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