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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41905 ***
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+                          CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME
+
+                           by SAMUEL R. DELANY
+
+    [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
+    that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+    ACE BOOKS, INC.
+    1120 Avenue of the Americas
+    New York 36, N.Y.
+
+    CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME
+
+    Copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.
+
+    All Rights Reserved
+
+    Printed in U.S.A.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _This is for Marilyn, of course._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     SAMUEL R. DELANY considers _Captives of the Flame_ to be the first
+     of a trilogy dealing with the same epoch and characters. It is,
+     however, his second published novel, his first being _The Jewels of
+     Aptor_, Ace Book F-173, which has received considerable acclaim.
+
+     A young man, resident in New York City, Delany is a prolific and
+     talented writer, whose work in poetry and prose have won him many
+     awards. Asked for comment on his literary ambitions, he preferred
+     to quote one of the characters from one of his works:
+
+     "I wanted to wield together a prose luminous as twenty sets of
+     headlights flung down a night road; I wanted my words tinged with
+     the green of mercury vapor street lamps seen through a shaling of
+     oak leaves in the park past midnight. I needed phrases that would
+     break open like thunder, or leave a brush as gentle as willow
+     boughs passed in a dark room.... The finest writing is always the
+     finest delineation of surfaces."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+The green of beetles' wings ... the red of polished carbuncle ... a web
+of silver fire. Lightning tore his eyes apart, struck deep inside his
+body; and he felt his bones split. Before it became pain, it was gone.
+And he was falling through blue smoke. The smoke was inside him, cool as
+blown ice. It was getting darker.
+
+He had heard something before, a ... voice: the _Lord of the Flames_....
+Then:
+
+Jon Koshar shook his head, staggered forward, and went down on his knees
+in white sand. He blinked. He looked up. There were two shadows in front
+of him.
+
+To his left a tooth of rock jutted from the sand, also casting a double
+shadow. He felt unreal, light. But the backs of his hands had real dirt
+on them, his clothes were damp with real sweat, and they clung to his
+back and sides. He felt immense. But that was because the horizon was so
+close. Above it, the sky was turquoise--which was odd because the sand
+was too white for it to be evening. Then he saw the City.
+
+It hit his eyes with a familiarity that made him start. The familiarity
+was a refuge, and violently his mind clawed at it, tried to find other
+familiar things. But the towers, the looped roadways, that was all there
+was--and one small line of metal ribbon that soared out across the
+desert, supported by strut-work pylons. The transit ribbon! He followed
+it with his eyes, praying it would lead to something more familiar. The
+thirteenth pylon--he had counted them as he ran his eye along the silver
+length--was crumpled, as though a fist had smashed it. The transit
+ribbon snarled in mid-air and ceased. The abrupt end again sent his mind
+clawing back toward familiarity: _I am Jon Koshar_ (followed by the
+meaningless number that had been part of his name for five years). _I
+want to be free_ (and for a moment he saw again the dank, creosoted
+walls of the cabins of the penal camp, and heard the clinking chains of
+the cutter teeth as he had heard them for so many days walking to the
+mine entrance while the yard-high ferns brushed his thighs and
+forearms ... but that was in his mind).
+
+The only other things his scrambling brain could reach were facts of
+negation. He was some place he had _never_ been before. He did _not_
+know how he had gotten there. He did _not_ know how to get back. And the
+close horizon, the double shadows ... now he realized that this was
+_not_ Earth (Earth of the Thirty-fifth Century, although he gave it
+another name, Fifteenth Century G.F.).
+
+But the City.... It was on earth, and he was on earth, and he was--had
+been--in it. Again the negations: the City was _not_ on a desert, nor
+could its dead, deserted towers cast double shadows, nor was the transit
+ribbon broken.
+
+The transit ribbon!
+
+No!
+
+It couldn't be broken. He almost screamed. _Don't let it be broken,
+please...._
+
+The entire scene was suddenly jerked from his head. There was nothing
+left but blue smoke, cool as blown ice, inside him, around him. He was
+spinning in blue smoke. Sudden lightning seared his eyeballs, and the
+shivering after-image faded, shifted, became ... a web of silver fire,
+the red of polished carbuncle, the green of beetles' wings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Silent as a sleeping serpent for sixty years, it spanned from the heart
+of Telphar to the royal palace of Toromon. From the ashes of the dead
+city to the island capital, it connected what once had been the two
+major cities, the only cities of Toromon. Today there was only one.
+
+In Telphar, it soared above ashes and fallen roadways into the night.
+
+Miles on, the edge of darkness paled before the morning and in the faint
+shadow of the transit ribbon, at the edge of a field of lava, among the
+whispering, yard-high ferns, sat row on row of squat shacks, cheerless
+as roosting macaws. They stood near the entrance of the tetron mines.
+
+A few moments before, the light rain had stopped. Water dribbled down
+the supporting columns of the transit ribbon which made a black band on
+the fading night.
+
+Now, six extraordinarily tall men left the edge of the jungle. They
+carried two corpses among them. Two of the tall men hung back to
+converse.
+
+"The third one won't get very far."
+
+"If he does," said the other, "he'll be the first one to get through the
+forest guards in twelve years."
+
+"I'm not worried about his escaping," said the first. "But why have
+there been such an increase in attempts over the past year?"
+
+The other one laughed. Even in the dull light, the three scars that ran
+down the side of his face and neck were visible. "The orders for tetron
+have nearly doubled."
+
+"I wonder just what sort of leeches in Toron make their living off these
+miserable--" He didn't finish, but pointed ahead to the corpses.
+
+"The hydroponic growers, the aquarium manufacturers," answered the man
+with the scars. "They're the ones who use the ore. Then, of course,
+there's the preparation for the war."
+
+"They say that since the artificial food growers have taken over, the
+farmers and fishermen near the coast are being starved out. And with the
+increased demand for tetron, the miners are dying off like flies here at
+the mine. Sometimes I wonder how they supply enough prisoners."
+
+"They don't," said the other. Now he called out. "All right. Just drop
+them there, in front of the cabins."
+
+The rain had made the ground mud. Two dull splashes came through the
+graying morning. "Maybe that'll teach them some sort of lesson," said
+the first.
+
+"Maybe," shrugged the one with the scars.
+
+Now they turned back toward the jungle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon, streaks of light speared the yellow clouds and pried apart the
+billowing rifts. Shafts of yellow sank into the lush jungles of Toromon,
+dropping from wet, green fronds, or catching on the moist cracks of
+boulders. Then the dawn snagged on the metal ribbon that arced over the
+trees, and webs of shadow from the immense supporting pylons fell across
+the few, gutted lava beds that dotted the forest.
+
+A formation of airships flashed through a tear in the clouds like a
+handful of hurled, silver chips. As the buzz from their tetron motors
+descended through the trees, Quorl, the forest guard, stretched his
+seven-foot body and rolled over, crushing leaves beneath his shoulder.
+Instinctively his stomach tensed. But silence had returned. With large,
+yellow-brown eyes, he looked about the grove in which he had spent the
+night. His broad nostrils flared even wider. But the air was still,
+clean, safe. Above, the metal ribbon glinted. Quorl lay back on the
+dried leaves once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As dawn slipped across the jungle, more and more of the ribbon caught
+fire from beneath the receding shadows, till at last it soared above the
+yellow crescent of sand that marked the edge of the sea.
+
+Fifty yards down the beach from the last supporting pylon whose base
+still sat on dry land, Cithon, the fisherman, emerged from his shack.
+
+"Tel?" he called. He was a brown, wiry man whose leathery face was
+netted with lines from sand and wind. "Tel?" he called once more. Now he
+turned back into the cottage. "And where has the boy gotten off to now?"
+
+Grella had already seated herself at the loom, and her strong hands now
+began to work the shuttle back and forth while her feet stamped the
+treadle.
+
+"Where has he gone?" Cithon demanded.
+
+"He went out early this morning," Grella said quietly. She did not look
+at her husband. She watched the shuttle moving back and forth, back and
+forth between the green and yellow threads.
+
+"I can see he's gone out," Cithon snapped. "But where? The sun is up. He
+should be out with me on the boat. When will he be back?"
+
+Grella didn't answer.
+
+"When will he be back?" Cithon demanded.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Outside there was a sound, and Cithon turned abruptly and went to the
+side of the shack.
+
+The boy was leaning over the water trough, sloshing his face.
+
+"Tel."
+
+The boy looked up quickly at his father. He was perhaps fourteen, a thin
+child, with a shock of black hair, yet eyes as green as the sea. Fear
+had widened them now.
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+"No place," was the boy's quietly defensive answer. "I wasn't doing
+anything."
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+"No place," Tel mumbled again. "Just walking...."
+
+Suddenly Cithon's hand, which had been at his waist jerked up and then
+down, and the leather strap that had been his belt slashed over the
+boy's wet shoulder.
+
+The only sound was a sudden intake of breath.
+
+"Now get down to the boat."
+
+Inside the shack, the shuttle paused in Grella's fist the length of a
+drawn breath. Then it shot once more between the threads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Down the beach, the transit ribbon leapt across the water. Light shook
+on the surface of the sea like flung diamonds, and the ribbon above was
+dull by comparison.
+
+Dawn reached across the water till at last the early light fell on the
+shore of an island. High in the air, the ribbon gleamed above the busy
+piers and the early morning traffic of the wharf. Behind the piers, the
+towers of the City were lanced with gold, and as the sun rose, gold
+light dropped further down the building faces.
+
+On the boardwalk, two merchants were talking above the roar of
+tetron-powered winches and chuckling carts.
+
+"It looks like your boat's bringing in a cargo of fish," said the stout
+one.
+
+"It could be fish. It could be something else," answered the other.
+
+"Tell me, friend," asked the portly one, whose coat was of cut and cloth
+expensive enough to suggest his guesses were usually right, "why do you
+trouble to send your boat all the way to the mainland to buy from the
+little fishermen there? My aquariums can supply the City with all the
+food it needs."
+
+The other merchant looked down at the clip-board of inventory slips.
+
+"Perhaps my clientele is somewhat different from yours."
+
+The first merchant laughed. "You sell to the upper families of the City,
+who still insist on the doubtful superiority of your imported
+delicacies. Did you know, my friend, I am superior in every way to you?
+I feed more people, so what I produce is superior to what you produce. I
+charge them less money, and so I am financially more benevolent than
+you. I make more money than you do, so I am also financially superior.
+Also, later this morning my daughter is coming back from the university,
+and this evening I will give her a party so great and so lavish that she
+will love me more than any daughter has ever loved a father before."
+
+Here the self-satisfied merchant laughed again, and turned down the
+wharf to inspect a cargo of tetron ore that was coming in from the
+mainland.
+
+As the merchant of imported fish turned up another inventory slip,
+another man approached him. "What was old Koshar laughing about?" he
+asked.
+
+"He was gloating over his good fortune in backing that hairbrained
+aquarium idea. He was also trying to make me jealous of his daughter.
+He's giving her a party tonight to which I am no doubt invited; but the
+invitation will come late this afternoon with no time for me to reply
+properly."
+
+The other man shook his head. "He's a proud man. But you can bring him
+to his place. Next time he mentions his daughter, ask him about his son,
+and watch the shame storm into his face."
+
+"He may be proud," said the other, "but I am not cruel. Why should I
+move to hurt him? Time takes care of her own. This coming war will see."
+
+"Perhaps," said the other merchant. "Perhaps."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once over the island city of Toron, capital of Toromon, the transit
+ribbon breaks from its even course and bends among the towers, weaves
+among the elevated highways, till finally it crosses near a wide splash
+of bare concrete, edged with block-long aircraft hangars. Several
+airships had just arrived, and at one of the passenger gates the people
+waiting for arrivals crowded closely to the metal fence.
+
+Among them was one young man in military uniform. A brush of red hair,
+eyes that seemed doubly dark in his pale face, along with a squat,
+taurine power in his legs and shoulders; these were what struck you in
+the swift glance. A close look brought you the incongruity of the
+major's insignia and his obvious youth.
+
+He watched the passengers coming through the gate with more than
+military interest.
+
+Someone called, "Tomar!"
+
+And he turned, a grin leaping to his face.
+
+"Tomar," she called again. "I'm over here."
+
+A little too bumptiously, he rammed through the crowd until at last he
+almost collided with her. Then he stopped, looking bewildered and happy.
+
+"Gee, I'm glad you came," she said. "Come on. You can walk me back to
+father's." Her black hair fell close to broad, nearly oriental
+cheekbones. Then the smile on her first strangely, then attractively
+pale mouth fell.
+
+Tomar shook his head, as they turned now, arm in arm, among the people
+wandering over the field.
+
+"No?" she asked. "Why not?"
+
+"I don't have time, Clea," he answered. "I had to sneak an hour off just
+to get here. I'm supposed to be back at the Military Ministry in forty
+minutes. Hey, do you have any bags I can carry?"
+
+Clea held up a slide rule and a notebook. "I'm traveling light. In a
+week I'll be back at the university for summer courses, so I didn't
+bring any clothes. Wait a minute. You're not going to be too busy to get
+to the party Dad's giving me tonight, are you?"
+
+Tomar shrugged.
+
+Clea began a word, but pushed her tongue hard against the roof of her
+mouth. "Tomar?" she asked after a moment.
+
+"Yes?" He had a rough voice, which, when he was sad, took on the
+undertones of a bear's growl.
+
+"What's happening about the war? Will there really be one?"
+
+Again he shrugged. "More soldiers, more planes, and at the Ministry
+there's more and more work to do. I was up before dawn this morning
+getting a fleet of survey planes off for a scouting trip to the mainland
+over the radiation barrier. If they come back this evening, I'll be
+busy all night with the reports and I won't be able to make the party.
+
+"Oh," said Clea. "Tomar?"
+
+"Yes, Clea Koshar?"
+
+"Oh, don't be formal with me, please. You've been in the City long
+enough and known me long enough. Tomar, if the war comes, do you think
+they'll draft prisoners from the tetron mines into the army?"
+
+"They talk about it."
+
+"Because my brother...."
+
+"I know," said Tomar.
+
+"And if a prisoner from the mines distinguished himself as a soldier,
+would he be freed at the end of the war? They wouldn't send him back to
+the mines, would they?"
+
+"The war hasn't even begun yet," said Tomar. "No one knows how it will
+end."
+
+"You're right," she said, "as usual." They reached the gate. "Look,
+Tomar, I don't want to keep you if you're busy. But you've got to
+promise to come see me and spend at least an afternoon before I go back
+to school."
+
+"If the war starts, you won't be going back to school."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You already have your degree in theoretical physics. Now you're only
+doing advanced work. Not only will they conscript prisoners from the
+mines, but all scientists, engineers, and mathematicians will have to
+lend their efforts to the cause as well."
+
+"I was afraid of that," Clea said. "You believe the war will actually
+come, don't you, Tomar?"
+
+"They get ready for it night and day," Tomar said. "What is there to
+stop it? When I was a boy on my father's farm on the mainland, there was
+too much work, and no food. I was a strong boy, with a strong boy's
+stomach. I came to the City and I took my strength to the army. Now I
+have work that I like. I'm not hungry. With the war, there will be work
+for a lot more people. Your father will be richer. Your brother may come
+back to you, and even the thieves and beggars in the Devil's Pot will
+have a chance to do some honest work."
+
+"Perhaps," said Clea. "Look, like I said, I don't want to keep you--I
+mean I do, but. Well, when will you have some time?"
+
+"Probably tomorrow afternoon."
+
+"Fine," said Clea. "We'll have a picnic then, all right?"
+
+Tomar grinned. "Yes," he said. "Yes." He took both her hands, and she
+smiled back at him. Then he turned away, and was gone through the crowd.
+
+Clea watched a moment, and then turned toward the taxi stand. The sun
+was beginning to warm the air as she pushed into the shadow of the great
+transit ribbon that soared above her between the towers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Buildings dropped bands of shadow across the ribbon, as it wound through
+the city, although occasional streaks of light from an eastward street
+still made silver half-rings around it. At the center of the city it
+raised a final two hundred feet and entered the window of the laboratory
+tower in the west wing of the royal palace of Toron.
+
+The room in which the transit ribbon ended was deserted. At the end of
+the metal band was a transparent crystal sphere, fifteen feet in
+diameter which hovered above the receiving platform. A dozen small
+tetron units of varying sizes sat around the room. The viewing screens
+were dead gray. On a control panel by one ornate window, a bank of
+forty-nine scarlet-knobbed switches pointed to off. The metal catwalks
+that ran over the receiving platform were empty.
+
+In another room of the palace, however, someone was screaming.
+
+"Tetron!"
+
+"... if your Highness would only wait a moment to hear the report,"
+began the aged minister, "I believe...."
+
+"Tetron!"
+
+"... you would understand the necessity," he continued in an amazingly
+calm voice, "of disturbing you at such an ungodly hour ..."
+
+"I never want to hear the word tetron again!"
+
+"... of the morning."
+
+"Go away, Chargill; I'm sleeping!" King Uske, who had just turned
+twenty-one though he had been the official ruler of Toromon since the
+age of seven, jammed his pale blond head beneath three over-stuffed
+pillows that lay about the purple silken sheets of his bed. With one
+too-slender hand he sought feebly around for the covers to hide himself
+completely.
+
+The old minister quietly picked up the edge of the ermine-rimmed
+coverlet and held it out of reach. After several half-hearted swipes,
+the pale head emerged once more and asked in a coldly quiet voice,
+"Chargill, why is it that roads have been built, prisoners have been
+reprieved, and traitors have been disemboweled at every hour of the
+afternoon and evening without anyone expressing the least concern for
+what I thought? Now, suddenly, at--" Uske peered at the jewel-crusted
+chronometer by his bed in which a shimmering gold light fixed the hour,
+"--my God, ten o'clock in the morning! Why must I suddenly be consulted
+at every little twist and turn of empire?"
+
+"First," explained Chargill, "you are now of age. Secondly, we are about
+to enter a war, and in times of stress, responsibility is passed to the
+top, and you, sir, are in the unfortunate position."
+
+"Why can't we have a war and get it over with?" said Uske, rolling over
+to face Chargill and becoming a trifle more amenable. "I'm tired of all
+this idiocy. You don't think I'm a very good king, do you?" The young
+man sat up and planted his slender feet as firmly as possible on the
+three-inch thick fur rug. "Well, if we had a war," he continued,
+scratching his stomach through his pink sateen pajama top, "I'd ride in
+the first line of fire, in the most splendid uniform imaginable, and
+lead my soldiers to a _sweeping_ victory." At the word sweeping, he
+threw himself under the covers.
+
+"Commendable sentiment," stated Chargill dryly. "And seeing that there
+may just be a war before the afternoon arrives, why don't you listen to
+the report, which merely says that another scouting flight of planes
+has been crippled trying to observe the enemy just beyond the tetron
+mines over the radiation barrier."
+
+"Let me continue it for you. No one knows how the planes have been
+crippled, but the efficacy of their methods has lead the council to
+suggest that we consider the possibility of open war even more strongly.
+Isn't this more or less what the reports have been for weeks?"
+
+"It is," replied Chargill.
+
+"Then why bother me. Incidentally, must we really go to that imbecilic
+party for that stupid fish-peddler's daughter this evening? And talk
+about tetron as little as possible, please."
+
+"I need not remind you," went on the patient Chargill, "that this stupid
+fish-peddler has amassed a fortune nearly as large as that in the royal
+treasury--though I doubt if he is aware of the comparison--through the
+proper exploitation of the unmentionable metal. If there is a war, and
+we should need to borrow funds, it should be done with as much good will
+as possible. Therefore, you will attend his party to which he has so
+kindly invited you."
+
+"Listen a minute, Chargill," said Uske. "And I'm being serious now. This
+war business is completely ridiculous, and if you expect me to take it
+seriously, then the council is going to have to take it seriously. How
+can we have a war with whatever is behind the radiation barrier? We
+don't know anything about it. Is it a country? Is it a city? Is it an
+empire? We don't even know if it's got a name. We don't know how they've
+crippled our scouting planes. We can't monitor any radio communication.
+Of course we couldn't do that anyway with the radiation barrier. We
+don't even know if it's people. One of our silly planes gets its tetron
+(Pardon me. If you can't say it, I shouldn't say it either.) device
+knocked out and a missile hurled at it. Bango! The council says war.
+Well, I refuse to take it seriously. Why do we keep on wasting planes
+anyway? Why not send a few people through the transit ribbon to do some
+spying?"
+
+Chargill looked amazed.
+
+"Before we instituted the penal mines, and just after we annexed the
+forest people, the transit ribbon was built. Correct? Now, where does it
+go?"
+
+"Into the dead city of Telphar," answered Chargill.
+
+"Exactly. And Telphar was not at all dead when we built it, sixty years
+ago. The radiation hadn't progressed that far. Well, why not send spies
+into Telphar and from there, across the barrier and into enemy
+territory. Then they can come back and tell us everything." Uske smiled.
+
+"Of course your Majesty is joking." Chargill smiled. "May I remind your
+Majesty that the radiation level in Telphar today is fatal to human
+beings. Completely fatal. The enemy seems to be well beyond the barrier.
+Only recently, with the great amount of tetron--eh, excuse me--coming
+from the mines have we been able to develop planes that can perhaps go
+over it. And that, when and if we can do it, is the only way."
+
+Uske had started out smiling. It turned to a giggle. Then to a laugh.
+Suddenly he cried out and threw himself down on the bed. "Nobody listens
+to me! Nobody takes any of my suggestions!" He moaned and stuck his head
+under the pillows. "No one does anything but contradict me. Go away. Get
+out. Let me sleep."
+
+Chargill sighed and withdrew from the royal bedchamber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It had been silent for sixty years. Then, above the receiving stage in
+the laboratory tower of the royal place of Toromon, the great
+transparent crystal sphere glowed.
+
+On the stage a blue haze shimmered. Red flame shot through the mist, a
+net of scarlet, contracting, pulsing, outlining the recognizable
+patterning of veins and arteries. Among the running fires, the shadow of
+bones formed a human skeleton in the blue, till suddenly the shape was
+laced with sudden silver, the net of nerves that held the body
+imprisoned in sensation. The blue became opaque. Then the black-haired
+man, barefooted, in rags, staggered forward to the rail and held on for
+a moment. Above, the crystal faded.
+
+He blinked his eyes hard before he looked up. He looked around. "All
+right," he said out loud. "Where the hell are you?" He paused. "Okay.
+Okay. I know. I'm not supposed to get dependent on you. I guess I'm all
+right now, aren't I?" Another pause. "Well, I feel fine." He let go of
+the rail and looked at his hands, back and palms. "Dirty as hell," he
+mumbled. "Wonder where I can get washed up." He looked up. "Yeah, sure.
+Why not?" He ducked under the railing and vaulted to the floor. Once
+again he looked around. "So I'm really in the castle. After all these
+years. I never thought I'd see it. Yeah, I guess it really is."
+
+He started forward, but as he passed under the shadow of the great
+ribbon's end, something happened.
+
+He faded.
+
+At least the exposed parts of his body--head, hands, and feet--faded. He
+stopped and looked down. Through his ghost-like feet, he could see the
+rivets that held down the metal floor. He made a disgusted face, and
+continued toward the door. Once in the sunlight, he solidified again.
+
+There was no one in the hall. He walked along, ignoring the triptych of
+silver partitions that marked the consultant chamber. A stained glass
+window further on rotated by silent machinery flung colors over his face
+as he passed. A golden disk chronometer fixed in the ceiling behind a
+carved crystal face said ten-thirty.
+
+Suddenly he stopped in front of a book cabinet and opened the glass
+door. "Here's the one," he said out loud again. "Yeah, I know we haven't
+got time, but it will explain it to you better than I can." He pulled a
+book from the row of books. "We used this in school," he said. "A long
+time ago."
+
+The book was Catham's _Revised History of Toromon_. He opened the
+sharkskin cover and flipped a few pages into the text.
+
+"... from a few libraries that survived the Great Fire (from which we
+will date all subsequent events). Civilization was reduced beyond
+barbarism. But eventually the few survivors on the Island of Toron
+established a settlement, a village, a city. Now they pushed to the
+mainland, and the shore became the central source of food for the
+island's population which now devoted itself to manufacturing. On the
+coast, farms and fishing villages flourished. On the island, science and
+industry became sudden factors in the life of Toromon, now an empire.
+
+"Beyond the plains at the coast, explorers discovered the forest people
+who lived in the strip of jungle that held in its crescent the stretch
+of mainland. They were a mutant breed, gigantic in physical stature,
+peaceful in nature. They quickly became part of Toromon's empire, with
+no resistance.
+
+"Beyond the jungle were the gutted fields of lava and dead earth, and it
+was here that the strange metal tetron was discovered. A great empire
+has a great crime rate, and our penal system was used to supply miners
+for the tetron. Now technology leaped ahead, and we developed many uses
+for the power that could be released from the tetron.
+
+"Then, beyond the lava fields, we discovered what it was that had
+enlarged the bodies of the forest people, what it was that had killed
+all green things beyond the jungle. Lingering from the days of the Great
+Fire, a wide strip of radioactive land still burned all around the lava
+fields, cutting us off from further expansion.
+
+"Going toward that field of death, the plants became gnarled, distorted
+caricatures of themselves. Then only rock. Death was long if a man
+ventured in and came back. First immense thirst; then the skin dries
+out; blindness, fever, madness, at last death; this is what awaited the
+transgressor.
+
+"It was at the brink of the radiation barrier, in defiance of death,
+that Telphar was established. It was far enough away to be safe, yet
+near enough to see the purple glow at the horizon over the broken
+hills. At the same time, experiments were being conducted with
+elementary matter transmission, and as a token to this new direction of
+science, the transit ribbon was commissioned to link the two cities. It
+was more a gesture of the solidarity of Toromon's empire than a
+practical appliance. Only three or four hundred pounds of matter could
+be sent at once, or two or three people. The transportation was
+instantaneous, and portended a future of great exploration to any part
+of the world, with theoretical travel to the stars.
+
+"Then, at seven thirty-two on an autumn evening, sixty years
+ago, a sudden increase in the pale light was observed in the
+radiation-saturated west by the citizens of Telphar. Seven hours later
+the entire sky above Telphar was flickering with streaks of pale blue
+and yellow. Evacuation had begun already. But in three days, Telphar was
+dead. The sudden rise in radiation has been attributed to many things in
+theory, but as yet, an irrefutable explanation is still wanted.
+
+"The advance of the radiation stopped well before the tetron mines;
+however, Telphar was not lost to Toron for good, and ..."
+
+Jon suddenly closed the book. "You see?" he said. "That's why I was
+afraid when I saw where I was. That's why ..." He stopped, shrugged.
+"You're not listening," he said, and put the book back on the shelf.
+
+Down the hallway fifty feet, two ornate stairways branched right and
+left. He waited with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking absently
+toward another window, like a person waiting for someone else to make up
+his mind. But the decision was not forthcoming. At last, belligerently
+he started up the stairway to the left. Halfway up he became a little
+more cautious, his bare feet padding softly, his broad hand preceding
+him wearily on the banister.
+
+He turned down another hallway where carved busts and statues sat in
+niches in the walls, a light glowing blue behind those to the left,
+yellow behind those to the right. A sound from around a corner sent him
+behind a pink marble mermaid playing with a garland of seaweed.
+
+The old man who walked by was carrying a folder and looked serenely and
+patiently preoccupied.
+
+Jon waited without breathing the space of three ordinary breaths. Then
+he ducked out and sprinted down the hall. At last he stopped before a
+group of doors. "Which one?" he demanded.
+
+This time he must have gotten an answer, because he went to one, opened
+it, and slipped in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Uske had pulled the silken sheet over his head. He heard several small
+clicks and tiny brushing noises, but they came through the fog of sleep
+that had been washing back over him since Chargill's departure. The
+first sound definite enough to wake him was water against tile. He
+listened to it for nearly two minutes through the languid veil of
+fatigue. It was only when it stopped that he frowned, pushed back the
+sheet, and sat up. The door to his private bath was open. The light was
+off, but someone, or thing, was apparently finishing a shower. The
+windows of his room were covered with thick drapes, but he hesitated to
+push the button that would reel them back from the sun.
+
+He heard the rings of the shower curtain sliding along the shower rod;
+the rattle of the towel rack; silence; a few whistled notes. Suddenly he
+saw that dark spots were forming on the great fur rug that sprawled
+across the black stone floor. One after another--footprints! Incorporeal
+footprints were coming toward him slowly.
+
+When they were about four feet away from his bed, he slammed the flat of
+his palm on the button that drew back the curtains. Sunlight filled the
+room like bright water.
+
+And standing in the last pair of footprints was the sudden, naked figure
+of a man. He leaped at Uske as the King threw himself face down into the
+mound of pillows and tried to scream at the same time. Immediately he
+was caught, pulled up, and the edge of a hand was thrust into his open
+mouth so that when he bit down, he chomped the inside of his cheeks.
+
+"Will you keep still, stupid?" a voice whispered behind him. The King
+went limp.
+
+"There, now just a second."
+
+A hand reached past Uske's shoulder, pressed the button on the night
+table by the bed, and the curtains swept across the window. The hand
+went out as if it had been a flame.
+
+"Now you keep still and be quiet."
+
+The pressure released and the King felt the bed give as the weight
+lifted. He held still for a moment. Then he whirled around. There wasn't
+anyone there.
+
+"Where do you keep your clothes, huh? You always were about my size."
+
+"Over there ... there in that closet."
+
+The bodiless footprints padded over the fur rug, and the closet door
+opened. Hangers slid along the rack. The bureau at the back of the
+closet was opened. "This'll do fine. I didn't think I was ever going to
+get into decent clothes again. Just a second."
+
+There was the sound of tearing thread.
+
+"This jacket will fit me all right, once I get these shoulder pads out
+of it."
+
+Something came out of the closet, dressed now: a human form, only
+without head or hands.
+
+"Now that I'm decent, open up those curtains and throw some light around
+the place." The standing suit of clothes waited. "Well, come on, open
+the curtains."
+
+Slowly Uske reached for the button. A freshly shaven young man with
+black hair stood in the sunlight, examining his cuffs. An open brocade
+jacket with metal-work filigree covered a white silk shirt that laced
+over a wide V-neck. The tight gray trousers were belted with a broad
+strip of black leather and fastened with a gold disk. The black boots,
+opened at the toe and the heel, were topped with similar disks. Jon
+Koshar looked around. "It's good to be back."
+
+"Who ... what are you?" whispered Uske.
+
+"Loyal subject of the crown," said Jon, "you squid-brained clam."
+
+Uske sputtered.
+
+"Think back about five years to when you and I were in school together."
+
+A flicker of recognition showed in the blond face.
+
+"You remember a kid who was a couple of years ahead of you, and got you
+out of a beating when the kids in the mechanics class were going to gang
+up on you because you'd smashed a high-frequency coil, on purpose. And
+remember you dared that same kid to break into the castle and steal the
+royal Herald from the throne room? In fact, you gave him the fire-blade
+to do it, too. Only that wasn't mentioned in the trial. Did you also
+alert the guards that I was coming? I was never quite sure of that
+part."
+
+"Look ..." began Uske. "You're crazy."
+
+"I might have been a little crazy then. But five years out in the tetron
+mines has brought me pretty close to my senses."
+
+"You're a murderer...."
+
+"It was in self-defense, and you know it. Those guards that converged on
+me weren't kidding. I didn't kill him on purpose. I just didn't want to
+get my head seared off."
+
+"So you seared one of their heads off first. Jon Koshar, I think you're
+crazy. What are you doing here anyway?"
+
+"It would take too long to explain. But believe me, the last thing I
+came back for was to see you again."
+
+"So you come in, steal my clothing" Suddenly he laughed. "Oh, of course.
+I'm dreaming all this. How silly of me. I must be dreaming."
+
+Jon frowned.
+
+Uske went on. "I must be feeling guilty about that whole business when
+we were kids. You keep on disappearing and appearing. You can't possibly
+be more than a figment of my imagination. Koshar! The name! Of course.
+That's the name of the people who are giving the party that I'm going to
+once I wake up. That's the reason for the whole thing."
+
+"What party?" Jon demanded.
+
+"Your father is giving it for your sister. Yes, that's right. You had
+quite a pretty sister. I'm going back to sleep now. And when I wake up,
+you're to be gone, do you understand? What a silly dream."
+
+"Just a moment. Why are you going?"
+
+Uske snuggled his head into the pillow. "Apparently your father has
+managed to amass quite a fortune. Chargill says I have to treat him
+kindly so we can borrow money from him later on. Unless I'm dreaming
+that up too."
+
+"You're not dreaming."
+
+Uske opened one eye, closed it again. And rolled over onto the pillow.
+"Tell that to my cousin, the Duchess of Petra. She was dragged all the
+way from her island estate to come to this thing. The only people who
+are getting out of it are mother and my kid brother. Lucky starfish."
+
+"Go back to sleep," said Jon.
+
+"Go away," said Uske. He opened his eyes once more to see Jon push the
+button that pulled the curtains. And then the headless, handless figure
+went to the door and out. Uske shivered and pulled the covers up again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jon walked down the hall.
+
+Behind the door to one room that he did not enter, the red-headed
+Duchess of Petra was standing by the window of her apartment, gazing
+over the roofs of the city, the great houses of the wealthy merchants
+and manufacturers, over the hive-like buildings which housed the city's
+doctors, clerks, secretaries, and storekeepers, down to the reeking
+clapboard and stone alleys of the Devil's Pot.
+
+The early sun lay flame in her hair and whitened her pale face. She
+pushed the window open a bit, and the breeze waved her blue robe as she
+absently fingered a smoky crystal set in a silver chain around her neck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jon continued down the hall.
+
+Three doors away, the old queen lay on the heap of over-stuffed
+mattresses, nestled in the center of an immense four-poster bed. Her
+white hair was coiled in two buns on either side of her head, her mouth
+was slightly open and a faint breath hissed across the white lips. On
+the wall above the bed hung the portrait of the late King Alsen,
+sceptered, official, and benevolent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a set of rooms just beside the queen mother's chamber, Let, Prince of
+the Royal Blood, Heir Apparent to the Empire of Toromon, and half a
+dozen more, was sitting in just his pajama top on the edge of his bed,
+knuckling his eyes.
+
+The thin limbs of the thirteen-year-old were still slightly akimbo with
+natural awkwardness and sleep. Like his brother, he was blond and
+slight.
+
+Still blinking, he slipped into his underwear and trousers, pausing a
+moment to check his watch. He fastened the three snaps on his shirt,
+turned to the palace intercom, and pressed a button.
+
+"I overslept, Petra," Let apologized. "Anyway, I'm up now."
+
+"You must learn to be on time. Remember, you are heir to the throne of
+Toromon. You mustn't forget that."
+
+"Sometimes I wish I could," replied Let. "Sometimes."
+
+"Never say that again," came the sudden command through the tiny
+intercom. "Do you hear me? Never even let yourself think that for a
+moment."
+
+"I'm sorry, Petra," Let said. His cousin, the Duchess, had been acting
+strangely since her arrival two days ago. Fifteen years his senior, she
+was still the member of the family to whom he felt closest. Usually,
+with her, he could forget the crown that was always being pointed to as
+it dangled above his head. His brother was not very healthy, nor
+even--as some rumored--all in his proper mind. Yet now it was Petra
+herself who was pointing out the gold circlet of Toromon's kingship. It
+seemed a betrayal. "Anyway," he went on. "Here I am. What did you want?"
+
+"To say good morning." The smile in the voice brought a smile to Let's
+face too. "Do you remember that story I told you last night, about the
+prisoners in the tetron mines?"
+
+"Sure," said Let, who had fallen asleep thinking about it. "The ones who
+were planning an escape." She had sat in the garden with him for an hour
+after dark, regaling him with the harrowing details of three prisoners'
+attempt to escape the penal mines. She had terminated it at the height
+of suspense with the three men crouching by the steps in the darkness
+and the drizzling rain, waiting to make their dash into the forest. "You
+said you were going to go on with it this morning."
+
+"Do you really want to hear the end of the story?"
+
+"Of course I do. I couldn't get to sleep for hours thinking about it."
+
+"Well," said Petra, "when the guard changed, and the rope tripped him up
+when he was coming down the steps, the rear guard ran around to see what
+had happened, as planned, and they dashed through the searchlight beam,
+into the forest, and ..." She paused. "Anyway, one of them made it. The
+other two were caught and killed."
+
+"Huh?" said Let. "Is that all?"
+
+"That's about it," said Petra.
+
+"What do you mean?" Let demanded. Last night's version had contained
+detail upon detail of the prisoners' treatment, their efforts to dig a
+tunnel, the precautions they took, along with an uncannily vivid
+description of the scenery that had made him shiver as though he had
+been in the leaky, rotten-walled shacks. "You can't just finish it up
+like that," he exclaimed. "How did they get caught? Which one got away?
+Was it the chubby one with the freckles? How did they die?"
+
+"Unpleasantly," Petra answered. "No, the chubby one with the freckles
+didn't make it. They brought him, and the one with the limp, back that
+morning in the rain and dropped them in the mud outside the barracks to
+discourage further escape attempts."
+
+"Oh," said Let. "What about the one who did make it?" he asked after a
+moment.
+
+Instead of answering, she said, "Let, I want to give you a warning." The
+prince stiffened a bit, but she began differently than he expected.
+"Let, in a little while, you may be going on quite an adventure, and you
+may want to forget some things, because it will be easier. Like being
+the prince of Toromon. But don't forget it, Let. Don't."
+
+"What sort of adventure, Petra?"
+
+Again she did not answer his question. "Let, do you remember how I
+described the prison to you? What would you do if you were king and
+those prisoners were under your rule, with their rotten food, the rats,
+their fourteen hours of labor a day in the mines ..."
+
+"Well, I don't know, Petra," he began, feeling as if something were
+being asked of him that he was reluctant to give. It was like when his
+history teacher expected him to know the answer on a question of
+government just because he had been born into it. "I suppose I'd have to
+consult the council, and see what Chargill said. It would depend on the
+individual prisoners, and what they'd done; and of course how the people
+felt about it. Chargill always says you shouldn't do things too
+quickly ..."
+
+"I know what Chargill says," said the Duchess quietly. "Just remember
+what I've said, will you?"
+
+"What about the third man, the one who escaped?"
+
+"He ... came back to Toron."
+
+"He must have had a lot more adventures. What happened to him, Petra?
+Come on, tell me."
+
+"Actually," said Petra, "he managed to bypass most of the adventures. He
+came very quickly. Let me see. After they dashed across the searchlit
+area, they ducked into the jungle. Almost immediately the three got
+separated. The black-haired one got completely turned around, and
+wandered in the wrong direction until he had gone past the mines, out of
+the forest, and across the rocky stretch of ground beyond a good five
+miles. By the time it was light enough to see, he suddenly realized he
+had been wandering toward the radiation barrier; because in the
+distance, like a black skeleton on the horizon, were the abandoned ruins
+of Telphar, the Dead City."
+
+"Shouldn't he have been dead from the radiation?"
+
+"That's exactly what he figured. In fact, he figured if he was close
+enough to see the place, he should have been dead a few miles back. He
+was tired. The food they'd taken kept him from being hungry. But he was
+definitely alive. Finally he decided that he might as well go toward
+the city. He took two steps more, when suddenly he heard something."
+
+There was silence over the intercom.
+
+After he had allowed sufficient time for a dramatic pause, Let asked,
+"What was it? What did he hear?"
+
+"If you ever hear it," Petra said, "you'll know it."
+
+"Come on, Petra, what was it?"
+
+"I'm quite serious," Petra said. "That's all I know of the story. And
+that's all you need to know. Maybe I'll be able to finish it when I come
+back from the party tonight."
+
+"Please, Petra ..."
+
+"That's it."
+
+He paused for a minute. "Petra, is the adventure I'm supposed to have,
+the war? Is that why you're reminding me not to forget?"
+
+"I wish it were that simple, Let. Let's say that's part of it."
+
+"Oh," said Let.
+
+"Just promise to remember the story, and what I've said."
+
+"I will," said Let, wondering. "I will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jon walked down a long spiral staircase, nodded to the guard at the
+foot, passed into the castle garden, paused to squint at the sun, and
+went out the gate. Getting in was a lot more difficult.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The Devil's Pot overturned its foul jelly at the city's edge. Thirteen
+alleys lined with old stone houses was its nucleus; many of them were
+ruined, built over, and ruined again. These were the oldest structures
+in Toron. Thick with humanity and garbage, it reached from the
+waterfront to the border of the hive houses in which lived the clerks
+and professionals of Toron. Clapboard alternated with hastily
+constructed sheet-metal buildings with no room between. The metal
+rusted; the clapboard sagged. The waterfront housed the temporary
+prison, the immigration offices, and the launch service that went out to
+the aquariums and hydroponics plants that floated on vast pontoons three
+miles away.
+
+At the dock, a frog-like, sooty hulk had pulled in nearly an hour ago.
+But the passengers were only being allowed to come ashore now, and that
+after passing their papers through the inspection of a row of officials
+who sat behind a wooden table. A flimsy, waist-high structure of boards
+separated the passengers from the people on the wharf. The passengers
+milled.
+
+A few had bundles. Many had nothing. They stood quietly, or ambled
+aimlessly. On the waterfront street, the noise was thunderous. Peddlers
+hawking, pushcarts trundling, the roar of arguing voices. Some
+passengers gazed across the fence at the sprawling slum. Most did not.
+
+As they filed past the officers and onto the dock, a woman with a box of
+trinkets and a brown-red birthmark splashed over the left side of her
+face pushed among the new arrivals. Near fifty, she wore a dress and
+head rag, that were a well-washed, featureless gray.
+
+"And would you like to buy a pair of shoelaces, fine strong ones," she
+accosted a young man who returned a bewildered smile of embarrassment.
+
+"I ... I don't got any money," he stammered, though complimented by the
+attention.
+
+Rara glanced down at his feet. "Apparently you have no shoes either.
+Well, good luck here in the New World, the Island of Opportunity." She
+brushed by him and aimed toward a man and woman who carried a bundle
+composed of a hoe, a rake, a shovel, and a baby. "A picture," she said,
+digging into her box, "of our illustrious majesty, King Uske, with a
+real metal frame, hand-painted in miniature in honor of his birthday.
+No true cosmopolitan patriot can be without one."
+
+The woman with the baby leaned over to see the palm-sized portrait of a
+vague young man with blond hair and a crown. "Is that really the king?"
+
+"Of course it is," declared the birthmarked vendress. "He sat for it in
+person. Look at that noble face. It would be a real inspiration to the
+little one there, when and if he grows up."
+
+"How much is it?" the woman asked.
+
+Her husband frowned.
+
+"For a hand-painted picture," said Rara, "it's very cheap. Say, half a
+unit?"
+
+"It's pretty," said the woman, then caught the frown on the man's face.
+She dropped her eyes and shook her head.
+
+Suddenly the man, from somewhere, thrust a half-unit piece into Rara's
+hand. "Here." He took the picture and handed it to his wife. As she
+looked at it, he nodded his head. "It is pretty," he said. "Yes. It is."
+
+"Good luck here in the New World," commented Rara. "Welcome to the
+Island of Opportunity." Turning, she drew out the next gee-gaw her hand
+touched, glanced at it long enough to see what it was, and said to the
+man she now faced. "I see you could certainly use a spool of fine thread
+to good purpose." She pointed to a hole in his sleeve. "There." A brown
+shoulder showed through his shirt, further up. "And there."
+
+"I could use a needle too," he answered her. "And I could use a new
+shirt, and a bucket of gold." Suddenly he spat. "I've as much chance of
+getting one as the other with what I've got in my pocket."
+
+"Oh, surely a spool of fine, strong thread ..."
+
+Suddenly someone pushed her from behind. "All right. Move on, lady. You
+can't peddle here."
+
+"I certainly can," exclaimed Rara, whirling. "I've got my license right
+here. Just let me find it now...."
+
+"Nobody has a license to peddle in front of the immigration building.
+Now move on."
+
+"Good luck in the New Land," she called over her shoulder as the officer
+forced her away. "Welcome to the Island of Opportunity!"
+
+Suddenly a commotion started behind the gate. Someone was having trouble
+with papers. Then a dark-haired, barefoot boy broke from his place in
+line, ran to the wooden gate, and vaulted over. The wooden structure was
+flimsy. As the boy landed, feet running, the fence collapsed.
+
+Behind the fence they hesitated like an unbroken wave. Then they came.
+At the table the officials stood up, waved their hands, shouted, then
+stood on their benches and shouted some more. The officer who had shoved
+the vending woman disappeared in the wash of bodies.
+
+Rara clutched her box of trinkets and scurried to the corner, then
+melded with the herding crowd for two blocks into the slums.
+
+"Rara!"
+
+She stopped and looked around. "Oh, there you are," she said, joining a
+young girl who stood back from the crowd, holding a box of trinkets like
+the other woman's.
+
+"Rara, what happened?"
+
+The birthmarked woman laughed. "You are watching the beginning of the
+transformation. Fear, hunger, a little more fear, no work, more fear,
+and every last one of these poor souls will be a first class, grade-A
+citizen of the Devil's Pot. How much did you sell?"
+
+"Just a couple of units worth," the girl answered. She was perhaps
+sixteen, with a strange combination of white hair, blue eyes, and skin
+that had tanned richly and quickly, giving her the large-eyed look of an
+exotic snow-maned animal. "Why are they running?"
+
+"Some boy started a panic. The fence gave way and the rest followed
+him." A second surge of people rounded the corner. "Welcome to the New
+Land, the Island of Opportunity," Rara called out. Then she laughed.
+
+"Where are they all going to go?" Alter asked.
+
+"Into the holes in the ground, into the cracks in the street. The lucky
+men will get into the army. But even that won't absorb them all. The
+women, the children...?" She shrugged.
+
+Just then a boy's voice came from halfway down the block. "Hey!"
+
+They turned.
+
+"Why that's the boy that broke the fence down," exclaimed Rara.
+
+"What does he want?"
+
+"I don't know. Before this afternoon I'd never seen him in my life."
+
+He was dark, with black hair; but as he approached, they saw that his
+eyes were water-green. "You're the woman who was selling things, huh?"
+
+Rara nodded. "What do you want to buy?"
+
+"I don't want to buy anything," he said. "I want to sell something to
+you." He was barefoot; his pants frayed into nothing at mid-calf, and
+his sleeveless shirt had no fastenings.
+
+"What do you want to sell?" she asked, her voice deepening with
+skepticism.
+
+He reached into his pocket, and brought out a rag of green flannel,
+which he unwrapped now in his hand.
+
+They had been polished to a milky hue, some streaked with gold and red,
+others run through with warm browns and yellows. Two had been rubbed
+down to pure mother-of-pearl, rubbed until their muted silver surfaces
+were clouded with pastel lusters. There in the nest of green, they
+swirled around themselves, shimmering.
+
+"They're nothing but sea shells," Rara said.
+
+Alter reached her forefinger out and touched a white periwinkle.
+"They're lovely," she told him. "Where did you get them?" They ranged in
+size from the first joint of her thumb to the width of her pinky nail.
+
+"By your departed mother, my own sister, we can't afford to give him a
+centiunit, Alter. I hardly sold a thing before that brute officer forced
+me away."
+
+"I found them on the beach," the boy explained. "I was hiding on the
+boat and I didn't have nothing to do. So I polished them."
+
+"What were you hiding for?" asked Rara, her voice suddenly sharp. "You
+don't mean you stowed away?"
+
+"Un-huh," the boy nodded.
+
+"How much do you want for them?" Alter asked.
+
+"How much? How much would it cost to get a meal and a place to stay?"
+
+"Much more than we can afford to pay," interrupted Rara. "Alter, come
+with me. This boy is going to talk you out of a unit or two yet, if you
+keep on listening to him."
+
+"See," said the boy, pointing to the shells. "I've put holes in them
+already. You can string them around your neck."
+
+"If you want to get food and a place to sleep," said Alter, "you don't
+want money. You want friends. What's your name? And where are you from?"
+
+The boy looked up from the handful of shells, surprised. "My name is
+Tel," he said after a moment. "I come from the mainland coast. And I'm a
+fisherman's son. I thought when I came here I could get a job in the
+aquariums. That's all you hear about on the coast."
+
+Alter smiled. "First of all you're sort of young ..."
+
+"But I'm a good fisherman."
+
+"... and also, it's very different from fishing on a boat. I guess you'd
+say that there were a lot of jobs in the aquariums and the hydroponics
+gardens. But with all the immigrants, there are three people for every
+job."
+
+The boy shrugged. "Well, I can try."
+
+"That's right," said Alter. "Come on. Walk with us."
+
+Rara huffed.
+
+"We'll take him back to Geryn's place and see if we can get him some
+food. He can probably stay there a little while if Geryn takes a liking
+to him."
+
+"You can't just take every homeless barnacle you find back to Geryn's.
+You'll have it crawling with every shrimp in the Pot. And suppose he
+doesn't take a liking to him. Suppose he decides to kick us out in the
+street." The birthmark on her left cheek darkened.
+
+"Aunt Rara, please," said Alter. "I'll handle Geryn."
+
+Rara huffed once more. "How come when we're two weeks behind on the
+rent, you can't find a kind word in your mouth for the old man when he
+threatens to throw us onto the street? Yet for the sake of a handful of
+pretty shells ..."
+
+"_Please ..._"
+
+A breeze seeped through the narrow street, picked a shock of Alter's
+white hair and flung it back from her shoulder.
+
+"Anyway, Geryn may be able to use him. If Tel stowed away, that means he
+doesn't have any papers."
+
+Tel frowned with puzzlement.
+
+Rara frowned with chastisement in her eyes. "You are not supposed to
+refer to that, ever."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Alter. "It's just a fantasy of Geryn's anyway.
+It'll never happen. And without papers, Tel can't get a job at the
+aquariums, even if they wanted him. So if Geryn thinks he can fit him
+into his crazy plan, Tel will come out a lot better than if he had some
+old ten-unit-a-week factory job. Look, Rara, how can Geryn possibly
+kidnap ..."
+
+"Be quiet," snapped Rara.
+
+"And even if he did, what good is it going to do? It's not as if it were
+the king himself."
+
+"I don't understand," said Tel.
+
+"That's good," said Rara. "And if you want to keep going with us, you
+won't try to find out."
+
+"We can tell you this much," said Alter. "The man who owns the inn where
+we stay wants to do something. Now, he is a little crazy. He's always
+talking to himself, for example. But he needs someone who has no
+identification registered in the City. Now, if he thinks he can use you,
+you'll get free food and a place to sleep. He used to be the gardener on
+the island estate of the Duchess of Petra. But he drank a little too
+much and I guess at last he had to go. He still says she sends him
+messages though, about his plan. But ..."
+
+"You don't have to go any further," Rara said, curtly.
+
+"You'll hear about it from him," said Alter. "Why did you stow away?"
+
+"I just got fed up with life at home. We'd work all day to catch fish,
+and then have to leave them rotting on the beach because we could only
+sell a fifth of them, or sometimes none at all. Some people gave up;
+some only managed to get it in their heads that they had to work harder.
+I guess my father was like that. He figured if he worked enough, someone
+would just have to buy them. Only nobody did. My mother did some hand
+weaving and we were living mostly on that. Finally, I figured I was
+eating up more than I was worth. So I left."
+
+"Just like that, and with no money?" asked Rara.
+
+"Just like that," Tel said.
+
+"You poor boy," said Rara, and in a sudden fit of maternal affection,
+she put her arm around his shoulder.
+
+"Ow!" cried Tel, and winced.
+
+Rara jerked her hand away. "What's the matter?"
+
+"I ... I got hurt there," the boy said, rubbing his shoulders gently.
+
+"Hurt? How?"
+
+"My father--he whipped me there."
+
+"Ah," said Rara. "Now it comes out. Well, whatever the reasons you left,
+they're your own business. Anyway, I've never known anyone yet to do
+something for one reason alone. Don't lag behind, now. We'll be back at
+Geryn's in time for lunch."
+
+"I thought if I could sneak aboard," went on Tel, "that they'd have to
+let me off in the City, even if I didn't have money. I didn't know about
+papers. And when I was in line, I figured I'd explain to the men at the
+desk. Or maybe I'd even give them my shells, and they would get the
+papers for me. But the guy ahead of me had a mistake in his. Some date
+was wrong, and they said they were going to send him back to the
+mainland and that he couldn't leave the ship. He said he'd give them
+real money, and even got it out of his pocket. But they started to take
+him away. That's when I ran out of line and jumped the fence. I didn't
+know everyone else would run too."
+
+"Probably half their papers were out of order, too. Or forged. That's
+why they ran."
+
+"You're a cynic, Aunt Rara."
+
+"I'm a practical woman."
+
+As they turned another corner, the boy's green eyes jumped at the
+blue-hazed towers of the palace, distant behind the wealthy roofs of
+merchants' mansions, themselves behind the hive houses and the spreading
+ruin of tenements. He tried to memorize the twisting street they
+followed. He couldn't.
+
+There were two general, contradictory impressions in his mind: first, of
+being enclosed in these tiny alleys, some so small that two could not
+pass through them with arms held out; the second, of the spreading,
+immense endlessness of the city. He tried to tell Alter what he felt,
+but after a minute of broken sentences, she smiled at him and shook her
+head. "No, I don't understand. What do you mean?"
+
+And a sudden picture of the seaside leapt into his head. The yellow
+length of the beach lashed across his mind so that it stung. He could
+see the salt-and-pepper rocks, shoaling away and knobbed with periwinkle
+shells. He could see the brown and green fingers of seaweed clutching
+the sand when the waves went out. He blinked the gray city back into his
+eyes. Tears washed the broken curb, the cracked walls, washed the rusted
+metal window jamb sharp and clean again.
+
+"He means he's homesick," Rara interpreted. "No, boy," she said. "It'll
+never go away. But it'll get less."
+
+The street turned sharply twice, then widened.
+
+"Well," said Alter. "Here we are."
+
+A red, circular plaque hung over the door of the only stone building on
+the block. It was two stories, twice the height of the other structures.
+They entered.
+
+Beams of real wood were set into the low ceiling. By one wall was a
+counter. There was a large table in the middle, and coming down into the
+room in a large V was a stairway.
+
+Of the men and women sitting around the room, one caught Tel's eye
+immediately. He was perhaps seven feet and a handful of inches tall, and
+was sitting, spraddle-legged, at the table. He had a long, flat, equine
+face, and a triplex of scars started on his cheek, veered down to his
+neck, and disappeared under his collarless shirt. As Tel watched, he
+turned to a plate of food he was eating, so that his scars disappeared.
+
+Suddenly, from the stair's top, a harpoon-straight old man appeared. He
+hurried down, his white hair spiking out in all directions. Reaching the
+bottom, he whirled around, darting black eyes to every person in the
+room. "All right," he said. "I've received the message. I've received
+the message. And it's time."
+
+Alter whispered to Tel, "That's Geryn."
+
+"Are we all here?" the old man demanded. "Are we all here now?"
+
+A woman at the counter snickered. Suddenly Geryn turned toward Tel,
+Alter, and Rara. "You!" he demanded. His pointing finger wavered so they
+could not tell which of the three he meant.
+
+"You mean him?" asked Alter, pointing to Tel.
+
+Geryn nodded vigorously. "What are you doing here? Are you a spy?"
+
+"No, sir," said Tel.
+
+Geryn stepped around the table and looked at him closely. The black eyes
+were two sharp spots of darkness in a face the color of shipboards gone
+two winters without paint.
+
+"Geryn," Alter said. "Geryn, he isn't a spy. He's from the mainland. And
+Geryn, he doesn't have any papers, either. He stowed away."
+
+"You're not a spy?" Geryn demanded again.
+
+"No, sir," Tel repeated.
+
+Geryn backed away. "I like you," he said. "I trust you." Slowly he
+turned away. Then he whirled back. "I have no choice, you see. It's too
+late. The message has come. So I need you." He laughed. Then the laugh
+stopped short as if sliced by a razor. He put his hands over his eyes,
+and then brought his finger down slowly. "I'm tired," he said. "Rara,
+you owe me rent. Pay up or I'll kick you all out. I'm tired." He walked
+heavily toward the bar. "Give me something to drink. In my own tavern
+you can give me something to drink."
+
+Someone laughed again. Tel looked at Alter.
+
+"Well," she said. "He likes you."
+
+"He does?"
+
+"Um-hm," she nodded.
+
+"Oh," said Tel.
+
+At the bar, Geryn drained a large glass of pale green liquid, slammed
+the empty glass on the board and cried out, "The war. Yes, the war!"
+
+"Oh, here we go," Alter whispered.
+
+Geryn ran his finger slowly along the rim of the glass. "The war," he
+said again. He turned suddenly. "It's coming!" he declaimed. "And do you
+know why it's coming? Do you know how it's coming? We can't stop it, not
+now, not any more. I've received the signal, so there's no hope left. We
+must just go ahead and try to save something, something to start and
+build from again." Geryn looked directly at Tel. "Boy, do you know what
+a war is?"
+
+"No, sir," said Tel, which wasn't exactly true. He'd heard the word.
+
+"Hey," someone cried from the bar. "Are we gonna get stories, great
+fires and destruction again?"
+
+Geryn ignored the cry. "Do you know what the Great Fire was?"
+
+Tel shook his head.
+
+"The world was once much bigger than it is today," Geryn said. "Once man
+flew not just between island and mainland, island and island, but
+skirted the entire globe of the earth. Once man flew to the moon, even
+to the moving lights in the sky. There were empires, like Toromon, only
+bigger. And there were many of them. Often they fought with one another,
+and that was called a war. And the end of the final war was the Great
+Fire. That was over fifteen hundred years ago. Most of the world, from
+what little we know of it today, is scarred with strips of impassable
+land, the sea is run through with deadly currents. Only fragments of the
+earth, widely separated can hold life. Toromon may be the only one, for
+all we are sure of. And now we will have another war."
+
+Some one from the bar yelled, "So what if it comes? It might bring some
+excitement."
+
+Geryn whirled. "You don't understand!" He whipped one hand through his
+shocked white hair. "What are we fighting? We don't know. It's something
+mysterious and unnamable on the other side of the radiation barrier. Why
+are we fighting?"
+
+"Because ..." began a bored voice at the bar.
+
+"Because," interrupted Geryn, suddenly pointing directly at Tel's face,
+"we have to fight. Toromon has gotten into a situation where its
+excesses must be channelled toward something external. Our science has
+outrun our economics. Our laws have become stricter, and we say it is to
+stop the rising lawlessness. But it is to supply workers for the mines
+that the laws tighten, workers who will dig more tetron, that more
+citizens shall be jobless, and must therefore become lawless to survive.
+Ten years ago, before the aquariums, fish was five times its present
+price. There was perhaps four per cent unemployment in Toron. Today the
+prices of fish are a fifth of what they were, yet unemployment has
+reached twenty-five per cent of the city's populace. A quarter of our
+people starve. More arrive every day. What will we do with them? We will
+use them to fight a war. Our university turns out scientists whose
+science we can not use lest it put more people out of work. What will we
+do with them? We will use them to fight a war. Eventually the mines will
+flood us with tetron, too much for even the aquariums and the hydroponic
+gardens. It will be used for the war."
+
+"Then what?" asked Tel.
+
+"We do not know who or what we are fighting," repeated Geryn. "We will
+be fighting ourselves, but we will not know it. According to the books,
+it is customary in a war to keep each side in complete ignorance of the
+other. Or give them lies like those we use to frighten children instead
+of truth. But here the truth may be ..." His voice trailed off.
+
+"What's your plan?" Tel asked.
+
+There was another laugh at the bar.
+
+"Somehow," and his voice was lower. "Somehow we must get ready to save
+something, salvage some fragment from the destruction that will come.
+There are only a few of us who know all this, who understand it, who
+know what ... what has to be done."
+
+"What is that?" Tel asked again.
+
+Suddenly Geryn whirled. "Drinks!" he called. "Drinks all around!" The
+quiet amusement and general lethargy disappeared as the people moved to
+the bar. "Drink up, friends, my fellows!" cried Geryn.
+
+"Your plan?" Tel asked again, puzzled.
+
+"I'll tell you," answered the old man, almost in a whisper. "I'll tell
+you. But not just yet. Not just ..." He turned back again. "Drink up!"
+Three men who already had their glasses gave a cheer.
+
+"Are you with me, friends?" Geryn demanded.
+
+"We're with you," six more cried, laughing, clinking their glasses hard
+on the table top as Tel looked from Alter to Rara and back.
+
+"My plan ..." began Geryn. "Have you all had a glass? All of you?
+Another round for everybody. Yes, a second round!"
+
+There was a solid cheer, now. Glass bottoms turned toward the ceiling,
+then whammed on the counter top again.
+
+"My plan is to--you understand it's not just my plan, but only a small
+part in a great plan, a plan to save us all--my plan is to kidnap Prince
+Let from the palace. That's the part that we must do. Are you with me,
+friends?" A yell rose, and somebody had started a friendly fight at the
+end of the bar. Then Geryn's voice suddenly broke through the sound,
+low, in a grating whisper that silenced them for seconds. "Because you
+must be with me! The time is tonight. I have ... I have it planned." The
+voices halted, and then heaved to a roar. "Tonight," repeated Geryn,
+though hardly anyone could hear him. "I have it planned. Only you've got
+to be ... be with me."
+
+Tel frowned and Alter shook her head. The old man had closed his eyes
+for a moment. Rara was beside him, her hand on his shoulder. "You're
+going to get yourself sick with all this yelling. Let me get you up to
+your room."
+
+As she turned him toward the stairs, the scarred giant who had been
+given a drink, now rose from the table, looked straight at Geryn, then
+drained his glass.
+
+Geryn nodded, drew a breath through his teeth, and then allowed Rara to
+lead him up the stairs as Tel and Alter watched.
+
+The noise among the drinking men and women at the bar increased.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+She made a note on her pad, put down her slide rule, and picked up a
+pearl snap with which she fastened together the shoulder panels of her
+white dress. The maid said, "Ma'am, shall I do your hair now?"
+
+"One second," Clea said. She turned to page 328 of her integral tables,
+checked the increment of sub-cosine A plus B over the _n_th root of A to
+the _n_th plus B to the _n_th, and transferred it to her notebook.
+
+"Ma'am?" asked the maid. She was a thin woman, about thirty. The little
+finger of her left hand was gone.
+
+"You can start now." Clea leaned back in the beauty-hammock and lifted
+the dark mass of her hair from her neck. The maid caught the ebony
+wealth with one hand and reached for the end of the four yards of silver
+chain strung with alternate pearls and diamonds each inch and a half.
+
+"Ma'am?" asked the maid again. "What are you figuring on?"
+
+"I'm trying to determine the inverse sub-trigonometric functions. Dalen
+Golga, he was my mathematics professor at the university, discovered the
+regular ones, but nobody's come up with the inverses yet."
+
+"Oh," said the maid. She ceased weaving the jeweled chain a moment,
+took a comb, and whipped it through a cascade of hair that fell back on
+Clea's shoulder. "Eh ... what are you going to do with them, once you
+find them?"
+
+"Actually," said Clea. "Ouch ..."
+
+"Oh, pardon me, I'm sorry, please ..."
+
+"Actually," went on Clea, "they'll be perfectly useless. At least as far
+as anyone knows now. They exist, so to speak, in a world that has little
+to do with ours. Like the world of imaginary numbers, the square root of
+minus one. Eventually we may find use for them, perhaps in the same way
+we use imaginary numbers to find the roots of equations of a higher
+order than two, because cosine theta plus _I_ sine theta equals _e_ to
+the _I_ sine theta, which lets us ..."
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"Well, that is to say they haven't been able to do anything like that
+with the sub-trigonometric functions yet. But they're fun."
+
+"Bend your head a little to the left, ma'am," was the maid's comment.
+
+Clea bent.
+
+"You're going to look beautiful." Four and five fingers wove deftly in
+her hair. "Just beautiful."
+
+"I hope that Tomar can get here. It's not going to be any fun without
+him."
+
+"But isn't the King coming?" asked the maid. "I saw his acceptance note
+myself. You know it was on very simple paper. Very elegant."
+
+"My father will enjoy that a good deal more than I will. My brother went
+to school with the King before ... before his Majesty's coronation."
+
+"That's amazing," said the maid. "Were they friends? Just think of it?
+Do you know whether they were friends or not?"
+
+Clea shrugged.
+
+"And, oh," said the maid, continuing, "have you seen the ballroom? All
+the hors d'oeuvres are real, imported fish. You can tell, because
+they're smaller than the ones your father grows."
+
+"I know," smiled Clea. "I don't think I've ever eaten any of Dad's fish
+in my life, which is sort of terrible, actually. They're supposed to be
+very good."
+
+"Oh, they are, ma'am. They are. Your father is a fine man to grow such
+great, good fishes. But you must admit, there's something special about
+the ones that come from the coast. I tasted one on my way up through the
+pantry. So I know."
+
+"What exactly is it?" Clea asked, turning around.
+
+The maid frowned, and then smiled and nodded wisely. "Oh, I know. I
+know. You can tell the difference."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that moment, Jon Koshar was saying, "Well, so far you've been right."
+He appeared to be more or less standing (the room was dim, so his head
+and hands were invisible), more or less alone ("Yeah, I trust you. I
+don't have much choice," he added.) in the pantry of his father's
+mansion.
+
+Suddenly his voice took a different tone. "Look, I _will_ trust you;
+with part of me, anyway. I've been caged up for nearly five years, for
+something stupid I did, and for something that no matter how hard I try,
+I can't convince myself was all my fault. I don't mean that Uske should
+be blamed. But chance, and all the rest ... well, all I mean is it makes
+me want out that much more. I want to be _free_. I nearly got myself
+killed trying to escape from the mines. And a couple of people did get
+killed helping me. All right, you got me out of that stainless steel
+graveyard I wandered into back at the radiation barrier, and for that,
+thanks. I mean it. But I'm not free yet. And I still want out, more than
+anything in the world.
+
+"Sure, I know that you want me to do something, but I don't understand
+it yet. You say you'll tell me soon. Okay. But you're riding around in
+my head like this, so I'm not free yet. If that's what I have to do to
+get free, than I'll do it. But I'm warning you. If I see another crack
+in the wall, another spot of light getting in, I'll claw my hands off
+trying to break through and to hell with what you want. Because while
+you're there, I can't be free."
+
+Suddenly the light in the pantry flipped on. His sudden face went from
+the tautness of his last speech to fear. He had been standing by the
+side of a seven-foot porcelain storage cabinet. He jumped back to the
+wall. Whoever had come in, a butler or caterer, was out of sight on the
+other side. A hand came around the edge of the cabinet, reaching for the
+handle. The hand was broad, wiry with black hair, and sported a cheap,
+wide, brass ring set with an irregular shape of blue glass. As the door
+opened, the hand swung out of sight. There was a clatter of dishes on
+the shelves, the slide of crockery slipping over plastic racks, and a
+voice. "All right there. You carry this one." Then a grunt, and the
+_ker-flop_ of the latch as the door slammed to.
+
+A moment later, the light, and John Koshar's hands and head, went out.
+When Jon stepped forward again, he looked at the pantry, at the doors,
+the cabinets. The familiarity hurt. There was a door that opened into
+the main kitchen. (Once he had snagged a kharba fruit from the cook's
+table and ran, as behind him a wooden salad bowl crashed to the floor.
+The sound made him whirl, in time to catch the cook's howl and to see
+the pale shreds of lettuce strewn across the black tile floor. The bowl
+was still spinning. He had been nine.)
+
+He started slowly for the door to the hallway that led to the dining
+room. In the hall was a red wood table on which sat a free form
+sculpture of aluminum rods and heavy glass spheres. That was unfamiliar.
+Not the table, the sculpture.
+
+A slight highlight along the curve of crystal brought back to him for a
+moment the blue ceramic vase that had been there in his memory. It was
+coated with glaze that was shot through with myriad cracks. It was
+cylindrical, straight, then suddenly veering to a small mouth, slightly
+off center. The burnished red wood behind the vivid, turquoise blue was
+a combination that was almost too rich, too sensual. He had broken the
+vase. He had broken it in surprise, when his sister had come in on him
+suddenly, the little girl with hair black as his own, only more of it,
+saying, "What are you doing, Jon?" and he had jumped, turned, and then
+the vase was lying in fragments on the floor, like a lot of bright,
+brittle leaves made out of stone. He remembered his first reaction had
+been, oddly, surprise at finding that the glaze covered the inside as
+well as the outside of the vase. He was fourteen.
+
+He walked to the family dining room and stepped inside. With the
+ballroom in use, no one would come here. Stepping into the room was like
+stepping into a cricket's den, the subtle _tsk-tsk_ of a thousand clocks
+repeated and repeated, overlapping and melting, with no clear,
+discernible rhythm. The wall by the door was lined with shelves and they
+were filled with his father's collection of chronometers. He looked at
+the clocks on the shelf level with his eye. The last time he had been in
+this room, it had been the shelf below. The light from the door made a
+row of crescents on the curved faces, some the size of his little finger
+nail, others the diameter of his head. Their hands were invisible, their
+settings were dim. (In his memory they went from simple gold to ornately
+carved silver, and one was set in an undersea bower with jeweled shells
+and coral branches.) There must be many new clocks after five years, he
+thought. If he turned on the light, how many would he recognize?
+
+(When he was eighteen, he had stood in this room and examined the thin,
+double prong of a fire-blade. The light in the room was off, and as he
+flicked the button on the hilt, and the white sparks leaped out and up
+the length of the blade, the crescents flamed on the edges of the clock
+faces, all along the wall. Later, at the royal palace, with that same
+blade, there had been the same, sudden, clumsy fear at discovery, fear
+clotting into panic, the panic turning to confusion, and the confusion
+metastasizing into fear again, only fear all through him, dragging him
+down, so that when he tried to run down the vaulted hall, his feet were
+too heavy, so that when he tripped against the statue in the alcove,
+whirled upon the pursuing guard, and swung the white needle of energy
+down and the guard's flesh hissed and fell away--a moment of blood
+spurring under pale flame--almost immediately he was exhausted. They
+took him easily after that.)
+
+Clumsy, he thought. Not with his fingers, (He had fixed many of these
+clocks when his father had acquired them in various states of
+disrepair.), but with his mind. His emotions were not fine and drawn,
+but rather great shafts of anger or fear fell about him without focus or
+apparent source. Disgust, or even love, when he had felt it was vague,
+liable to metamorphasize from one to the other. (School was great; his
+history teacher was very good.... School was noisy; the kids were pushy
+and didn't care about anything. His blue parakeet was delicate and
+beautiful; he had taught it to whistle ... there were always crumbs on
+the bottom of the cage; changing the paper was a nuisance.)
+
+Then there had been five years of prison. And the first sharp feeling
+pierced his mind, as sharp as the uncoiled hair-spring of a clock, as
+sharp as jewels in a poison ring. It was a wish, a pain, an agony for
+freedom. The plans for escape had been intricate, yet sharp as the
+cracks in blue ceramic glaze. The hunger for escape was a hand against
+his stomach, and as the three of them had, at last, waited in the rain
+by the steps, it had tightened unbearably. Then ...
+
+Then with all the sharpness, what had made him lose the others? Why had
+he wandered in the wrong direction? Clumsy! And he wanted to be free of
+that! And wonder if that was what he had wanted to be free of all along
+while he had sputtered at the prison guards, choked on the food, and
+could not communicate his outrage. Then, at the horizon, was the purple
+glow of something paler than sunrise, deadlier than the sea, a
+flickering, luminous purple gauze behind the hills. Near him were the
+skeletons of broken, century-ancient trees, leafless, nearly petrified.
+The crumbly dirt looked as if it had been scattered over the land in
+handfuls, loosely, bearing neither shrubs or footprints. By one boulder
+a trickle of black water ran beneath a fallen log, catching dim light in
+the ripples on either side. He looked up.
+
+On the horizon, against the lines of light, as though cut--no,
+torn--from carbon paper was the silhouette of a city. Tower behind tower
+rose against the pearly haze. A net of roadways wound among the spires.
+
+Then he made out one minuscule thread of metal that ran from the city,
+in his general direction but veering to the right. It passed him half a
+mile away and at last disappeared into the edge of the jungle that he
+could see, now, behind him. _Telphar!_ The word came to his mind as
+though on a sign attached with springs to his consciousness. The
+radiation! That was the second thing he thought of. Once more the name
+of the city shivered in his brain: _Telphar!_ The certain, very certain
+death he had wandered into caught the center of his gut like a fist. It
+was almost as if the name were sounding out loud in his skull. Then he
+stopped. Because he realized he had heard something. A ... a voice! Very
+definitely he heard it--
+
+Music had started. He could hear it coming from the ballroom now. The
+party must be under way. He looked out into the hall. A fellow in a
+white apron, holding an empty tray on which were crumbs from small
+cakes, was coming toward him.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," the man in the apron said. "Guests aren't supposed to
+be in this part of the house."
+
+"I was trying to find the-eh-er ..." Jon coughed.
+
+The man in the apron smiled. "Oh. Of course. Go back into the ballroom
+and take the hall to your left down three doors."
+
+"Thank you," Jon smiled back and hurried up the hallway. He entered the
+ballroom by way of a high, arched alcove in which were small white meat,
+red meat, dark meat of fish ground into patties, cut into stars, strips
+of fillet wound into imitation sea shells, tiny braised shrimp, and
+stuffed baby smelts.
+
+A ten-piece orchestra--three bass radiolins, a theremin, and six blown
+shells of various sizes--was making a slow, windy music from the dais.
+The scattering of guests seemed lost in the great room. Jon wandered
+across the floor.
+
+Here and there were stainless steel fountains in which blue or pink
+liquid fanned over mounds of crushed ice. Each fountain was rimmed with
+a little shelf on which was a ring of glasses. He picked a glass up, let
+a spout of pink fill it, and walked on, sipping slowly.
+
+Suddenly, the loudspeaker announced the arrival of Mr. Quelor Da and
+party. Heads turned, and a moment later a complex of glitter, green
+silk, blue net, and diamonds at the top of the six wide marble steps
+across the room resolved into four ladies and their escorts.
+
+Jon glanced up at the balcony than ran around the second story of the
+room. A short gentleman in a severe, unornamented blue suit was coming
+toward the head of the steps which expanded down toward the ballroom
+floor with the grace and approximate shape of a swan's wing. The
+gentleman hurried down the pale cascade.
+
+Jon sipped his drink. It was sweet with the combined flavors of a dozen
+fruits, with the whisper of alcohol bitter at the back of his tongue.
+The gentleman hurried across the floor, passing within yards of him.
+
+Father! The impact was the same as the recognition of Telphar. The hair
+was thinner than it had been five years ago. He was much heavier.
+His--father--was at the other side of the room already, checking with
+the waiters. Jon pulled his shoulders in, and let his breath out. It was
+the familiarity, not the change, that hurt.
+
+It took some time before the room filled. There was a lot of space. One
+guest Jon noted was a young man in military uniform. He was powerful,
+squat in a taurine way usually associated with older men. There was a
+major's insignia on his shoulder. Jon watched him a while, empathizing
+with his occasional looks that told how out of place he felt. He took
+neither food nor drink, but prowled a ten-foot area by the side of the
+balcony steps. Waiting, Jon thought.
+
+A half an hour later, the floor was respectably populated. Jon had
+exchanged a few words at last with the soldier. (Jon: "A beautiful
+party, don't you think?" Soldier, with embarrassment: "Yes, sir." Jon:
+"I guess the war is worrying all of us." Soldier: "The war? Yes." Then
+he looked away, not inclined to talk more.) Jon was now near the door.
+Suddenly the loudspeaker announced: "The Party of His Royal Majesty, the
+King."
+
+Gowns rustled, the talk rose, people turned, and fell back from the
+entrance. The King's party, headed by himself and a tall,
+electric-looking red-headed woman, his senior by a handful of years,
+appeared at the top of the six marble steps. As they came down, right
+and left, people bowed. Jon dropped his head, but not before he realized
+that the King's escort had given him a very direct look. He glanced up
+again, but now her emerald train was sweeping down the aisle the people
+had left open. Her insignia, he remembered, told him she was a duchess.
+
+Coming up the aisle in the other direction now between the bowing crowds
+was old Koshar. He bowed very low, and the pale blond young man raised
+him and they shook hands, and Koshar spoke. "Your Majesty," he began
+warmly.
+
+"Sir," answered the King, smiling.
+
+"I haven't seen you since you were a boy at school."
+
+The King smiled again, this time rather wanly. Koshar hurried on.
+
+"But I would like to introduce my daughter to you, for it's her party.
+Clea--." The old man turned to the balcony stairs, and the crowd's eyes
+turned with him.
+
+She was standing on the top step, in a white dress made of panel over
+silken panel, held with pearl clasps. Her black hair cascaded across one
+shoulder, webbed and re-webbed with a chain of silver strung with
+pearls. Her hands at her sides, she came down the stairs. People stepped
+back; she smiled, and walked forward. Jon watched while at last his
+sister reached his father's side.
+
+"My daughter Clea," said old Koshar to the King.
+
+"Charmed."
+
+Koshar raised his left hand, and the musicians began the introduction to
+the changing partners dance. Jon watched the King take Clea in his arms,
+and also saw the soldier move toward them, and then stop. A woman in a
+smoky gray dress suddenly blocked his view, smiled at him, and said,
+"Will you dance?" He smiled back, to avoid another expression, and she
+was in his arms. Apparently the soldier had had a similar experience,
+for at the first turn of the music, Jon saw the soldier was dancing too.
+A few couples away, Clea and the King turned round and round, white and
+white, brunette and blond. The steps came back to Jon like a poem
+remembered, the turn, the dip, separate, and join again. When a girl
+does the strange little outward step, and the boy bows, so that for a
+moment she is out of sight, her gown always swishes just so. Yes, like
+that! This whole day had been filled with the sudden remembrances of
+tiny facts like that, forgotten for five years, at once relearned with
+startling vividness that shocked him. The music signaled for partners to
+change. Gowns whirled into momentary flowers, and he was dancing with
+the brown-haired woman the soldier had been dancing with a moment
+before. Looking to his left, he saw that the soldier had somehow
+contrived to get Clea for a partner. Moving closer, he overheard.
+
+"I didn't think you were going to get here at all. I'm so glad," from
+Clea.
+
+"I could have even come earlier," Tomar said. "But you'd have been
+busy."
+
+"You could have come up."
+
+"And once I got here, I didn't think we'd get a chance to talk, either."
+
+"Well, you've got one now. Better make it quick. We change partners in a
+moment. What happened to the scouting planes?"
+
+"All crippled. Didn't sight a thing. They got back to base almost before
+I did this morning. The report was nothing. What about the picnic,
+Clea?"
+
+"We can have it on ..."
+
+A burst of music signaled the change. Jon did not hear the day, but
+expected his sister to whirl into his arms. But instead (he saw her
+white dress flare and turn by him) an emerald iridescence caught in his
+eye, then rich mahogany flame. He was dancing with the Duchess. She was
+nearly his height, and watched him with a smile hung in the subtle area
+between friendship and knowing cynicism. She moved easily, and he had
+just remembered that he ought to smile back to be polite when the music
+sounded the change. The instant before she whirled away, he heard her
+say, very distinctly, "Good luck, Jon Koshar."
+
+His name brought him to a halt, and he stared after her. When he did
+turn back to his new partner, surprise still on his face, his eyes were
+filled with sudden whiteness. It was Clea. He should have been dancing,
+but he was standing still. When she looked at his face to discover why,
+she suddenly drew a breath. At first he thought his head had disappeared
+again. Then, as shock and surprise became suddenly as real as her wide
+eyes, her open mouth, he whispered, "Clea!" And her hand went to her
+mouth.
+
+_Clumsy!_ he thought, and the word was a sudden ache in his hands and
+chest. Reach for her. Dance. As his hands went out, the music stopped,
+and the languid voice of the King came over the loudspeaker.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of Toromon, I have just received a
+message from the council that necessitates an announcement to you as my
+friends and loyal subjects. I have been requested by the council to make
+their declaration of war official by my consent. An emergency meeting
+over sudden developments has made it imperative that we begin immediate
+action against our most hostile enemies on the mainland. Therefore,
+before you all, I declare the Empire of Toromon to be at war."
+
+In the silence, Jon looked for his sister, but she was gone. Someone
+near the microphone cried out, "Long live the King." Then the cry echoed
+again. The musicians started the music once more, partners found one
+another, and the talking and laughing grew in his ears like waves, like
+crumbling rock, like the cutter teeth clawing into the rock face of the
+ore deposits....
+
+Jon shook his head. But he was in his own house, yes. His room was on
+the second floor and he could go up and lie down. And by his bed would
+be the copper night table, and the copy of _Delcord the Whaler_ which he
+had been reading the night before.
+
+He'd left the ballroom and gotten halfway down the hall before he
+remembered that his room was probably not his room any longer. And that
+he certainly couldn't go up to it and lie down. He was standing in front
+of the door of one of the sitting rooms that opened off the hall. The
+door was ajar, and from it he heard a woman's voice.
+
+"Well, can't you do something about his index of refraction? If he's
+going to be doing any work at night, you can't have him popping on and
+off like a cigarette lighter." There was silence. Then: "Well, at least
+don't you think he should be told more than he knows now? Fine. So do I,
+especially since the war has been officially declared."
+
+Jon took a breath and stepped in.
+
+Her emerald train whirled across the duller green of the carpet as she
+turned. The bright hair, untonsured save by two coral combs, fell behind
+her shoulders. Her smile showed faint surprise. Very faint. "Who were
+you talking to?" Jon Koshar asked.
+
+"Mutual friends," the Duchess said. They were alone in the room.
+
+After a moment, Jon said, "What do they want us to do? It's treason,
+isn't it?"
+
+The Duchess' eyes went thin. "Are you serious?" she asked. "You call
+that treason, keeping these idiots from destroying themselves, eating
+themselves up in a war with a nameless enemy, something so powerful that
+if there were any consideration of real fighting, we could be destroyed
+with a thought. Do you remember who the enemy is? You've heard his name.
+There are only three people in Toromon who have, Jon Koshar. Everyone
+else is ignorant. So we're the only ones who can say we're fully
+responsible. That responsibility is to Toromon. Have you any idea what
+state the economy is in? Your own father is responsible for a good bit
+of it; but if he closed down his aquariums now, the panic he would cause
+would equal the destruction their being open already causes. The empire
+is snowballing toward its own destruction, and it's going to take it out
+in the war. You call trying to prevent it treason?"
+
+"Whatever we call it, we don't have much choice, do we?"
+
+"With people like you around, I'm not sure it isn't a bad idea."
+
+"Look," said Jon. "I was cooped up in a prison mine way out beyond
+nowhere for five years. All I wanted was out, see. All I wanted was to
+get free. Well, I'm back in Toron and I'm still not free."
+
+"First of all," said the Duchess, "if it wasn't for them, you wouldn't
+be as free as you are now. After a day of clean clothes and walking in
+fresh air, if you're not well on the road to what you want, then I'd
+better change some ideas of my own. I want something too, Jon Koshar.
+When I was seventeen, I worked for a summer in your father's aquarium.
+My nine hours a day were spent with a metal spoon about the size of your
+head scraping the bottoms of the used tank tube of the stuff that even
+the glass filters were too touchy to take out. Afterwards I was too
+tired to do much more than read. So I read. Most of it was about
+Toromon's history. I read a lot about the mainland expeditions. Then, in
+my first winter out of school, I lived in a fishing village at the edge
+of the forest, studying what I could of the customs of the forest
+people. I made sketches of their temples, tried to map their nomadic
+movements. I even wrote an article on the architecture of their
+temporary shelters that was published in the university journal.
+
+"Well, what I want is for Toromon to be free, free of its own ridiculous
+self-entanglements. Perhaps coming from the royal family, I had a easier
+path toward a sense of Toromon's history. At its best, that's all an
+aristocracy is good for anyway. But I wanted more than a sense, I wanted
+to know what it was worth. So I went out and looked, and I found out it
+was worth a whole lot. Somehow Toromon is going to have to pick itself
+up by the back of the neck and give itself a shaking. If I have to be
+the part that does the shaking, then I will. That's what I want, Jon
+Koshar, and I want it as badly as you want to be free."
+
+Jon was quiet a moment. Then he said, "Anyway, to get what we want, I
+guess we more or less have to do the same thing. All right, I'll go
+along. But you're going to have to explain some things to me. There's a
+lot I still don't understand."
+
+"A lot we both don't," the Duchess said. "But we know this: they're not
+from Earth, they're not human, and they come from very far away.
+Inconceivably far."
+
+"What about the rest?"
+
+"They'll help us help Toromon if we help them. How, I still don't
+understand for sure. Already I've arranged to have Price Let kidnaped."
+
+"Kidnaped? But why?"
+
+"Because if we get through this, Toromon is going to need a strong king.
+And I think you'll agree that Uske will never quite make that. Also,
+he's ill, and under any great strain, might die in a moment, not to
+mention the underground groups that are bound to spring up to undermine
+whatever the government decides to do, once the war gets going. Let is
+going where he can become a strong man, with the proper training, so
+that if anything happens to Uske, he can return and there'll be someone
+to guide the government through its crises. After that, how we're to
+help them, I'm not sure."
+
+"I see," said Jon. "How did they get hold of you, anyway? For that
+matter, how did they get me?"
+
+"You? They contacted you just outside of Telphar, didn't they? They had
+to rearrange the molecular structure of some of your more delicate
+proteins and do a general overhaul on your sub-crystalline structure so
+the radiation wouldn't kill you. That, unfortunately had the unpleasant
+side effect of booting down your index of refraction a couple of points,
+which is why you keep fading in dim light. In fact, I got a blow-by-blow
+description of your entire escape from them. It kept me on the edge of
+my seat all night. How was I contacted? The same way you were, suddenly,
+and with those words: _Lord of the Flames_. Now, your first direct
+assignment will be ..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In another room, Clea was sitting on a blue velvet hassock with her
+hands tight in her lap. Then suddenly they flew apart like springs,
+shook beside her head, and then clasped again. "Tomar," she said.
+"Please, excuse me, but I'm upset. It was so strange. When I was dancing
+with the King, he told me how he had dreamed of my brother this morning.
+I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was just small talk. Then,
+just after I changed partners for the third time, there I was, staring
+into a face that I could have sworn was Jon's. And the man wasn't
+dancing, either. He was just looking at me, very funny, and then he said
+my name. Tomar, it was the same voice Jon used to use when I'd hurt
+myself and he wanted to help. Oh, it couldn't have been him, because he
+was too tall, and too gaunt, and the voice was just a little too deep.
+But it was so much like what he might have been. That was when the King
+made his announcement. I just turned and ran. The whole thing seemed
+supernatural. Oh, don't worry, I'm not superstitious, but it unnerved
+me. And that plus what you said this morning."
+
+"What I said?" asked Tomar. He stood beside the hassock in the
+blue-draped sitting room, his hands in his pockets, listening with
+animal patience.
+
+"About their drafting all the degree students into the war effort. Maybe
+the war is good, but Tomar, I'm working on another project, and all at
+once, the thing I want most in the world is to be left alone to work on
+it. And I want you, and I want to have a picnic. I'm nearly at the
+solution now, and to have to stop and work on bomb sightings and missile
+trajectories ... Tomar, there's a beauty in abstract mathematics that
+shouldn't have to be dulled with that sort of thing. Also, maybe you'll
+go away, or I'll go away. That doesn't seem fair either. Tomar, have you
+ever had things you wanted, had them in your hands, and suddenly have a
+situation come up that made it look like they might fly out of your grip
+forever?"
+
+Tomar rubbed his hand across his brush-cut red hair and shook his head.
+"There was a time once, when I wanted things. Like food, work, and a bed
+where all four legs touched the ground. So I came to Toron. And I got
+them. And I got you, and so I guess there isn't anything else to want,
+or want that bad." He grinned, and the grin made her smile.
+
+"I guess," she started, "... I guess it was just that he looked so much
+like my brother."
+
+"Clea," Tomar said. "About your brother. I wasn't going to tell you this
+until later. Maybe I shouldn't say it now. But you were asking whether
+or not they were going to draft prisoners into the army; and whether at
+the end of their service, they'd be freed. Well, I did some checking.
+They are going to, and I sent through a recommendation that they take
+your brother among the first bunch. In three hours I got a memorandum
+from the penal commissioner. Your brother's dead."
+
+She looked at him hard, trying to hold her eyes open and to prevent the
+little snarl of sound that was a sob from loosening in the back of her
+throat.
+
+"In fact it happened last night," Tomar went on. "He and two others
+attempted an escape. Two of their bodies were found. And there's no
+chance that the third one could have escaped alive."
+
+The snarl collapsed into a sound she would not make. She sat for a
+moment. Then she said, "Let's go back to the party." She stood up, and
+they walked across the white rug to the door. Once she shook her head
+and opened her mouth. Then she closed it again and went on. "Yes. I'm
+glad you said it. I don't know. Maybe it was a sign ... a sign that he
+was dead. Maybe it was a sign ..." She stopped. "No. It wasn't. It
+wasn't anything, was it? No." They went down the steps to the ballroom
+once more. The music was very, very happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A few hours earlier, Geryn gave Tel a kharba fruit. The boy took the
+bright-speckled melon around the inn, looking for Alter. Unable to find
+her, he wandered onto the street and up the block. Once a cat with a
+struggling gray shape in its teeth hurtled across his path. Later he saw
+an overturned garbage can with a filigree of fish bones ornamenting the
+parti-colored heap. Over the house roofs across the street, the taller
+buildings and towers of Toron paled to blue, with sudden yellow
+rectangles of window light scattered unevenly over their faces.
+
+Turning down another block, he saw Rara standing on the corner, stopping
+the occasional passers-by. Tel started up to her, but she saw him and
+motioned him away. Puzzled, he went to a stoop and sat down to watch. As
+he ran his thumbnail along the orange rind, and juice oozed from the
+slit, he heard Rara talking to a stranger.
+
+"Your fortune, sir. I'll spread your future before you like a silver
+mirror ..." The stranger passed. Rara turned to a woman now coming toward
+her. "Ma'am, a fragment of a unit will spread your life out like a
+patterned carpet where you may trace the designs of your fate. Just a
+quarter of a unit ..." The woman smiled, but shook her head. "You look
+like you come from the mainland," Rara called after her. "Well, good
+luck here in the New World, sister, the Island of Opportunity."
+Immediately she turned to another man, this one in a deep green uniform.
+"Sir," Tel heard her begin. Then she paused as she surveyed his costume.
+"Sir," she continued, "for a single unit I will unweave the threads of
+your destiny from eternity's loom. Would you like to know the promotion
+about to come your way? How many children you'll ..."
+
+"Come on, lady," said the man in uniform. "It's illegal to tell fortunes
+here."
+
+"But I've got my license," declared Rara. "I'm a genuine clairvoyant.
+Just a second ..." And her hands began to plunge into the seams and
+pockets of her gray rags.
+
+"Never mind, lady. Just get moving," and he gave her a push. Rara moved.
+
+Tel peeled back the strip of rind he'd loosened from the kharba fruit,
+licked the juice from the yellow wound, and followed Rara.
+
+"Son of an electric eel," she said when Tel reached her, her birthmark
+scarlet. "Just trying to make a living, that's all."
+
+"Want a bite?"
+
+Rara shook her head. "I'm too angry," she said. They walked back to the
+inn.
+
+"Do you know where Alter is?" Tel asked. "I was looking for her."
+
+"She's not in the inn?"
+
+"I couldn't find her there."
+
+"Did you look on the roof?" Rara asked.
+
+"Oh," said Tel. "No." They turned into the tavern and Tel went upstairs.
+It was not until he was halfway up the ladder on the second floor that
+went to the trap door in the ceiling that he wondered why she was on the
+roof. He pushed the trap door back and hoisted himself to the dusty,
+weathered rim.
+
+Alter was hanging head and white hair down from a pipe that went from
+the stone chimney to a supporting pipe that was fastened by a firm
+collar to the roof.
+
+"What are you doing?" Tel asked.
+
+"Hi," she smiled down at him. "I'm practicing."
+
+"Practicing what?"
+
+She was hanging double from her waist over the pipe. Now she grabbed the
+bar close to her waist and somersaulted forward, letting her feet slowly
+and evenly to the ground, her legs perfectly straight. "My stunts," she
+said. "I'm an acrobat." She did not let go of the bar, but suddenly
+swung her legs up so that her ankles nearly touched her hands, and then
+whipped them down again, ending the kip by supporting herself upright on
+the metal perch. Then she flung her legs back (Tel jumped because she
+looked like she was going to fall) and went out and down, then under,
+swung up, arced over, and went down again in a giant circle. She circled
+once more, then doubled up, caught one knee over the bar, reversed
+direction, and suddenly was sitting on top of the rod with one leg over.
+
+"Gee," Tel said. "How did you do that?"
+
+"It's all timing," Alter said. Suddenly she threw her head back, and
+circled the bar once more, hanging from her hands and one knee. Then
+the knee came loose, and her feet came slowly to the ground. "You've
+just got to be strong enough to hold up your own weight. Maybe a little
+stronger. But the rest is all timing."
+
+"You mean I could do that?"
+
+"You want to try something?"
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Come here and grab hold of the bar."
+
+Tel came over and grabbed. He could just keep his feet flat on the
+tar-papered roof and still hold on. "All right," he said.
+
+"Now pull yourself up and hook your left knee around the bar."
+
+"Like this?" He kicked up once, missed, and tried again.
+
+"When you kick, throw your head back," she instructed. "You'll balance
+better."
+
+He did, pulled up, and got his foot through his arms, and suddenly felt
+the bar slide into the crook of his knee. He was hanging by his left
+knee and hands. "Now what do I do?" he asked, swaying back and forth.
+
+Alter put her hand on his back to steady him. "Now straighten your right
+leg, and keep your arms fairly straight." He obeyed. "Now swing your
+right leg up and down, three times, and then swing it down real hard."
+Tel lifted his leg, dropped it, and at once began swinging back and
+forth beneath the pole. "Keep the leg straight," Alter said. "Don't bend
+it, or you'll loose momentum."
+
+He got to the third kick, and then let go (with his thigh muscles, not
+his hands) and at once the sky slipped back behind him and his body
+swung upward away from the direction of the kick. "Whoooo," he said, and
+then felt an arm steadying his wrist. He was sitting on top of the bar
+with one leg over it. He looked down at Alter. "Is that what was
+supposed to happen?"
+
+"Sure," she said. "That's how you mount the bar. It's called a knee
+mount."
+
+"I guess it's easier than climbing. Now what do I do?"
+
+"Try this. Straighten out your arms. And make sure they stay straight.
+Now straighten your back leg behind you." As he tried, he felt her hand
+on his knee, helping. "Hey ..." he said. "I'm not balanced."
+
+"Don't worry," she said. "I'm holding you. Keep those arms straight. If
+you don't obey instructions you'll have a head full of tar paper. Seven
+feet isn't very high, but head first it's sort of uncomfortable."
+
+Tel's elbows locked.
+
+"Now when I count three, kick the leg I'm holding under you and throw
+your head back as hard as you can. One ..."
+
+"What's supposed to happen?" Tel demanded.
+
+"Follow instructions," replied Alter. "Two ... three!"
+
+Tel threw and kicked, and felt Alter give his leg an extra push. He had
+planned to close his eyes, but what he saw kept them open. Sky and then
+roof were coming at him, fast. Then they veered away, along with Alter's
+face (which was upside down), till an instant later the pale blue towers
+of Toron, all pointing in the wrong direction, pierced his sight.
+Righting themselves, they jerked out of his line of vision and he was
+looking straight up at the sky (there was a star out, he noted before it
+became a meteor and flashed away) until it was replaced by the roof and
+Alter's face (laughing now) and then once more everything swept into its
+proper position for a moment.
+
+He clamped his stinging hands tightly on the bar, and when he felt
+himself stop, he hunched forward and closed his eyes. "Mmmmmmmmmm," he
+said. Alter's hand was on his wrist, very firm, and he was sitting on
+top of the bar again.
+
+"You just did a double back knee circle," she said, "You did it very
+well too." Then she laughed. "Only it wasn't supposed to be double. You
+just kept going."
+
+"How do I get down?" Tel asked.
+
+"Arms straight," said Alter.
+
+Tel straightened his arms.
+
+"Put this hand over here." She patted the bar on the other side of his
+leg. Tel transferred his grip. "Now bring your leg off the bar." Tel
+hoisted his leg back so that he was supported by just his hands. "Now
+bend forward and roll over, slowly if you can." Tel rolled, felt the
+bar slip from where it was pressed against his waist, and a moment later
+his feet were brushing back and forth over the tar paper. He let go and
+rubbed his hands together. "Why didn't you tell me what I was gonna do?"
+
+"Because then you wouldn't have done it. Now that you know you can, the
+rest will be easier. You've got three stunts now in less than five
+minutes. The knee mount, back knee circle, and the forward dismount. And
+that was the best I've ever seen anybody do for a first try."
+
+"Thanks," said Tel. He looked back up at the horizontal bar. "You know,
+it feels real funny, doing that stuff. I mean you don't really do it.
+You do things and than it happens to you."
+
+"That's right," Alter said. "I hadn't thought of it like that Maybe
+that's why a good acrobat has to be a person who can sort of relax and
+just let things happen. You have to trust both your mind and your body."
+
+"Oh," said Tel. "I was looking for you when I came up here. I wanted to
+give you something."
+
+"Thank you," she smiled, brushing a shock of white hair from her
+forehead.
+
+"I hope it didn't get broken." He reached into his pocket and pulled out
+a handful of something sinewy; he had strung the shells on lengths of
+leather thong. There were three loops of leather, each longer than the
+one before, and the shells were spread apart and held in place by tiny
+knots. "Geryn gave me the thong, and I put it together this afternoon.
+It's a necklace, see?"
+
+She turned while he tied the ends behind her neck. Then she turned back
+to him, touching the green brilliance of one frail cornucopia, passing
+to the muted orange of another along the brown leather band. "Thank
+you," she said. "Thank you very much, Tel."
+
+"You want some fruit?" he said, picking up the globe and beginning to
+peel the rest of it.
+
+"All right," she said. He broke it open, gave her half, and they went to
+the edge of the roof and leaned on the balustrade, looking to the
+street below, then over the roofs of the other houses of the Devil's Pot
+and up to the darkening towers.
+
+"You know," Tel said. "I've got a problem."
+
+"No identification papers, no place to go. I should say you do."
+
+"Not like that," he said. "But that's part of it, I guess. I guess it's
+a large part of it. But not all."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I've got to figure out what I want. Here I am, in a new place, with no
+way to get anything for myself; I've got to figure a goal."
+
+"Look," said Alter, assuming the superiority of age and urban training,
+"I'm a year older than you, and I don't know where I'm going yet. But
+when I was your age, it occurred to me it would probably all take care
+of itself. All I had to do was ride it out. So that's what I've been
+doing, and I haven't been too unhappy. Maybe it's the difference between
+living here or on the seashore. But here you've got to spend a lot of
+time looking for the next meal. At least people like you and me have to.
+If you pay attention to that, you'll find yourself heading in the right
+direction soon enough. Whatever you're going to be, you're going to be,
+if you just give yourself half a chance."
+
+"Like a big acrobatic stunt, huh?" asked Tel. "You just do the right
+things and then it happens to you."
+
+"Like that," said Alter. "I guess so."
+
+"Maybe," said Tel. The kharba fruit was cool, sweet like honey, orange,
+and pineapple.
+
+A minute later someone was calling them. They turned from the balustrade
+and saw Geryn's white head poking from the trap door. "Come down," he
+demanded. "I've been looking all over for you. It's time."
+
+They followed him back to the first floor. Tel saw that the scarred
+giant was still sitting at the table, his hands folded into quiet
+hammers before him.
+
+"Now, everyone," Geryn called as he sat down at the table. Somewhat
+reluctantly people left the bar. Geryn dropped a sheaf of papers on the
+table. "Come around, everyone." The top sheet was covered with fine
+writing and careful architectural drawing. "Now this is the plan." So
+were the other sheets, when Geryn turned them over. "First, I'll divide
+you into groups."
+
+He looked at the giant across the table. "Arkor, you take the first
+group." He picked out six more men and three women. He turned to the
+white-haired girl now. "Alter, you'll be with the special group." He
+named six more people. Tel was among them. A third group was formed
+which Geryn himself was to lead. Arkor's group was for strong-arm work.
+Geryn's was for guard duty and to keep the way clear while the prince
+was being conveyed back to the inn. "The people in the special group
+already know what to do."
+
+"Sir," said Tel, "you haven't told me, yet."
+
+Geryn looked at him. "You have to get caught."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"You go past the guards, and make enough noise so that they catch you.
+Then, when they're occupied with you, we'll break in. Because you have
+no papers, they won't be able to trace you."
+
+"Am I supposed to stay caught?"
+
+"Of course not. You'll get away when we distract them."
+
+"Oh," said Tel. Geryn went back to the papers.
+
+As the plan was reviewed, Tel saw two things. First the completeness of
+the research, information, and attention to detail--habits of individual
+guards: one who left at the first sound of the change signal; another
+who waited a moment to exchange greetings with his replacement, a friend
+from his military academy days. Second, he saw its complexity. There
+were so many ins and outs, gears that had to mesh, movements to be timed
+within seconds, that Tel wondered if everything could possibly go right.
+
+While he was wondering, they were suddenly already on their way, each
+one with a bit of the plan fixed firmly in his mind, no one with too
+clear a picture of the entire device. The groups were to split into
+subgroups of two or three, then reconvene at appointed spots around the
+castle. Tel and Alter found themselves walking through the city with
+the giant. Occasional street lights wheeled their shadows over the
+cracked pavement.
+
+"You're from the forest, aren't you?" Tel finally asked the giant.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Why did you come here?" Tel asked, trying to make conversation as they
+walked.
+
+"I wanted to see the city," he said, raising his hand to his scars with
+a small chuckle. After that, he said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Prime Minister Chargill took his evening constitutional along the
+usually deserted Avenue of the Oyster at about this time every night.
+Prime Minister Chargill always carried on him a complete set of keys to
+the private suites of the royal family. This evening, however, a drunk
+in rags reeled out of a side street and collided with the old man. A
+moment later, making profuse apologies, he backed away, ducking his
+head, his hands behind his back. When the drunk returned to the side
+street, his weaving gait ceased, his hand came from behind his back, and
+in it was a complete set of keys to the private suites of the royal
+family.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The guard who was in charge of checking the alarm system loved flowers.
+He could--(and had been)--observed going to the florist's at least once
+a week on his time off. So when the old woman with a tray of scarlet
+anemones came by and offered them for his perusal, it is not surprising
+that he lowered his head over the tray and filled his lungs with that
+strange, pungent smell somewhere between orange rind and the sea wind.
+Forty-seven seconds later, he yawned. Fourteen seconds after that, he
+was sitting on the ground, his head hung forward, snoring. Through the
+gate two figures could be seen at the alarm box ... had anyone been
+there to look.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At another entrance to the castle, two guards converged on a
+fourteen-year-old boy with black hair and green eyes who was trying to
+climb the fence.
+
+"Hey, get down from there! All right, come on. Where're your papers?
+What do you mean you don't have any? Come on with us. Get the camera
+out, Jo. We'll have to photograph him and send the picture to Chief
+Records Headquarters. They'll tell us who you are, kid. Now hold still."
+
+Behind them, a sudden white-haired figure was out of the shadows and
+over the gate in a moment. The guards did not see her.
+
+"Hold still now, kid, while I get your retina pattern."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on a bunch of rowdies, led by a giant, started to raise hell
+around the palace. They hadn't even gotten the kid to the guard house
+yet, but somehow in the confusion the boy got away. One guard, who wore
+a size seventeen uniform was knocked unconscious, but no one else was
+hurt. They dispersed the rowdies, carried the guard to the infirmary,
+and left. The doctor saw him in the waiting room, then left him there
+momentarily to look for an accident report slip in the supply room at
+the other side of the building. (He could have sworn that a whole pad of
+them had been lying on the desk when he'd stepped out for a bit ten
+minutes ago.) When the doctor returned with the slip the soldier was
+still there--only he was stark naked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A minute later, an unfamiliar guard, wearing a size seventeen uniform,
+saluted the guard at the gate, and marched in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two strange men behind the gate flung a cord with a weight on one end
+over a third story cornice. They missed once, then secured it the second
+time and left it hanging there.
+
+A guard wearing a size seventeen uniform came down the hall of the west
+wing of the castle, stopped before a large double door on which was a
+silver crown, indicating the room of the Queen Mother; he took a
+complete set of keys to the private suites of the royal family from his
+cloak, and locked her Majesty firmly in her room. At the next door, he
+locked Prince Let securely in his. Then he went rapidly on.
+
+Tel ran till he got to the corner, rounded it, and checked the street
+sign. It was correct. So he went to a doorway and sat down to wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the same time, Prince Let, getting ready for bed and wearing nothing
+but his undershirt, looked out the window and saw a girl with white hair
+hanging head down outside the shutter. He stood very still The upside
+down face smiled at him. Then the hands converged at the window lock,
+did something, and the two glass panels came open. The girl rolled over
+once, turned quickly, and suddenly she was crouching on the window
+ledge.
+
+Let snatched up his pajama bottoms first, and ran to the door second.
+When he couldn't open it, he whirled around and pulled on his pajama
+pants.
+
+Alter put her finger to her lips as she stepped down into his room.
+"Keep quiet," she whispered. "And relax," she added. "The Duchess of
+Petra sent me. More or less." She had been instructed to use that name
+to calm the prince. It seemed to work a trifle.
+
+"Look," explained Alter, "you're being kidnapped. It's for your own
+good, believe me." She watched the blond boy come away from the door.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.
+
+"I'm a friend of yours if you'll let me be."
+
+"Where are you going to take me?"
+
+"You're going to go on a trip. But you'll come back, eventually."
+
+"What has my mother said?"
+
+"Your mother doesn't know. Nobody knows except you and the Duchess, and
+the few people who're helping her."
+
+Let appeared to be thinking. He walked over to his bed, sat down, and
+pressed his heel against the side board. There was a tiny click. Nothing
+else happened. "Why won't they open the door?" he asked.
+
+"It's been locked," Alter said. Suddenly she looked at the clock beside
+the Prince's bed, and turned to the window. Light from the crystal
+chandelier caught on the shells that were strung on leather thongs
+around her neck as she turned.
+
+Let put his hand quietly on the newel post of his bed and pressed his
+thumb hard on the purple garnet that encrusted the crowning ornamental
+dolphin. Nothing happened except a tiny click.
+
+At the window, Alter reached out her hand, just as a bundle appeared
+outside on a lowered rope. She pulled them in, untied them, and shook
+them out as the rope suddenly flew out the window again. "Here," she
+said. "Get into these." It was a suit of rags. She tossed them to him.
+
+Finally Let slipped out of his pajama pants and into the suit.
+
+"Now look in your pocket," Alter said.
+
+The boy did and took out a bunch of keys.
+
+"You can open the door with those," Alter said. "Go on."
+
+Let paused, then went to the door. Before he put the key in the lock
+though, he bent down and looked through the keyhole. "Hey," he said,
+looking back at the girl. "Come here. Do you see anything?"
+
+Alter crossed the room, bent down, and looked. The only motion Let made
+was to lean against one of the panels on the wall, which gave a slight
+click. Nothing happened.
+
+"I don't see anything," Alter said. "Open the door."
+
+Let found the proper key, put it in the lock, and the door swung back.
+
+"All right, you kids," said the guard who was standing on the other side
+of the door (who incidentally wore a size seventeen uniform), "you come
+along with me." He took Let firmly by one arm and Alter by the other and
+marched them down the hall. "I'm warning you to keep quiet," the guard
+said to Let as they turned the last corner.
+
+Three minutes later they were outside the castle. As the guard passed
+another uniformed man at the Sentry's post, he said, "More stupid kids
+trying to break into the palace."
+
+"What a night," said the guard and scratched his head. "A girl too?"
+
+"Looks like it," said the guard who was escorting Alter and the Prince.
+"I'm taking them to be photographed."
+
+"Sure," answered the guard, and saluted.
+
+The two children were marched down the street toward the guard house.
+Before they got there, they were turned off into a side street. Then
+suddenly the guard was gone. A black-haired boy with green eyes was
+coming toward them.
+
+"Is this the Prince?" Tel asked.
+
+"Un-huh," said Alter.
+
+"Who are you?" Let asked. "Where are you taking me?"
+
+"My name is Tel. I'm a fisherman's son."
+
+"My name is Alter," Alter introduced herself.
+
+"She's an acrobat," Tel added.
+
+"I'm the Prince," Let said. "Really. I'm Prince Let."
+
+The two others looked at the blond boy who stood in front of them in
+rags like their own. Suddenly they laughed. The Prince frowned. "Where
+are you taking me?" he asked again.
+
+"We're taking you to get something to eat and where you can get a good
+night's sleep," Alter answered. "Come on."
+
+"If you hurt me, my mother will put you in jail."
+
+"Nobody's going to hurt you, silly," Tel said. "Come on."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The Duchess of Petra said, "Now, your first direct assignment will
+be ..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, the sudden green of beetles' wings; the red of polished carbuncle;
+a web of silver fire; lightning and blue smoke. Columns of jade caught
+red light through the great crack in the roof. The light across the
+floor was red. Jon felt that there were others with him, but he could
+not be sure. Before him, on a stone platform, three marble crescents
+were filled with pulsating shadows. Jon Koshar looked at them, and then
+away. There were many more columns, most broken.
+
+He saw a huge break in the sanctuary wall. Outside he could look down on
+an immense red plain. At a scribed line, the plain changed color to an
+even more luminous red. Near the temple a few geometrical buildings cast
+maroon pinions of shadow over the russet expanse. Suddenly he realized
+that the further half of the plain was an immense red sea, yet with a
+perfectly straight shore line. Calmly it rippled toward the bright
+horizon.
+
+At the horizon, filling up nearly a quarter of the sky, was what seemed
+to be a completely rounded mountain of dull red. No, it was a segment of
+a huge red disk, a great dull sun lipping the horizon of the planet. Yet
+it was dim enough so that he could stare directly at it without
+blinking. Above it, the atmosphere was a rich purple.
+
+Then there was a voice from behind him, and he turned to the triple
+throne once more.
+
+"Hail, hosts of Earth," the voice began. The very shadows of the room
+were like red bruises on the stone. "You are in the halls of an extinct
+city on Creton III. Twelve million years ago this planet housed a
+civilization higher than yours today. Now it is dead, and only we are
+left, sitting on their thrones in the twilight of their dying, ruddy
+sun."
+
+"Who are you?" demanded Jon, but his voice sounded strange, distorted.
+As he bit the last word off, another voice broke in.
+
+"What do you really want from us?"
+
+Then a third voice.
+
+"What are you going to do with us?"
+
+Jon looked around but saw no one else. Suddenly another picture, the
+picture of a world of white desert where the sky was deep blue and each
+object cast double shadows, filled his mind. "This isn't the world you
+took me to before ..." he exclaimed.
+
+"No," came the quiet voice, "this is not the world we took you to
+before. Listen. We are homeless wanderers of space. Our origin was not
+only in another galaxy, but in another universe, eternities ago. By way
+of this universe we can move from star to star without transversing any
+segment of time, unless we desire. Thus we have dwelt quietly in the
+dead cities of myriad suns till now. We have never tampered with any
+living species, though there is something in us that yearns for the
+extinct cultures.
+
+"Recently according to our standards, though still much older than your
+solar system, a dark force has come into the universe. It has evolved
+similarly to us, and also leaps among galaxies in moments. Yet it holds
+no culture sacred that it finds, and has already tampered with a score
+of civilizations. It is younger than we are, and can only exist in one
+individual at a time, while our entity has three lobes, so to speak.
+This rival thinks nothing of completely changing the mind of its host,
+giving deadly information, even new powers. We are bound only to ride
+with your minds, warn you, guide you, but changing your body before your
+minds, and that only to keep you from death. So it will be your own
+greed, your own selflessness that will eventually win or lose this
+battle. Therefore it will be won or lost within the framework of your
+own civilization."
+
+"Then tell us this," came a voice that was not Jon's. "What is on the
+other side of the radiation barrier?"
+
+"But we have told you already. And you have guessed. Toromon is at war
+with an economic condition. Beyond the barrier is a civilization which
+is controlled by the Lord of the Flames. He is only in one member of
+their number, and any time he may move to another, although it is not
+likely."
+
+"Are they our enemies?"
+
+"Your only enemies are yourselves. But he must be evicted none the less.
+To do that, all you must do is confront the individual who is bearing
+him, the three of you together. But you must all be within seeing
+distance of him at once. For we work through your minds. What you cannot
+perceive, we cannot affect."
+
+"How will we do this?"
+
+"One of you has already been made immune to the radiation barrier. So
+will the rest of you when it becomes necessary. This is what you will do
+for us, and it will also remove the threatening element of the unknown
+that distracts Toromon from her own problems."
+
+"But why our planet?" a voice asked.
+
+"Yours is an ideal experimenting ground. Because of the Great Fire, your
+planet has many civilizations that are now completely isolated from one
+another; many, however, are on a fairly high level. The radiation
+barriers that lace your planet will keep you isolated from them for some
+time. When the Lord of the Flames is finished with one empire, he may
+wish to try a different method on a basically similar civilization. For
+all your isolated empires had the same base. Marinor, Letpar, Calcivon,
+Aptor--these are all empires on your planet of which you have never
+heard. But your first concern is Toromon."
+
+"Will we remember all this?" Jon asked.
+
+"You will remember enough. Good-bye; you know your task." The red haze
+in the deserted temple pulsed and the jade columns flickered. Hands of
+blue smoke caught him and flung him through a lightning flash. Whirled
+through a net of silver, he dropped through red into the vivid green of
+beetles' wings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jon blinked. The Duchess took a step backwards. The green carpet, the
+rich wood-paneled walls, the glass-covered desk: they were in a sitting
+room of his father's house, again.
+
+Finally Jon asked, "Now just what am I supposed to do, again? And
+explain it very carefully."
+
+"I was going to say," said the Duchess, "that you were to get to the
+Prince, who is being kept at an inn in the Devil's Pot, and accompany
+him to the forest people. I want him to stay there until this war is
+over. They live a different life from any of the other people of this
+empire. They will give him something he'll be able to use. I told you I
+spent some time there when I was younger. I can't explain exactly what
+it is, but it's a certain ruggedness, a certain strength. Maybe they
+won't give it to him, but if he's got it in him, they'll bring it out."
+
+"What about ... the Lord of the Flames?"
+
+"I don't--do you have any idea, Jon?"
+
+"Well, assuming we get beyond the radiation barrier, assuming we find
+what people we're fighting, assuming we find which one of them is
+carrying around the Lord of the Flames, and assuming we can all three of
+us get to him at once--assuming all that, there's no problem. But we
+can't, can we? Look, I'll be going to the forest, so I'll be closest to
+the radiation barrier. I'll try to get through, see what the situation
+is, and then the two of you can come on. All right?"
+
+"Fine."
+
+"If nothing else, it'll put me closer to the Lord of the Flames ... and
+my freedom."
+
+"How are you not free now, Jon Koshar?" the Duchess asked.
+
+Instead of answering, he said, "Give me the address of the inn at the
+Devil's Pot."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Going down the hall, with the address, Jon increased his pace. His mind
+carried an alien mind that had saved him from death once already. How
+could he be free? The ... obligation? That couldn't be the word.
+
+Around the corner he heard a voice. "And now would you please explain it
+to me? It's not every day that I'm called on to declare war. I think I
+did it rather eloquently. Now tell my why."
+
+(Jon remembered the trick of acoustics which as a child enabled him to
+stand in this spot and overhear his sister and her girlfriends'
+conversation just as they came into the house.)
+
+"It's your brother," came the other voice. "He's been kidnaped."
+
+"He's been what?" asked the King. "And why? And by whom?"
+
+"We don't know," answered the official. "But the council thought it was
+best to get you to declare war."
+
+"Oh," said the King. "So that's why I made that little speech in there.
+What does mother say?"
+
+"It wouldn't be polite to repeat, sir. She was locked in her room, and
+very insulted."
+
+"She would be," said Uske. "So, the enemy has infiltrated and gotten my
+silly brother."
+
+"Well," said the voice, "they can't be sure. But what with the planes
+this morning, they thought it was best."
+
+"Oh, well," said the King. There were footsteps. Then silence.
+
+Coming round the corner, Jon saw the coat closet was ajar. He opened the
+door, took out a great cape and hood, and wrapped it around him, pulling
+the hood close over his head. He stepped into the foyer and went out
+past the doorman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the edge of the Devil's Pot, the woman with the birthmark on the left
+side of her face was tapping a cane and holding out a tin cup. She had
+put on a pair of dark glasses and wandered up one street and down
+another. "Money for a poor blind woman," she said in a whiny voice.
+"Money for the blind." As a coin clinked into her cup, she nodded,
+smiled, and said, "Welcome to the New World. Good luck in the Island of
+Opportunity."
+
+The man who had given her the coin walked a step, and then turned back.
+"Hey," he said to Rara. "If you're blind, how do you know I'm new here?"
+
+"Strangers are generous," Rara explained, "while those who live here are
+too frozen to give."
+
+"Look," said the man, "I was told to watch out for blind beggars who
+weren't blind. My cousin, he warned me ..."
+
+"Not blind!" cried Rara. "Not blind? Why my license is right here. It
+permits me to beg in specified areas because of loss of sight. If you
+keep this up, I'll be obliged to show it to you." She turned away with a
+huff and began in another direction. The man scratched his head, then
+hurried off.
+
+A few moments later, a man completely swathed in a gray cloak and hood
+came around the corner and stopped in front of the woman.
+
+"Money for the blind?"
+
+"Can you use this?" the man said. From his cloak he held out a brocade
+jacket, covered with fine metal work.
+
+"Of course," said Rara softly. Then she coughed. "Er ... what is it?"
+
+"It's a jacket," Jon said. "It's made pretty well. Maybe you can sell
+it?"
+
+"Oh, thank you. Thank you, sir."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few blocks later, a ragged boy, who looked completely amazed, was
+handed a white silk shirt by the man in the gray cloak. In front of a
+doorway two blocks on, a pair of open-toed black boots with gold disks
+were left--and stolen from that doorway exactly forty seconds later by a
+hairdresser who was returning to her home in Devil's Pot. She was
+missing the little finger of her left hand. Once the gray cloaked figure
+paused in an alley beneath a clothes line. Suddenly he flung up a ball
+of gray cloth, which caught on the line, unrolled, and became
+identifiable as a pair of dark gray trousers. A block later the last
+minor articles of clothing were hurled unceremoniously through an open
+window. As Jon turned another corner, he glimpsed a figure ducking into
+a doorway down the dim street. The man was apparently following him.
+
+Jon walked very slowly down the next block, ambling along in the shadow.
+The hoodlum crept up behind him, then grabbed his cloak, ripped it away,
+and leaped forward.
+
+Only there wasn't anything there. The mugger stood for a moment, the
+cape dangling from his hand, blinking at the place a man should have
+been. Then something hit him in the jaw. He staggered back. Something
+else hit him in the stomach. As he stumbled forward now, beneath the
+street lamp, a transparent human figure suddenly formed in front of him.
+Then it planted its quite substantial fist into his jaw again, and he
+went back, down, and out.
+
+Jon dragged the man back to the side of the alley, fading out completely
+as he did so. Then he took the hoodlum's clothes, which were ragged,
+smelly, and painfully nondescript. The shoes, which were too small for
+him, he had to leave off. Then he flung the cape back around his
+shoulders and pulled the hood over his head.
+
+For the next six blocks he was lost because there were no street signs.
+When he did find the next one, he realized he was only a block away from
+the inn.
+
+As he reached the stone building, he heard a thud in the tiny alleyway
+beside it. A moment later a girl's voice called softly, "There. Just
+like that. Only you better do exactly as I say or you'll break your arms
+or legs, or back."
+
+He walked to the edge of the building and peered into the alley.
+
+Her white hair loose, Alter stood looking up at the roof. "All right,
+Tel," she called. "You next."
+
+Something came down from the roof, flipped over on the ground at her
+feet, rolled away, and then suddenly unwound to standing position. The
+black-haired boy ran his fingers through his hair. "Wow," he said. Then
+he shook his head. "Wow."
+
+"Are you all right?" Alter asked. "You didn't pull anything, did you?"
+
+"No," he said. "I'm all right. I think. Yeah, everything's in place." He
+looked up at the roof again, two stories above.
+
+"Your turn, Let," Alter called up.
+
+"It's high," came a childish voice from the roof.
+
+"Hurry up," said Alter, her voice becoming authoritative. "When I count
+three. And remember, knees up, chin down, and roll quick. One, two,
+three!" There was the space of a breath, and then it fell, rolled,
+bounced unsteadily to its feet, and resolved into another boy, this one
+blond, and slighter than the first.
+
+"Hey, you kids," Jon said.
+
+They turned.
+
+Jon looked at the smaller boy. His slight blond frame, less substantial
+then even Alter's white-haired loveliness was definitely of the royal
+family. "What are you doing out here, anyway?" Jon asked. "Especially
+you, your Highness."
+
+All three children jumped.
+
+It looked like they might balk, and after that descent from the roof, he
+wasn't sure where they might balk to. So he said, "Incidentally, the
+Duchess of Petra sent me. How did you do that fall?"
+
+His Highness was the only one to relax appreciably.
+
+"And are you sure you're supposed to be outside?"
+
+"We were supposed to stay on the top floor," Tel said. "But him," he
+pointed to his ragged Highness, "he got restless, and we started telling
+him about the tricks, and so we went up to the roof, and Alter said she
+could get us down."
+
+"Can you get them back up?" Jon asked.
+
+"Sure," said Alter, "all we do is climb ..."
+
+Jon held up his hand. "Wait a minute," he said. "We'll go inside and
+talk to the man in charge. Don't worry. No one'll be mad."
+
+"You mean talk to Geryn?" said Alter.
+
+"I guess that's what his name is."
+
+They started back out of the alley. "Tell me," Jon said, "just what sort
+of person is Geryn?"
+
+"He's a strange old man. He talks to himself all the time," said Alter.
+"But he's smart."
+
+Talks to himself, Jon reflected, and nodded. When they reached the door
+of the inn, Jon pulled his cape off and stepped into the light. A few
+people at the bar turned around, and when they saw the children, they
+looked askance at one another.
+
+"Geryn's probably upstairs," Alter said. They went to the second floor.
+Jon let the children go ahead of him as they passed into the shadow of
+the hall. He only stepped up to them when Alter pushed open the door at
+the end of the hall and bright light from Geryn's room fell full across
+them.
+
+"What is it?" Geryn snapped. And then, "What is it, quick?" He whirled
+around in the chair at the rough wooden desk when they entered. The
+giant was standing by the window. Geryn's gray eyes fidgeted back and
+forth. Finally he said, "Why are you out here? And who is he? What do
+you want?"
+
+"I'm from the Duchess of Petra," Jon said. "I've come to take Let to the
+forest people."
+
+"Yes," said the old man. "Yes." Then suddenly his face twisted as if he
+were trying to remember something. Then shook his head. "Yes." Suddenly
+he stood up. "Well, go on. I've done my part, I tell you. I've done.
+Every minute he's in my house he endangers my boarders, my friends. Take
+him. Go on."
+
+The giant turned from the window. "I am to go with you. My name is
+Arkor."
+
+Jon frowned. For the first time the scarred giant's height struck him.
+"Why...?" he started.
+
+"It is my country that we go to," said Arkor. "I know how to get there.
+I can take you through it. Geryn says it is part of the plan."
+
+Jon felt a sudden knot of resentment tighten inside him. These
+plans--the Duchess', Geryn's, even the plans of the triple beings who
+inhabited them--they trapped him. Freedom. The word went in and out of
+his mind like a shadow. He said, "When do we go then, if you know how to
+get there?"
+
+"In the morning," said Arkor.
+
+"Alter, take him to a room. Get him out of here. Quick. Go on." They
+backed from the room and Alter hurried them up the hall.
+
+Jon was thinking. After delivering Let to the forest people, he was
+going further. Yes. He would go on, try to get through the radiation
+barrier. But all three of them had to get through if they were to do any
+good. So why wasn't Geryn coming instead of sending the giant? If Geryn
+came, then there'd be two people near the Lord of the Flames. But Geryn
+was old. Maybe the Duchess could bring him with her when she came.
+Mentally he smashed a fist into his thoughts and scattered them. Don't
+think. Don't think. Thinking binds up your mind, and you can never be--
+He stopped. Then another thought wormed into his skull, the thought of
+five years of glittering hunger.
+
+That night he slept well. Morning pried his eyes open with blades of
+light that fell through the window. It was very early. He had been up
+only a minute when there was a knock on his door. Then it opened, and
+Arkor directed the dwarfed form of the Prince into Jon's room, then
+turned and left.
+
+"He says to meet him downstairs in five minutes," Let said.
+
+"Sure," said Jon. He finished buttoning up the ragged shirt stolen from
+the mugger the night before, and looked at the boy by the door. "I guess
+you're not used to these sort of clothes," he said. "Once I wasn't
+either. Pretty soon they begin to take."
+
+"Huh?" said Let. Then, "Oh."
+
+"Is something wrong?"
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+Jon thought for a moment. "Well," he said. "I'm sort of a friend of your
+brother. An acquaintance, anyway. I'm supposed to take you to the
+forest."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You'll be safe there."
+
+"Could we go to the sea instead?"
+
+"My turn for a 'why'?" Jon asked.
+
+"Because Tel told me all about it last night. He said it was fun. He
+said there were rocks all different colors. And in the morning, he said,
+you can see the sun come up like a burning blister behind the water. He
+told me about the boats, too. I'd like to work on a boat. I really
+would. They don't allow me to do anything at home. Mother says I might
+get hurt. Will I get a chance to work someplace?"
+
+"Maybe," Jon said.
+
+"Tel had some good stories about fishing. Do you know any stories?"
+
+"I don't know," Jon said. "I never tried telling any. Hey, come on. We
+better get started."
+
+"I like stories," Let said. "Come on. I'm just trying to be friendly."
+
+Jon laughed, then thought a minute. "I can tell you a story, about a
+prison mine. Do you know anything about the prison mines beyond the
+forest?"
+
+"Some," said Let.
+
+"Well, once upon a time, there were three prisoners in that prison
+camp." They started out in the hall. "They'd been there a long time,
+and they wanted to get out. One was ... well, he looked like me, let's
+pretend. Another had a limp ..."
+
+"And the third one was chubby, sort of," interrupted Let. "I know that
+story."
+
+"You do?" asked Jon.
+
+"Sure," Let said.
+
+"Then you go on and tell it." Jon was a little annoyed.
+
+Let told it to him.
+
+They were outside waiting for Arkor when the boy finished. "See," Let
+said. "I told you I knew it."
+
+"Yeah," said Jon quietly. He stood very still. "You say the other
+two ... didn't make it?"
+
+"That's right," Let said. "The guards brought them back and dumped their
+bodies in the mud so that ..."
+
+"Shut up," Jon said.
+
+"Huh?" asked Let.
+
+He was quiet for a few breaths. "Who told you that ... story?"
+
+"Petra," Let answered. "She told it to me. It's a good story, huh?"
+
+"Incidentally," Jon said. "I'm the one that got away."
+
+"You mean?" The boy stopped. "You mean it really happened?"
+
+The early light warmed the deserted street now as Arkor came to the door
+of the inn and stepped into the street.
+
+"All right," he said. "Come on."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The news service of Toromon in the city of Toron was a public address
+system that flooded the downtown area, and a special printed sheet that
+was circulated among the upper families of the city. On the mainland it
+was a fairly accurate brigade of men and women who transported news
+orally from settlement to settlement. All announced simultaneously that
+morning:
+
+    CROWN PRINCE KIDNAPED
+    KING DECLARES WAR!
+
+In the military ministry, directives were issued in duplicate and
+redelivered in triplicate. At eight-forty, the 27B Communications Sector
+became hopelessly snarled. This resulted in the shipment of a boatload
+of prefabricated barracks foundations to a port on the mainland
+sixty-two miles from the intended destination.
+
+Let, Jon, and Arkor were just mounting the private yacht of the Duchess
+of Petra which was waiting for them at the end of the harbor. Later, as
+the island of Toron slipped across the water, Let mentioned to Jon,
+leaning against the railing, that there was an awful lot of commotion on
+the docks.
+
+"It's always like that," Jon told him, remembering the time he'd gone
+with his father in the morning to the pier. "They're inspecting cargoes.
+But it does look awfully busy."
+
+Which was a euphemism. One group of military directives which had been
+quite speedily and accurately delivered were the offers of contracts,
+primarily for food, and secondarily for equipment. Two of the
+distributors of imported fish who had absolutely no chance of receiving
+the contracts sent in a bid accompanied by a letter which explained
+(with completely fraudulent statistics) how much cheaper it would be to
+use imported fish rather than those from the aquariums. Then they
+commandeered a group of ruffians who broke into the house of old
+Koshar's personal secretary, who was still sleeping after the previous
+night's party which he had helped out with. (So far he has appeared in
+this story only as a hand seen around the edge of a storage cabinet
+door, a broad hand, with wiry black hair, on which there was a cheap,
+wide, brass ring in which was set an irregular shape of blue glass.)
+
+They tied him to a chair, punched him in the stomach, and in the head,
+and in the mouth until there was blood running down his trimmed, black
+beard; and he had given the information they wanted--information that
+enabled them to sink three of the Koshar cargo fleet that was just
+coming into dock.
+
+The Duchess' private yacht made contact with a tetron-tramp returning to
+the mainland and Let, Jon, and Arkor changed ships. Coming from the
+yacht in bare feet and rags gave them an incongruous appearance. But on
+the tramp, among those passengers who were returning for their families,
+they quickly became lost.
+
+On Toron, the pilot of the shuttle boat that took workers from the city
+to the aquariums found a clumsily put-together, but nevertheless
+unmistakable, bomb hidden in the lavatory. It was dismantled. There was
+no accident. But an authority, Vice-Supervisor Nitum of Koshar Synthetic
+Food Concerns (whose name you do not need to remember, as he was killed
+three days later in a street brawl) clenched his jaw (unshaven; he had
+been called to the office a half an hour early over the sunken cargo
+boats), nodded his head, and issued a few non-official directives
+himself. Twenty minutes later, Koshar Synthetic Food Concerns was
+officially given the government contract to supply the armies of Toromon
+with food. Because the two rival bidders, the import merchants, had
+ceased to exist about twelve minutes previously, having suddenly been
+denied warehouse space, and their complete storage dumped into the
+streets to rot (nearly seven tons of frozen fish) because the
+refrigeration lockers, and the refrigeration buildings, and the
+refrigeration trucks had all been rented from Rahsok Refrigeration, and
+nobody had ever thought of spelling Rahsok backwards.
+
+In the military ministry, Captain Clemen, along with Major Tomar, was
+called away from his present job of completing the evacuation of the top
+four floors of an adjacent office building to accommodate the new corps
+of engineers, mathematicians, and physicists that the army had just
+enlisted. Apparently riots had started in the streets around the old
+Rahsok Refrigeration Houses. The warehouses were just a few blocks away
+from the official boundary of the Devil's Pot.
+
+They got there ten minutes after the report came in. "What the hell is
+going on?" Clemen demanded, from the head of the City Dispersal Squad.
+Behind the line of uniformed men, masses of people were pushing and
+calling out. "And what's that stench?" added Clemen. He was a tiny man,
+exactly a quarter of an inch over the minimum for military
+acceptance--4' 10".
+
+"Fish, sir," the Dispersal Chief told him. "There's tons of it all over
+the street. The people are trying to take it away."
+
+"Well, let them have it," Clemen said. "It'll clear the streets of the
+mess and maybe do some good."
+
+"You don't understand, sir," the head of Dispersal explained. "It's been
+poisoned. Just before it was dumped, it was soaked with buckets of
+barbitide. Half a ton of the stuff's already been carried away."
+
+Clemen turned. "Tomar," he said. "You get back to headquarters and see
+personally that a city-wide announcement goes out telling about the
+poisoned fish. Call General Medical, find out the antidote, and get the
+information all over the city. See to it personally, too."
+
+Tomar got back to headquarters, got General Medical, got the antidote,
+which was expensive, complicated, and long, and drafted his
+announcement.
+
+     WARNING! Any citizen who has taken fish from the street in the area
+     of Rahsok Refrigeration is in immediate danger of death. The fish
+     has been treated with the fatal poison barbitide. No fish other
+     than that directly traceable to the Synthetic Markets should be
+     eaten. WARN YOUR NEIGHBORS! If fish has been eaten, go directly to
+     the General Medical building (address followed). Symptoms of
+     barbitide poisoning: intense cramps about two hours after
+     ingestion, followed by nausea, fever, and swollen lymph nodes.
+     Death results in twenty minutes after onset of cramps under normal
+     conditions. Foods with high calcium contents prolong spasms to a
+     maximum hour and a half (foods such as milk, ground egg shell).
+     General Medical has been alerted. There you will receive injections
+     of Calcium Silicate and Atropayic Acid which can counteract the
+     effects of the poison up until the last five or ten minutes.
+
+Tomar personally sent the directive through Communications Center 27B,
+marked urgent and emergency. Ten minutes later he received a visiphone
+call from the Communications Engineer saying that 27B had been
+hopelessly snarled all morning. In fact so had 26B, 25B. In further
+fact, said the engineer, the only available sectors open were 34A and
+42A, none of which, incidentally, had access to complete city lines.
+
+Tomar made a triplicate copy of the warning and sent it out,
+nonetheless, through Sectors 40A, 41A, and 42A. A half an hour later the
+secretary to the Communications Engineer called and said, "Major Tomar,
+I'm sorry, I just got back from my break and I didn't see your message
+until just now. Because of the tie-ups, we've received instructions only
+to let authorized persons have access to the available sectors."
+
+"Well, who the hell is authorized," Tomar bellowed. "If you don't put
+that through and quick, half the city may be dead by this evening."
+
+The secretary paused a minute. Then he said, "I'm sorry, sir, but ...
+well, look. I'll give it directly to the Communications Engineer when he
+gets back."
+
+"When is he getting back?" Tomar demanded.
+
+"I ... I don't know."
+
+"Who is authorized?"
+
+"Only generals, sir, and only those directly concerned with the war
+effort."
+
+"I see," Tomar said, and hung up.
+
+He had just dispatched seven copies of the announcement with an
+explanatory note to seven of the fourteen generals in the ministry when
+the Communications Engineer called again. "Major, what's all this about
+a bushel of fish?"
+
+"Look, there are seven tons of the stuff all over the streets."
+
+"And poisoned?"
+
+"Exactly. Will you please see that this message gets out over every
+available piece of city-wide communication as fast as possible? This is
+really life and death."
+
+"We're just allowed to work on getting war messages through. But I guess
+this takes priority. Oh, that explains some of the messages we've been
+getting. I believe there's even one for you."
+
+"Well?" asked Tomar after a pause.
+
+"I'm not allowed to deliver it, sir."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You're not authorized, sir."
+
+"Look, damn it, get it right now and read it to me."
+
+"Well ... er ... it's right here sir. It's from the chief of the City
+Dispersal Squad."
+
+The message was, in brief, that twenty-three men, among them Captain
+Clemen, had been trampled to death by an estimated two and a half
+thousand hungry residents of the Devil's Pot, most of them immigrants
+from the mainland.
+
+A ton and a half of fish was finally removed from the streets and
+disposed of. But five and a half tons had made its way through the city.
+The Communications Engineer also added that while they'd been talking, a
+memorandum had come through that Sectors 34A to 42A were now out of
+commission, but that the major should try 27B again, because it might
+have cleared up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The second shift of workers that day was arriving at the aquariums. In
+the great pontooned building, vast rows of transparent plastic tubes,
+three feet in diameter, webbed back and forth among the tetron pumps.
+Vibrator nets cut the tubes into twenty-foot compartments. Catwalks
+strung the six-story structure, all flooded with deep red light that
+came from the phosphor-rods that stuck up from the pumps. Light toward
+the blue end of the spectrum disturbed the fish, who had to be visible
+at all times, to be moved, or to be checked for any sickness or
+deformity. In their transparent tubes, the fish floated in a state near
+suspended animation, vibrated gently, were kept at a constant 82°, were
+fed, were fattened, were sorted according to age, size, and species;
+then slaughtered. The second shift of workers moved into the aquarium,
+relieving the first shift.
+
+They had been on about two hours when a sweating hulk of a man who was
+an assistant feeder reported to the infirmary, complaining of general
+grogginess. Heat prostration was an occasional complaint in the
+aquarium.
+
+The doctor told him to lie down for a little while. Five minutes later
+he went into violent cramps. Perhaps the proper attention would have
+been paid to him had not a few minutes later a woman fallen from a
+catwalk at the top of the aquarium and broken one of the plastic
+arteries and her skull, six stories below.
+
+In the red light the workers gathered around her broken body that lay at
+the end of a jagged plastic tube. In the spread water, dozens of fish,
+fat and ruddy-skinned, flapped their gills weakly.
+
+The woman's co-workers said she had complained of not feeling well, when
+suddenly she went into convulsions while crossing one of the catwalks.
+By the time the doctor got back to the infirmary, the assistant feeder
+had developed a raging fever, and the nurse reported him violently
+nauseated. Then he died.
+
+In the next two hours, out of the five thousand two hundred and eighty
+people who worked at the aquariums, three hundred and eighty-seven were
+taken with cramps and died in the next two hours, the only exception
+being an oddball physical culture enthusiast who always drank two quarts
+of milk for lunch; he lasted long enough to be gotten onto the shuttle
+and back to General Medical on Toron, where he died six minutes after
+admittance, one hour and seventeen minutes after the onset of the
+cramps. That was the first case that General Medical actually received.
+It was not until the sixteenth case that the final diagnosis of
+barbitide poisoning was arrived at. Then someone remembered the query
+that had come in by phone from the military ministry that morning about
+the antidote.
+
+"Somehow," said Chief Toxologist Oona, "the stuff has gotten into some
+food or other. It may be all over the city." Then he sat down at his
+desk and drafted a warning to the citizens of Toron containing a
+description of the effects of barbitide poisoning, antidote, and
+instructions to come to the General Medical building, along with a
+comment on high calcium foods. "Send this to the Military Ministry and
+get it out over every available source of public communications, and
+quick," he told his secretary.
+
+When the Assistant Communications Engineer (the first having gone off
+duty at three o'clock) received the message, he didn't even bother to
+see who it was from, but balled it up in disgust and flung it into a
+wastepaper basket and mumbled something about unauthorized messages. Had
+the janitor bothered to count that evening, he would have discovered
+that there were now thirty-six copies of Major Tomar's directive in
+various wastebaskets around the ministry.
+
+Only a fraction of the barbitide victims made it to General Medical, but
+the doctors were busy. There was just one extraordinary incident, and
+among the screams of cramped patients, it was not given much thought.
+Two men near the beginning of the rush of patients, gained access to the
+special receiving room. They managed to get a look at all the women who
+arrived. One of the patients who was wheeled by them was a particularly
+striking girl of about fifteen with snow white hair and a strong, lithe
+body, now knotted with cramps. Sweat beaded her forehead, her eyelids,
+and through her open collar you could see she wore a leather necklace of
+shells.
+
+"That's her," one of the men said. The other nodded, then went to the
+doctor who was administering the injections, and whispered to him.
+
+"Of course not," the doctor said indignantly in a clear voice. "Patients
+need at least forty-eight hours rest and careful observation after
+injection of the antidotes. Their resistance is extremely low and
+complications ..."
+
+The man said something else to the doctor and showed him a set of
+credentials. The doctor stopped, looked scared, then left the patient he
+was examining and went to the bed of the new girl. Quickly he gave her
+two injections. Then he said to the men, "I want you to know that I
+object to this completely and I will--"
+
+"All right, Doctor," the first man said. Then the second hoisted Alter
+from the cot and they carried her out of the hospital.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Queen Mother had her separate throne room. She sat in it now,
+looking at photographs. In bright colors, two showed the chamber of the
+Crown Prince. In one picture the Prince was seated on his bed in his
+pajama pants with his heel against the side board; standing by the
+window was a white-haired girl with a leather necklace strung with tiny,
+bright shells. The next showed the Prince still sitting on the bed, this
+time with his hand on the newel dolphin. The girl was just turning
+toward the open window.
+
+The third picture, which from the masking, seemed to have been taken
+through a keyhole, showed what seemed to be an immense enlargement of a
+human pupil; mistily discernible through the iris were the dottings and
+tiny pathways of a retina pattern. On the broad arm of the Queen
+Mother's throne was a folder marked: ALTER RONID.
+
+In the folder were a birth certificate, a clear photograph of the same
+retina pattern, a contract in which a traveling circus availed itself of
+the service of a group of child acrobats for the season, a school
+diploma, copies of receipts covering a three-year period of gymnastic
+instruction, a copy of a medical bill for the correction of a sprained
+hip, and two change of address slips. Also there were several cross
+reference slips to the files of Alia Ronid (mother, deceased) and Rara
+Ronid (maternal aunt, legal guardian).
+
+The Queen put the photographs on top of the folder and turned to the
+guards. There were thirty of them lined against the walls of the room.
+She lifted up the heavy, jeweled scepter and said, "Bring her in." She
+touched the two buns of white hair on the sides of her head, breathed
+deeply, and straightened in the chair, as two doors opened at the other
+end of the room.
+
+Two blocks had been set up in the middle of the room, about four feet
+high and a foot apart.
+
+Alter stumbled once, but the guard caught her. They walked her between
+the blocks, which came to just below her shoulders, spread her arms over
+the surface and strapped them straight across the tops at the biceps and
+wrist.
+
+The Queen smiled. "That's only a precaution. We want to help you." She
+came down the steps of the throne, the heavy jeweled rod cradled in her
+arm. "Only we know something about you. We know that you know something
+which if you tell me, will make me feel a great deal better. I've been
+very upset, recently. Did you know that?"
+
+Alter blinked and tried to get her balance. The blocks were just under
+the proper height by half an inch so that she could neither stand
+completely nor could she sag.
+
+"We know you're tired, and after your ordeal with the barbitide--you
+don't feel well, do you?" asked the Queen, coming closer.
+
+Alter shook her head.
+
+"Where did you take my son?" the Queen asked.
+
+Alter closed her eyes, then opened them wide and shook her head.
+
+"Believe me," said the Queen, "we have ample proof. Look." She held up
+the photographs for Alter to see. "My son took these pictures of the two
+of you together. They're very clear, don't you think?" She put the
+pictures back in the quilted pocket of her robe.
+
+"Aren't you going to tell me, now?"
+
+"I don't know anything," Alter said.
+
+"Come now. That room had as many cameras as a sturgeon has eggs. There
+are dozens of hidden switches. Somehow the alarms connected with them
+didn't go off, but the cameras still worked."
+
+Alter shook her head again.
+
+"You don't have to be afraid," said the Queen. "We know you're tired and
+we want to get you back to the hospital as soon as possible. Now. What
+happened to my son, the Prince?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"You're a very sweet girl. You're an acrobat too?"
+
+Alter swallowed, and then coughed.
+
+The Queen gave a puzzled smile this time. "Really, you don't have to be
+afraid to answer me. You are an acrobat, isn't that right?"
+
+Alter nodded.
+
+The Queen reached out and slowly lifted the triplet leather necklace
+with its scattering of shells in her fingers. "This is a beautiful piece
+of jewelry." She lifted it from Alter's neck. "An acrobat's body must be
+like a fine jewel, fine and strong. You must be very proud of it." Again
+she paused and tilted her head. "I'm only trying to put you at ease,
+dear, make conversation." Smiling, she lifted the necklace completely
+from around Alter's neck. "Oh, this is exquisite ..."
+
+Suddenly the necklace clattered to the ground, the shells making an
+almost miniature sound against the tiles.
+
+Alter's eyes followed the necklace to the floor.
+
+"Oh," the Queen said. "I'm terribly sorry. It would be a shame to break
+something like this." With one hand the Queen drew back her robes until
+her shoe was revealed. Then she moved her foot forward until her raised
+toe was over the necklace. "Will you tell me where my son is?"
+
+There was seven, eight, ten seconds of silence. "Very well," the Queen
+said, and brought her foot down. The sound of crushed shells was covered
+by Alter's scream. Because the Queen had brought down the scepter, too,
+the full arc of its swing, onto Alter's strapped forearm. Then she
+brought it down again. The room was filled with the scream and the crack
+of the jeweled scepter against the surface of the block. Then the Queen
+smashed Alter's upturned elbow joint.
+
+When there was something like silence, the Queen said, "Now, where is my
+son?"
+
+Alter didn't say for a long while; when she did, they were ready to
+believe anything. So what she told them didn't do much good when they
+had time to check it. Later, unconscious, she was carried into the
+General Medical building wrapped in a gray blanket.
+
+"Another fish poison case?" asked the clerk.
+
+The man nodded. The doctor, who had been there when Alter was removed
+from the hospital, had been working steadily for six hours. When he
+unwrapped the blanket, he recognized the girl. When he unwrapped it
+further, the breath hissed between his lips, and then hissed out again,
+slowly. "Get this girl to emergency surgery," he said to the nurse.
+"Quickly!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Devil's Pot, Tel had just gotten over a case of the runs which
+had kept him away from food all day. Feeling hungry, now, he was
+foraging in the cold storage cabinet of the inn's kitchen. In the
+freezing chest he found the remains of a baked fish, so he got a sharp
+knife from over the sink, and cut a piece. Then the door opened and the
+barmaid came in. She was nearly seventy years old and wore a red scarf
+around her stringy neck. Tel had cut a slice of onion and was putting it
+on top of the fish when the barmaid ran forward and knocked the dish
+from his hand.
+
+"Ouch," Tel said, and jumped, though nothing had hurt him.
+
+"Are you completely crazy?" the woman asked. "You want to be carried out
+of here like the rest of them?"
+
+Tel looked puzzled as Rara entered the kitchen. "Good grief," she
+declared. "Where is everybody? I'm starved. I started selling that
+homebrew tonic of mine that I made up yesterday, and around noon,
+suddenly everybody was buying the stuff. They wanted something for
+cramps, and I guess my Super Aqueous Tonic is as good as anything else.
+I couldn't even get back to eat. Is there some sort of epidemic? Say,
+that looks good," and she went for the fish.
+
+The old barmaid snatched up the dish and carried it to the disposal can.
+"It's poisoned, don't you understand?" She dumped it into the chute.
+"It's got to be the fish that's causing it. Everybody who ate it has
+been carried off to General Medical with cramps. Lots of them died, too.
+The woman who lives across the street and me, we figured it out. We both
+bought it from the same woman this morning, and that's all it could be.
+
+"Well, I'm still hungry," Tel said.
+
+"Can we have some cheese and fruit?" asked Rara.
+
+"I guess that's safe," the woman said.
+
+"Who was carried out?" Tel wanted to know, looking back in the cabinet.
+
+"Oh, that's right," the barmaid said, "you've been upstairs sick all
+day." And then she told him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At about the same time, an observer in a scouting plane noticed a boat
+bearing prefabricated barracks foundations some sixty miles away from
+any spot that could possibly be receiving such a shipment. In fact, he
+had sent a corrective order on a typographical error concerning ... yes,
+it must be, that same boat. He'd sent it that morning through
+Communication Sector 27B. They were near the shore, one of the few spots
+away from the fishing villages and the farm communes where the great
+forest had crept down to the edge of the water itself. A tiny port,
+occasionally used as an embarkation for the families of emigrants going
+to join people in the city, was the only point of civilization between
+the rippling smoke-green sea on one side and the crinkling deep green of
+the forest tree tops on the other. The observer also noted that a small
+tetron tramp was about to dock also. But that transport ship ... He
+called the pilot and requested contact be made.
+
+The pilot was shaking his head, groggily.
+
+The co-pilot was leaning back in his seat, his mouth opened, his eyes
+closed. "I don't feel too ..." The pilot started, and then reached
+forward absently to crumple a sheet of tin foil he had left on the
+instrument panel, in which, a few hours ago, had been a filet sandwich
+that he and the co-pilot had shared between them.
+
+Suddenly the pilot fell forward out of his chair, knocking the control
+stick way to the left. He clutched his stomach as the plane banked
+suddenly to the right. In the observation blister, the observer was
+thrown from his chair and the microphone fell from his hand.
+
+The co-pilot woke up, belched, grabbed for the stick, which was not in
+its usual place, and so missed. Forty-one seconds later, the plane had
+crashed into a dock some thirty feet from the mooring tetron tramp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+There was a roaring in the air. Let cried out and ran forward. Then
+shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping on the deck as the rail swung
+by. Then thunder. Then screaming. Something was breaking in half.
+
+Jon and Arkor got him out. They had to jump overboard with the
+unconscious Prince, swim, climb, and carry. There were sirens at the
+dock when they laid him on the dried leaves of the forest clearing.
+
+"We'll leave him here," Arkor said.
+
+"Here? Are you sure?" Jon asked.
+
+"They will come for him. You must go on," he said softly. "We'll leave
+the Prince now, and you can tell me of your plan."
+
+"My plan ..." Jon said. They walked off through the trees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dried leaves tickled one cheek, a breeze cooled the other. Something
+touched him on the side, and he stretched his arms, scrunched his
+eyelids, then curled himself into the comfortable dark. He was napping
+in the little park behind the palace. He would go in for supper soon.
+The leaf smell was fresher than it had ever.... Something touched him on
+the side again.
+
+He opened his eyes, and bit off a scream. Because he wasn't in the park,
+he wasn't going in to supper, and there was a giant standing over him.
+
+The giant touched the boy with his foot once more.
+
+Suddenly the boy scrambled away, then stopped, crouching, across the
+clearing. A breeze shook the leaves like admonishing fingers before he
+heard the giant speak. The giant was silent. Then the giant spoke again.
+
+The word the boy recognized in both sentences was, "... Quorl ..."
+
+The third time he spoke, he merely pointed to himself and repeated,
+"Quorl."
+
+Then he pointed to the boy and smiled questioningly.
+
+The boy was silent.
+
+Again the giant slapped his hand against his naked chest and said,
+"Quorl." Again he extended his hand toward the boy, waiting for sound.
+It did not come. Finally the giant shrugged, and motioned for the boy to
+come with him.
+
+The boy rose slowly, and then followed. Soon they were walking briskly
+through the woods.
+
+As they walked, the boy remembered: the shadow of the plane out of
+control above them, the plane striking the water, water becoming a
+mountain of water, like shattered glass rushing at them across the sea.
+And he remembered the fire.
+
+Hadn't it really started in his room at the palace, when he pressed the
+first of the concealed micro-switches with his heel? The cameras were
+probably working, but there had been no bells, no sirens, no rush of
+guards. It had tautened when he pushed the second switch in the jeweled
+dolphin on his bedpost. It nearly snapped with metallic panic when he
+had to maneuver the girl into position for the retina photograph.
+_Nothing_ had happened. He was taken away, and his mother stayed quietly
+in her room. What was supposed to happen was pulling further and
+further away from the reality. How could anybody kidnap the Prince?
+
+His treatment by the boy who told him about the sea and the girl who
+taught him to fall pulled it even tighter. _If_ the Prince _were_
+kidnaped, certainly his jailors should not tell him stories of beautiful
+mornings and sunsets, or teach him to do impossible things with his
+body.
+
+He was sure that the girl had meant him to die when she had told him to
+leap from the roof. But he had to do what he was told. He always had.
+(He was following the giant through the dull leaves because the giant
+had told him to.) When he had leapt from the roof, then rolled over and
+sprung to his feet alive, the shock had turned the rack another notch
+and he could feel the threads parting.
+
+Perhaps if he had stayed there, talked more to the boy and girl, he
+could have loosened the traction, pulled the fabric of reality back into
+the shape of expectation. But then the man with the black hair and the
+scarred giant had come to take him away. He'd made one last volitional
+effort to bring "is" and "suppose" together. He'd told the man the story
+of the mine prisoners, the one cogent, connected thing he remembered
+from his immediate past, a real good "suppose" story. But the man turned
+on him and said that "suppose" wasn't "suppose" at all, but "is." A
+thread snapped here, another there.
+
+(Over the deck of the boat there was roaring in the air. He had cried
+out. Then shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping and the rail swung
+by. Then thunder. Then screaming, his screaming: _I can't die! I'm not
+supposed to die!_ Something tore in half.)
+
+The leaves were shaking, the whole earth trembled with his tired,
+unsteady legs. As they walked through the forest, the last filament
+went, like a thread of glass under a blow-torch flame. The last thing to
+flicker out, like the fading end of the white hot strand, was the memory
+of someone, somewhere, entreating him not to forget something, not to
+forget it no matter what ... but what it was, he wasn't sure.
+
+Quorl, with the boy beside him, kept a straight path through the
+forest. The ground sloped up now. Boulders lipped with moss pushed out
+here and there. Once Quorl stopped short; his arm shot in front of the
+boy to keep him from going further.
+
+Yards before them the leaves parted, and two great women walked forward.
+Everything about them was identical, their blue-black eyes, flat noses,
+broad cheek ridges. Twin sisters, the boy thought. Both women also bore
+a triplex of scars down the left sides of their faces. They paid no
+attention to either Quorl or the boy, but walked across into the trees
+again. The moment they were gone, Quorl started again.
+
+Much later they turned onto a small cliff that looked across a great
+drop to another mountain. Near a thick tree trunk was a pile of brush
+and twigs. The boy watched Quorl drop to his knees and being to move the
+brush away. The boy crouched to see better.
+
+The great brown fingers tipped with bronze-colored nails gently revealed
+a cage made of sticks tied together with dried vines. Something squeaked
+in the cage, and the boy jumped.
+
+Quorl in a single motion got the trap door opened and his hand inside.
+The next protracted squeak suddenly turned into a scream. Then there was
+silence. Quorl removed a furry weasel and handed it to the boy.
+
+The pelt was feather soft and still warm. The head hung crazily to the
+side where the neck had been broken. The boy looked at the giant's hands
+again.
+
+Veins roped across the ligaments' taut ridges. The hair on the joints of
+the fingers grew up to edge of the broad, furrowed knuckles. Now the
+finders were pulling the brush back over the trap. They crossed the
+clearing and Quorl uncovered a second trap. When the hand went into the
+trap and the knot of muscle jumped on the brown forearm
+(Squeeeeee_raaaaa_!), the boy looked away, out across the great drop.
+
+The sky was smoke gray to the horizon where a sudden streak of orange
+marked the sunset. The burning copper disk hung low in the purple gap of
+the mountains. A fan of lavender drifted above the orange, and then
+white, faint green.... The gray wasn't really gray, it was blue-gray. He
+began to count colors, and there were twelve distinct ones (not a
+thousand). The last one was a pale gold that tipped the edges of the few
+low clouds that clustered near the burning circle.
+
+A touch on the shoulder made the boy turn back. Quorl handed him the
+second animal, and they went back into the woods. Later, they had built
+a small fire and had skinned and quartered the animals on the
+scimitar-like blade that the giant wore. They sat in the diminishing
+shell of light with the meat on forked sticks, turning it over the
+flame. The boy watched the gray-maroon fibers go first shiny with juice,
+and then darken, turn crisp and brown. When the meat was done, Quorl
+took a piece of folded skin from his pouch and shook some white powder
+onto it. Then he passed the leather envelope to the boy.
+
+The boy poured a scattering of white powder into his palm, then
+carefully put his tongue to it. It was salt.
+
+When they had nearly finished eating the forest had grown cooler and
+still. Fire made the leaves around them into flickering shingles on the
+darkness. Quorl was cleaning the last, tiny bone with big, yellow teeth
+when there was a sound. They both turned.
+
+Another branch broke to their left. "Tloto," Quorl called harshly,
+followed by some sort of invective.
+
+It moved closer, the boy could hear it moving, closer until the boy saw
+the tall shadow at the edge of the ring of light.
+
+With disgust--but without fear, the boy could see--Quorl picked up a
+stick and flung it. The shadow dodged and made a small mewing sound.
+
+"Di ta klee, Tloto," Quorl said. "Di ta klee."
+
+Only Tloto didn't _di ta klee_, but came forward instead, into the
+light.
+
+Perhaps it had been born of human parents, but to call it human now ...
+It was bone naked, hairless, shell white. It had no eyes, no ears, only
+a lipless mouth and slitted nostril flaps. It sniffed toward the fire.
+
+Now the boy saw that both the feet were clubbed and gnarled. Only two
+fingers on each hand were neither misshapen or stiffly paralyzed. It
+reached for Quorl's pile of bones, making the mewing sound with its
+mouth.
+
+With a sudden sweep of his hand, Quorl knocked the paraplegic claw away
+and shouted another scattering of indifferent curses. Tloto backed away,
+turned to the boy, and came forward, its nostril slits widening and
+contracting.
+
+The boy had eaten all he could and had a quarter of his meat still left.
+It's only a head or two taller than I am, he thought. If it's from this
+race of giants, perhaps it's still a child. Maybe it's my age. He stared
+at the blank face. It doesn't know what's going on, the boy thought. It
+doesn't know what's supposed to be happening.
+
+Perhaps it was just the sound of the word in his head that triggered off
+the sudden panic. (Or was it something else that caught in his chest?)
+Anyway, he took the unfinished meat and extended it toward Tloto.
+
+The claw jumped forward, grabbed, and snatched back. The boy tried to
+make his mouth go into a smile. But Tloto couldn't see, so it didn't
+matter. He turned back to the fire, and when he looked up again, Tloto
+was gone.
+
+As Quorl began to kick dirt onto the coals, he lectured the boy,
+apparently on Tloto and perhaps a few other philosophical concepts. The
+boy listened carefully, and understood at least that Tloto was not worth
+his concern. Then they lay down beside the little cyst of embers, the
+glowing scab of light on the darkness, and slept.
+
+When the giant's hand came down and shook his shoulder, it was still
+dark. He didn't jump this time but blinked against the night and pulled
+his feet under him. It had grown colder, and dark wind brushed his neck
+and fingered his hair. Then a high sound cut above the trees and fell
+away. Quorl took the boy's arm and they started through the dark trees
+quickly.
+
+Gray light filtered from the left. Was it morning? No. The boy saw it
+was the rising moon. The light became white, then silver white. They
+reached a cliff at last, beyond which was the dark sea. Broken rock
+spilled to ledges below. Fifty feet down, but still a hundred feet above
+the water, was the largest table of rock. The moon was high enough to
+light the entire lithic arena as well as the small temple at its edge.
+
+In front of the temple stood a man in black robes who blew on a huge
+curved shell. The piercing wail sliced high over the sea and the forest.
+People were gathering around the edge of the arena. Some came in
+couples, some with children, but most were single men and women.
+
+The boy started to go down, but Quorl held him back. They waited. From
+sounds about them, the boy realized there were others observing from the
+height also. On the water, waves began to glitter with broken images of
+the moon. The sky was speckled with stars.
+
+Suddenly a group of people were led from the temple onto the platform.
+Most of them were children. One was an old man whose beard twitched in
+the light breeze. Another was a tall stately women. All of them were
+bound, all of them were near naked, and all except the woman shifted
+their feet and looked nervously about.
+
+The priest in the black robe disappeared into the temple, and emerged
+again with something that looked to the boy from this distance for all
+the world like a back-scratcher. The priest raised it in the moonlight,
+and a murmur rose and quieted about the ring of people. The boy saw that
+there were three close prongs on the handle, each snagging on the
+luminous beams of the moon, betraying their metallic keenness.
+
+The priest walked to the first child and caught the side of her head in
+his hand. Then he quickly drew the triple blade down the left side of
+her face. She made an indefinite noise, but it was drowned in the rising
+whisper of the crowd. He did the same to the next child who began to
+cry, and to the next. The woman stood completely still and did not
+flinch when the blades opened her cheek. The old man was afraid. The
+boy could tell because he whimpered and backed away.
+
+A man and a woman stepped from the ring of people and held him for the
+priest. As the blade raked the side of his face, his high senile whine
+turned into a scream. The boy thought for a moment of the trapped
+animals. The old man staggered away from his captors and no one paid him
+any more attention. The priest raised the shell to his mouth once more,
+and the high, brilliant sound flooded the arena.
+
+Then, as they had come, silently the people disappeared into the woods.
+Quorl touched the boy's shoulder and they too went into the woods. The
+boy looked at the giant with a puzzled expression, but there was no
+explanation. Once the boy caught sight of a white figure darting at
+their left as a shaft of moonlight slipped across a naked shoulder.
+Tloto was following them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The boy spent his days learning. Quorl taught him to pull the gut of
+animals to make string. It had to be stretched a long time and then
+greased with hunks of fat. Once learned it became his job; as did
+changing the bait in the traps; as did cutting willow boughs to make
+sleeping pallets; as did sorting the firewood into piles of variously
+sized wood; as did holding together the sticks while Quorl tied them
+together and made a canopy for them, the night it rained.
+
+He learned words, too. At least he learned to understand them.
+_Tike_--trap, _Di'tika_--a sprung trap, _Tikan_--two traps. One
+afternoon Quorl spent a whole six hours teaching words to the boy. There
+were lots of them. Even Quorl, who did not speak much, was surprised how
+many had to be learned. The boy did not speak at all. But soon he
+understood.
+
+"There is a porcupine," Quorl would say, pointing.
+
+The boy would turn his eyes quickly, following the finger, and then look
+back, blinking quietly in comprehension.
+
+They were walking through the forest that evening, and Quorl said, "You
+walk as loud as a tapir." The boy had been moving over dry leaves.
+Obediently he moved his bare feet to where the leaves were damp and did
+not crackle.
+
+Sometimes the boy went alone by the edge of the stream. Once a wild pig
+chased him and he had to climb a tree. The pig tried to climb after him
+and he sat in the crotch of the branch looking quietly down into the
+squealing mouth, the warty gray face; he could see each separate bristle
+stand up and lie down as the narrow jaw opened and closed beneath the
+skin. One yellow tusk was broken.
+
+Then he heard a mewing sound away to his left. Looking off he saw
+slug-like Tloto coming towards his tree. A sudden urge to sound pushed
+him closer to speech (_Stay away! Stay Back!_) than he had been since
+his arrival in the woods. But Tloto could not see. Tloto could not hear.
+His hands tightened until the bark burned his palm.
+
+Suddenly the animal turned from the tree and took off after Tloto.
+Instantly the slug-man turned and was gone.
+
+The boy dropped from the tree and ran after the sound of the pig's
+crashing in the underbrush. Twenty feet later after tearing through a
+net of thick foliage, he burst onto a clearing and stopped.
+
+In the middle of the clearing, the pig was struggling half above ground
+and half under. Only it wasn't ground. It was some sort of muckpool
+covered by a floating layer of leaves and twigs. The pig was going under
+fast.
+
+Then the boy saw Tloto on the other side of the clearing, his nostrils
+quivering, his blind head turning back and forth. Somehow the slug-man
+must have maneuvered the animal into the trap. He wasn't sure how, but
+that must have been what had happened.
+
+The urge that welled in him now came too fast to be stopped. It had too
+much to do with the recognition of luck, and the general impossibility
+of the whole situation. The boy laughed.
+
+He startled himself with the sound, and after a few seconds stopped.
+Then he turned. Quorl stood behind him.
+
+(Squeeeee ... Squeeee ... _raaaaaaa_! Then a gurgle, then nothing.)
+
+Quorl was smiling too, a puzzled smile.
+
+"Why did you--?" (The last word was new. He thought it meant laugh, but
+he said nothing.)
+
+The boy turned back now. Tloto and the pig were gone.
+
+Quorl walked the boy back to their camp. As they were nearing the stream
+Quorl saw the boy's footprints in the soft earth and frowned. "To leave
+your footprints in wet earth is dangerous. The vicious animals come to
+drink and they will smell you, and they will follow you, to eat. Suppose
+that pig had smelled them and been chasing you, instead of running into
+the pool? What then? If you must leave your footprints, leave them in
+dry dust. Better not to leave them at all."
+
+The boy listened, and remembered. But that night, he saved a large piece
+of meat from his food. When Tloto came into the circle of firelight, he
+gave it to him.
+
+Quorl gave a shrug of disgust and flung a pebble at the retreating
+shadow. "He is useless," Quorl said. "Why do you waste good food on him?
+To throw away good food is a--." (Unintelligible word.) "You do not
+understand--." (Another unintelligible word.)
+
+The boy felt something start up inside him again. But he would not let
+it move his tongue; so he laughed. Quorl looked puzzled. The boy laughed
+again. Then Quorl laughed too. "You will learn. You will learn at last."
+Then the giant became serious. "You know, that is the first--sound I
+have heard you make since coming here."
+
+The boy frowned, and the giant repeated the sentence. The boy's face
+showed which word baffled him.
+
+The giant thought a minute, and then said, "You, me, even Tloto, are
+_malika_." That was the word. Now Quorl looked around him. "The trees,
+the rocks, the animals, they are not _malika_. But the laughing sound,
+that was a _malika_ sound."
+
+The boy thought about it until perhaps he understood. Then he slept.
+
+He laughed a lot during the days now. Survival had come as close to
+routine as it could here in the jungle, and he could turn his attention
+to more _malika_ concerns. He watched Quorl when they came on other
+forest people. With single men and women there was usually only an
+exchange of ten or twelve friendly words. If it were a couple,
+especially with children, he would give them food. But if they passed
+anyone with scars, Quorl would freeze until the person was by.
+
+Once the boy wandered to the temple on the arena of rock. There were
+carvings on much of the stone. The sun was high. The carvings
+represented creatures somewhere between fish and human. When he looked
+up from the rock, he saw that the priest had come from the temple and
+was staring at him. The priest stared until he went away.
+
+Now the boy tried to climb the mountain. That was hard because the
+footing was slippery and the rocks kept giving. At last he stopped on a
+jutting rock that looked down the side of the mountain. He was far from
+any place he knew. He was very high. He stood with hand against the
+leaning trunk of a near rotten tree, breathing deep and squinting at the
+sky. (Three or four times Quorl and he had taken long hunting trips: one
+had taken them to the edge of a deserted meadow across which was a
+crazily sagging farmhouse. There were no people there. Another had taken
+them to the edge of the jungle, beyond which the ground was gray and
+broken, and row after row of unsteady shacks sat among clumps of
+slithering ferns. Many of the forest people living there had scars and
+spent more time in larger groups.) The boy wondered if he could see to
+the deserted meadow from here, or to the deadly rows of prison shacks. A
+river, a snake of light, coiled through the valley toward the sea. The
+sky was very blue.
+
+He heard it first, and then he felt it start. He scrambled back toward
+firmer ground but didn't scramble fast enough. The rock tilted, tore
+loose, and he was falling. (It pierced through his memory like a white
+fire-blade hidden under canvas: "... knees up, chin down, and roll
+quick," the girl had said a long time ago.) It was perhaps twenty feet
+to the next level. Tree branches broke his fall and he hit the ground
+spinning, and rolled away. Something else, the rock or a rotten log, bit
+the ground a moment later where he had been. He uncurled too soon,
+reaching out to catch hold of the mountain as it tore by him. Then he
+hit something hard; then something hit him back, and he sailed off into
+darkness in a web of pain.
+
+Much later he shook his head, opened his eyes, then chomped his jaws on
+the pain. But the pain was in his leg, so chomping didn't help. He moved
+his face across crumbling dirt. The whole left side of his body ached,
+the type of ache that comes when the muscles are tensed to exhaustion
+but will not relax.
+
+He tried to crawl forward, and went flat down onto the earth, biting up
+a mouthful of dirt. He nearly tore his leg off.
+
+He had to be still, calm, find out exactly what was wrong. He couldn't
+tear himself to pieces like the wildcat who had gotten caught in the
+sprung trap and who had bled to death after gnawing off both hind legs.
+He was too _malika_.
+
+But each movement he made, each thought he had, happened in the blurring
+green haze of pain. He raised himself up and looked back. Then he lay
+down again and closed his eyes. A log the thickness of his body lay
+across his left leg. Once he tried to push it away but only bruised his
+palm against the bark, and at last went unconscious with the effort.
+
+When he woke up, the pain was very far away. The air was darkening. No,
+he wasn't quite awake. He was dreaming about something, something soft,
+a little garden, with shadows blowing in at the edge of his vision swift
+and cool, a little garden behind the--
+
+Suddenly, very suddenly, it struck him what was happening, the slowing
+down of thoughts, his breathing, maybe even his heart. Then he was
+struggling again, struggling hard enough that had he still the strength,
+he would have torn himself in half, knowing while he struggled that
+perhaps the wildcat had been _malika_ after all, or not caring if he
+were less, only fighting to pull himself away from the pain, realizing
+that blood had begun to seep from beneath the log again, just a tiny
+trickle.
+
+Then the shadows overtook him, the dreams, the wisps of forgetfulness
+gauzing his eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tloto nearly had to drag Quorl halfway up the mountain before the giant
+got the idea. When he did, he began to run. Quorl found the boy; just
+before sunset. He was breathing in short gasps, his fists clenched, his
+eyes closed. The blood on the dirt had dried black.
+
+The great brown hands went around the log, locked, and started to shift
+it; the boy let out a high sound from between his teeth.
+
+The hands, roped with vein and ridged with ligament, strained the log
+upward; the sound became a howl.
+
+The giant's feet braced against the dirt, slid into the dirt, and the
+hands that had snapped tiny necks and bound sticks together with gut
+string, pulled; the howl turned into a scream. He screamed again. Then
+again.
+
+The log coming loose tore away nearly a square foot of flesh from the
+boy's leg. Then, Quorl went over and picked him up.
+
+This is the best dream, the boy thought, from that dark place he had
+retreated to behind the pain, because Quorl is here. The hands were
+lifting him now, he was held close, warm, somehow safe. His cheek was
+against the hard shoulder muscle, and he could smell Quorl too. So he
+stopped screaming and turned his head a little to make the pain go away.
+But it wouldn't go. It wouldn't. Then the boy cried.
+
+The first tears through all that pain came salty in his eyes, and he
+cried until he went to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quorl had medicine for him the next day ("From the priest," he said.)
+which helped the pain and made the healing start. Quorl also had made
+the boy a pair of wooden crutches that morning. Although muscle and
+ligament had been bruised and crushed and the skin torn away, no bone
+had broken.
+
+That evening there was a drizzle and they ate under the canopy. Tloto
+did not come, and this time it was Quorl who saved the extra meat and
+kept looking off into the wet gray trees. Quorl had told the boy how
+Tloto had led him to him; when they finished eating, Quorl took the meat
+and ducked into the drizzle.
+
+The boy lay down to sleep. He thought the meat was a reward for Tloto.
+Only Quorl had seemed that night full of more than usual gravity. The
+last thing he wondered before sleep flooded his eyes and ears was how
+blind, deaf Tloto had known where he was anyway.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he woke it had stopped raining. The air was damp and chill. Quorl
+had not come back.
+
+The sound of the blown shell came again. The boy sat up and flinched at
+the twinge in his leg. To his left the moon was flickering through the
+trees. The sound came a third time, distant, sharp, yet clear and
+marine. The boy reached for his crutches and hoisted himself to his
+feet. He waited till the count of ten, hoping that Quorl might suddenly
+return to go with him.
+
+A last he took a deep breath and started haltingly forward. The faint
+moonlight made the last hundred yards easy going. Finally he reached a
+vantage where he could look down through the wet leaves onto the arena
+of stone.
+
+The sky was sheeted with mist and the moon was an indistinct pearl in
+the haze. The sea was misty. People were already gathered at the edge.
+The boy looked at the priest and then ran his eye around the circle of
+people. One of them was Quorl!
+
+He leaned forward as far as he could. The priest sounded the shell again
+and the prisoners came out of the temple: first three boys, then an
+older girl, then a man. The next one ... Tloto! It was marble-white
+under the blurred moon. Its clubbed feet shuffled on the rock. Its blind
+head ducked right and left with bewilderment.
+
+As the priest raised the long three-pronged knife, the boy's hands went
+tight around the crutches. He passed from one prisoner to the next.
+Tloto cringed, and the boy sucked in a breath as the knife went down,
+feeling his own flesh part under the blades. Then the murmur died, the
+prisoners were unbound, and the people filed from the rock back into the
+forest.
+
+The boy waited to see which way Quorl headed before he started through
+moon-dusted bushes as fast as his crutches would let him. There were
+many people on the webbing of paths that came from the temple rock.
+There was Quorl!
+
+When he caught up, Quorl saw him and slowed down. Quorl didn't look at
+him, though. Finally the giant said, "You don't understand. I had to
+catch him. I had to give him to the old one to be marked. But you don't
+understand." The boy hardly looked at all where they were going, but
+stared up at the giant.
+
+"You don't understand," Quorl said again. Then he looked at the boy and
+was quiet for a minute. "No, you don't," he repeated. "Come." They
+turned off the main path now, going slower. "It's a ... custom. An
+important custom. Yes, I know it hurt him. I know he was afraid. But it
+had to be. Tloto is one of those who--." (The word was some inflection
+of the verb to know.) Quorl was silent for a moment. "Let me try to tell
+you why I had to hurt your friend. Yes, I know he is your friend, now.
+But once I said that Tloto was _malika_. I was wrong. Tloto is more than
+_malika_--he and the others that were marked. Somehow these people know
+things. That was how Tloto survived. That's how he knew where you were,
+when you were hurt. He knew inside your head, he heard inside your head.
+Many are born like that, more of them each year. As soon as we find out,
+we mark them. Many try to hide it, and some succeed for a long time. Can
+you understand? Do you? When Tloto showed me where you were, he knew
+that I would know, that he would be caught and marked. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Again he paused and looked at the boy. The eyes still showed puzzled
+hurt. "You want to know why. I ... we.... Long ago we killed them when
+we found out. We don't any more. The mark reminds them that they are
+different, and yet the same as we. Perhaps it is wrong. It doesn't hurt
+that much, and it heals. Anyway, we don't kill them any more. We know
+they're important...." Suddenly, having gone all through it with this
+strange boy, it seemed twisted to the giant, incorrect. Then he gave the
+boy what the boy had been sent to the forest to get, what the Duchess
+had found and knew was necessary. "I was wrong," Quorl said. "I'm sorry.
+I will speak to the priest tomorrow."
+
+They walked until the dawn lightened the sky behind the trees. Once
+Quorl looked around and said, "I want to show you something. We are very
+near, and the weather is right."
+
+They walked a few minutes more till Quorl pointed to a wall of leaves,
+and said, "Go through there."
+
+As they pressed through the dripping foliage, bright light burnished
+their faces. They were standing on a small cliff that looked down the
+mountain. Fog the color of pale gold, the same gold the boy had seen so
+rarely in the sunset, rolled across the entire sky. The center flamed
+with the misty sun, and way below them through the fog was the shattered
+traces of water, the color of magnesium flame on copper foil, without
+edge or definition.
+
+"That's a lake that lies between this mountain and the next," Quorl
+said, pointing to the water.
+
+"I thought...." the boy started softly, his tongue rough against the new
+language. "I thought it was the sea."
+
+Beside them appeared the crouching figure of Tloto. Drops from the wet
+leaves burned on his neck and back, over the drying blood. He turned his
+blank face left and right in the golden light, and with all his knowing
+could communicate no awe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Clea Koshar had been installed in her government office for three days.
+The notebook in which she had been doing her own work in inverse
+sub-trigonometric functions had been put away in her desk for exactly
+fifty-four seconds when she made the first discovery that gave her a
+permanent place in the history of Toromon's wars as its first military
+hero. Suddenly she pounded her fist on the computer keys, flung her
+pencil across the room, muttered, "What the hell is this!" and dialed
+the military ministry.
+
+It took ten minutes to get Tomar. His red-haired face came in on the
+visiphone, recognized her, and smiled. "Hi," he said.
+
+"Hi, yourself," she said. "I just got out those figures you people sent
+us about the data from the radiation barrier, and those old readings
+from the time Telphar was destroyed. Tomar, I didn't even have to feed
+them to the computer. I just looked at them. That radiation was
+artificially created. Its increment is completely steady. At least on
+the second derivative. Its build-up pattern is such that there couldn't
+be more than two simple generators, or one complexed on ..."
+
+"Slow down," Tomar said. "What do you mean, generators?"
+
+"The radiation barrier, or at least most of it, is artificially
+maintained. And there are not more than two generators, and possibly
+one, maintaining it."
+
+"How do you generate radiation?" Tomar asked.
+
+"I don't know," Clea said. "But somebody has been doing it."
+
+"I don't want to knock your genius, but how come nobody else figured it
+out?"
+
+"I just guess nobody thought it was a possibility, or thought of
+gratuitously taking the second derivative, or bothered to look at them
+before they fed them into the computers. In twenty minutes I can figure
+out the location for you."
+
+"You do that," he said, "and I'll get the information to whomever it's
+supposed to get to. You know, this is the first piece of information of
+import that we've gotten from this whole battery of slide-rule slippers
+up there. I should have figured it would have probably come from you.
+Thanks, if we can use it."
+
+She blew him a kiss as his face winked out. Then she got out her
+notebook again. Then minutes later the visiphone crackled at her. She
+turned to it and tried to get the operator. The operator was not to be
+gotten. She reached into her desk and got out a small pocket tool kit
+and was about to attack the housing of the frequency-filterer when the
+crackling increased and she heard a voice. She put the screw driver down
+and put the instrument back on the desk. A face flickered onto the
+screen and then flickered off. The face had dark hair, seemed perhaps
+familiar. But it was gone before she was sure she had made it out.
+
+Crossed signals from another line, she figured. Maybe a short in the
+dialing mechanism. She glanced down at her notebook and took up her
+pencil when the picture flashed onto the screen again. This time it was
+clear and there was no static. The familiarity, she did not realize, was
+the familiarity of her own face on a man.
+
+"Hello," he said. "Hello, Hello, Clea?"
+
+"Who is this?" she asked.
+
+"Clea, this is Jon."
+
+She sat very still, trying to pull two halves of something back together
+(as in a forest, a prince had felt the same things disengage). Clea
+succeeded. "You're supposed to be ... dead. I mean I thought you were.
+Where are you, Jon?"
+
+"Clea," he said. "Clea--I have to talk to you."
+
+There was a five-second silence.
+
+"Jon, Jon, how are you?"
+
+"Fine," he said. "I really am. I'm not in prison any more. I've been
+out a long time, and I've done a lot of things. But Clea, I need your
+help."
+
+"Of course," she said. "Tell me how? What do you want me to do?"
+
+"Do you want to know where I am?" he said. "What I've been doing? I'm in
+Telphar, and I'm trying to stop the war."
+
+"In Telphar?"
+
+"There's something behind that famed radiation barrier, and it's a more
+or less civilized race. I'm about to break through the rest of the
+barrier and see what can be done. But I need some help at home. I've
+been monitoring phone calls in Toron. There's an awful lot of equipment
+here that's more or less mine if I can figure out how to use it. And
+I've got a friend here who knows more in that line than I gave him
+credit for. I've overheard some closed circuit conference calls, and I'm
+talking to you by the same method. I know you've got the ear of Major
+Tomar and I know he's one of the few trustworthy people in that whole
+military hodge-podge. Clea, there is something hostile to Toromon behind
+that radiation barrier, but a war is not the answer. The thing that's
+making the war is the unrest in Toromon. And the war isn't going to
+remedy that. The emigration situation, the food situation, the excess
+man power, the deflation: that's what's causing your war. If that can be
+stopped, then the thing behind the barrier can be dealt with quickly and
+peacefully. There in Toron you don't even know what the enemy is. They
+wouldn't let you know even if they knew themselves."
+
+"Do you know?" Clea asked.
+
+Jon paused. Then he said, "No, but whatever it is, it's people with
+something wrong among them. And warring on them won't exorcise it."
+
+"Can you exorcise it?" Clea asked.
+
+Jon paused again. "Yes. I can't tell you how; but let's say what's
+troubling them is a lot simpler than what's troubling us in Toromon."
+
+"Jon," Clea asked suddenly, "what's it like in Telphar? You know I'll
+help you if I can, but tell me."
+
+The face on the visiphone was still. Then it drew a deep breath. "Clea,
+it's like an open air tomb. The city is very unlike Toron. It was
+planned, all the streets are regular, there's no Devil's Pot, nor could
+there ever be one. Roadways wind above ground among the taller
+buildings. I'm in the Palace of the Stars right now. It was a
+magnificent building." The face looked right and left. "It still is.
+They had amazing laboratories, lots of equipment, great silvered meeting
+halls under an immense ceiling that reproduced the stars on the ceiling.
+The electric plants still work. Most houses you can walk right in and
+turn on a light switch. Half the plumbing in the city is out, though.
+But everything in the palace still works. It must have been a beautiful
+place to live in. When they were evacuating during the radiation rise,
+very little marauding took place...."
+
+"The radiation ..." began Clea.
+
+Jon laughed, "Oh, that doesn't bother us. It's too complicated to
+explain now, but it doesn't."
+
+"That's not what I meant," Clea said. "I figured if you were alive, then
+it obviously wasn't bothering you. But Jon, and this isn't government
+propaganda, because I made the discovery myself: whatever is behind the
+barrier caused the radiation rise that destroyed Telphar. Some place
+near Telphar is a projector that caused the rise, and it's still
+functioning. This hasn't been released to the public yet, but if you
+want to stop your war, you'll never do it if the government can
+correctly blame the destruction of Telphar on the enemy. That's all they
+need."
+
+"Clea, I haven't finished telling you about Telphar. I told you that the
+electricity still worked. Well, most houses you go into, you turn on the
+light and find a couple of sixty-year-old corpses on the floor. On the
+roads you can find a wreck every hundred feet or so. There're almost ten
+thousand corpses in the Stadium of the Stars. It isn't very pretty.
+Arkor and I are the only two humans who have any idea of what the
+destruction of Telphar really amounted to. And we still believe we're in
+the right."
+
+"Jon, I can't hold back information...."
+
+"No, no," Jon said. "I wouldn't ask you to. Besides, I heard your last
+phone call. So it's already out. I want you to do two things for me. One
+has to do with Dad. The other is to deliver a message. I overheard a
+conference call between Prime Minister Chargill and some of the members
+of the council. They're about to ask Dad for a huge sum of money to
+finance the first aggressive drive in this war effort. Try and convince
+him that it'll do more harm than good. Look, Clea, you've got a
+mathematical mind. Show him how this whole thing works. He doesn't mean
+to be, but he's almost as much responsible for this thing as any one
+individual could be. See if he can keep production from flooding the
+city. And for Toromon's sake, keep an eye, a close eye on his
+supervisors. They're going to tilt the island into the sea with all
+their cross-purposes intrigues. All I can do is start you on the right
+track, Sis, and you'll have to take it from there.
+
+"Now for the message. The one circuit I can't break in on is the Royal
+Palace system. I can just overhear. Somehow I've got to get a message to
+the Duchess of Petra. Tell her to get to Telphar in the next forty-eight
+hours by way of the transit ribbon. Tell her there are two kids she owes
+a favor to. And tell her the girl she owes four or five favors. She'll
+be able to find out who they are."
+
+Clea was scribbling. "Does the transit ribbon still work?" she asked.
+
+"It was working when I escaped from prison," Jon said. "I don't see why
+it should have stopped now."
+
+"You used it?" Clea said. "That means you were in Toron!"
+
+"That's right. And I was at your party too."
+
+"Then it was ..." She stopped. Then laughed, "I'm so glad, Jon. I'm so
+glad it was you after all."
+
+"Come on, Sis, tell me about yourself," Jon said. "What's been happening
+in the real world. I've been away from it a long time. Here in Telphar I
+don't feel much closer. Right now I'm walking around in my birthday
+suit. On our way here we got into a shadowy situation and I had to
+abandon my clothes for fear of getting caught. I'll explain that later,
+too. But what about you?"
+
+"Oh, there's nothing to tell. But to you I guess there is. I graduated,
+with honors. I've grown up. I'm engaged to Tomar. Did you know that? Dad
+approves, and we're to be married as soon as the war's over. I'm working
+on a great project, to find the inverse sub-trigonometric functions.
+Those are about the most important things in my life right now. I'm
+suppose to be working on the war effort, but except for this afternoon,
+I haven't done much."
+
+"Fine," Jon said. "That's about the right proportions."
+
+"Now what about you? And the clothes?" She grinned into the visaphone,
+and he grinned back.
+
+"Well--no, you wouldn't believe it. At least not if I told it that way.
+Arkor, the friend who's with me, is one of the forest people. He left
+the forest to spend some time in Toron, which is where I met him.
+Apparently he managed to accumulate an amazing store of information,
+about all sorts of things--electronics, languages, even music. You'd
+think he could read minds. Anyway, here we are, through the forest,
+across the prison mines, and in Telphar."
+
+"Jon, what were the mines like? It always made me wonder how Dad could
+use tetron when he knew that you were being whipped to get it."
+
+"You and I'll get drunk some evening and I'll tell you what it was
+like," Jon said. "But not until. When you're trying to convince Dad,
+bring that up about me and the mines."
+
+"Don't worry," she said. "I will."
+
+"Anyway," Jon went on, "we had to get through the forest without being
+seen and with all those leaves it was pretty dark. Arkor could get
+through because he was a forest man and nobody would stop him. But
+because they'd have seen me, I had to go most of the way naked as a
+jaybird."
+
+Clea frowned. "I don't understand. Are you sure you're all right?"
+
+Jon laughed. "Of course I'm all right. I can't really explain to you
+just yet. I'm just so happy to see you again, to be able to talk to
+you. Sis, I've wanted to be free for so long, to see you and Dad again,
+and--there's nothing wrong with me except the sniffles."
+
+It welled up in her like a wave and the tears flooded her lower lids,
+and then one overflowed and ran down the left side of her nose. "You see
+what you're doing," she said. And they laughed once more. "To see you
+again, Jon is so ... _fine_."
+
+"I love you, Sis," Jon said. "Thanks, and so long for a little while."
+
+"I'll get your message out. So long." The phone blinked dark and she sat
+there wondering if perhaps the tension wasn't too much. But it wasn't,
+and she had messages to deliver.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+During the next couple of hours, two people died, miles apart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Don't be silly," Rara was saying in the inn at the Devil's Pot. "I'm a
+perfectly good nurse. Do you want to see my license?"
+
+The white-haired old man sat very straight in his chair by the window.
+Blue seeped like liquid across the glass. "Why did I do it?" he said.
+"It was wrong. I--I love my country."
+
+Rara pulled the blanket from the back of the chair and tucked it around
+the stiff, trembling shoulders. "What are you talking about?" she said,
+but the birthmark over her face showed deep purple with worry.
+
+He shook the blanket off and flung his hand across the table where the
+news directive lay.
+
+    CROWN PRINCE KIDNAPED!
+      KING DECLARES WAR!
+
+The trembling in Geryn's shoulders became violent shaking.
+
+"Sit back," said Rara.
+
+Geryn stood up.
+
+"Sit down," Rara repeated. "Sit down. You're not well. Now sit down!"
+
+Geryn lowered himself stiffly to the chair. He turned to Rara. "Did I
+start a war? I tried to stop it. That was all I wanted. Would it have
+happened if ..."
+
+"Sit back," Rara said. "If you're going to talk to somebody, talk to me.
+I can answer you. Geryn, you didn't start the war."
+
+Geryn suddenly rose once more, staggered forward, slammed his hands on
+the table and began to cough.
+
+"For pity's sake," Rara cried, trying to move the old man back into his
+chair, "will you sit down and relax! You're not well! You're not well at
+all!" From above the house came the faint beat of helicopter blades.
+
+Geryn went back to his chair. Suddenly he leaned his head back, his
+sharp Adam's apple shooting high in his neck and quivering. Rara jumped
+forward and tried to bring his head up. "Dear heavens," she breathed.
+"Stop that. Now stop it, or you'll hurt yourself."
+
+Geryn's head came up straight again. "A war," he said. "They made me
+start the--"
+
+"No one made you do anything," Rara said. "And you didn't start the
+war."
+
+"Are you sure?" he asked. "No. You can't be sure. No one can.
+Nobody...."
+
+"Will you please try to relax," Rara repeated, tucking at the blanket.
+
+Geryn relaxed. It went all through his body, starting at his hands. The
+stiff shoulders dropped a little, his head fell forward, the wall of
+muscle quivering across his stomach loosened, the back bent; and that
+frail fist of strength that had jarred life through his tautened body
+for seventy years, shaking inside his chest, it too relaxed. Then it
+stopped. Geryn crumpled onto the floor.
+
+The shifting body pulled Rara down with him. Unaware that he was dead,
+she was trying to get him back into the chair, when the helicopter
+blades got very loud.
+
+She looked up to see the window darken with a metal shadow. "Good lord,"
+she breathed. Then the glass shattered.
+
+She screamed, careened around the table, and fled through the door,
+slamming it behind her.
+
+Over the flexible metal ramp that hooked onto the window sill two men
+entered the room. Fire-blades poised, they walked to the crumpled body,
+lifted it between them, and carried it back to the window. Their arm
+bands showed the royal insignia of the palace guards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tel was running down the street because someone was following him. He
+ducked into a side alley and skittered down a flight of stone steps.
+Somewhere overhead he heard a helicopter.
+
+His heart was pounding like explosions in his chest, like the sea, like
+his ocean. Once he had looked through a six-inch crevice between glassy
+water and the top of a normally submerged cave and seen wet, orange
+starfish dripping from the ceiling and their reflections quivering with
+his own breath. Now he was trapped in the cave of the city, the tide of
+fear rising to lock him in. Footsteps passed above him.
+
+Nearby was a ladder that led to a trap door which would put him in the
+hall of a tenement. He climbed it, emerged, and then turned up the
+regular steps to the roof. He walked across the tar-paper surface to the
+edge, leaned over, and peered into the alley. Two men, who may have been
+the people following him, approached from opposite ends of the alley.
+The sky was deepening toward evening and it was cool. The two men met,
+and then one pointed to the roof.
+
+"Damn," Tel muttered, ducked backward, and bit his tongue with surprise.
+He opened his mouth and breathed hard, holding the side of his jaw. The
+helicopter was coming closer.
+
+Then something very light fell over him. He forgot his bitten tongue and
+struck out with his hands. It was strong, too. It jerked at his feet and
+he fell forward. It was not until it lifted him from the roof that he
+realized he was caught in a net. He was being drawn up toward the sound
+of the whirling helicopter blades.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just about that time the order came through. He didn't even have time to
+say good-bye to Clea. Two other mathematicians in the corps had shown
+appropriate awe at Clea's discovery and proceeded to locate the
+generator. The next-in-charge general, working on a strategy Tomar did
+not quite understand, decided that now was the time for an active
+strike. "Besides," he added, "if we don't give them some combat soon,
+we'll lose--and I mean lose as in 'misplace'--the war."
+
+The shadow of the control tower fell through the windshield and slipped
+across Tomar's face. He pulled up his goggles and sighed. Active combat.
+What the hell would they be combating? The disorder, the disorganization
+was beginning to strike him as farcical. Though after the poisoned fish,
+the farcical was no longer funny.
+
+The buildings on the airfield sunk back and down. The transit ribbon
+fell below him and the six other planes in the formation pulled up
+behind him. A moment later the island was a comb of darkness on the
+glittering foil of the evening sea.
+
+Clouds banded the deep blue at the horizon. There were three stars out,
+the same stars that he had looked at as a boy when his sunup to sundown
+work day had ended. Between hunger and hunger there had been some times
+when you could look at the stars and wonder, as there were now between
+times of work and work.
+
+The controls were set. There was nothing to do but wait for land to rise
+up over the edge of the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the end of the metal ribbon was a transparent crystal sphere,
+fifteen feet in diameter which hovered above the receiving stage. A
+dozen small tetron units sat around the room. By one ornate window a
+bank of forty-nine scarlet knobbed switches pointed to off. Two men
+stood on the metal catwalk that ran above the receiving stage, one young
+man with black hair, the other a dark giant with a triplex of scars down
+the left side of his face.
+
+In another room, the corpses of the elders of Telphar sat stiff and
+decomposed on green velvet seats.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was evening in the solarium on top of the General Medical building.
+The patients were about to be herded from their deck chairs and game
+tables under the glass roof back to their wards, when a woman screamed.
+Then there was the sound of breaking glass. More people screamed.
+
+Alter heard the roar of helicopter blades. People were running around
+her. Suddenly the crowd of bathrobed patients broke from in front of
+her. She touched the cast that covered her left shoulder and arm. People
+cried out. Then she saw.
+
+The glass dome had been shattered at the edge, and the flexible metal
+ramp ran a dark ribbon from the copter to the edge of the solarium. The
+men that marched across had the insignia of the royal guards. She
+clamped her jaws together and moved behind the nurse. The men marched
+in, fire-blades high, among the overturned deck chairs. There were three
+stars visible, she noted irrelevantly, through the bubble dome.
+
+Good lord! They were coming toward her!
+
+The moment the guards recognized her, she realized the only way to get
+out was to cross the suddenly immense span of metal flooring to the
+stairwell. She ducked her head, broke from the crowd of patients and
+ran, wondering why she had been fool enough to wait this long. The guard
+tackled her and she heard screams again.
+
+She fell to the hard floor and felt pain explode along the inside of her
+cast. The guard tried to lift her, and with her good arm she struck at
+his face. Then she held her palm straight and brought the edge down on
+the side of his neck.
+
+She staggered and she felt herself slip to the floor. Then someone
+grabbed a handful of her hair and her head was yanked back. At first she
+closed her eyes. Then she had to open them. Night was moving above her
+through the dome of the solarium. Then the cracked edge of the glass
+passed over her, and it was colder, and the blur and roar of helicopter
+blades was above.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"On course?"
+
+"Dead on course," said Tomar back into the microphone. Below, the rim of
+land slipped back under them. The moon bleached the edges of the
+vari-colored darknesses beneath them; then went down.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Major?" came the voice from the speaker
+again.
+
+"Not thinking about anything," Tomar said. "Just thinking about waiting.
+It's funny, that's most of what you do in this army: wait. You wait to
+go out and fight. And once you go out, then you start waiting to turn
+around and come back."
+
+"Wonder what it'll be like."
+
+"A few bombs over that generator, then we'll have had active combat, and
+everyone will be happy."
+
+A laugh, mechanical, through the speaker. "Suppose they 'active' back?"
+
+"If they cripple our planes like they've done before, we'll make it to
+the island again."
+
+"I had to leave a hot cup of coffee back at the hangar, Major. I wish it
+was light so we could see what we were doing."
+
+"Stop bitching."
+
+"Hey, Major."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I've invented a new kind of dice."
+
+"You would."
+
+"What you do is take fifteen centiunit pieces and arrange them in a
+four-by-four square with one corner missing. Then you take a sixteenth
+one and shoot it within forty-five degrees either way of the diagonal
+into the missing corner. It works out that no matter how you do it, if
+all the coins in the square are touching, two coins will fly off of the
+far edge. Each of those has a number and the two numbers that fly off
+are like the two numbers that come up on the dice. It's better than
+regular dice because the chances are up on some combinations. And
+there's a certain amount of skill involved too. The guys call it
+Randomax. That's for _random numbers_ and _matrix_."
+
+"I'll play you a game someday," Tomar said. "You know, if you used a
+smaller coin than a centiunit for the one you fire into the missing
+corner, say a deciunit, the chances that it would hit both corner coins
+would go up, that is your randomness."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Sure," Tomar said. "My girl friend's a mathematician, and she was
+telling me all about probability a few weeks ago. I bet she'd be
+interested in the game."
+
+"You know what, Major?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I think you're the best officer in the damn army."
+
+Such was the conversation before the first battle of the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such was the conversation Jon Koshar monitored in the laboratory tower
+of the Palace of the Stars in Telphar. "Oh damn," he said. "Come on,
+Arkor. We'd better get going. If the Duchess doesn't get here with Geryn
+soon.... Well, let's not think about it." He scribbled a note, set it in
+front of one visiphone and dialed the number of another that was on a
+stand in front of the receiving platform of the transit ribbon.
+
+"There," he said. "That's got instructions to follow us as soon as she
+gets here. And she better not miss it." They went down the metal steps
+to a double doorway that opened onto a road.
+
+Two mechanical vehicles stood there, both with pre-controls set for
+similar destinations. Jon and Arkor climbed into one, pushed the
+ignition button, and the car shot forward along the elevated roadway.
+White mercury lights flooded the elevated strip as it wound through the
+city.
+
+The road dipped and houses got wider and lower on each side. The horizon
+glowed purple and above that, deep yellow clouds dropped into late
+evening. There was a sound of planes overhead.
+
+As the car halted at the barren limit of the last suburb of Telphar, a
+sudden white streak speared from the horizon. "Uh-oh," said Jon. "That's
+what I was afraid of."
+
+Something caught fire in the air, twisted wildly through the sky, and
+then began to circle down, flaming.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Major! Major! What happened to D-42?"
+
+"Something got him. Pull over. Pull over everybody!"
+
+"We can't spot it. Where'd it come from?"
+
+"All right, everybody. Break formation. Break formation, I said!"
+
+"Major, I'm going to drop a bomb. Maybe we can see where that came from
+in the light. I thought you said cripple."
+
+"Never mind what I said. Drop it."
+
+"Major Tomar. This is B-6. We've been--" (Unintelligible static.)
+
+Someone else gave a slow whistle through the microphone.
+
+"Break formation, I said. Damn it, break formation."
+
+Over the plain, a sheet of red fire flapped up, and Jon and Arkor pulled
+back from the railing that edged the road. Another white streak left the
+horizon, and for a moment, in the glare, their shadows on the pavement
+were doubled in white and red.
+
+The sound of the explosion reached them a moment later, as broken rocks
+leapt into visibility like a rotted jaw swung up through red fire.
+
+Another sound behind them made them turn. The lighted roadways of
+Telphar looped the city like strands of pearls on skeletal fingers. A
+car came toward them.
+
+Another wailing missile took the sky, and a moment later a screaming
+plane answered, tearing down the night. This one suddenly turned as its
+flaming motors caught once more and careened above their heads so close
+that they ducked and disappeared among the city towers: an explosion,
+then falling flame drooled the side of a building. "I hope that's
+nowhere near the Palace of the Stars," a voice said next to Jon. "We'll
+have a great time getting back if it is."
+
+Jon whirled. The Duchess had gotten out of the car. The red light flared
+a moment in her hair, then died.
+
+"No. That was nowhere near it," Jon said. "Am I glad to see you."
+
+Tel and Alter, still in her cast and hospital robe, followed the Duchess
+out of the car.
+
+"Well," he said, "you brought the kids too."
+
+"It was better than leaving them back in Toron. Jon, Geryn is dead. I
+asked what to do, but I didn't get any answer. So we lugged his body
+along just in case. But what do we do now?"
+
+From the railing Arkor laughed.
+
+"It's not funny," Jon said.
+
+The Duchess looked overhead as another missile exploded. "I had hoped
+this wouldn't happen. This means a war, Jon. A real one, and
+unstoppable."
+
+Another plane crashed, too close this time, and they ducked behind the
+cars. "Gee," breathed Alter, which was the only thing anybody said.
+
+Then Arkor cried, "Come on."
+
+"Where to?" asked Jon.
+
+"Follow me," Arkor repeated. "Everyone."
+
+"What about Geryn?"
+
+"Leave that corpse behind," Arkor told them. "He can't help."
+
+"Look, do you know what's going on?" Jon demanded.
+
+"More than Geryn ever did," the giant returned. "Now let's get going."
+They sprinted out along the road, then ducked under the railing and made
+their way across the rocky waste.
+
+"Where are we going?" Tel whispered.
+
+Jon called back over his shoulder, "That's a very good question."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The plane got tipped, and for seven seconds, while the needles swung,
+he didn't know where he was going, east or west, up or down. When the
+needles stopped, he saw that it hadn't been any of the first three.
+Suddenly the green detector light flashed in the half darkness of the
+cabin. The generator! The radiation generator was right below him. Then
+he was blinded by a white flare outside the windshield. Oh, God damn!
+
+He felt the jerk and the air suddenly rushed in cold behind him. There
+was a hell of a lot of noise and the needle quietly swung.... He was
+going down!
+
+Land lit up outside the front window; a small block house set in the
+wrecked earth. There were three whirling antennae on the roof. That must
+be it! That must!
+
+It happened in his arms and fingers, not in his head. Because suddenly
+he pushed the stick forward, and the plane, what was left of it, turned
+over and he was staring straight down, straight ahead, straight,
+straight below him. And coming closer.
+
+It must have been his arms, because his head was thinking wildly about a
+time when a girl with pearls in her black hair had asked him what he had
+wanted, and he had said, 'Nothing ... nothing....' and realized he had
+been wrong because suddenly he wanted very much to ... (The block house
+came up and hit him.) ... Nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tel and the Duchess screamed. The rest just drew breath quickly and
+staggered back. "He's in there," Arkor said. "That's where your Lord of
+the Flames is."
+
+The landscape glowed with the encroaching light of the flaming torch,
+and they saw the blockhouse now with its whirling antennae on the roof.
+Before the plane hit, a darkness opened in the side of the blockhouse
+and three figures emerged and sprinted among the rocks.
+
+"The middle one," said Arkor. "That's him, face him, concentrate on
+him...."
+
+"What do you...?" Tel began.
+
+"You ride along with me, kids," Arkor said, only he didn't move. Two of
+the figures had fallen now, but the middle one was running toward them.
+The torch hit, and his shadow was suddenly flung across the broken earth
+to meet them....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The green of beetles' wings ... the red of polished carbuncle ... a web
+of silver fire, and through the drifting blue smoke Jon hurled across
+the sky.
+
+Then blackness, intense and cold. The horizon was tiny, jagged, maybe
+ten feet away. He reached a metal out and crawled expertly (not
+clumsily. Expertly!) across a crevice, but slowly, very slowly. The sky
+was sharp with stars, though the sun was dim to his light-sensitive
+rind. Like a sliding cyst, he edged over the chunk of rock that spun
+somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Now he reached out with his mind to
+touch a second creature on another rock. _Petra_, he called. _Where is
+he?_
+
+_His orbit should take him between the three of us in a minute and a
+half._
+
+_Fine._
+
+_Jon, who is the third one? I still don't understand._
+
+Another mind joined them. _You don't understand yet? I was the third, I
+always was. I was the one who directed Geryn to make the plan in the
+first place for the kidnaping. What made you think that he was in
+contact with the triple beings?_
+
+_I don't know_, Jon said. _Some misunderstanding._
+
+There was the laughter of children. Then Tel said, _Hey, everybody,
+we're with Arkor._
+
+_Shhh_, said Alter. _The misunderstanding was my fault, Jon. I told you
+that Geryn talked to himself, and that made you think it was him._
+
+_Get ready_, Petra said. _Here he comes._
+
+Jon saw, or rather sensed the approach of another spinning asteroid,
+whirling toward them through the blackness. But it was inhabited. Yes!
+The three of them threw their thoughts across the rush of space.
+
+_There...._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roaring steam swirled above him. He raised his eye-stalks another twenty
+feet and looked toward the top of the cataract some four miles up. Then
+he lowered his siphon into the edge of the pool of pale green liquid
+methane and drank deeply. Far away in a beryl green sky, three suns
+rushed madly about one another and gave a little heat to this farthest
+of their six planets.
+
+Now Jon flapped his slitherers down and began to glide away from the
+methane falls and up the nearly vertical mountain slope. Someone was
+coming toward him, with shiny red eye-stalks waving in greeting.
+"Greetings to the new colony," the eye-stalks signaled.
+
+Jon started to signal back. But suddenly he recognized (a feeling way at
+the back of his slitherers) who this was. He leaped forward and flung
+the double flaps of leathery flesh across his opponent and began to
+scramble back up the rocks. Jon had his tight, but was wondering where
+the hell were....
+
+Suddenly his eye-stalk caught the great form that he knew must be Arkor
+coming down over the rocks (with Alter and Tel. Yes, definitely; because
+the creature suddenly did a flying leap between two crags that could
+have only been under the girl-acrobat's control), and a moment later
+that Petra had arrived at the other shore of the methane river. Using
+her slitherers for paddles, she struck out across the foaming current.
+
+Think at him, concentrate.... _There...._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The air was water-clear. The desert was still, and he lay in the warm
+sand, under the light of the crescent moon. He was growing, adding
+facets; he let the pale illumination seep into his transparent body,
+decreasing his polarization cross-frequencies. The light was beautiful,
+too beautiful--dangerous! He began to tingle, to glow red-hot. His base
+burned with white heat and another layer of sand beneath him melted,
+fused, ran, and became part of his crystalline body.
+
+He stepped up the polarization, his body clouded, and cooled once more.
+Music sang through him, and his huge upper facet reflected the stars.
+
+Once more he lessened his polarization, and the light crept further and
+further into his being. His temperature rose. Vibrations suffused his
+transparency and the pulsing music made the three dust particles that
+had settled on his coaxial face seven hundred and thirty years ago dance
+above him. He felt their reflection deep in his prismatic center.
+
+He felt it coming, suddenly, and tried to stop it. But the polarization
+index suddenly broke down completely. For one terrific moment of ecstasy
+the light of the moon and the stars poured completely through him. Chord
+after chord rang out in the desert night. Back and forth along his axis,
+colliding, shaking his substance, jarring him, pommeling him, came the
+vibrations. For one instant he was completely transparent. The next, he
+was white-hot. Before he could melt, he felt the crack start.
+
+It shot the length of his forty-two mile, super-heated body. He was in
+two pieces! The radio disturbance alone covered a third of a galaxy.
+Twelve pieces fell away. The chord crashed again, and the crack whipped
+back and forth vivisecting him. Already he was nearly thirty-six
+thousand individual crystals, all of which had to grow again, thirty-six
+thousand minds. He was no more.
+
+_Jon_, the voice sang through drumbled silicate.
+
+_Right over here, Petra_, he hummed back. (The note was a perfect
+quarter tone below A-flat. Perfect! Not clumsy. _Perfect_!)
+
+_Where's Arkor?_
+
+To their left the triple notes of an E-flat minor chord (Arkor, Tel, and
+Alter) sounded: _Right here._
+
+Just as they had made contact, before the music stopped (and once more
+their thoughts would become separate, individual, and they would lose
+awareness of each other and of the hundreds of other crystals that lay
+over the desert, under the clear perpetual night)--just then a strident
+dissonance pierced among them.
+
+_There_, sang Petra.
+
+_There_, hummed Jon.
+
+_There_, came the triad in E-flat minor. They concentrated, tuned,
+turned their thoughts against the dissonance. _There...._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jon rolled over and pushed the silk from his white shoulders and
+stretched. Through the blue pillars, the evening sky was yellow. Music,
+very light and fast, was coming from below the balcony. Suddenly a voice
+sounded beside him: "Your Majesty, your Majesty! You shouldn't be
+resting now. They're waiting for you downstairs. Tltltrlte will be
+furious if you're late."
+
+"What do I care?" Jon responded. "Where's my robe?"
+
+The serving maid hastened away and returned with a sheer, shimmering
+robe, netted through with threads of royal black. The drape covered
+Jon's shoulders, draped across his breasts, and fell to his thighs.
+
+"My mirror," said Jon.
+
+The serving maid brought the mirror and Jon looked. Long, slightly
+oriental eyes sat wide-spaced in the ivory face over high cheekbones.
+Full breasts pushed tautly beneath the transluscent material, and the
+slender waist spread to sensual, generous hips. Jon almost whistled at
+his reflection.
+
+The maid slipped clear plastic slippers on his feet, and Jon rose and
+walked toward the stairs. In the lobby, the throng hissed appreciatively
+as he descended. On one column hung a bird cage in which a three-headed
+cockatoo was singing to beat the band. Which was difficult to do,
+because the band was composed of fourteen copper-headed drums. (Fourteen
+was the royal number.)
+
+Across the lobby wind instruments wailed, and Jon paused on the stairs.
+"Don't worry," the maid said, "I'm right behind you."
+
+Jon felt the terror rise. _Hey_, he called out mentally, _is that you,
+Petra?_
+
+_Like I said, right behind you._
+
+_Incidentally, how did I come up with this body?_
+
+_I don't know, dear, but you look devastating._
+
+_Gee, thanks_, he said, projecting a mental sneer. _Where's Arkor and
+Company?_
+
+The music had stopped. There was only the sound of the three-headed
+bird.
+
+_There they are._
+
+The winds screeched again, and at the entrance of the lobby, the people
+fell away from the door. There was Tltltrlte. He was tall, and dark, in
+a cloak in which there were many more black threads than in Jon's. He
+unsheathed a sword, and began to come forward. "Your reign is through,
+Daughter of the Sun," he announced. "It is time for a new cycle."
+
+"Very well," said Jon.
+
+As Tltltrlte advanced, the throng that crowded the lobby clapped their
+hands in terror and moved back further. Jon stood very straight.
+
+As Tltltrlte came forward, his shoulders narrowed. He pushed back the
+hood of his cloak and a mass of ebony hair cascaded down his shoulders.
+With each step, his hips broadened and his waist narrowed. A very
+definite bulge of mammary glands now pushed up beneath his black silk
+tunic. As Tltltrlte reached the bottom of the steps, she raised her
+sword.
+
+_Think at him_, came Arkor from the bird cage.
+
+_Think at him_, came from Petra.
+
+Jon saw the blade flash forward and then felt it slide into his abdomen.
+_At her_, he corrected.
+
+_At her_, they answered.
+
+As Jon toppled down the steps, dying, he asked, _What the hell is this
+anyway?_
+
+_We're inhabiting a very advanced species of moss_, Arkor explained,
+with the calmness that only a telepath can muster in certain confusing
+situations. _Each individual starts off male, but eventually changes to
+female at the desired time._
+
+_Moss?_ asked Jon as he hit his head on the bottom step and died.
+
+_There...._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wave came again and thundered on the beach. He staggered backwards,
+just as the froth spumed up the sand. The sky was blue-black. He raised
+his fingers to his lips (seven long tines webbed together) and whined
+into the night. He lifted his transparent eyelids from his huge,
+luminous eyes to see if there wasn't some faint trace of the boat. Spray
+fell on them, stung the rims, and he snapped all three lids over them,
+one after another. He whined again, and once more the wave grew before
+him.
+
+He opened the two opaque lids, and this time thought he saw them far off
+through the greenish spray. The pentagonal sail rode above a
+billow-blue, wet, and full. It dipped, rose, and he pulled back his
+transparent eyelid again, this time when the wave was down, and thought
+he saw figures on the fibrous hammock of the boat. On the blue sail was
+the white circle of a Master Fisherman's boat. His parent was a Master
+Fisherman. Yes, it was his parent coming to get him.
+
+Another billow exploded and he crouched in the froth, digging his hind
+feet deep into the pebbly beach.
+
+The crosshatch of planking scudded onto the shore, and they swarmed off.
+One wore a chain around his neck with the Master Fisherman's seal.
+Another carried a seven-pronged fork. The two others were just
+boat-hands and wore identifying black belts of Kelpod shells.
+
+"My offspring," said the one with the seal. "My fins have smarted for
+you. I thought we would never swim together again." He reached down and
+lifted Jon into his arms. Jon put his head against his parent's chest
+and watched water beading down the pentagonal scales.
+
+"I was frightened," Jon said.
+
+His parent laughed. "I was frightened too. Why did you swim out so far?"
+
+"I wanted to see the island. But when I was swimming, I saw...."
+
+"What?"
+
+Jon closed his eyelids.
+
+His parent smiled again. "You're sleepy. Come." Now Jon felt himself
+carried to the water and into the waves. The spray fell warmly on his
+face now, and unafraid, he relaxed his gill slits as water fell across
+him and they climbed onto the boat.
+
+Wind caught the sail, and the open-work of planking listed into the sea.
+Long clouds swung rapidly across the twin moons like the tines of the
+fishing forks the fishermen saluted the sacred phosphor fires with when
+they returned from their expeditions. He dreamed of his, a little, in
+the swell and drop. His parent had tied him to the boat, and so he
+floated at the end of a few feet of slack. Water rolled down his
+shoulders, slipped beneath his limp dorsal fin, and tickled. Then he
+dreamed of something else, the thing he had seen, glowing first beneath
+the water, then rising.... He whined suddenly, and shook his head.
+
+He heard the others on the boat, their webbed feet slipping on the wet
+planks. He opened his eyes and looked up. The two boat-hands were
+holding onto stays and pointing off into the water. Now his parent had
+come up to them, holding a fishing spear, and they were joined by the
+Second Fisherman.
+
+Jon scrambled from the water onto the plank. His parent put an arm
+around him and drew him closer. (_Here he comes_, Arkor said.) His other
+hand went to the seal of authority around his neck, as though it gave
+him some sort of protection.
+
+"There it is," Jon suddenly cried. "That's what I saw. That's why I was
+afraid to swim back." (_There it is_, Jon said.)
+
+A phosphorescent disk was shimmering under the surface of the water. The
+Second Fisherman raised his spear higher. "What is it?" he asked. (_What
+is it this time?_ Petra wanted to know.)
+
+Indistinct, yet nearly the size of the ship, it hovered almost three
+breast strokes from them, glowing beneath the surface.
+
+(_I'll have a look_, said Petra.) The Second Fisherman suddenly dove
+forward and disappeared. Still holding to the frame of the boat, Jon and
+his parent went under the water where they could see better.
+
+One of Jon's eyelids, the transparent one, was actually an envelope of
+tissue which he could flood with vitreous solution when he was submerged
+to form a correcting lens over his pupil.
+
+Through the water he saw the Second Fisherman bubbling through the water
+toward the immense, transluscent hemisphere that dangled ahead of them.
+The Second Fisherman stopped with an underwater double-reverse and
+hovered near the thing. (_It's a huge jellyfish_, Petra told them.)
+"Can't figure out what it is," the Second Fisherman signaled back. Then
+he extended his fork and jabbed at the membrane. The seven tines went
+in, came out.
+
+The jellyfish moved, fast.
+
+The tentacles hanging from the bottom of the bag raveled upward like
+snagged threads. The body bloated and surged sideways. Two tentacles
+wrapped around the Second Fisherman as he tried to swim away. (_Eep_,
+said Petra. _These things hurt._)
+
+Jon's parent was on top of deck again, shouting orders to the
+boat-hands. The ship swung toward the thing which was now heaving to the
+surface.
+
+(_Look, let's finish this thing up for good. Concentrate._ That was
+Arkor. _There...._)
+
+(From beneath the water they felt Petra reach her mind into the pulsing
+mass: _There...._)
+
+(As the tentacles encased her and she jammed the spear home again and
+again through the leaking membrane, she felt Jon's mind join in:
+There....)
+
+The boat rammed into the side of the jellyfish, the planks tearing away
+the membrane and the thick, stinging insides fountaining over them. Now
+it nearly turned over, and tentacles flapped from the water in wet,
+fleshy ropes. The Second Fisherman was caught in one of the snarls.
+
+Their green faces were lighted from beneath by the milky glow.
+
+(_There...._) Suddenly it tore away from the planks, going down beneath
+the water. (_There...._) The Second Fisherman's head bobbed to the
+surface, shook the green fin that crested his skull, and laughed.
+(_There...._)
+
+3 to 6, 3 to 6, (Jon's frequency oscillated from 3 to 6 as he drifted
+through clouds of super-heated gas) 3 to 6, 3 to 6--7 to 10! (Someone
+was coming.) U to 10, 7 to 10, (It was getting closer; suddenly:) 10 to
+16! (Then:) 3 to 6, 7 to 10, 3 to 6, 7 to 10, (they had passed through
+each other. _Hi_, Petra said. _Have you any idea where we are?_)
+
+(_The temperature is somewhere near three quarters of a million degrees.
+Any ideas?_)
+
+9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (came puttering along and passed through both
+Jon and Petra;) 12 to 35, 10 to 37, (and then, again) 3 to 6, 7 to 10, 9
+to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (_We are halfway between the surface and the
+center of a star not unlike our sun_, said Arkor. _Note all the strange
+elements around._) 9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27.
+
+7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10 (_They keep on turning into one another_,
+Petra said.) 7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10.
+
+3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6 (_At this temperature you would too if you were
+atomic_, Jon told her.) 3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6.
+
+9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (_Where's our friend?_ Arkor wanted to know.)
+
+pi to e, pi to 2e, 2pi to 4e, 4pi to 8e, 8pi to 16e, 16pi to 32e.
+
+(_Speak of the_ ... Jon started. _Hey, we've got to do something about
+that. Not only is it transcendental, it's increasing so fast he'll
+eventually shake this star apart._) 3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6.
+
+(_So that's what causes novas_, said Petra.) 7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10.
+
+(At the next oscillation, Arkor, acting as a side-coefficient, passed
+through the intruder.) 32^{2}pi to 64e (Arkor got out before the second
+extremity was reached. The wave cycle stuttered, having been reversed
+end on end.) 642pi to 32e (It tried to right itself and couldn't because
+Jon spun through the lower end divisibility) 642pi to 16/9e (then Arkor
+jumped in, tail first it recovered and it resolved into:) 642pi to 4/3e,
+642pi to 4/3e, 642pi to 4/3e (it quivered, its range no longer
+geometric).
+
+(_Watch this_, said Petra, _About face...._ She gave it a sort of nudge,
+not passing through it, so that when it whirled to catch her, she was
+gone, and it was going the other way:)
+
+4/3pi to 642e, 4/3pi to 642e, 4/3pi to 642e,
+
+(_I hope no one ever does that to me_, said Petra. _Look, the poor thing
+is contracting._)
+
+4/3 to 640e, 4/3pi to 622, 4/3pi to 560, 4/3pi to 499,
+
+(Somehow the _e_ component chanced to slip through 125. Jon moved in
+like a shower of anti-theta-mazons and extracted a painless cube so fast
+that the intruder oscillated on it three times before it knew what had
+happened to it:)
+
+4/3pi to 5^{3}e, 4/3pi to 5^{3}e, 4/3pi to 5^{3}e under high
+gravity--very high, that is, two to three million times that of earth,
+such as inside a star--in such warped space there is a subtle difference
+between 5^{3} and 125, though they represent the same number. It's like
+the notes E-sharp and F, which are technically the same, but are
+distinguished between when played by a good violinist with a fine ear.
+When the root came loose, therefore, the variation threw the wave-length
+all off balance:) 4/3pi to 5e, 4/3pi to 5e, 4/3pi to 5e....
+
+(_All right, everybody, concentrate--_)
+
+(_There, there, there...._)
+
+For one moment, the intruding oscillation turned, ducked, tried to
+escape, and couldn't. It contracted into a small ball with a volume of
+4/3pi_e_^{3}, and disappeared.
+
+_There...._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jon Koshar shook his head, staggered forward, and went down on his knees
+in white sand. He blinked. He looked up. There were two shadows in front
+of him. Then he saw the city.
+
+It was Telphar, stuck on a desert, under a double sun. The transit
+ribbon started across the desert, got the length of twelve pylons, and
+then crumpled.
+
+As he stood up, something caught in the corner of his eye.
+
+His eyes moved, and he saw a woman about twenty feet away from him. Her
+red hair fell straight to her shoulders in the dry heat. He blinked as
+she approached. She wore a straight skirt and had a notebook under her
+arm. "Petra?" he said, frowning. It was Petra, but Petra different.
+
+"Jon," she answered. "What happened to you?"
+
+He looked down at himself. He was wearing a torn, dirty uniform. A
+prison uniform. His prison uniform!
+
+"Arkor," said Petra, suddenly. (Her voice was higher, less sure.)
+
+They turned. Arkor stood in the sand, his feet wide over the white
+hillocks. The triple scars down his face welled bright blood in the hot
+light.
+
+They came together now. "What's going on?" Jon asked.
+
+Arkor shrugged.
+
+"What about the kids?" asked Petra.
+
+"They're still right here," Arkor said, pointing to his head and
+grinning. Then his finger touched the opened scars. When he drew it
+away, he saw the blood and frowned. Then he looked at the City. The sun
+caught on the towers and slipped like bright liquid along the looping
+highways. "Hey," Jon said to Petra. (No, he realized; it was Petra with
+a handful of years lopped off.) "What's the notebook?"
+
+She looked down at it, surprised to find it in her hands. Then she
+looked at her dress. Suddenly she laughed, and began to flip through the
+pages of the notebook. "Why, this is the book in which I finished my
+article on shelter architecture among the forest people. In fact this is
+what I was wearing the day I finished my article."
+
+"And you?" Jon asked Arkor.
+
+Arkor looked at the blood on his finger. "My mark is bleeding, like the
+night the priest put it there." He paused. "That was the night that I
+became Arkor, really. That was the time that I realized how the world
+was, the confusion, the stupidity, the fear. It was the night I decided
+to leave the forest." Now he looked up at Jon. "That was the uniform you
+were wearing when you escaped from prison."
+
+"Yes," said Jon. "I guess it was what I was wearing when I became me,
+too. That was the time when freedom seemed most bright." He paused. "I
+was going to find it no matter what. Only somehow I felt I'd gotten
+sideswiped. I wonder whether I have or not."
+
+"Have you?" asked Petra. She glanced at the City. "I guess when I
+finished that essay, that's when I really became myself, too. I remember
+I went through a whole sudden series of revelations about myself, and
+about society, and about how I felt about society, about being an
+aristocrat, even, what it meant and what it _didn't_ mean. And I suppose
+that's why I'm here now." She looked at the City again. "There he is,"
+she nodded.
+
+"That's right," said Jon.
+
+They started across the sand, now, making toward the shadow of the
+ruined transit ribbon. They reached it quicker than they thought, for
+the horizon was very close. The double shadows, one a bit lighter than
+the other, lay like two inked brush strokes over the page of the desert.
+"But how come we're in our own bodies," the Duchess asked, as they
+reached the shadow of the first pylon. "Shouldn't we be inhabiting the
+forms of...." Suddenly there was a sound, the shadow moved. Jon looked
+up at the ribbon above them and cried out.
+
+As the metal tore away, they jumped back, and a moment later a length of
+the ribbon splashed down into the sand, where they had stood. They were
+still for a handful of breaths.
+
+"You're darn right he's there," Jon said. "Come on."
+
+They started again. Petra shook white grains from her notebook cover and
+they moved along the loose sand. A road seeped from under the desert,
+now, and began to rise toward Telphar. They mounted it and followed it
+toward the looming city. Before them the towers were dark streaks on the
+rich blue sky.
+
+"You know, Petra's question is a good one," Arkor said few minutes
+later.
+
+"Yeah," said Jon. "I've been thinking about it too. We seem to be in
+our own bodies, only they're different. Different as our bodies were at
+the most important moments of our lives. Maybe, somehow, we've come to a
+planet in some corner of the universe, where three beings almost
+identical to us, only different in that way, are doing, for some reason
+we'll never know, almost exactly what we're doing now."
+
+"It's possible," Arkor said. "With all the myriad possibilities of
+worlds, it's conceivable that one might be like that, or like this."
+
+"Even to the point of talking about talking about it?" asked Petra. She
+answered herself. "Yes, I guess it could. But saying all this for
+reasons we don't understand, and saying, 'Saying all this for reasons we
+don't understand....'" She shuddered. "It's not supposed to be that way.
+It gives me the creeps."
+
+There was another sound, and they froze. It was the low sound of some
+structure tumbling, but they couldn't see anything.
+
+Another fifty feet, when the road had risen ten feet off the ground and
+the first tower was beside them, they heard a cracking noise again. The
+road swayed beneath them. "Uh-oh," Arkor said.
+
+Then the road fell. They cried out, they scrambled; suddenly there was
+cracked concrete around them, and they had fallen. Above them was a
+jagged width of blue sky between the remaining edges of the road.
+
+"My foot's caught," Petra cried out.
+
+Arkor was beside her, tugging on the concrete slab that held her.
+
+"Hold on a second," Jon said. He grabbed a free metal strut that still
+vibrated in the rubble, and jammed it between the slab and the beam it
+lay on. Using the wreck of an I-beam for a fulcrum, he pried it up.
+"There, slip your foot out."
+
+Petra rolled away. "Is the bone broken?" he asked. "I got a friend of
+mine out of a mine accident that way, once." He let the slab fall
+again. (And for a moment he stopped, thinking, I knew what to do. I
+wasn't clumsy, I knew....)
+
+Petra rubbed her ankle. "No," she said. "I just got my ankle wedged in
+that crevice, and the concrete fell on top." She stood up, now, picking
+up the notebook. "Ow," she said. "That hurts."
+
+Arkor held her arm. "Can you walk?"
+
+"With difficulty," Petra said, taking another step and clamping her
+teeth.
+
+"Alter says to stand on your other foot and shake your injured one
+around to get the circulation back," Arkor told her.
+
+Petra gritted teeth, and stepped again. "A little better," she said.
+"I'm scared. This really hurts. This may be a body that looks like mine,
+but it hurts, and it hurts like mine." Suddenly she looked off into the
+city. "Oh hell," she said. "He's in there. Let's go."
+
+They went forward again, this time under the road. The sidewalks,
+deserted and graying, slipped past. They passed a shopping section;
+teeth of broken glass gaped in the frames of store windows. Above, two
+roads veered and crossed, making a black, extended swastika on a patch
+of white clouds.
+
+Then a sudden rumbling.
+
+Silence.
+
+They stopped.
+
+Now a crash, thunderous and protracted. An odor of dust reached them.
+"He's there," Arkor said.
+
+"Yes," said Jon.
+
+"I can...."
+
+Then the City exploded. There was one instant of very real agony for Jon
+as the pavement beneath his feet shot up at him, and he reached his mind
+out as a shard of concrete knocked in his face (all the time crying,
+_No, no, I've just become Jon Koshar, I'm not supposed to_ ... as a lost
+Prince had cried out half a year and half a universe away) and at the
+same time, _There...._
+
+Petra got a chance to see the face of the building beside them rip off
+a foot before the air blast tore the notebook from her hands, and at the
+same time she welled her thoughts from behind the bone confines of her
+skull. _There...._
+
+And Arkor's thoughts (he never saw the explosion because he blinked just
+then) tore out through his eyelids as fragmented steel tore into them.
+_There...._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was cold, it was black. For a moment they saw with a spectrum that
+reached from the star-wide waves of novas to the micro-micron skittering
+of neutrinos. And it was black, and completely cold. A rarefied breeze
+of ionized hydrogen (approximately two particles per cubic rod) floated
+over half a light year. Once, a herd of pale photons dashed through them
+from a deflected glare on some dying sun a trillion eons past. Other
+than that, there was silence, save for the hum of one lone galaxy,
+eternities away. They hovered, frozen, staring into nothing, above,
+below, behind, contemplating what they had seen.
+
+Then, the green of beetles' wings, and they flailed into the blood of
+sensation from the blackness, whirled into red flame the color of
+polished carbuncle, smoothly through the nerves and into the brain;
+then, before the blue smoke, burning blue through the lightning seared
+axion of their corporate organisms, they were snared within the heat and
+electric imminency of a web of silver fire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+In the laboratory tower of Toron, the transparent bubble above the
+receiving stage brightened. In shimmering haze on the platform, the
+transparent figures solidified. Then Alter and Tel slipped beneath the
+rail on the stage and dropped down to the floor (Alter still wore the
+hospital robe and the cast on her left arm) while Arkor, Jon, and Petra
+used the metal stairway to descend. A battery of relays snapped
+somewhere and the scarlet heads of forty-nine switches by the window
+snapped to off. The globe faded.
+
+"A bit more explanation," Petra was saying. "Hey, kids, keep quiet."
+
+"Well, as far as the Lord of the Flames goes, on Earth anyway, it's more
+or less trivial and irrelevant," said Arkor. "You're still right. This
+war is in Toromon, not outside it."
+
+"My curiosity is still peaked," Jon said. "So give."
+
+"From what I gathered while I saw scanning the minds of those two who
+came out of the generator building with the Lord of the Flames (I should
+say the host of the Lord of the Flames), there's a tribe behind the
+barrier which resembles more or less what man might have been forty or
+fifty thousand years ago. Physically they're squat, thick-boned, and
+have the elements of a social system. Mentally they're pretty thick and
+squat too. The Lord of the Flames got into one of them just about when
+he was at age four. Then he gave the kid about sixty thousand years
+worth of technical information. So he began building all sorts of
+goodies, forcing his people to help him, using some equipment from a
+ruined city that dates from pre-Great Fire times behind the barrier.
+That's how the generators and the anti-aircraft guns got constructed."
+
+"Our war is still going on," Jon said.
+
+"Well, the Lord of the Flames is no longer with us," said Petra. "We've
+chased it to the other end of the universe. Now that we've removed what
+external reason there was for the war, we've got to think about the
+internal ones."
+
+"What are you going to do immediately about the kids?" Jon asked.
+
+"I think the best thing for them to do is to go off to my estate for a
+little while," Petra said.
+
+"It's on an island, isn't it?" Tel asked.
+
+"That's right," Petra said.
+
+"Gee, Alter. Now I can teach you how to fish, and we'll be right by the
+sea."
+
+"What about Uske?" Arkor asked. "You can either walk into his room and
+interrupt an obscene dream he's having, and present your case and be
+arrested for treason, or you can leave well enough alone at this point
+and wait till the opportunity comes to do something constructive."
+
+Suddenly Jon grinned. "Hey, you say he's asleep?" He turned and bounded
+for the door.
+
+"What are you going to do?" Petra called.
+
+Jon looked at Arkor. "Read my mind," he said.
+
+Then Arkor laughed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his bedroom, Uske rolled over through a silken rustle, opened one
+eye, and thought he heard a sound.
+
+"Hey, stupid," someone whispered.
+
+Uske reached out of bed and pressed the night light. A dim orange glow
+did not quite fill half the room.
+
+"Now don't get panicky," continued the voice. "You're dreaming."
+
+"Huh?" Uske leaned on one elbow, blinked, and scratched his head with
+his other hand.
+
+A shadow approached him, then stopped, naked, faceless, transparent,
+half in and half out of the light. "See," came the voice. "A figment of
+your imagination."
+
+"Oh, I remember you," Uske said.
+
+"Fine," said the shadow. "Do you know what I've been doing since the
+last time you saw me?"
+
+"I couldn't be less interested," Uske said, turning over and looking the
+other way.
+
+"I've been trying to stop the war. Do you believe me?"
+
+"Look, figment, it's three o'clock in the morning. I'll believe it, but
+what's it to you."
+
+"Just that I think I've succeeded."
+
+"I'll give you two minutes before I pinch myself and wake up." Uske
+turned back over.
+
+"Look, what do you think is behind the radiation barrier?"
+
+"I think very little about it, figgy. It doesn't have very much to do
+with me."
+
+"It's a primitive race that can't possibly harm us, especially now that
+its--its generators have been knocked out. All of its artillery it got
+from a source that is now defunct. Look, Uske, I'm your guilty
+conscience. Wouldn't it be fun to really be king for a while and stop
+the war? You declared war. Now declare peace. Then start examining the
+country and doing something about it."
+
+"Mother would never hear of it. Neither would Chargill. Besides, all
+this information is only a dream."
+
+"Exactly, Uske. You're dreaming about what you really want. So how does
+this sound: make a deal with me as your guilty conscience and
+representative of yourself; if this dream turns out to be correct, then
+you declare peace. It's the only logical thing. Come on, stand up for
+yourself, be a king. You'll go down in history as having started a war.
+Wouldn't you like to go down as having stopped it too?"
+
+"You don't understand...."
+
+"Yes, I know. A war is a bigger thing that the desires of one man, even
+if he is a king. But if you get things started on the right foot, you'll
+have history on your side."
+
+"Your two minutes have been cut down to one; and it's up."
+
+"I'm going; I'm going. But think about it, Uske."
+
+Uske switched off the light and the ghost went out. A few minutes later
+Jon crawled through the laboratory tower window, buttoning his shirt.
+Arkor shook his head, smiling. "Well," he said. "Good try. Here's hoping
+it does some good."
+
+Jon shrugged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning, Rara got up early to sweep off the front steps of the
+inn (windows boarded, kitchen raided, but deserted now save for her; and
+she had the key); she swept to the left, looking right, then swept to
+the right, looked left, and said, "Dear Lord, you can't stay there like
+that. Come on, now. Get on, be on your way."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry."
+
+"For pity's sake, woman, you can't go around cluttering up the steps of
+an honest woman's boarding house. We're re-opening this week, soon as we
+get the broken windows repaired. Vandals didn't leave a one, after the
+old owner died. Just got my license, so it's all legal. Soon as we get
+the window, so you just move on."
+
+"I just got here, this morning.... They didn't tell us where to go, they
+just turned us off the ship. And it was so dark, and I was tired.... I
+didn't know the City was so big. I'm looking for my son--not so big! We
+used to be fishermen back on the mainland. I did a little weaving."
+
+"And your son ran off to the City and you ran off after him. Good luck
+in the New Land; welcome to the island of Opportunity. But just get up
+and move on."
+
+"But my son...."
+
+"There are more fishermen's sons down here in the Devil's Pot than you
+can shake a stick at--fishermen's sons, farmers' sons, blacksmiths'
+sons, sons' sons. And all of their mothers were weavers or water
+carriers, or chicken raisers. I must have talked to all of them at one
+time or another. I won't even tell you to go down to the launch where
+they take the workers out to the aquariums and the hydroponic's gardens.
+That's what most of the young people do when they get here ... if they
+can get a job. I won't even tell you to go there, because there're so
+many people that work there, you might miss him a dozen days running."
+
+"But the war--I thought he might have joined...."
+
+"Somewhere in this ridiculous mess," interrupted Rara, her birthmark
+deepening in color, "I have misplaced a niece who was as close to me as
+any daughter or son ever was to any mother or father. All reports say
+that she's dead. So you just be happy that you don't know about yours.
+You be very happy, do you hear me!"
+
+The woman was standing up now. "You say the launches to the factory?
+Which way are they?"
+
+"I'm telling you not to go. They're that way, down two streets, and to
+your left until you hit the docks. Don't go."
+
+"Thank you," the woman was saying, already off down the street. "Thank
+you." As she reached the middle of the block, someone rounded the corner
+a moment later, sprinting. He brushed past the woman and ran toward the
+door of the inn.
+
+"Tel," whispered Rara. "Tel!"
+
+"Hi, Rara." He stopped, panting.
+
+"Well, come in," she said. "Come inside." They stepped into the lobby of
+the inn. "Tel, do you know anything about what happened to Alter? I got
+a weird story from General Medical. And then you disappeared. My lord, I
+feel like a crazy fool opening this place. But if somehow she wanted to
+get to me, where would she go if I wasn't here? And then, what am I to
+do anyway. I mean I have to eat, and--"
+
+"Rara," he said, and he said it so that she stopped talking. "Look I
+know where Alter is. And she's safe. As far as you know, you don't know
+where she is, if she's alive or dead. But you suspect she isn't alive.
+I'll be going to her, but you don't know that either. I just came to
+check on some things."
+
+"I've got all her things together right here. They gave me her clothes
+at the hospital, and put them all into a bundle in case we had to make a
+quick getaway. We had to do that once when we were working in a carnival
+where the manager suddenly took a liking to her and made himself a pest.
+She was twelve. He was a beast. Maybe you should take--"
+
+"The fewer things I take the better," Tel said. Then he saw the bundle
+on the table by the door. On top was a leather thong to which a few
+chips of colored shell still clung. "Maybe this," he said, picking it
+up. "What shape is Geryn's room in?"
+
+"The place has been ransacked since they took him away," she said.
+"Everybody and his brother has been picking at the place. What about
+Geryn, how is he?"
+
+"Dead," Tel said. "What I really came about was to burn his plans for
+the kidnaping."
+
+"Dead?" Rara asked. "Well, I'm not surprised. Oh, the plans! Why I
+burned those myself the minute I got back into his room. They were all
+over the table; why they didn't take them all up right then, I'll
+never--"
+
+"Did you burn every last scrap?"
+
+"And crumbled the ashes, and disposed of them one handful at a time over
+a period of three days by the docks. Every last scrap."
+
+"Then I guess there's nothing for me to do," he said. "You may not see
+me or Alter for a long time. I'll give her your love."
+
+Rara bent down and kissed him on the cheek. "For Alter," she said. Then
+she asked, "Tel?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That woman you brushed by in the street when I saw you running up the
+block...."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Did you ever see her before?"
+
+"I didn't look at her very carefully. I'm not sure. Why?"
+
+"Never mind," Rara said. "You just get on out of here before.... Well,
+just get."
+
+"So long, Rara." He got.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not so high as the towers of the Royal Palace of Toron, the green tile
+balcony outside Clea's window caught the breeze like the hem of an
+emerald woman passing the sea. There was water beyond the other houses,
+deeper blue than the sky, and still. She leaned over the balcony
+railing. On the white marble table were her notebook, a book on matter
+transmission, and her slide rule.
+
+"Clea."
+
+She whirled at the voice, her black hair leaping across her shoulder in
+the low sun.
+
+"Thanks for getting my message through."
+
+"This is you," she said slowly. "In person now."
+
+"Uh-huh."
+
+"I'm not quite sure what to say," she said, blinking. "Except I'm glad."
+
+"I've got some bad news," he said.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Very bad news. It'll hurt you."
+
+She looked puzzled, her head going to the side.
+
+"Tomar's dead."
+
+The head straightened, the black eyebrows pulled together, and her lower
+lip tautened across her teeth until her jaw muscles quivered. She nodded
+once, quickly, and said, "Yes." Then, as quickly, she looked down and up
+at him. Her eyes were closed. "That ... that hurts so much."
+
+He waited a few moments, and then said, "Here, let me show you
+something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Come over to the table. Here." He took a handful of copper centiunit
+pieces from his pocket, moved her books and slide rule over, and
+arranged the coins in a square, four by four, only with one corner
+missing. Now he took a smaller, silver deciunit and put it on the table
+about a foot from the missing corner. "Shoot it into the gap there," he
+said.
+
+She put her forefinger on the silver disk, was still, and then snapped
+her finger. The silver circle shot across the foot of white marble, hit
+the corner, and two pieces of copper bounced away from the other side of
+the square. She looked at him, questioningly.
+
+"It's a gambling game, called Randomax. It's getting sort of popular in
+the army."
+
+"Random for random numbers, max for matrix?"
+
+"You've heard of it?"
+
+"Just guessing."
+
+"Tomar wanted you to know about it. He said you might be interested in
+some of its aspects."
+
+"Tomar?"
+
+"Just like I monitored your phone calls, I overheard him talking to
+another soldier about it before he--before the crash. He just thought
+you'd be interested."
+
+"Oh," she said. She moved the silver circle away from the others, put
+the dislocated copper coins back in the square again, and flipped the
+smaller coin once more. Two different coins jumped away. "Damn," Clea
+said, softly.
+
+"Huh?" He looked up. Tears were running down her face.
+
+"Damn," she said. "It hurts." She blinked and looked up again. "What
+about you? You still haven't told me all that's happened to you. Wait a
+moment." She reached for her notebook, took a pencil up, and made a
+note.
+
+"An idea?" he asked.
+
+"From the game," she told him. "Something I hadn't thought of before."
+
+He smiled. "Does that solve all your problems on--what were
+they--sub-trigonometric functions?"
+
+"Inverse sub-trigonometric functions," she said. "No. It doesn't go that
+simply. Did you stop your war?"
+
+"I tried," he said. "It doesn't go that simply."
+
+"Are you free?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm glad. How did it come about?"
+
+"I used to be a very hardheaded, head-strong, sort of stupid kid, who
+was always doing things to get me into more trouble than it would get
+the people I did it to. That was about my only criterion for doing
+anything. Unfortunately I didn't do it very well. So now, still
+head-strong, maybe not quite so stupid, I've at least picked up a little
+skill. I had to do something where the main point wasn't whether it hurt
+me or not. They just had to be done. I had to go a long way, see a lot
+of things, and I guess it sort of widened my horizons, gave me some room
+to move around-some more freedom."
+
+"Childhood and a prison mine doesn't give you very much, does it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What about the war, Jon?"
+
+"Let's put it this way. As far as what's on the other side of the
+radiation barrier, which is pretty much out of commission now, there's
+no need for a war. None whatsoever. If that gets seen and understood by
+the people who have to see and understand it, then fine. If not, well
+then, it isn't that simple. Look, Clea, I just came by for a few
+minutes. I want to get out of the house before Dad sees me. Keep on
+talking to him. I'll be disappearing for a while, so you'll have to do
+it. Just don't bother to tell him I'm alive."
+
+"Jon...."
+
+He smiled. "I mean I want to do it myself when I come back."
+
+She looked down a moment, and when she looked up he was going back into
+the house. She started to say good-bye, but bit back the words.
+
+Instead, she sat down at the table; she opened the notebook; she cried a
+little bit. Then she started writing again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THREE AGAINST INFINITY
+
+
+The Empire of Toromon had finally declared war. The attacks on its
+planes had been nothing compared to the final insult--the kidnapping of
+the Crown Prince. The enemy must be dealt with, and when they were,
+Toromon would be able to get back on its economic feet.
+
+But how would the members of this civilization--one of the few that
+survived the Great Fire--get beyond the deadly radiation barrier, behind
+which the enemy lay? And assuming they got beyond the barrier, how would
+they deal with that enemy--the Lord of the Flames--whose very presence
+was unknown to the people among whom he lived?
+
+
+     Turn this book over for second complete novel
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    [Transcriber's Note: Caret symbol (^) is used to represent
+    superscripts. The number in {} is the exponent.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41905 ***