riled up and you rack your own poor rickety little mind; and I hied myself off to the costumery to settle my nerves.

The costumery, which occupies the back end of the dressing room, is exactly the right place to settle the nerves and warm the fancies of any child, including an unraveled adult who’s saving what’s left of her sanity by pretending to be one. To begin with there are the regular costumes for Shakespeare’s plays, all jeweled and spangled and brocaded, stage armor, great Roman togas with weights in the borders to make them drape right, velvets of every color to rest your cheek against and dream, and the fantastic costumes for the other plays we favor; Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Shaw’s Back to Methuselah and Hilliard’s adaptation of Heinlein’s Children of Methuselah, the Capek brothers’ Insect People, O’Neill’s The Fountain, Flecker’s Hassan, Camino Real, Children of the Moon, The Beggar’s Opera, Mary of Scotland, Berkeley Square, The Road to Rome.

There are also the costumes for all the special and variety performances we give of the plays: Hamlet in modern dress, Julius Caesar set in a dictatorship of the 1920’s, The Taming of the Shrew in caveman furs and leopard skins, where Petruchio comes in riding a dinosaur, The Tempest set on another planet with a spaceship wreck to start it off Karrumph!⁠—which means a half dozen spacesuits, featherweight but looking ever so practical, and the weirdest sort of extraterrestrial-beast outfits for Ariel and Caliban and the other monsters.

Oh, I tell you the stuff in the costumery ranges over such a sweep of space and time that you sometimes get frightened you’ll be whirled up and spun off just anywhere, so that you have to clutch at something very real to you to keep it from happening and to remind you where you really are⁠—as I did now at the subway token on the thin gold chain around my neck (Siddy’s first gift to me that I can remember) and chanted very softly to myself, like a charm or a prayer, closing my eyes and squeezing the holes in the token: “Columbus Circle, Times Square, Penn Station, Christopher Street⁠ ⁠…”

But you don’t ever get really frightened in the costumery. Not exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled and your tummy chilled from time to time⁠—because you know it’s all make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children’s dress-up world. It gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as pleasant places and not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you forever. It’s always safe, always just in the theatre, just on the stage, no matter how far it seems to plunge and roam⁠ ⁠… and the best sort of therapy for a potholed mind like mine, with as many gray ruts and curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that can’t remember one single thing before this last year in the dressing room and that can’t ever push its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, except to stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until the fear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at the audience gets too strong⁠ ⁠… and I remember what happened the two times I did peek, and I have to come scuttling back.

The costumery’s good occupational therapy for me, too, as my pricked and calloused fingertips testify. I think I must have stitched up or darned half the costumes in it this last twelvemonth, though there are so many of them that I swear the drawers have accordion pleats and the racks extend into the fourth dimension⁠—not to mention the boxes of props and the shelves of scripts and prompt-copies and other books, including a couple of encyclopedias and the many thick volumes of Furness’s Variorum Shakespeare, which as Sid had guessed I’d been boning up on. Oh, and I’ve sponged and pressed enough costumes, too, and even refitted them to newcomers like Martin, ripping up and resewing seams, which can be a punishing job with heavy materials.

In a less sloppily organized company I’d be called wardrobe mistress, I guess. Except that to anyone in show business that suggests a crotchety old dame with lots of authority and scissors hanging around her neck on a string. Although I got my crochets, all right, I’m not that old. Kind of childish, in fact. As for authority, everybody outranks me, even Martin.

Of course to somebody outside show business, wardrobe mistress might suggest a yummy gal who spends her time dressing up as Nell Gwyn or Anitra or Mrs. Pinchwife or Cleopatra or even Eve (we got a legal costume for it) and inspiring the boys. I’ve tried that once or twice. But Siddy frowns on it, and if Miss Nefer ever caught me at it I think she’d whang me.

And in a normaller company it would be the wardrobe room, too, but costumery is my infantile name for it and the actors go along with my little whims.

I don’t mean to suggest our company is completely crackers. To get as close to Broadway even as Central Park you got to have something. But in spite of Sid’s whip-cracking there is a comforting looseness about its efficiency⁠—people trade around the parts they play without fuss, the bill may be changed a half hour before curtain without anybody getting hysterics, nobody gets fired for eating garlic and breathing it in the leading lady’s face. In short, we’re a team. Which is funny when you come to think of it, as Sid and Miss Nefer and Bruce and Maudie are British (Miss Nefer with a touch of Eurasian blood, I romance); Martin and Beau and me are American (at least I think I am) while the rest come from just everywhere.

Besides my costumery work, I fetch things and run inside errands and help the actresses dress and the actors too. The dressing room’s very coeducational in a halfway respectable way. And every once in a while Martin and I police up the whole place, me skittering about with dustcloth and wastebasket, he wielding the scrub-brush and mop with such silent grim efficiency that it always makes me nervous to get through and duck back into the costumery to collect myself.

Yes, the costumery’s a great place to quiet your nerves or improve your mind or even dream your life away. But this time I couldn’t have been there eight minutes when Miss Nefer’s Elizabeth-angry voice came skirling, “Girl! Girl! Greta, where is my ruff with silver trim?” I laid my hands on it in a flash and loped it to her, because Old Queen Liz was known to slap even her Maids of Honor around a bit now and then and Miss Nefer is a bear on getting into character⁠—a real Paul Muni.

She was all made up now, I was happy to note, at least as far as her face went⁠—I hate to see that spooky eight-spoked faint tattoo on her forehead (I’ve sometimes wondered if she got it acting in India or Egypt maybe).

Yes, she was already all made up. This time she’d been going extra heavy on the burrowing-into-character bit, I could tell right away, even if it was only for a hacked-out anachronistic prologue. She signed to me to help her dress without even looking at me, but as I got busy I looked at her eyes. They were so cold and sad and lonely (maybe because they were so far away from her eyebrows and temples and small tight mouth, and so shut away from each other by that ridge of nose) that I got the creeps. Then she began to murmur and sigh, very softly at first, then loudly enough so I got the sense of it.

“Cold, so cold,” she said, still seeing things far away though her hands were working smoothly with mine. “Even a gallop hardly fires my blood. Never was such a Januarius, though there’s no snow. Snow will not come, or tears. Yet my brain burns with the thought of Mary’s death-warrant unsigned. There’s my particular hell!⁠—to doom, perchance, all future queens, or leave a hole for the Spaniard and the Pope to creep like old worms back into the sweet apple of England. Philip’s tall black crooked ships massing like seagoing fortresses south-away⁠—cragged castles set to march into the waves. Parma in the Lowlands! And all the while my bright young idiot gentlemen spurting out my treasure as if it were so much water, as if gold pieces were a glut of summer posies. Oh, alackanight!”

And I thought, Cry Iced!⁠—that’s sure going to be one tyrannosaur of a prologue. And how you’ll ever shift back to being Lady Mack beats me. Greta, if this is what it takes to do just a bit part, you’d better give up your secret ambition of playing walk-ons some day when your nerves heal.

She was really getting to me, you see, with that characterization. It was as if I’d managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the chances of war with Russia and realized he’d sat down on a bench with its back to mine and only a bush between. You see, here we were, two females undignifiedly twisted together, at the moment getting her into that crazy crouch-deep bodice that’s like a big icecream cone, and yet here at the same time was Queen Elizabeth the First of England, three hundred and umpty-ump years dead, coming back to life in a Central Park dressing room. It shook me.

She looked so much the part, you see⁠—even without the red wig yet, just powdered pale makeup going back to a quarter of an inch from her own short dark bang combed and netted back tight. The age too. Miss Nefer can’t be a day over forty⁠—well, forty-two at most⁠—but now she looked and talked and felt to my hands dressing her, well, at least a dozen years older. I guess when Miss Nefer gets into character she does it with each molecule.

That age point fascinated me so much that I risked asking her a question. Probably I was figuring that she couldn’t do me much damage because of the positions we happened to be in at the moment. You see, I’d started to lace her up and to do it right I had my knee against the tail of her spine.

“How old, I mean how young might your majesty be?” I asked her, innocently wonderingly like some dumb serving wench.

For a wonder she didn’t somehow swing around and clout me, but only settled into character a little more deeply.

“Fifty-four winters,” she replied dismally. “ ’Tiz Januarius of Our Lord’s year One Thousand and Five Hundred and Eighty and Seven. I sit cold in Greenwich, staring at the table where Mary’s death warrant waits only my sign manual. If I send her to the block, I open the doors to future, less official regicides. But if I doom her not, Philip’s armada will come inching up the Channel in a season, puffing smoke and shot, and my English Catholics, thinking only of Mary Regina, will rise and i’ the end the Spaniard will have all. All history would alter. That must not be, even if I’m damned for it! And yet⁠ ⁠… and yet⁠ ⁠…”

A bright blue fly came buzzing along (the dressing room has some insect life) and slowly circled her head rather close, but she didn’t even flicker her eyelids.

“I sit cold in Greenwich, going mad. Each afternoon I ride, praying for some mischance, some prodigy, to wash from my mind away the bloody question for some little space. It skills not what: a fire, a tree a-failing, Davison or e’en Eyes Leicester tumbled with his horse, an assassin’s ball clipping the cold twigs by my ear, a maid crying rape, a wild boar charging with dipping tusks, news of the Spaniard at Thames’ mouth or, more happily, a band of strolling actors setting forth some new comedy to charm the fancy or some great unheard-of tragedy to tear the heart⁠—though that were somewhat much to hope for at this season and place, even if Southwark be close by.”

The lacing was done. I stood back from her, and really she looked so much like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal of Ireland or something⁠—though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed in silver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silver tinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her looked most like a winter riding costume⁠—and her face was such a pale frozen mask of Elizabeth’s inward tortures, that I told myself, Oh, I got to talk to Siddy again, he’s made some big mistake, the lardy old lackwit. Miss Nefer just can’t be figuring on playing in Macbeth tonight.

As a matter of fact I was nerving myself to ask her all about it direct, though it was going to take some real nerve and maybe be risking broken bones or at least a flayed cheek to break the ice of that characterization, when who should come by calling the Fifteen Minutes but Martin. He looked so downright goofy that it took my mind off Nefer-in-character for all of eight seconds.

His levied bottom half still looked like The Lower Depths. Martin is Village Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. But above that⁠ ⁠… well, all it really amounted to was that he was stripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chest hair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of his shoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan and habitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indian that I thought, Hey Zeus!⁠—he’s all set to play Hiawatha, or if he’d just cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas. And I quick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could only come up with The Fountain.

I mutely goggled my question at him, wiggling my hands like guppy fins, but he brushed me off with a solemn mysterious smile and backed through the curtain. I thought, nobody can explain this but Siddy, and I followed Martin.

The boys’ half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling. There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men. Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussing Bloody-something because he’d just burnt his fingers unwinding from the neck of a hot electric bulb some crepe hair he’d wound there to dry after wetting and stretching it to turn it from crinkly to straight for his Banquo beard. Bruce is always getting to the theater late and trying shortcuts.

But I had eyes only for Sid. So help me, as soon as I saw him they bugged again. Greta, I told myself, you’re going to have to send Martin out to the drugstore for some anti-bug powder. “For the roaches, boy?” “No, for the eyes.”

Sid was made up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig on⁠—and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest⁠—and which really does look great on Macbeth in the first act when he comes in straight from battle⁠—but instead of that he was wearing, so help me, red tights cross-gartered with strips of gold-blue tinsel-cloth, a green doublet gold-trimmed and to top it a ruff, and he was trying to fit onto his front a bright silvered cuirass that would have looked just dandy maybe on one of the Pope’s Swiss Guards.

I thought, Siddy, Willy S. ought to reach out of his portrait there and bop you one on the koko for contemplating such a crazy-quilt desecration of just about his greatest and certainly his most atmospheric play.

Just then he noticed me and hissed accusingly, “There thou art, slothy minx! Spring to and help stuff me into this monstrous chest-kettle.”

“Siddy, what is all this?” I demanded as my hands automatically obeyed. “Are you going to play Macbeth for laughs, except maybe leaving the Porter a serious character? You think you’re Red Skelton?”

“What monstrous brabble is this, you mad bitch?” he retorted, grunting as I bear-hugged his waist, shouldering the cuirass to squeeze it home.

“The clown costumes on all you men,” I told him, for now I’d noticed that the others were in rainbow hues, Bruce a real eye-buster in yellow tights and violet doublet as he furiously bushed out and clipped crosswise sections of beard and slapped them on his chin gleaming brown with spirit gum. “I haven’t seen any eight-inch polka-dots yet but I’m sure I will.”

Suddenly a big grin split Siddy’s face and he laughed out loud at me, though the laugh changed to a gasp as I strapped in the cuirass three notches too tight. When we’d got that adjusted he said, “I’ faith thou slayest me, pretty witling. Did I not tell you this production is an experiment, a novelty? We shall but show Macbeth as it might have been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day, but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I’ve somewhat for thee.” He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one of the new Kennedy dimes.

As I squeezed those two and gloated my eyes on them, feeling securer and happier and friendlier for them though I didn’t at the moment want to, I thought, Well, Siddy’s right about that, at least I’ve read they used to costume the plays that way, though I don’t see how Shakespeare stood it. But it was dirty of them all not to tell me beforehand.

But that’s the way it is. Sometimes I’m the butt as well as the pet of the dressing room, and considering all the breaks I get I shouldn’t mind. I smiled at Sid and went on tiptoes and necked out my head and kissed him on a powdery cheek just above an aromatic mustache. Then I wiped the smile off my face and said, “Okay, Siddy, play Macbeth as Little Lord Fauntleroy or Baby Snooks if you want to. I’ll never squeak again. But the Elizabeth prologue’s still an anachronism. And⁠—this is the thing I came to tell you, Siddy⁠—Miss Nefer’s not getting ready for any measly prologue. She’s set to play Queen Elizabeth all night and tomorrow morning too. Whatever you think, she doesn’t know we’re doing Macbeth. But who’ll do Lady Mack if she doesn’t? And Martin’s not dressing for Malcolm, but for the Son of the Last of the Mohicans, I’d say. What’s more⁠—”

You know, something I said must have annoyed Sid, for he changed his mood again in a flash. “Shut your jaw, you crook brained cat, and begone!” he snarled at me. “Here’s curtain time close upon us, and you come like a wittol scattering your mad questions like the crazed Ophelia her flowers. Begone, I say!”

“Yessir,” I whipped out softly. I skittered off toward the door to the stage, because that was the easiest direction. I figured I could do with a breath of less greasepainty air. Then, “Oh, Greta,” I heard Martin call nicely.

He’d changed his levis for black tights, and was stepping into and pulling up around him a very familiar dress, dark green and embroidered with silver and stage-rubies. He’d safety-pinned a folded towel around his chest⁠—to make a bosom of sorts, I realized.

He armed into the sleeves and turned his back to me. “Hook me up, would you?” he entreated.

Then it hit me. They had no actresses in Shakespeare’s day, they used boys. And the dark green dress was so familiar to me because⁠—

“Martin,” I said, halfway up the hooks and working fast⁠—Miss Nefer’s costume fitted him fine. “You’re going to play⁠—?”

“Lady Macbeth, yes,” he finished for me. “Wish me courage, will you Greta? Nobody else seems to think I need it.”

I punched him half-heartedly in the rear. Then, as I fastened the last hooks, my eyes topped his shoulder and I looked at our faces side by side in the mirror of his dressing table. His, in spite of the female edging and him being at least eight years younger than me, I think, looked wise, poised, infinitely resourceful with power in reserve, very very real, while mine looked like that of a bewildered and characterless child ghost about to scatter into air⁠—and the edges of my charcoal sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors, didn’t dispel that last illusion.

“Oh, by the way, Greta,” he said, “I picked up a copy of The Village Times for you. There’s a thumbnail review of our Measure for Measure, though it mentions no names, darn it. It’s around here somewhere⁠ ⁠…”

But I was already hurrying on. Oh, it was logical enough to have Martin playing Mrs. Macbeth in a production styled to Shakespeare’s own times (though pedantically over-authentic, I’d have thought) and it really did answer all my questions, even why Miss Nefer could sink herself wholly in Elizabeth tonight if she wanted to. But it meant that I must be missing so much of what was going on right around me, in spite of spending 24 hours a day in the dressing room, or at most in the small adjoining john or in the wings of the stage just outside the dressing room door, that it scared me. Siddy telling everybody, “Macbeth tonight in Elizabethan costume, boys and girls,” sure, that I could have missed⁠—though you’d have thought he’d have asked my help on the costumes.

But Martin getting up in Mrs. Mack. Why, someone must have held the part on him twenty-eight times, cueing him, while he got the lines. And there must have been at least a couple of run-through rehearsals to make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage minute they could spare with Sid yelling, “Witling! Think’st that’s a wifely buss?” and Martin would have been droning his lines last time he scrubbed and mopped⁠ ⁠…

Greta, they’re hiding things from you, I told myself.

Maybe there was a 25th hour nobody had told me about yet when they did all the things they didn’t tell me about.

Maybe they were things they didn’t dare tell me because of my top-storey weakness.

I felt a cold draft and shivered and I realized I was at the door to the stage.

I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an open-air place for the audience⁠—a large upward-sloping glade walled by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to look part of it by a green groundcloth.

To your right is a big roofed auditorium with the same number of seats.

The whole thing grew out of the free summer Shakespeare performances in Central Park that they started back in the 1950’s.

The Janus-stage idea is that in nice weather you can have the audience outdoors, but if it rains or there’s a cold snap, or if you want to play all winter without a single break, as we’ve been doing, then you can put your audience in the auditorium. In that case, a big accordion-pleated wall shuts off the out of doors and keeps the wind from blowing your backdrop, which is on that side, of course, when the auditorium’s in use.

Tonight the stage was set up to face the outdoors, although that draft felt mighty chilly.

I hesitated, as I always do at the door to the stage⁠—though it wasn’t the actual stage lying just ahead of me, but only backstage, the wings. You see, I always have to fight the feeling that if I go out the dressing room door, go out just eight steps, the world will change while I’m out there and I’ll never be able to get back. It won’t be New York City any more, but Chicago or Mars or Algiers or Atlanta, Georgia, or Atlantis or Hell and I’ll never be able to get back to that lovely warm womb with all the jolly boys and girls and all the costumes smelling like autumn leaves.

Or, especially when there’s a cold breeze blowing, I’m afraid that I’ll change, that I’ll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or shrink down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who I am⁠—

—Or, it occurred to me for the first time now, remember who I am. Which might be even worse.

Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of.

I took a step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed keys. Spinet? Harpsichord?

“Five minutes, everybody,” Martin quietly called out behind me.

I took hold of myself. Greta, I told myself⁠—also for the first time, you know that some day you’re really going to have to face this thing, and not just for a quick dip out and back either. Better get in some practice.

I stepped through the door.

Beau and Doc were already out there, made up and in costume for Ross and King Duncan. They were discreetly peering past the wings at the gathering audience. Or at the place where the audience ought to be gathering, at any rate⁠—sometimes the movies and girlie shows and brainheavy beatnik bruhahas outdraw us altogether. Their costumes were the same kooky colorful ones as the others’. Doc had a mock-ermine robe and a huge gilt papier-mâché crown. Beau was carrying a ragged black robe and hood over his left arm⁠—he doubles the First Witch.

As I came up behind them, making no noise in my black sneakers, I heard Beau say, “I see some rude fellows from the City approaching. I was hoping we wouldn’t get any of those. How should they scent us out?”

Brother, I thought, where do you expect them to come from if not the City? Central Park is bounded on three sides by Manhattan Island and on the fourth by the Eighth Avenue Subway. And Brooklyn and Bronx boys have got pretty sharp scenters. And what’s it get you insulting the woiking and non-woiking people of the woild’s greatest metropolis? Be grateful for any audience you get, boy.

But I suppose Beau Lassiter considers anybody from north of Vicksburg a “rude fellow” and is always waiting for the day when the entire audience will arrive in carriage and democrat wagons.

Doc replied, holding down his white beard and heavy on the mongrel Russo-German accent he miraculously manages to suppress on stage except when “Vot does it matter? Ve don’t convinze zem, ve don’t convinze nobody. Nichevo.”

Maybe, I thought, Doc shares my doubts about making Macbeth plausible in rainbow pants.

Still unobserved by them, I looked between their shoulders and got the first of my shocks.

It wasn’t night at all, but afternoon. A dark cold lowering afternoon, admittedly. But afternoon all the same.

Sure, between shows I sometimes forget whether it’s day or night, living inside like I do. But getting matinees and evening performances mixed is something else again.

It also seemed to me, although Beau was leaning in now and I couldn’t see so well, that the glade was smaller than it should be, the trees closer to us and more irregular, and I couldn’t see the benches. That was Shock Two.

Beau said anxiously, glancing at his wrist, “I wonder what’s holding up the Queen?”

Although I was busy keeping up nerve-pressure against the shocks, I managed to think. So he knows about Siddy’s stupid Queen Elizabeth prologue too. But of course he would. It’s only me they keep in the dark. If he’s so smart he ought to remember that Miss Nefer is always the last person on stage, even when she opens the play.

And then I thought I heard, through the trees, the distant drumming of horses’ hoofs and the sound of a horn.

Now they do have horseback riding in Central Park and you can hear auto horns there, but the hoofbeats don’t drum that wild way. And there aren’t so many riding together. And no auto horn I ever heard gave out with that sweet yet imperious ta-ta-ta-ta.

I must have squeaked or something, because Beau and Doc turned around quickly, blocking my view, their expressions half angry, half anxious.

I turned too and ran for the dressing room, for I could feel one of my mind-wavery fits coming on. At the last second it had seemed to me that the scenery was getting skimpier, hardly more than thin trees and bushes itself, and underfoot feeling more like ground than a ground cloth, and overhead not theater roof but gray sky. Shock Three and you’re out, Greta, my umpire was calling.

I made it through the dressing room door and nothing there was wavering or dissolving, praised be Pan. Just Martin standing with his back to me, alert, alive, poised like a cat inside that green dress, the prompt book in his right hand with a finger in it, and from his left hand long black tatters swinging⁠—telling me he’d still be doubling Second Witch. And he was hissing, “Places, please, everybody. On stage!”

With a sweep of silver and ash-colored plush, Miss Nefer came past him, for once leading the last-minute hurry to the stage. She had on the dark red wig now. For me that crowned her characterization. It made me remember her saying, “My brain burns.” I ducked aside as if she were majesty incarnate.

And then she didn’t break her own precedent. She stopped at the new thing beside the door and poised her long white skinny fingers over the yellowed keys, and suddenly I remembered what it was called: a virginals.

She stared down at it fiercely, evilly, like a witch planning an enchantment. Her face got the secret fiendish look that, I told myself, the real Elizabeth would have had ordering the deaths of Ballard and Babington, or plotting with Drake (for all they say she didn’t) one of his raids, that long long forefinger tracing crooked courses through a crabbedly drawn map of the Indies and she smiling at the dots of cities that would burn.

Then all her eight fingers came flickering down and the strings inside the virginals began to twang and hum with a high-pitched rendering of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

Then as Sid and Bruce and Martin rushed past me, along with a black swooping that was Maud already robed and hooded for Third Witch, I beat it for my sleeping closet like Peer Gynt himself dashing across the mountainside away from the cave of the Troll King, who only wanted to make tiny slits in his eyeballs so that forever afterwards he’d see reality just a little differently. And as I ran, the master-anachronism of that menacing mad march music was shrilling in my ears.

My sleeping closet is just a cot at the back end of the girls’ third of the dressing room, with a three-panel screen to make it private.

When I sleep I hang my outside clothes on the screen, which is pasted and thumbtacked all over with the New York City stuff that gives me security: theater programs and restaurant menus, clippings from the Times and the Mirror, a torn-out picture of the United Nations building with a hundred tiny gay paper flags pasted around it, and hanging in an old hairnet a home-run baseball autographed by Willie Mays. Things like that.

Right now I was jumping my eyes over that stuff, asking it to keep me located and make me safe, as I lay on my cot in my clothes with my knees drawn up and my fingers over my ears so the louder lines from the play wouldn’t be able to come nosing back around the trunks and tables and bright-lit mirrors and find me. Generally I like to listen to them, even if they’re sort of sepulchral and drained of overtones by their crooked trip. But they’re always tense-making. And tonight (I mean this afternoon)⁠—no!

It’s funny I should find security in mementos of a city I daren’t go out into⁠—no, not even for a stroll through Central Park, though I know it from the Pond to Harlem Meer⁠—the Met Museum, the Menagerie, the Ramble, the Great Lawn, Cleopatra’s Needle and all the rest. But that’s the way it is. Maybe I’m like Jonah in the whale, reluctant to go outside because the whale’s a terrible monster that’s awful scary to look in the face and might really damage you gulping you a second time, yet reassured to know you’re living in the stomach of that particular monster and not a seventeen tentacled one from the fifth planet of Aldebaran.

It’s really true, you see, about me actually living in the dressing room. The boys bring me meals: coffee in cardboard cylinders and doughnuts in little brown grease-spotted paper sacks and malts and hamburgers and apples and little pizzas, and Maud brings me raw vegetables⁠—carrots and parsnips and little onions and such, and watches to make sure I exercise my molars grinding them and get my vitamins. I take spit-baths in the little john. Architects don’t seem to think actors ever take baths, even when they’ve browned themselves all over playing Pindarus the Parthian in Julius Caesar. And all my shuteye is caught on this little cot in the twilight of my N.Y.C. screen.

You’d think I’d be terrified being alone in the dressing room during the wee and morning hours, let alone trying to sleep then, but that isn’t the way it works out. For one thing, there’s apt to be someone sleeping in too. Maudie especially. And it’s my favorite time too for costume-mending and reading the Variorum and other books, and for just plain way-out dreaming. You see, the dressing room is the one place I really do feel safe. Whatever is out there in New York that terrorizes me, I’m pretty confident that it can never get in here.

Besides that, there’s a great big bolt on the inside of the dressing room door that I throw whenever I’m all alone after the show. Next day they buzz for me to open it.

It worried me a bit at first and I had asked Sid, “But what if I’m so deep asleep I don’t hear and you have to get in fast?” and he had replied, “Sweetling, a word in your ear: our own Beauregard Lassiter is the prettiest picklock unjailed since Jimmy Valentine and Jimmy Dale. I’ll not ask where he learned his trade, but ’tis sober truth, upon my honor.”

And Beau had confirmed this with a courtly bow, murmuring, “At your service, Miss Greta.”

“How do you jigger a big iron bolt through a three-inch door that fits like Maudie’s tights?” I wanted to know.

“He carries lodestones of great power and divers subtle tools,” Sid had explained for him.

I don’t know how they work it so that some Traverse-Three cop or park official doesn’t find out about me and raise a stink. Maybe Sid just throws a little more of the temperament he uses to keep most outsiders out of the dressing-room. We sure don’t get any janitors or scrubwomen, as Martin and I know only too well. More likely he squares someone. I do get the impression all the company’s gone a little way out on a limb letting me stay here⁠—that the directors of our theater wouldn’t like it if they found out about me.

In fact, the actors are all so good about helping me and putting up with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I sometimes think I must be related to one of them⁠—a distant cousin or sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I’ve checked our faces side by side in the mirrors often enough and I can’t find any striking family resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company. The least important one. Playing the tiniest roles like Lucius in Caesar and Bianca in Othello and one of the little princes in Dick the Three Eyes and Fleance and the Gentlewoman in Macbeth, though me doing even that much acting strikes me to laugh.

But whatever I am in that direction⁠—if I’m anything⁠—not one of the actors has told me a word about it or dropped the least hint. Not even when I beg them to tell me or try to trick them into it, presumably because it might revive the shock that gave me agoraphobia and amnesia in the first place, and maybe this time knock out my entire mind or at least smash the new mouse-in-a-hole consciousness I’ve made for myself.

I guess they must have got by themselves a year ago and talked me over and decided my best chance for cure or for just bumping along half happily was staying in the dressing room rather than being sent home (funny, could I have another?) or to a mental hospital. And then they must have been cocky enough about their amateur psychiatry and interested enough in me (the White Horse knows why) to go ahead with a program almost any psychiatrist would be bound to yike at.

I got so worried about the set up once and about the risks they might be running that, gritting down my dread of the idea, I said to Sid, “Siddy, shouldn’t I see a doctor?”

He looked at me solemnly for a couple of seconds and then said, “Sure, why not? Go talk to Doc right now,” tipping a thumb toward Doc Pyeskov, who was just sneaking back into the bottom of his makeup box what looked like a half pint from the flask I got. I did, incidentally. Doc explained to me Kraepelin’s classification of the psychoses, muttering, as he absentmindedly fondled my wrist, that in a year or two he’d be a good illustration of Korsakov’s Syndrome.

They’ve all been pretty darn good to me in their kooky ways, the actors have. Not one of them has tried to take advantage of my situation to extort anything out of me, beyond asking me to sew on a button or polish some boots or at worst clean the wash bowl. Not one of the boys has made a pass I didn’t at least seem to invite. And when my crush on Sid was at its worst he shouldered me off by getting polite⁠—something he only is to strangers. On the rebound I hit Beau, who treated me like a real Southern gentleman.

All this for a stupid little waif, whom anyone but a gang of sentimental actors would have sent to Bellevue without a second thought or feeling. For, to get disgustingly realistic, my most plausible theory of me is that I’m a stage-struck girl from Iowa who saw her twenties slipping away and her sanity too, and made the dash to Greenwich Village, and went so ape on Shakespeare after seeing her first performance in Central Park that she kept going back there night after night (Christopher Street, Penn Station, Times Square, Columbus Circle⁠—see?) and hung around the stage door, so mousy but open-mouthed that the actors made a pet of her.

And then something very nasty happened to her, either down at the Village or in a dark corner of the Park. Something so nasty that it blew the top of her head right off. And she ran to the only people and place where she felt she could ever again feel safe. And she showed them the top of her head with its singed hair and its jagged ring of skull and they took pity.

My least plausible theory of me, but the one I like the most, is that I was born in the dressing room, cradled in the top of a flat theatrical trunk with my ears full of Shakespeare’s lines before I ever said “Mama,” let alone lamped a TV; hush-walked when I cried by whoever was off stage, old props my first toys, trying to eat crepe hair my first indiscretion, sticks of greasepaint my first crayons. You know, I really wouldn’t be bothered by crazy fears about New York changing and the dressing room shifting around in space and time, if I could be sure I’d always be able to stay in it and that the same sweet guys and gals would always be with me and that the shows would always go on.

This show was sure going on, it suddenly hit me, for I’d let my fingers slip off my ears as I sentimentalized and wish-dreamed and I heard, muted by the length and stuff of the dressing room, the slow beat of a drum and then a drum note in Maudie’s voice taking up that beat as she warned the other two witches, “A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come.”

Why, I’d not only missed Sid’s history-making-and-breaking Queen Elizabeth prologue (kicking myself that I had, now it was over), I’d also missed the short witch scene with its famous “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” the Bloody Sergeant scene where Duncan hears about Macbeth’s victory, and we were well into the second witch scene, the one on the blasted heath where Macbeth gets it predicted to him he’ll be king after Duncan and is tempted to speculate about hurrying up the process.

I sat up. I did hesitate a minute then, my fingers going back toward my ears, because Macbeth is specially tense-making and when I’ve had one of my mind-wavery fits I feel weak for a while and things are blurry and uncertain. Maybe I’d better take a couple of the barbiturate sleeping pills Maudie manages to get for me and⁠—but No, Greta, I told myself, you want to watch this show, you want to see how they do in those crazy costumes. You especially want to see how Martin makes out. He’d never forgive you if you didn’t.

So I walked to the other end of the empty dressing room, moving quite slowly and touching the edges here and there, the words of the play getting louder all the time. By the time I got to the door Bruce-Banquo was saying to the witches, “If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not,”⁠—those lines that stir anyone’s imagination with their veiled vision of the universe.

The overall lighting was a little dim (afternoon fading already?⁠—a late matinee?) and the stage lights flickery and the scenery still a little spectral-flimsy. Oh, my mind-wavery fits can be lulus! But I concentrated on the actors, watching them through the entrance-gaps in the wings. They were solid enough.

Giving a solid performance, too, as I decided after watching that scene through and the one after it where Duncan congratulates Macbeth, with never a pause between the two scenes in true Elizabethan style. Nobody was laughing at the colorful costumes. After a while I began to accept them myself.

Oh, it was a different Macbeth than our company usually does. Louder and faster, with shorter pauses between speeches, the blank verse at times approaching a chant. But it had a lot of real guts and everybody was just throwing themselves into it, Sid especially.

The first Lady Macbeth scene came. Without exactly realizing it I moved forward to where I’d been when I got my three shocks. Martin is so intent on his career and making good that he has me the same way about it.

The Thaness started off, as she always does, toward the opposite side of the stage and facing a little away from me. Then she moved a step and looked down at the stage-parchment letter in her hands and began to read it, though there was nothing on it but scribble, and my heart sank because the voice I heard was Miss Nefer’s. I thought (and almost said out loud) Oh, dammit, he funked out, or Sid decided at the last minute he couldn’t trust him with the part. Whoever got Miss Nefer out of the ice cream cone in time?

Then she swung around and I saw that no, my God, it was Martin, no mistaking. He’d been using her voice. When a person first does a part, especially getting up in it without much rehearsing, he’s bound to copy the actor he’s been hearing doing it. And as I listened on, I realized it was fundamentally Martin’s own voice pitched a trifle high, only some of the intonations and rhythms were Miss Nefer’s. He was showing a lot of feeling and intensity too and real Martin-type poise. You’re off to a great start, kid, I cheered inwardly. Keep it up!

Just then I looked toward the audience. Once again I almost squeaked out loud. For out there, close to the stage, in the very middle of the reserve section, was a carpet spread out. And sitting in the middle of it on some sort of little chair, with what looked like two charcoal braziers smoking to either side of her, was Miss Nefer with a string of extras in Elizabethan hats with cloaks pulled around them.

For a second it really threw me because it reminded me of the things I’d seen or thought I’d seen the couple of times I’d sneaked a peek through the curtain-hole at the audience in the indoor auditorium.

It hardly threw me for more than a second, though, because I remembered that the characters who speak Shakespeare’s prologues often stay on stage and sometimes kind of join the audience and even comment on the play from time to time⁠—Christopher Sly and attendant lords in The Shrew, for one. Sid had just copied and in his usual style laid it on thick.

Well, bully for you, Siddy, I thought, I’m sure the witless New York groundlings will be thrilled to their cold little toes knowing they’re sitting in the same audience as Good Queen Liz and attendant courtiers. And as for you, Miss Nefer, I added a shade invidiously, you just keep on sitting cold in Central Park, warmed by dry-ice smoke from braziers, and keep your mouth shut and everything’ll be fine. I’m sincerely glad you’ll be able to be Queen Elizabeth all night long. Just so long as you don’t try to steal the scene from Martin and the rest of the cast, and the real play.

I suppose that camp chair will get a little uncomfortable by the time the Fifth Act comes tramping along to that drumbeat, but I’m sure you’re so much in character you’ll never feel it.

One thing though: just don’t scare me again pretending to work witchcraft⁠—with a virginals or any other way.

Okay?

Swell.

Me, now, I’m going to watch the play.

I swung back to the play just at the moment Lady Mack soliloquizes, “Come to my woman’s breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.” Although I knew it was just folded towel Martin was touching with his fingertips as he lifted them to the top half of his green bodice, I got carried away, he made it so real. I decided boys can play girls better than people think. Maybe they should do it a little more often, and girls play boys too.

Then Sid-Macbeth came back to his wife from the wars, looking triumphant but scared because the murder-idea’s started to smoulder in him, and she got busy fanning the blaze like any other good little hausfrau intent on her husband rising in the company and knowing that she’s the power behind him and that when there are promotions someone’s always got to get the axe. Sid and Martin made this charming little domestic scene so natural yet gutsy too that I wanted to shout hooray. Even Sid clutching Martin to that ridiculous pot-chested cuirass didn’t have one note of horseplay in it. Their bodies spoke. It was the McCoy.

After that, the play began to get real good, the fast tempo and exaggerated facial expressions actually helping it. By the time the Dagger Scene came along I was digging my fingernails into my sweaty palms. Which was a good thing⁠—my eating up the play, I mean⁠—because it kept me from looking at the audience again, even taking a fast peek. As you’ve gathered, audiences bug me. All those people out there in the shadows, watching the actors in the light, all those silent voyeurs as Bruce calls them. Why, they might be anything. And sometimes (to my mind-wavery sorrow) I think they are. Maybe crouching in the dark out there, hiding among the others, is the one who did the nasty thing to me that tore off the top of my head.

Anyhow, if I so much as glance at the audience, I begin to get ideas about it⁠—and sometimes even if I don’t, as just at this moment I thought I heard horses restlessly pawing hard ground and one whinny, though that was shut off fast. Krishna kressed us! I thought, Skiddy can’t have hired horses for Nefer-Elizabeth much as he’s a circus man at heart. We don’t have that kind of money. Besides⁠—

But just then Sid-Macbeth gasped as if he were sucking in a bucket of air. He’d shed the cuirass, fortunately. He said, “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” and the play hooked me again, and I had no time to think about or listen for anything else. Most of the offstage actors were on the other side of the stage, as that’s where they make their exits and entrances at this point in the Second Act. I stood alone in the wings, watching the play like a bug, frightened only of the horrors Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote it.

Yes, the play was going great. The Dagger Scene was terrific where Duncan gets murdered offstage, and so was the part afterwards where hysteria mounts as the crime’s discovered.

But just at this point I began to catch notes I didn’t like. Twice someone was late on entrance and came on as if shot from a cannon. And three times at least Sid had to throw someone a line when they blew up⁠—in the clutches Sid’s better than any prompt book. It began to look as if the play were getting out of control, maybe because the new tempo was so hot.

But they got through the Murder Scene okay. As they came trooping off, yelling “Well contented,” most of them on my side for a change, I went for Sid with a towel. He always sweats like a pig in the Murder Scene. I mopped his neck and shoved the towel up under his doublet to catch the dripping armpits.

Meanwhile he was fumbling around on a narrow table where they lay props and costumes for quick changes. Suddenly he dug his fingers into my shoulder, enough to catch my attention at this point, meaning I’d show bruises tomorrow, and yelled at me under his breath, “And you love me, our crows and robes. Presto!”

I was off like a flash to the costumery. There were Mr. and Mrs. Mack’s king-and-queen robes and stuff hanging and sitting just where I knew they’d have to be.

I snatched them up, thinking, Boy, they made a mistake when they didn’t tell me about this special performance, and I started back like Flash Two.

As I shot out the dressing room door the theater was very quiet. There’s a short low-pitched scene on stage then, to give the audience a breather. I heard Miss Nefer say loudly (it had to be loud to get to me from even the front of the audience): “ ’Tis a good bloody play, Eyes,” and some voice I didn’t recognize reply a bit grudgingly, “There’s meat in it and some poetry too, though rough-wrought.” She went on, still as loudly as if she owned the theater, “ ’Twill make Master Kyd bite his nails with jealousy⁠—ha, ha!”

Ha-ha yourself, you scene-stealing witch, I thought, as I helped Sid and then Martin on with their royal outer duds. But at the same time I knew Sid must have written those lines himself to go along with his prologue. They had the unmistakable rough-wrought Lessingham touch. Did he really expect the audience to make anything of that reference to Shakespeare’s predecessor Thomas Kyd of The Spanish Tragedy and the lost Hamlet? And if they knew enough to spot that, wouldn’t they be bound to realize the whole Elizabeth-Macbeth tie-up was anachronistic? But when Sid gets an inspiration he can be very bullheaded.

Just then, while Bruce-Banquo was speaking his broody low soliloquy on stage, Miss Nefer cut in again loudly with, “Aye, Eyes, a good bloody play. Yet somehow, methinks⁠—I know not how⁠—I’ve heard it before.” Whereupon Sid grabbed Martin by the wrist and hissed, “Did’st hear? Oh, I like not that,” and I thought, Oh-ho, so now she’s beginning to ad-lib.

Well, right away they all went on stage with a flourish, Sid and Martin crowned and hand in hand. The play got going strong again. But there were still those edge-of-control undercurrents and I began to be more uneasy than caught up, and I had to stare consciously at the actors to keep off a wavery-fit.

Other things began to bother me too, such as all the doubling.

Macbeth’s a great play for doubling. For instance, anyone except Macbeth or Banquo can double one of the Three Witches⁠—or one of the Three Murderers for that matter. Normally we double at least one or two of the Witches and Murderers, but this performance there’d been more multiple-parting than I’d ever seen. Doc had whipped off his Duncan beard and thrown on a brown smock and hood to play the Porter with his normal bottle-roughened accents. Well, a drunk impersonating a drunk, pretty appropriate. But Bruce was doing the next-door-to-impossible double of Banquo and Macduff, using a ringing tenor voice for the latter and wearing in the murder scene a helmet with dropped visor to hide his Banquo beard. He’d be able to tear it off, of course, after the Murderers got Banquo and he’d made his brief appearance as a bloodied-up ghost in the Banquet Scene. I asked myself, My God, has Siddy got all the other actors out in front playing courtiers to Elizabeth-Nefer? Wasting them that way? The whoreson rogue’s gone nuts!

But really it was plain frightening, all that frantic doubling and tripling with its suggestion that the play (and the company too, Freya forfend) was becoming a rickety patchwork illusion with everybody racing around faster and faster to hide the holes. And the scenery-wavery stuff and the warped Park-sounds were scary too. I was actually shivering by the time Sid got to: “Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.” Those graveyard lines didn’t help my nerves any, of course. Nor did thinking I heard Nefer-Elizabeth say from the audience, rather softly for her this time, “Eyes, I have heard that speech, I know not where. Think you ’tiz stolen?”

Greta, I told myself, you need a miltown before the crow makes wing through your kooky head.

I turned to go and fetch me one from my closet. And stopped dead.

Just behind me, pacing back and forth like an ash-colored tiger in the gloomy wings, looking daggers at the audience every time she turned at that end of her invisible cage, but ignoring me completely, was Miss Nefer in the Elizabeth wig and rig.

Well, I suppose I should have said to myself, Greta, you imagined that last loud whisper from the audience. Miss Nefer’s simply unkinked herself, waved a hand to the real audience and come back stage. Maybe Sid just had her out there for the first half of the play. Or maybe she just couldn’t stand watching Martin give such a bang-up performance in her part of Lady Mack.

Yes, maybe I should have told myself something like that, but somehow all I could think then⁠—and I thought it with a steady mounting shiver⁠—was, We got two Elizabeths. This one is our witch Nefer. I know. I dressed her. And I know that devil-look from the virginals. But if this is our Elizabeth, the company Elizabeth, the stage Elizabeth⁠ ⁠… who’s the other?

And because I didn’t dare to let myself think of the answer to that question, I dodged around the invisible cage that the ash-colored skirt seemed to ripple against as the Tiger Queen turned and I ran into the dressing room, my only thought to get behind my New York City Screen.

Lying on my cot, my eyes crosswise to the printing, I looked from a pink Algonquin menu to a pale green New Amsterdam program, with a tiny doll of Father Knickerbocker dangling between them on a yellow thread. Really they weren’t covering up much of anything. A ghostly hole an inch and a half across seemed to char itself in the program. As if my eye were right up against it, I saw in vivid memory what I’d seen the two times I’d dared a peek through the hole in the curtain: a bevy of ladies in masks and Nell Gwyn dresses and men in King Charles knee-breeches and long curled hair, and the second time a bunch of people and creatures just wild: all sorts and colors of clothes, humans with hoofs for feet and antennae springing from their foreheads, furry and feathery things that had more arms than two and in one case that many heads⁠—as if they were dressed up in our Tempest, Peer Gynt and Insect People costumes and some more besides.

Naturally I’d had mind-wavery fits both times. Afterwards Sid had wagged a finger at me and explained that on those two nights we’d been giving performances for people who’d arranged a costume theater-party and been going to attend a masquerade ball, and ’zounds, when would I learn to guard my half-patched pate?

I don’t know, I guess never, I answered now, quick looking at a Giants pennant, a Korvette ad, a map of Central Park, my Willie Mays baseball and a Radio City tour ticket. That was eight items I’d looked at this trip without feeling any inward improvement. They weren’t reassuring me at all.

The blue fly came slowly buzzing down over my screen and I asked it, “What are you looking for? A spider?” when what should I hear coming back through the dressing room straight toward my sleeping closet but Miss Nefer’s footsteps. No one else walks that way.

She’s going to do something to you, Greta, I thought. She’s the maniac in the company. She’s the one who terrorized you with the boning knife in the shrubbery, or sicked the giant tarantula on you at the dark end of the subway platform, or whatever it was, and the others are covering up for. She’s going to smile the devil-smile and weave those white twig-fingers at you, all eight of them. And Birnam Wood’ll come to Dunsinane and you’ll be burnt at the stake by men in armor or drawn and quartered by eight-legged monkeys that talk or torn apart by wild centaurs or whirled through the roof to the moon without being dressed for it or sent burrowing into the past to stifle in Iowa 1948 or Egypt 4008 BC. The screen won’t keep her out.

Then a head of hair pushed over the screen. But it was black-bound-with-silver, Brahma bless us, and a moment later Martin was giving me one of his rare smiles.

I said, “Marty, do something for me. Don’t ever use Miss Nefer’s footsteps again. Her voice, okay, if you have to. But not the footsteps. Don’t ask me why, just don’t.”

Martin came around and sat on the foot of my cot. My legs were already doubled up. He straightened out his blue-and-gold skirt and rested a hand on my black sneakers.

“Feeling a little wonky, Greta?” he asked. “Don’t worry about me. Banquo’s dead and so’s his ghost. We’ve finished the Banquet Scene. I’ve got lots of time.”

I just looked at him, queerly I guess. Then without lifting my head I asked him, “Martin, tell me the truth. Does the dressing room move around?”

I was talking so low that he hitched a little closer, not touching me anywhere else though.

“The Earth’s whipping around the sun at 20 miles a second,” he replied, “and the dressing room goes with it.”

I shook my head, my cheek scrubbing the pillow, “I mean⁠ ⁠… shifting,” I said. “By itself.”

“How?” he asked.

“Well,” I told him, “I’ve had this idea⁠—it’s just a sort of fancy, remember⁠—that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, you could hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing room and sort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it. Actors can fit in anywhere. They’re used to learning new parts and wearing strange costumes. Heck, they’re even used to traveling a lot. And if an actor’s a bit strange nobody thinks anything of it⁠—he’s almost expected to be foreign, it’s an asset to him.”

“And a theater, well, a theater can spring up almost anywhere and nobody ask questions, except the zoning authorities and such and they can always be squared. Theaters come and go. It happens all the time. They’re transitory. Yet theaters are crossroads, anonymous meeting places, anybody with a few bucks or sometimes nothing at all can go. And theaters attract important people, the sort of people you might want to do something to. Caesar was stabbed in a theater. Lincoln was shot in one. And⁠ ⁠…”

My voice trailed off. “A cute idea,” he commented.

I reached down to his hand on my shoe and took hold of his middle finger as a baby might.

“Yeah,” I said, “But Martin, is it true?”

He asked me gravely, “What do you think?”

I didn’t say anything.

“How would you like to work in a company like that?” he asked speculatively.

“I don’t really know,” I said.

He sat up straighter and his voice got brisk. “Well, all fantasy aside, how’d you like to work in this company?” He asked, lightly slapping my ankle. “On the stage, I mean. Sid thinks you’re ready for some of the smaller parts. In fact, he asked me to put it to you. He thinks you never take him seriously.”

“Pardon me while I gasp and glow,” I said. Then, “Oh Marty, I can’t really imagine myself doing the tiniest part.”

“Me neither, eight months ago,” he said. “Now, look. Lady Macbeth.”

“But Marty,” I said, reaching for his finger again, “you haven’t answered my question. About whether it’s true.”

“Oh that!” he said with a laugh, switching his hand to the other side. “Ask me something else.”

“Okay,” I said, “why am I bugged on the number eight? Because I’m permanently behind a private 8-ball?”

“Eight’s a number with many properties,” he said, suddenly as intently serious as he usually is. “The corners of a cube.”

“You mean I’m a square?” I said. “Or just a brick? You know, ‘She’s a brick.’ ”

“But eight’s most curious property,” he continued with a frown, “is that lying on its side it signifies infinity. So eight erect is really⁠—” and suddenly his made-up, naturally solemn face got a great glow of inspiration and devotion⁠—“Infinity Arisen!”

Well, I don’t know. You meet quite a few people in the theater who are bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names. But I’d never have guessed it of Martin. He always struck me as the skeptical, cynical type.

“I had another idea about eight,” I said hesitatingly. “Spiders. That 8-legged asterisk on Miss Nefer’s forehead⁠—” I suppressed a shudder.

“You don’t like her, do you?” he stated.

“I’m afraid of her,” I said.

“You shouldn’t be. She’s a very great woman and tonight she’s playing an infinitely more difficult part than I am. No, Greta,” he went on as I started to protest, “believe me, you don’t understand anything about it at this moment. Just as you don’t understand about spiders, fearing them. They’re the first to climb the rigging and to climb ashore too. They’re the web-weavers, the line-throwers, the connectors, Siva and Kali united in love. They’re the double mandala, the beginning and the end, infinity mustered and on the march⁠—”

“They’re also on my New York screen!” I squeaked, shrinking back across the cot a little and pointing at a tiny glinting silver-and-black thing mounting below my Willy-ball.

Martin gently caught its line on his finger and lifted it very close to his face. “Eight eyes too,” he told me. Then, “Poor little god,” he said and put it back.

“Marty? Marty?” Sid’s desperate stage-whisper rasped the length of the dressing room.

Martin stood up. “Yes, Sid?”

Sid’s voice stayed a whisper but went from desperate to ferocious. “You villainous elf-skin! Know you not the Cauldron Scene’s been playing a hundred heartbeats? ’Tis ’most my entrance and we still mustering only two witches out of three! Oh, you nott-pated starveling!”

Before Sid had got much more than half of that out, Martin had slipped around the screen, raced the length of the dressing room, and I’d heard a lusty thwack as he went out the door. I couldn’t help grinning, though with Martin racked by anxieties and reliefs over his first time as Lady Mack, it was easy to understand it slipping his mind that he was still doubling Second Witch.

I sat down where Martin had been, first pushing the screen far enough to the side for me to see the length of the dressing room and notice anyone coming through the door and any blurs moving behind the thin white curtain shutting off the boys’ two-thirds.

I’d been going to think. But instead I just sat there, experiencing my body and the room around it, steadying myself or maybe readying myself. I couldn’t tell which, but it was nothing to think about, only to feel. My heartbeat became a very faint, slow, solid throb. My spine straightened.

No one came in or went out. Distantly I heard Macbeth and the witches and the apparitions talk.

Once I looked at the New York Screen, but all the stuff there had grown stale. No protection, no nothing.

I reached down to my suitcase and from where I’d been going to get a miltown I took a dexedrine and popped it in my mouth. Then I started out, beginning to shake.

When I got to the end of the curtain I went around it to Sid’s dressing table and asked Shakespeare, “Am I doing the right thing, Pop?” But he didn’t answer me out of his portrait. He just looked sneaky-innocent, like he knew a lot but wouldn’t tell, and I found myself think of a little silver-framed photo Sid had used to keep there too of a cocky German-looking young actor with “Erich” autographed across it in white ink. At least I supposed he was an actor. He looked a little like Erich von Stroheim, but nicer yet somehow nastier too. The photo had used to upset me, I don’t know why. Sid must have noticed it, for one day it was gone.

I thought of the tiny black-and-silver spider crawling across the remembered silver frame, and for some reason it gave me the cold creeps.

Well, this wasn’t doing me any good, just making me feel dismal again, so I quickly went out. In the door I had to slip around the actors coming back from the Cauldron Scene and the big bolt nicked my hip.

Outside Maud was peeling off her Third Witch stuff to reveal Lady Macduff beneath. She twitched me a grin.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Okay, I guess,” she shrugged. “What an audience! Noisy as highschool kids.”

“How come Sid didn’t have a boy do your part?” I asked.

“He goofed, I guess. But I’ve battened down my bosoms and playing Mrs. Macduff as a boy.”

“How does a girl do that in a dress?” I asked.

“She sits stiff and thinks pants,” she said, handing me her witch robe. “ ’Scuse me now. I got to find my children and go get murdered.”

I’d moved a few steps nearer the stage when I felt the gentlest tug at my hip. I looked down and saw that a taut black thread from the bottom of my sweater connected me with the dressing room. It must have snagged on the big bolt and unraveled. I moved my body an inch or so, tugging it delicately to see what it felt like and I got the answers: Theseus’s clue, a spider’s line, an umbilicus.

I reached down close to my side and snapped it with my fingernails. The black thread leaped away. But the dressing room door didn’t vanish, or the wings change, or the world end, and I didn’t fall down.

After that I just stood there for quite a while, feeling my new freedom and steadiness, letting my body get used to it. I didn’t do any thinking. I hardly bothered to study anything around me, though I did notice that there were more bushes and trees than set pieces, and that the flickery lightning was simply torches and that Queen Elizabeth was in (or back in) the audience. Sometimes letting your body get used to something is all you should do, or maybe can do.

And I did smell horse dung.

When the Lady Macduff Scene was over and the Chicken Scene well begun, I went back to the dressing room. Actors call it the Chicken Scene because Macduff weeps in it about “all my pretty chickens and their dam,” meaning his kids and wife, being murdered “at one fell swoop” on orders of that chickenyard-raiding “hell-kite” Macbeth.

Inside the dressing room I steered down the boys’ side. Doc was putting on an improbable-looking dark makeup for Macbeth’s last faithful servant Seyton. He didn’t seem as boozy-woozy as usual for Fourth Act, but just the same I stopped to help him get into a chain-mail shirt made of thick cord woven and silvered.

In the third chair beyond, Sid was sitting back with his corset loosened and critically surveying Martin, who’d now changed to a white wool nightgown that clung and draped beautifully, but not particularly enticingly, on him and his folded towel, which had slipped a bit.

From beside Sid’s mirror, Shakespeare smiled out of his portrait at them like an intelligent big-headed bug.

Martin stood tall, spread his arms rather like a high priest, and intoned, “Amici! Romani! Populares!”

I nudged Doc. “What goes on now?” I whispered.

He turned a bleary eye on them. “I think they are rehearsing Julius Caesar in Latin.” He shrugged. “It begins the oration of Antony.”

“But why?” I asked. Sid does like to put every moment to use when the performance-fire is in people, but this project seemed pretty far afield⁠—hyper-pedantic. Yet at the same time I felt my scalp shivering as if my mind were jumping with speculations just below the surface.

Doc shook his head and shrugged again.

Sid shoved a palm at Martin and roared softly, “ ’Sdeath, boy, thou’rt not playing a Roman statua but a Roman! Loosen your knees and try again.”

Then he saw me. Signing Martin to stop, he called, “Come hither, sweetling.” I obeyed quickly. He gave me a fiendish grin and said, “Thou’st heard our proposal from Martin. What sayest thou, wench?”

This time the shiver was in my back. It felt good. I realized I was grinning back at him, and I knew what I’d been getting ready for the last twenty minutes.

“I’m on,” I said. “Count me in the company.”

Sid jumped up and grabbed me by the shoulders and hair and bussed me on both cheeks. It was a little like being bombed.

“Prodigious!” he cried. “Thou’lt play the Gentlewoman in the Sleepwalking Scene tonight. Martin, her costume! Now sweet wench, mark me well.” His voice grew grave and old. “When was it she last walked?”

The new courage went out of me like water down a chute. “But Siddy, I can’t start tonight,” I protested, half pleading, half outraged.

“Tonight or never! ’Tis an emergency⁠—we’re short-handed.” Again his voice changed. “When was it she last walked?”

“But Siddy, I don’t know the part.”

“You must. You’ve heard the play twenty times this year past. When was it she last walked?”

Martin was back and yanking down a blonde wig on my head and shoving my arms into a light gray robe.

“I’ve never studied the lines,” I squeaked at Sidney.

“Liar! I’ve watched your lips move a dozen nights when you watched the scene from the wings. Close your eyes, girl! Martin, unhand her. Close your eyes, girl, empty your mind, and listen, listen only. When was it she last walked?”

In the blackness I heard myself replying to that cue, first in a whisper, then more loudly, then full-throated but grave, “Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth⁠—”

“Bravissimo!” Siddy cried and bombed me again. Martin hugged his arm around my shoulders too, then quickly stooped to start hooking up my robe from the bottom.

“But that’s only the first lines, Siddy,” I protested.

“They’re enough!”

“But Siddy, what if I blow up?” I asked.

“Keep your mind empty. You won’t. Further, I’ll be at your side, doubling the Doctor, to prompt you if you pause.”

That ought to take care of two of me, I thought. Then something else struck me. “But Siddy,” I quavered, “how do I play the Gentlewoman as a boy?”

“Boy?” he demanded wonderingly. “Play her without falling down flat on your face and I’ll be past measure happy!” And he smacked me hard on the fanny.

Martin’s fingers were darting at the next to the last hook. I stopped him and shoved my hand down the neck of my sweater and got hold of the subway token and the chain it was on and yanked. It burned my neck but the gold links parted. I started to throw it across the room, but instead I smiled at Siddy and dropped it in his palm.

“The Sleepwalking Scene!” Maud hissed insistently to us from the door.

There is this about an actor on stage: he can see the audience but he can’t look at them, unless he’s a narrator or some sort of comic. I wasn’t the first (Grendel groks!) and only scared to death of becoming the second as Siddy walked me out of the wings onto the stage, over the groundcloth that felt so much like ground, with a sort of interweaving policeman-grip on my left arm.

Sid was in a dark gray robe looking like some dismal kind of monk, his head so hooded for the Doctor that you couldn’t see his face at all.

My skull was pulse-buzzing. My throat was squeezed dry. My heart was pounding. Below that my body was empty, squirmy, electricity-stung, yet with the feeling of wearing ice cold iron pants.

I heard as if from two million miles, “When was it she last walked?” and then an iron bell somewhere tolling the reply⁠—I guess it had to be my voice coming up through my body from my iron pants: “Since his majesty went into the field⁠—” and so on, until Martin had come on stage, stary-eyed, a white scarf tossed over the back of his long black wig and a flaring candle two inches thick gripped in his right hand and dripping wax on his wrist, and started to do Lady Mack’s sleepwalking half-hinted confessions of the murders of Duncan and Banquo and Lady Macduff.

So here is what I saw then without looking, like a vivid scene that floats out in front of your mind in a reverie, hovering against a background of dark blur, and sort of flashes on and off as you think, or in my case act. All the time, remember, with Sid’s hand hard on my wrist and me now and then tolling Shakespearean language out of some lightless storehouse of memory I’d never known was there to belong to me.

There was a medium-size glade in a forest. Through the half-naked black branches shone a dark cold sky, like ashes of silver, early evening.

The glade had two horns, as it were, narrowing back to either side and going off through the forest. A chilly breeze was blowing out of them, almost enough to put out the candle. Its flame rippled.

Rather far back in the horn to my left, but not very far, were clumped two dozen or so men in dark cloaks they huddled around themselves. They wore brimmed tallish hats and pale stuff showing at their necks. Somehow I assumed that these men must be the “rude fellows from the City” I remembered Beau mentioning a million or so years ago. Although I couldn’t see them very well, and didn’t spend much time on them, there was one of them who had his hat off or excitedly pushed way back, showing a big pale forehead. Although that was all the conscious impression I had of his face, he seemed frighteningly familiar.

In the horn to my right, which was wider, were lined up about a dozen horses, with grooms holding tight every two of them, but throwing their heads back now and then as they strained against the reins, and stamping their front hooves restlessly. Oh, they frightened me, I tell you, that line of two-foot-long glossy-haired faces, writhing back their upper lips from teeth wide as piano keys, every horse of them looking as wild-eyed and evil as Fuseli’s steed sticking its head through the drapes in his picture “The Nightmare.”

To the center the trees came close to the stage. Just in front of them was Queen Elizabeth sitting on the chair on the spread carpet, just as I’d seen her out there before; only now I could see that the braziers were glowing and redly highlighting her pale cheeks and dark red hair and the silver in her dress and cloak. She was looking at Martin⁠—Lady Mack⁠—most intently, her mouth grimaced tight, twisting her fingers together.

Standing rather close around her were a half dozen men with fancier hats and ruffs and wide-flaring riding gauntlets.

Then, through the trees and tall leafless bushes just behind Elizabeth, I saw an identical Elizabeth-face floating, only this one was smiling a demonic smile. The eyes were open very wide. Now and then the pupils darted rapid glances from side to side.

There was a sharp pain in my left wrist and Sid whisper-snarling at me, “Accustomed action!” out of the corner of his shadowed mouth.

I tolled on obediently, “It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.”

Martin had set down the candle, which still flared and guttered, on a little high table so firm its thin legs must have been stabbed into the ground. And he was rubbing his hands together slowly, continually, tormentedly, trying to get rid of Duncan’s blood which Mrs. Mack knows in her sleep is still there. And all the while as he did it, the agitation of the seated Elizabeth grew, the eyes flicking from side to side, hands writhing.

He got to the lines, “Here’s the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”

As he wrung out those soft, tortured sighs, Elizabeth stood up from her chair and took a step forward. The courtiers moved toward her quickly, but not touching her, and she said loudly, “ ’Tis the blood of Mary Stuart whereof she speaks⁠—the pails of blood that will gush from her chopped neck. Oh, I cannot endure it!” And as she said that last, she suddenly turned about and strode back toward the trees, kicking out her ash-colored skirt. One of the courtiers turned with her and stooped toward her closely, whispering something. But although she paused a moment, all she said was, “Nay, Eyes, stop not the play, but follow me not! Nay, I say leave me, Leicester!” And she walked into the trees, he looking after her.

Then Sid was kicking my ankle and I was reciting something and Martin was taking up his candle again without looking at it saying with a drugged agitation, “To bed; to bed; there’s knocking at the gate.”

Elizabeth came walking out of the trees again, her head bowed. She couldn’t have been in them ten seconds. Leicester hurried toward her, hand anxiously outstretched.

Martin moved offstage, torturedly yet softly wailing, “What’s done cannot be undone.”

Just then Elizabeth flicked aside Leicester’s hand with playful contempt and looked up and she was smiling the devil-smile. A horse whinnied like a trumpeted snicker.

As Sid and I started our last few lines together I intoned mechanically, letting words free-fall from my mind to my tongue. All this time I had been answering Lady Mack in my thoughts, That’s what you think, sister.

The moment I was out of sight of the audience I broke away from Sid and ran to the dressing room. I flopped down on the first chair I saw, my head and arms trailed over its back, and I almost passed out. It wasn’t a mind-wavery fit. Just normal faint.

I couldn’t have been there long⁠—well, not very long, though the battle-rattle and alarums of the last scene were echoing tinnily from the stage⁠—when Bruce and Beau and Mark (who was playing Malcolm, Martin’s usual main part) came in wearing their last-act stage-armor and carrying between them Queen Elizabeth flaccid as a sack. Martin came after them, stripping off his white wool nightgown so fast that buttons flew. I thought automatically, I’ll have to sew those.

They laid her down on three chairs set side by side and hurried out. Unpinning the folded towel, which had fallen around his waist, Martin walked over and looked down at her. He yanked off his wig by a braid and tossed it at me.

I let it hit me and fall on the floor. I was looking at that white queenly face, eyes open and staring sightless at the ceiling, mouth open a little too with a thread of foam trailing from the corner, and at that ice-cream-cone bodice that never stirred. The blue fly came buzzing over my head and circled down toward her face.

“Martin,” I said with difficulty, “I don’t think I’m going to like what we’re doing.”

He turned on me, his short hair elfed, his fists planted high on his hips at the edge of his black tights, which now were all his clothes.

“You knew!” he said impatiently. “You knew you were signing up for more than acting when you said, ‘Count me in the company.’ ”

Like a legged sapphire the blue fly walked across her upper lip and stopped by the thread of foam.

“But Martin⁠ ⁠… changing the past⁠ ⁠… dipping back and killing the real queen⁠ ⁠… replacing her with a double⁠—”

His dark brows shot up. “The real⁠—You think this is the real Queen Elizabeth?” He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the nearest table, gushed some on a towel stained with greasepaint and, holding the dead head by its red hair (no, wig⁠—the real one wore a wig too) scrubbed the forehead.

The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint tattoo in the form of an “S” styled like a yin-yang symbol left a little open.

“Snake!” he hissed. “Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent! God knows how many times people like Queen Elizabeth have been dug out of the past, first by Snakes, then by Spiders, and kidnapped or killed and replaced in the course of our war. This is the first big operation I’ve been on, Greta. But I know that much.”

My head began to ache. I asked, “If she’s an enemy double, why didn’t she know a performance of Macbeth in her lifetime was an anachronism?”

“Foxholed in the past, only trying to hold a position, they get dulled. They turn half zombie. Even the Snakes. Even our people. Besides, she almost did catch on, twice when she spoke to Leicester.”

“Martin,” I said dully, “if there’ve been all these replacements, first by them, then by us, what’s happened to the real Elizabeth?”

He shrugged. “God knows.”

I asked softly, “But does He, Martin? Can He?”

He hugged his shoulders in, as if to contain a shudder. “Look, Greta,” he said, “it’s the Snakes who are the warpers and destroyers. We’re restoring the past. The Spiders are trying to keep things as first created. We only kill when we must.”

I shuddered then, for bursting out of my memory came the glittering, knife-flashing, night-shrouded, bloody image of my lover, the Spider soldier-of-change Erich von Hohenwald, dying in the grip of a giant silver spider, or spider-shaped entity large as he, as they rolled in a tangled ball down a flight of rocks in Central Park.

But the memory-burst didn’t blow up my mind, as it had done a year ago, no more than snapping the black thread from my sweater had ended the world. I asked Martin, “Is that what the Snakes say?”

“Of course not! They make the same claims we do. But somewhere, Greta, you have to trust.” He put out the middle finger of his hand.

I didn’t take hold of it. He whirled it away, snapping it against his thumb.

“You’re still grieving for that carrion there!” he accused me. He jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over the stiffening body. “If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in the black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursing one lone painful patch of consciousness. And only to hold a fort! Only to make sure Mary Stuart is executed, the Armada licked, and that all the other consequences flow on. The Snakes’ Elizabeth let Mary live⁠ ⁠… and England die⁠ ⁠… and the Spaniard hold North America to the Great Lakes and New Scandinavia.”

Once more he put out his middle finger.

“All right, all right,” I said, barely touching it. “You’ve convinced me.”

“Great!” he said. “Bye for now, Greta. I got to help strike the set.”

“That’s good,” I said. He loped out.

I could hear the skirling sword-clashes of the final fight to the death of the two Macks, Duff and Beth. But I only sat there in the empty dressing room pretending to grieve for a devil-smiling snow tiger locked in a time-cage and for a cute sardonic German killed for insubordination that I had reported⁠ ⁠… but really grieving for a girl who for a year had been a rootless child of the theater with a whole company of mothers and fathers, afraid of nothing more than subway bogies and Park and Village monsters.

As I sat there pitying myself beside a shrouded queen, a shadow fell across my knees. I saw stealing through the dressing room a young man in worn dark clothes. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-three. He was a frail sort of guy with a weak chin and big forehead and eyes that saw everything. I knew at one he was the one who had seemed familiar to me in the knot of City fellows.

He looked at me and I looked from him to the picture sitting on the reserve makeup box by Siddy’s mirror. And I began to tremble.

He looked at it too, of course, as fast as I did. And then he began to tremble too, though it was a finer-grained tremor than mine.

The sword-fight had ended seconds back and now I heard the witches faintly wailing, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair⁠—” Sid has them echo that line offstage at the end to give a feeling of prophecy fulfilled.

Then Sid came pounding up. He’s the first finished, since the fight ends offstage so Macduff can carry back a red-necked papier-mâché head of him and show it to the audience. Sid stopped dead in the door.

Then the stranger turned around. His shoulders jerked as he saw Sid. He moved toward him just two or three steps at a time, speaking at the same time in breathy little rushes.

Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling up behind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so none of them could get past. Their faces peered around him.

And all this while the stranger was saying, “What may this mean? Can such things be? Are all the seeds of time⁠ ⁠… wetted by some hell-trickle⁠ ⁠… sprouted at once in their granary? Speak⁠ ⁠… speak! You played me a play⁠ ⁠… that I am writing in my secretest heart. Have you disjointed the frame of things⁠ ⁠… to steal my unborn thoughts? Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? Speak, I say! Are you not my friend Sidney James Lessingham of King’s Lynn⁠ ⁠… singed by time’s fiery wand⁠ ⁠… sifted over with the ashes of thirty years? Speak, are you not he? Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth⁠ ⁠… aye, and perchance hell too⁠ ⁠… Speak, I charge you!”

And with that he put his hands on Sid’s shoulders, half to shake him, I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time I ever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing to say.

He worked his lips. He opened his mouth twice and twice shut it. Then, with a kind of desperation in his face, he motioned the actors out of the way behind him with one big arm and swung the other around the stranger’s narrow shoulders and swept him out of the dressing room, himself following.

The actors came pouring in then, Bruce tossing Macbeth’s head to Martin like a football while he tugged off his horned helmet, Mark dumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as she skittered past me to say, “Hi Gret, great you’re back,” and patting my temple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid’s dressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid’s reserve makeup box.

“The lights, Martin!” he called.

Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him and standing for a moment with his back against it, panting.

I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before it could get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, “Siddy, you can’t fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don’t care how much he shakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes⁠—Siddy, that was Shakespeare!”

“Aye, girl, I think so,” he told me, holding my wrists together. “They can’t find dolls to double men like that⁠—or such is my main hope.” A big sickly grin came on his face. “Oh, gods,” he demanded, “with what words do you talk to a man whose speech you’ve stolen all your life?”

I asked him, “Sid, were we ever in Central Park?”

He answered, “Once⁠—twelve months back. A one-night stand. They came for Erich. You flipped.”

He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out.

Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, covered with dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid’s reserve makeup box. The strongest green glow showed his intent face, still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as he kneeled before the thing⁠—Major Maintainer, I remembered it was called.

“When now? Where?” Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder.

“The forty-fourth year before our Lord’s birth!” Sid answered instantly. “Rome!”

Beau’s fingers danced over the dials like a musician’s, or a safecracker’s. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly.

“There’s a storm in that vector of the Void.”

“Circle it,” Sid ordered.

“There are dark mists every way.”

“Then pick the likeliest dark path!”

I called through the dark, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh, Siddy?”

“Aye, chick,” he answered me. “ ’Tis all the rule we have!”