STRESS PATTERN

By Neal Barrett Jr.

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2012 / Neal Barrett, Jr.

Copy-edited by: Anita Lorene Smith

Cover design by: David Dodd

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This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.  If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Meet the Author

NEAL BARRETT, JR is an American treasure, a prolific author with a keen eye to character and the ability to make the improbable obvious.  He has written over fifty novels and numerous short stories that span the field from mystery/suspense, fantasy, science fiction and historical novels, to "off-the-wall" mainstream fiction. Reviewers have defined his work as "stories that defy any category or convention..."

His “author’s best” collection, “Perpetuity Blues,” was a finalist for the 2001 World Fantasy Award.

His two fantasy novels featuring “Finn, the Lizard Master” have been published by Bantam---“The Prophecy Machine,” in 2000, and “The Treachery of Kings” in 2001. These novels were based on “The Lizard Shoppe,” which appeared in Dragon Magazine, and won the “best fiction of the year” award from The West Coast Publishers.

In addition to his appearance in numerous magazines, his work may be seen in collections such as The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nebula Awards, OMNI: Best Science Fiction, Asimov's Robots, Dark at Heart, The Year's Best Science Fiction (Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Tenth and Eleventh Annual Collections), etc.

His novelette, "Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus" was a finalist for both the SFWA NEBULA Award, and the Hugo Award, for best novelette of the year, and his story “Cush” was a Hugo nominee.

His short story, "Stairs," received a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Barrett has a habit of crossing genre lines with his fiction. "Sallie C.," from The Best of the West, and "Winter on the Belle Fourche," from The New Frontier, were both chosen for Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction.

His novel, "Through Darkest America," received acclaim from readers and critics alike. Reviewer Edward Bryant called it "A book of astonishing power...simply one of the best..."

OTHER BOOKS FROM CROSSROAD PRESS BY NEAL BARRETT JR.

Novels:

Interstate Blues

Piggs (With original screenplay by the author)

Pink Vodka Blues

The Hereafter Gang

The Karma Corps

Find more eBook offerings from Neal Barrett Jr. available through www.bitingdogpress.com

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STRESS PATTERN

CHAPTER ONE

For nearly an hour, I had been sitting on the edge of the escarpment. My backside was tired of the hard ground, and I was weary of the view. It was, really, no view at all. The same lights were available closer to hand and the view was merely where I wasn't, as opposed to where I was.

Actually, the escarpment itself was a small personal vanity. It swept down into the flat, featureless valley from a breathtaking three meters. A magnificent piece of geography.

The day before I had crouched in the capsule and made lists. The first list was Things I Have. It included the capsule itself, food rations, water, first aid kit, tools, toilet paper. The second list was Colors I Have Seen Since I've Been Here. A somewhat less impressive inventory. Whatever else this world might be, it did not border on the gaudy. Dun, brown, umber, gray, sepia, tan, and khaki. A really formidable palette. A wonderland for the color-blind. The rare touch of ocher and olive-green were clearly party colors, reserved for special occasions.

I wandered back to the capsule a few paces to the right of the tracks I'd made on the outward trek. Aside from the chance to make new designs on the landscape, there was always the possibility of unearthing a rich vein of scarlet or lavender, a patch of cobalt blue.

The capsule was slightly charred from its plummet through the atmosphere, but it still gleamed like a robin's egg. A true opal in a dung heap. Beside the capsule I had stacked the flat aluminum containers of water, food, and other good things. The second day I had arranged them in two squared stacks, on either side of the hatch. This morning, swept by a creative urge, I had set all the canisters on end to make a pyramidal display. And tomorrow? We would see. These things are always better when left to the whim of the moment.

I was still some twenty meters away when the landscape behind the capsule began to quiver. I stopped, stared a moment, and decided this had nothing to do with heat shimmers, optical illusions, or such as that. I went quickly to the ground, assuming what the military types call a low profile.

Just behind the capsule was an area where the umber soil gave way to a gray, pebbly surface. This was the spot doing all the moving about. At first, the ground merely trembled slightly, as if it were the surface of a pond touched by a light breeze. Then, small sections of earth rose in sharp little hummocks—quick, jerky motions that sent surface stones flying. And finally, the ground itself rumbled, heaved, and erupted in a high column of black soil that towered over the capsule.

I was glad for the low profile. Even pleased that some of the warm bits of soil pummeled down upon me. It was a good time to be ground-colored—when the column of black soil tumbled back to the surface, it left something gray and unpleasant behind.

It was all over in seconds.

The whatever-it-might-be was mostly mouth, and it swiftly engorged the capsule, my pyramidal canister display, and even the small pile of garbage in my back yard. There was a moist, sucking sound, the rattle of tiny stones, and nothing more.

For a long moment, I watched the spot where all this had happened. Then I stood cautiously and brushed away bits of soil and examined the area where I had formerly lived. The gray pebbly place was,, slightly cratered, but otherwise unchanged. One of my aluminum canisters was half-buried nearby and I sat down and opened it. It was just what I would have chosen out of anything on board. Neither food nor water but a tape selection called "Music and Dance from Seven Worlds." The machine for playing this cultural gem—had I cared to—was a part of the capsule itself, now somewhere in the maw of the gray whatever.

That, clearly, was that.

There was little left to hold me on the escarpment. We all have to leave home sometime. I would simply go earlier than I had planned.

A careful calculation had shown the food packs would last, with frugal rationing, another three weeks or so. The water, maybe two. So I knew it would eventually be necessary to leave the capsule and start for somewhere. And the best time for that, I'd decided, was when I was down to minimal food packs, and all the water I could carry. So much for careful calculations.

It had been easy enough to put off exploring. From the escarpment, the horizon presented a drab, featureless array of nothing in all directions. No plants. No trees. No promising range of mountains.

And no need for decisions, now. I had neither food nor water. Only the clothes on my back and a piece of paper in my pocket. The paper was my list of Colors I Have Seen Since I've Been Here. Now I'd have the chance to seek more subtle variations of dun-brown, different shades of umber. My pen, of course, was on a shelf in the capsule.

With a last look at where the capsule had been, I started for the edge of the escarpment. I made a mental note to avoid gray, pebbly areas.

One could say I was lucky to be alive.

I couldn't deny this, under, the circumstances. Whatever had happened to the ship hadn't happened to me. The alarm wailed, and I tossed my book aside and bounded from my chair through the little open hatchway ringed in red and strapped myself in. We had been told how to do this. Also, there were printed instructions on a small plate below the hatch, and I always read such things.

Naturally, I supposed it was a drill of some kind. Until the port snapped shut behind me and jolted me off to somewhere.

For the most part, I listened to bad recorded music. Occasionally, I heard quick spurts of power and sensed a change in direction. I paid little attention to that. I am not an astronomer but I know that deep space is measured in awesome distances, at the best. I decided the capsule had been programmed to assure survivors they were, indeed, actually moving toward, some destination. No doubt, I would be kindly put to sleep at the proper time.

Surprisingly, the music was interrupted by a tape advising me to bind myself securely with the straps and things provided. I went along with this. There was a loud roar of power. Much shrieking and howling outside. Gravity slammed me against my cushion and we came to a fairly gentle landing.

I didn't think about the air outside. Whether it was breathable, or whether, indeed, there was any air at all. The thought never crossed my mind. I read the instructions telling how the portal knob turned from "A" to "B" and stepped outside. I very much wanted to save the parachutes. There were a great many of them, and they were quite colorful. But they had been scorched and torn beyond repair.

I had plenty of time on my hands and I spent some of it calculating the odds against my survival. They were impressive, to be sure. Evidently, no other passengers, had jumped into their capsules. If there were other survivors, and they had landed on this world, they had not landed near me. First, then, the odds against escaping from the ship. And after that, the almost incalculable luck of finding a habitable planet nearby. And landing on it safely. I felt certain the people who had built the escape capsule would be as surprised as I was.

Then, one more bit of fortuitous timing, I could have easily been dozing aboard the capsule when the dirt demon decided to eat it.

Now, surely, my singular run of luck had come to an abrupt halt. A mile or so from the escarpment, the world looked much as it had before. The horizon was a dull, faraway line. There had been no new colors to add to my list. The sun was white-hot in a cloudless sky and my throat was dry.

Among other things, I wondered who would get my seat at the university. I wondered if I would have enjoyed my vacation on Merrivale, had I arrived there. I was much annoyed that everything had been paid for in advance, and that I was in a poor position to get any sort of refund.

Up to now, I had not led an overly exciting life, but it had been satisfying and pleasant. The teaching of economics is not considered particularly adventuresome, but there is plenty of water near every classroom, and a wide array of interesting colors is available everywhere.

There are things to be said for such a life, though some would not agree. Dear old Dad has made this fairly clear over the years. Poor Andy. Too dull and bookish to become a god of athletics, he has chosen the monkish life of the mind. Well, so be it.

The sun was lower now, but my throat was still parched. I remembered it got fairly cool at night and wondered where I would sleep.

I wondered how long you could go without any water at all.

I wondered if the gray thing that ate capsules came out after dark.

And then something moved in the corner of my eye and I turned and saw the potbellied, dun-colored creature. It was stalking directly across my path less than a hundred meters away.

CHAPTER TWO

Ordinarily, I am not an emotional person.

At that moment, though, I could have shouted and waved my arms about. I didn't, of course. The creature had no idea who I was, or what my intentions might be. And I wasn't about to scare it off.

By now, I could see "creature" was a good description. Whatever it might be, it wasn't a man—or not the same kind of man as I. Still, it had two arms, two legs, and a head of sorts. Close enough.

It was still some distance away, coming from my right. By walking a bit faster I would cross his path before he crossed mine, and give him a chance to look me over. Once it was established I meant no harm, I could devise signs or signals to show I was hungry, thirsty, and needed a place to sleep.

I needed water badly, and my need created little fears. He might run for help. Attack me on the spot. Faint dead away at the sight of me. All real and valid possibilities.

I never imagined that he would simply not give a damn.

Still, what else could I think? We were no more than twenty meters apart. Surely, he'd noticed me by now. I smiled openly, spread my hands just as they do on the tapes to show I had no weapons. He walked straight toward me, without glancing one way or the other.

"Excuse me," I said. "My name is Andrew Gavin and—"

"Furganis'h," he answered. And kept walking.

I stared at his back. For God's sake, I thought, he's just walking away. Without stopping or pausing curiously or anything of the sort.

The idea that he was simply going to. leave me there was more than I could take.

"Look," I called after him. "Wait a minute, please!"

He stopped, turned slowly, and looked at me.

"Nomesh ti?"

I started to answer, then caught myself. Something very peculiar was happening. I knew he'd garbled something like "No met see" at me. But I also knew he meant "What do you want?"

One of those chills you read about touched me where it traditionally does, at the base of my neck. The first thing that popped into my mind, of course, was extrasensory perception. I'd read the creature's mind. Or he had implanted thoughts in my head. Only I knew it wasn't ESP at all. I realized, instinctively, that on this, world you simply did that. You understood one another.

Such a realization calls for gasps of astonishment. Not this time, though. Understanding slipped too easily into my mind. Later, it was a little frightening to remember I hadn't reacted.

I faced him again, and said, "I'm Andrew Gavin."

The creature looked at me.

"I'm Andrew. What's your name?"

"Phretci," he said.

Well, something. A start. I gave him a moment, hoping he'd open up on his own. Nothing. Stock still. Dead in his tracks.

"Look." I pointed behind me. "I came from back there. Where are you from?"

A glassy stare. Then the head moved a quarter-inch to the right. "Back there."

All right. I used to tell my students it was important to give direct answers. And there is always one bright fellow in class who does exactly that. Fine. I have dealt with lads like you before, friend.

"Good." I smiled. "And where are you going?"

"There." He nodded ahead.

No sense in getting irritated. This was his home court, not mine.

Phretci was patient, if nothing else. He stood perfectly still, almost rigid. And he was more creature than man, in my eyes. He came barely to my chest, and bony arms, almost fragile, spindly legs, a potbelly and drab, dun-colored skin. He was naked except for a wide brown straw hat, frayed and unfinished at the edges. The necessary equipment, identifiably male, hung between his legs. And his face— How to describe a face that barely deserves the name? No worry lines. Sagging jowls. Frowns. Creases. Marks that give expression and character, even in an animal's face. He was completely devoid of visible signs of emotion. A round, dun head with eyes, nose, and a hole for a mouth. A child could have done better, hurriedly punching features in a lump of clay.

The black liquid eyes focused somewhere behind me. I was about to go into the business of direction again, caught myself, and rephrased the question.

"Phretci—do you mind if I walk along with you?"

Phretci didn't say yes or no. He turned around and moved off and I moved with him.

Clearly, he could get along fine without conversation. I couldn't. There was one subject I needed to discuss quickly.

"Phretci," I told him, "I'm thirsty. I need water. Do you understand? Is there someplace nearby where I can get water?"

Phretci came to a stop. For the first time, his pinpoint eyes showed a glimmer of puzzlement.

"Yes, Andrew."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes. There is someplace nearby where you can get water."

"Fine. Where?".

Again, a faint shard of curiosity. "You don't know where water is, Andrew?"

I took a deep breath. "No. No, I don't, Phretci."

He almost blinked.

"Where?" I asked, with as much patience as I could muster. "Where, Phretci?"

"There, Andrew."

I followed his stubby finger. It pointed directly at the ground.

I looked at him. Trying to read something more. Great Jesus. Was I supposed to dig a well? Now?

"Phretci—" I paused. "Phretci, I'm new here. You say water is 'there.' Do you really mean that it's there, in the ground?" I had a sudden inspiration. "When you're thirsty—what do you do?"

Instantly: "Get water, Andrew."

Near desiccation gives a man patience. "Phretci, would you do something for me?"

Silence.

"Would you help me find water?"

"No, Andrew."

The sides of my throat were rubbing each other, raw. "For God's sake, why not?"

Phretci moved easily around me and walked away.

Now, what?

I wasn't sure what to do. I could follow. He didn't mind that apparently. I could wait until he got thirsty and see what he did about it. He had admitted he drank water. Only—how often? Every hour? Every day? Once a week? Maybe that was what the dun-colored potbelly was for.

My heart sank. It suddenly dawned on me that anyone walking across this horizon-to-horizon sandbox without a canteen, bucket, or waterbag couldn't get overly thirsty.

I sat down wearily. Watched Phretci retreat. A dun smudge on the wastelands. And then of course I did the only thing I could do: dig.

There was at least a particle of method in this madness. It was hard to imagine that anyone as literal as Phretci could be overly sly and devious. There was water where he said there was water. It might be three meters below the surface. Or thirty. Surely, though, it wasn't. You couldn't tunnel into the bowels of the earth every time you needed a drink. Could you?

The dirt was powdery on the surface and relatively loose below. It went faster than I expected. As I dug I came upon a very light brown I hadn't seen before. Almost manila. It was a satisfying discovery and I mentally added it to my list.

Every few moments I glanced up and followed the line of dusty footprints to Phretci. He was still there, plodding along steadily. I didn't want to lose him. We didn't have a great deal going for us yet, but he was the second life-form I had met on this bizarre world—and I didn't think I would ever be close to the gray thing that ate my capsule.

When I was no more than eighteen centimeters below the surface my hand struck something soft. I stopped. Felt the thing gently. It gave slightly under my touch. I squeezed harder and it gushed all over my hand. I pulled my hand away and looked at it but I already knew what it was. I could smell it. And I never remembered being able to smell water before.

Once I had the depth, I dug hurriedly. In a few moments I had a wide square and I slowed down and carefully brushed away the soil, just as I had seen the archaeologists do in the travel tapes.

I found four.

Each was the size of a large artichoke and similar in shape. Pale green bulbs, like an unopened flower. I ruined the first one before I caught on to the technique. They were plants, and as plants are prone to do, they were attached to something below. I pulled too hard, without pinching off the base that disappeared underground, and let nearly all the water drain away. I only made that mistake once. I drank the others; they were cool, and slightly sweet to the taste. And I couldn't recall ever having tasted any better water, anywhere.

Enlarging my hole, I dug up two more and drank them. Then I sat back and took a deep breath. Since I was now clearly in the land of plenty, I dug up another and splashed it over my face and let it run down the front of my shirt. Then I looked up and checked on Phretci.

Still there. Two hundred meters or so closer to wherever it was he was going. Certainly, I reflected, this creature lacked nearly all the qualities of a good after-dinner speaker—but the next time he spoke to me, I would listen. With all his shortcomings, he was a companion to treasure.

My next act was not intended to show disrespect, or lack of trust. Still, it occurred to me that such water groves might be found every twenty kilometers or so. Or every hundred. Probably not so. Still—

Moving off Phretci's course I zigzagged drunkenly across the wasteland, cut. a few random angles, and counted to a hundred by fives.

I dug.

And there they were. Pale green bulbs. A very bad green, to be sure, but another color for the ever-growing list. And if I didn't question why a dun stranger and I could clearly understand each other's every word, I didn't ask why a wealth of water grew just below the surface of this dry, powdery landscape. Thirst is not like the subject of economics. It does not require clear, concise answers.

CHAPTER THREE

I have never been given to nostrums and parables—folksy sayings that pretend to capsule the wisdom of the ages. However, much was changing in my life. If my pen had not been lost to the capsule-eater, I would have scribbled a precious guideline on the back of my color list:

He who keeps his mouth shut and watches

dun-colored strangers may yet survive.

Words to live by. And the key to getting along with the inscrutable Phretci. There were many questions I could have asked. I didn't. I watched and listened. Not by our words but our deeds, or something such as that.

We quickly adapt to new surroundings. And notice things we might have ignored before. Once I caught up with Phretci, I knew he had arrived at some important juncture. He was standing. Stock still, as usual. There was a stone beside one dirty foot. Nothing, in itself. The stone was no bigger than the palm of my hand. Insignificant, then, to the untutored eye. But—some creature had taken the pains to bend over and place another, smaller stone on top of the first. More than meaningful to an old hand on this world. I tried to picture the circumstances that would move Phretci to such an act. Clearly, no ordinary stones, then. Veritable monuments.

I waited.

I said nothing about the rocks.

I did not even ask about the Great Groove. And to me, that sight was far more wondrous than the stones. I could not have been more excited if we had come upon a deep canyon slashed into the earth.

It was a trough-like depression, some thirty meters across. Sides perfectly smooth. Eight or nine meters deep at its center. As if a large cylinder of some kind had been pressed into the ground, then lifted, leaving its mark.

Standing at the rim of this ditch I peered first in one direction, then the other. There was no end to it. It stretched in both directions from horizon to horizon. My new policy was watch and wait, but I couldn't help speculating. A drainage ditch? Not one that had been used recently. An old canal? A dry river bed? Not the latter. Too symmetrical.

The Great Groove could have been any number of things. But it was none of them now, I decided. And if that was true, why were we waiting on the rim of something that now did nothing?

Phretci had not moved. The sun touched the edge of the world. My companion was a dun statue facing the Great Groove and the nothingness beyond. I started, then, when he dropped to his haunches and began to dig methodically in the soil. Water time. But I was only partially right. Again, leadership by example.

He dug up several of the green bulbs, deftly snapped their bases and drank his fill. Then, wonder of wonders, he peeled back the limp sides of the plant and exposed a pale, pink cluster inside. With one bite he tore this away, chewed it thoughtfully, then ate the leaves themselves.

Well, foolish me. I had tossed the containers aside like so many paper cups. Surely a good lesson for a professor of economics. The consumer-oriented society doesn't expect multipurpose products. It is pleased if a purchase serves one use reasonably well.

On such a frugal planet, though, I shouldn't have been surprised. Why separate sources of food and water when one would do?

In the custom of the land, I prepared dinner from my own hole. The pink clusters had the consistency of pomegranate seeds, but were starchier and not as sweet. A little went a long way. Two of the bulbs were quite filling. I didn't care for the leaf petals—they were grainy and bitter. I ate them anyway, with the thought that they were probably important to the diet or Phretci wouldn't bother.

I wondered if the stems might be dried and smoked. Possibly they hadn't thought of that.

Of course there was a bonus to this discovery. A new color for the list. Bulb-cluster pink. A decorator must this year.

The less said about night the better.

No bed-plants emerged from the soil. Phretci stretched out on his back and went into an immediate comatose state. As simple as that. For him but not for me. It was not cold, but it wasn't warm, either. And nothing in these flatlands to slow down the slight chill breeze. Not a bush or a rock to hide behind. I considered climbing down into the Great Groove. But rules are rules. Phretci didn't. I wouldn't either. Anyway, I told myself, the Groove most likely funneled the wind down its channel at a faster pace, and was colder, if anything.

My body finally forced me into sleep. It was worn from the trials of the day and ready to ignore inconveniences. I dreamed of a capsule falling crazily through the night sky. And I dreamed of loneliness. Such a terrible, aching loneliness that I came awake, suddenly frightened. But of course there was nothing there. Only the dark wasteland and the cold stars. The sun woke me as it blazed over the eastern horizon.

Phretci was at his usual stand. Staring at nothing. And we had visitors.

I supposed they had arrived during the night. There were two of them. Both looked exactly like Phretci, though one was obviously female. They stood slightly apart, gazing into the distance.

The sun quartered the sky. Nothing happened. Or much the same thing happened again. I did not stare with the others. Proper or not, I took long walks about the area—various arcs and circles that were always in sight of the trio by the Groove.

Finally, I covered all the sights in the neighborhood, dug a couple of bulbs, and settled down by the edge of the Sacred Ditch, or whatever it was. Unless I cared to take off on my own, or murder the three of them in their tracks, there was little else to do.

For my own peace of mind, I had, until now, deliberately avoided any speculations beyond the immediate future. My chances of ever leaving this world were slim indeed. While I hadn't seen much of this planet, I was certain no other human types had either. Eventually, they would. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or five hundred years from tomorrow. And in the meantime, what would become of me? Now I knew I had a fair chance of surviving. Theoretically, if there was nothing else to be had, I could eat bulbs forever. Other than that, what would I do with myself? I doubted there was any great need for the science of economics. I was barely past forty, and could reasonably expect another sixty years or so.

Great God, what a terrifying thought! I was certain I couldn't stand more than a week at the outside. How long could I last in this lively crowd without going berserk? Would I snap, suddenly, and strangle every creature in sight? Or worse—give in to the local mores and become a normal catatonic citizen. Either prospect was frightening.

At the university, I was considered slightly reserved. All right—stuffy and dull. And perhaps I was. Now, I had the chance to become the planet loudmouth. The fellow in the next apartment who has wild parties every night. It was a weary prospect. It would be an understatement to say the future looked less than promising.

For some time I had felt a dull itch at the back of my neck. As if one of the three were watching me. Not likely, I decided. None of them would expend the energy.

I turned, though, and caught a pair of ball-bearing eyes locked on mine. It was the female. She didn't move. Just stared. Intently.

I smiled politely and pretended to see something on the horizon. When I glanced back again she was still staring. I smiled and nodded hello.

Nothing.

I fingered a few grains of dry soil through my fingers. "Well," I said, "looks like it's going to turn out nice, doesn't it?"

Evidently, she thought it did.

Or my charm simply overwhelmed her. She stopped staring and laid herself down before me and spread her spindly legs in the air.

I blinked, pulled myself up, and backed away from the scene. Great God, lady, what brought that on?

I cast a wary glance at the male. Half expecting him to heave me into the Great Groove. Nothing of the sort. Neither he nor Phretci took notice at all.

It was one of those touchy situations.

It had happened to me before—but not quite in this manner. There are always a few nitbrain females, attractive and otherwise, who believe there is more than one way to get a passing grade in Basic Economics. Admittedly, I've been tempted more than once to give some of them a hand. Melisa Mills, for instance. Melisa of the golden legs and wheat colored hair. She has played prominent, if highly unlikely roles in some of my better fantasies.

That way, of course, lies madness. As many a sad but wiser member of the teaching profession will tell you.

This was not exactly that kind of situation. For one thing, I was anything but tempted. Spacers say the alien population becomes increasingly attractive as time wears on. Perhaps. I had not been out of touch that long.

I tried not to look. But it was hard to do anything else. The lady was clearly in great need. There was much heaving of the dun-colored belly, and other obvious indications. Again, I studied things of interest on the far horizon. Eventually, she would tire of these antics and bring this nonsense to a halt.

Not so.

If anything, she was becoming increasingly agitated. Poor creature. Three able-bodied males on hand and no takers.

Again, not so.

I had underestimated Phretci's energy level. Or overrated his strength of character. Waste not, want not. A sound law of economics. Phretci did his duty, and did it quickly. In moments everyone was back in their places as if nothing had happened.

And shortly after that the Alimentary Express arrived, and I discovered why we were all meeting like this in the wilderness.

CHAPTER FOUR

The sudden fever of activity told me something was in the wind.

One moment, three dun statues graced the landscape. A study in post-orgasmic reflection. Then, without a word, this trio was on their knees digging up the area.

I watched for a moment, then joined the fun. The idea of this game, evidently, was to gather as many green bulbs as we could and stack them in neat piles. No. I was doing it wrong. This time, we were to pick the bulbs so that enough stem remained to enable us to twist a quick knot at the base and preserve the water inside.

Next, we took all our bulbs and rolled them into the Great Groove.

Now that, I thought, didn't make a great deal of sense. I gave Phretcia a puzzled glance and got a blank stare in return. What was all this about? I wondered. If we wanted the bulbs again, they were going to be harder than hell to retrieve.

No one else was concerned. They were all in their places again, staring at the featureless horizon and the cloudless sky. With a difference. This time, each dun head was turned in a particular direction—toward one end of the Great Groove. I followed their lead. Nothing. As before, the Groove stretched endlessly from one end of the world to the other. No new attraction there.

The morning sun was in the proper, quadrant, and half of the big depression was in shade. If you wanted to study the complexities of the Great Groove, it was a fair time for it. By noon, the entire landscape would blend into one, bland and neutral tone of brown.

I tired of watching and sat down and dangled my legs over the rim. I tried to count the bulbs we had tossed inside. The first time I lost count entirely. The second time I got 121; the third, 117. I was beginning on a fourth when I glanced up to check the landscape.

I looked. Then sat up straight. Then I jumped up and backed the hell out of there.

My throat, went suddenly dry, but I was not thirsty. I squinted and looked again. Clearly, whether I cared to believe it or not, something was coming for us down the Great Groove. And even at this distance it was obviously somewhat larger than we were. A lot larger.

When necessary, you use whatever, reference points are available. The only thing I had seen nearly that big on this planet was the gray capsule-eater that swallowed everything I owned except my list of colors, and the tape featuring "Music and Dance from Seven Worlds." If that sort of creature was on its way down the Groove, I did not intend to be here when it arrived.

I started off in a sprint, glanced back to see if the others were behind me. I stopped. No one else had moved. Great God, I thought, surely they can see it too? It was moving faster than I'd imagined. I stood there; and stared. Well aware that I ought to be somewhere else. If it's that big now, I thought—what's it going to look like when it gets here?

Economics and zoology are two entirely different subjects. My own poor guess was that it was some kind of outsized worm. It undulated like a worm, or a caterpillar, and had characteristics of both. Its featureless head was dark, nearly black, and as it grew closer I could see the black gave way on the body to segmented bands of gray. The lighter bands were bare. The darker areas sported great hairy, bristles.

The size, though.

The size terrified me more than anything. It was all I could do to stand my ground. Fifty meters away it was enormous. I judged it to be half again as high as the Groove. Twelve meters, then. And thirty wide. I didn't even hazard a guess at the length. I couldn't see the end of it and didn't want to.

All right. A moment of rational thought amid personal panic. No matter how irrational it might appear, this is what we had come for. Why Phretci had journeyed from "there" to "here." Why a little stone had been placed atop a big one. And why the silent newcomer and his sex-starved friend had joined us.

So. Now that it was here, what were we going to do with it? Is that what one does here for entertainment? I wondered. Watch the worms go by?

No.

It wasn't.

I was afraid that it wouldn't be.

When the monster finally stopped I was paralyzed. There was nothing to look at anywhere but worm. It breathed like an asthmatic whale. Great slits in its hairy sides heaved, stretched obscenely, then clamped moistly shut. Hot air reached me and I nearly retched. God—I was sure nothing anywhere could smell like that!

I glanced at Phretci. That's it, then? We can go now?

The beast snuffed about, scattering dust. It discovered our bulb supply and sucked it up quickly.

And then Phretci and the others showed me what we were going to do next.

We weren't going to look at the worm and go.

What we were going to do was crawl inside it.

They were. Not me. I watched, horrified, as they calmly grabbed handfuls of bristle and hoisted themselves aboard. The idea was to wait until the thing exhaled, slip through one of the wet slits, and not get caught when it sucked shut again.

They were gone.

I had not grown attached to any of them. Phretci, in his own way, had taught me how to shop for food and water. We had broken the language barrier together. In a sense, we attracted the same type of female.

We were not, by God, going to be worm-mates.

I watched the creature move sluggishly away. A gigantic, smelly brush. Taken in again by the old bulb in the Groove trick.

I wondered where it was going. Most likely, someplace exactly like this one.

And Andrew Gavin. What about him? What do economists do in the wilderness? I already knew the chilling answer to that one. They eat bulb food and drink bulb water until they go out of their academic skulls. Which doesn't take overly long.

I ran.

I tried to remember the approximate silt where Phretci had disappeared. Slipped in a quarter-second before the thing slapped shut behind me.

It was, I decided, a hell of a way to get to work in the morning.

And then I threw up my entire cargo of bulb food.

CHAPTER FIVE

Insanity of insanities.

I had nothing else to give, but my stomach didn't know this. The smell was unbelievably worse inside. I gagged and retched until my supply of bile was exhausted. Then I hung on weakly to something fleshy and warm and tried to get my breath. The whole business nearly started again. Breathing through my mouth was helpful. But no solution.

I knew I would eventually have to turn around and look at what I had already glimpsed during those delightful convulsive pauses. Well, I had yearned for color. Here, then, was where it had all been hiding. My piece of paper would not hold it all. Vivid, glistening pinks speckled with throbbing blues, grays, and purples. A whole array of moist reds, pulpy yellows, and—worst of all—wet greens.

The scenery alone was bizarre enough. No players were needed to complete the picture. But players there were in plenty. Scattered in couples, parties, and singles as far as I could see in either direction. They were clearly experienced travelers and I watched them for helpful hints. Staying on your feet inside, while the worm undulated down the Great Groove, was a major problem. The regulars had solved this by squatting on their haunches and clinging to varicolored appendages. They looked like all commuters everywhere. Moving unconsciously with the motion of their particular mode of travel.

I'm an economist, and not a painter of mental pictures. How could I adequately describe such a scene? Where would I find some good analogy? A fair comparison? So a listener could say, "Oh, it looks like that, does it?" Useless, I decided.. How many people have squatted in an endless, air-cooled gut with several dozen dun-colored commuters—clinging to little things that hang about in such places? Not many, surely.

Eventually, I seemed to get my sea legs—if that's the word when you're in a full squat.

There was another slight inconvenience. Though the gut was nearly three meters wide, it was occasionally necessary to shift about so bits of food could pass. These were mostly small items, usually unrecognizable—though I did see things that still resembled the bulbs we had rolled down the Groove. It seemed to me, all in all, meager nutrition for such a gigantic creature. Not that I was complaining. I reasoned, finally, that the lack of food was intentional. Whoever was in charge of this Alimentary Express would logically keep food intake to a minimum—both as an incentive for the worm to get wherever it was going, and for added passenger comfort.

I promised myself to ask someone when the time was right.

But like so many questions relating to this peculiar planet, the time was seldom right—and when it was, there was no one on hand who cared to answer.

I had already spotted Phretci. He was a few meters forward, across the aisle. I thought I could make it there—I was getting used to the motion of the tract and the quick patterns of light and darkness caused by the expanding and shutting of the slits. It was still necessary, though, to have good timing. When the worm exhaled, quite a force of air came down the tunnel and out the slits. There was a danger, then, of getting blown out into the wilderness, or being deposited at the wrong station.

I made it safely to Phretci's side and was pleased with myself. He didn't answer my greeting, but this was not surprising.

There is really no substitute for camaraderie on a long trip.

"Phretci," I asked, "where are we going?" Of course, I did it all wrong again.

"There, Andrew."

I considered another angle, then recalled the Great Water Debate. I wondered. Literal to the extreme. Sometimes, no answer at all. Perhaps some questions—and answers—were simply not relevant in Phretci's eyes. Maybe I had mistakenly attributed human qualities to him, and blamed him for alien reasoning processes. But if "Where are we going?" or "Where can I find water?" were not relevant, what was? And maybe "there" was as close as he could come to defining a destination. When we got "there" would we be "here"—with another "there" in the offing?

Perhaps I was simply playing the inquiring professor to keep my hand in. Maybe all my wanderings of the mind could be summed up by stating Phretci and his friends were truly a sullen bunch of bastards.

We moved along in an almost restful motion. One gets used to most anything. The unbelievable odor moved down my mental scale from "intolerable" to "awful."

There were wet pink walls to study, interesting blue veins that throbbed and moved about. For a time, I cataloged the digested bits of garbage moving by and wondered why we, too, were not broken down into tidier packages. Of course, there would be little point in running the line if this sort of thing took place. Clearly, these processes were carried out farther forward, in gullets, crops, gizzards, or whatever.

Most of my fellow passengers looked like Phretci, and the other two who had boarded with us. But there were variations. A short, obese creature that looked like a beige pig. Almost. Another, nearly a head taller than I was; a thin, sickly fellow with a pale olive skin. He sat with his gaunt back painfully hunched against the worm's sides, his spidery legs jammed against his chest.

Peculiar, I thought. Different, yet all oddly alike. Simple-featured. Nothing wasted. So far, three intelligent species on one planet. And if I had seen three, there were probably more. And why hadn't one evolved as dominant, overpowering the others? Baffling, on any other world. Not so hard to answer, here. The aggression required to kill or maim your competitors is quite taxing. Apathy, I decided, was the key to survival. And the meek shall inherit the Earth. Sleep and ye shall find.

I couldn't bear to ask Phretci how long the trip would take. If he couldn't imagine spatial distances, I did not want to get into the time scene. If it was a quarter till then, or half-past now, I didn't want to know about it. Such knowledge might well send me screaming down the intestinal halls until I was unceremoniously ejected from the aft exit. On this world, though, a fitting way to go.

Hard to believe—but I closed my eyes and dozed. A hardened commuter. When the motion of the worm stopped I came up off the floor and barely made it through an open slit before the thing was off again. No dawdling about on this line.

Phretci was just ahead of me. I blinked in the unfamiliar glare of daylight and decided it was midafternoon.

From where I stood on the edge of the Groove, the land sloped slightly away. Not much. Ten degrees or so. Two hills—mounds six meters high—crowned both ends of a shallow valley. The valley was filled with small hummocks topped by Phretci-sized holes. All the world like a prairie dog town.

The soil was a uniform powdery gray. Thirty or forty creatures moved lethargically about the area, further powdering the soil, and occasionally popping in and out of holes. They all looked like Phretci.

Phretci!

I glanced about in all directions. We were no longer companions. He had simply walked away while I gawked at the city sights. I might have been looking right at him, then. But as far as I knew, I never saw him again.

No great loss, surely. But it is disquieting to lose friends as quickly as you make them.

CHAPTER SIX

I have never let the vagaries of chance guide my life.

Set realistic goals, and work toward them. Decide what needs to be done, and do it. Suddenly, though, I was thrust into a situation where practical life-plans bordered on the ridiculous. What were my goals, now? Where was I to go? What was I to do with myself?

Scheduling the day was no great problem. Decide where to dig for bulbs. Here. Or there. Decide whether to eat one, or two. Three, maybe, on holidays. Round out the process and choose a proper area in which to deposit the day's wastes.

Stimulating, indeed.

Tomorrow the stars. Or perhaps later in the week.

To the left of the settlement the Great Groove formed a junction with another groove, which curved away from the main route and disappeared behind one of the low hills. With little else to do, I wandered to the rim of this spur line and peered down its length. Nothing. Not too surprising.

Directly across the ditch, though, was a more interesting sight. Three short grooves cut into the spur at right angles. Two were empty, but one of the giant worms filled the other. Its sides heaved against the pit, and a crude tangle of fiber ropes kept the creature from backing into the main artery. Though I would have bet it could leave if it decided not to stay.

As I watched, a dozen dun-colored beings appeared at the far end of the pit, near the thing's head. They dumped big fiber sacks into the hole and ambled back to wherever they'd come from.

Food, then. Too far away, of course, to see what it was.

Bulbs? They didn't appear to be. I wondered. If there was another delicacy on this world, and worms could eat it, maybe I could, too. I made, a mental note to ask someone, and as usual, never got the chance.

A conclusion, then, from the keen-eyed economist: There was at least one organized effort on the planet. The worms were domesticated, fed, and run on some sort of schedule. If you cared to stretch a point, you could say I was not lost in the wilderness. I was at the hub of a great transportation center.

The spur that disappeared beyond the hill intrigued me. I suppose because it offered another route out of the settlement. God knew where it went. Nowhere, most likely. But I had to take a look. Andrew Gavin, ever driven by the lure of strange new lands.

I passed the hummocks and holes without stopping. There was little for me there. Though I did wonder just what all these creatures did for a living. Did they make things? Grow crops? Run taverns? Most likely, none of these.

It was close to sunset when I reached the far side of the settlement near the base of one of the low hills. I angled up its side and followed the path of the spur line to the horizon. I could walk along its rim, and see where it led. I decided I probably would. I certainly couldn't stay here. But that would have to wait for tomorrow; shadows were crawling over the land and I didn't like the idea of hiking at night.

There was a slight "V" directly below, where the base of the two hills came together. Well beyond the settlement, and out of the wind. As good a place as any, and I started for it. Then stopped. Something caught my eye and turned me around. A touch of color just below the top of the neighboring hill. Not much of a color, maybe—a square of brown a little lighter than the soil. More than a square, I decided. And it was too late in the day for mirages. A square with mud walls, by God, and a thatched roof!

I raced down my hill. Bounded quickly up the side of the other. It was small, but a hut. A hut with a low door and a window. If it was empty, and it surely was, I would have fine accommodations for the night. If it wasn't, I'd simply—

"Lissen—whajou want?"

I stepped back a pace and a head materialized in the door. I stared and stepped back again. Great God, the thought came to me, no wonder it lives alone.

"Well, wa'sit?" it demanded again. "Whaya! want?"

"I'm"—I cleared my throat—"Andrew Gavin. How—how are you?"

A sudden broad smile cut like a razor across its face. "Andrewgaffa." It appeared to like the taste of the words. "You c'monin, Andrewgaffa. 'M Thraxil. C'mon—you doin' that, OK?"

And at that point it came fully out of its hut to greet me. And that wasn't necessary at all.

Tall. In places. One arm short and powerful. One gaunt and bony. The left hand stubby and multi-fingered, the right long, slim, tapering to a single digit. Legs equally varied. His face was an egg crushed in the middle and hurriedly patched. A nose that began as a stub, angled off into the beginnings of a beak, then gave the whole thing up, and fell off into a snout. One eye grossly larger than the other. A mouth full-lipped on one side, a gap on the other. His head and body were covered with random patches of hair. He was dun, beige, khaki, brown, or umber—depending upon where you looked. He'd made a sorry mess of the sex problem. The less said about that the better.

Poor bastard, I thought. He was stuck together as if he'd never quite decided what he wanted to be. Nonetheless, I followed him into the hut, thinking, ironically, that he had the friendliest smile on the planet.

"Andrewgaffa, isit?" He eyed me curiously from a squat.

"Yes," I told him. "It was nice of you to ask me in, Thraxil."

The smile faded. He gave me a blank stare. "Wha'? Whasit?"

"I said—"

"Jusminit, Andrewgaffa. Lemme gesome light."

Of course. I sat up at that. Another cultural milestone, nearly as significant as the hut itself.

Reaching behind him with his longest arm, he grasped a small bowl and snaked it around between us. Flint sparks flew from his hand and a bright flame took hold. It was some kind of oil lamp, and it smelled to high heaven. But it bathed the hut in a friendly glow.

Thraxil studied me. I could tell he wasn't sure of me yet. "Where yuocomin' from, Andrewgaffa? Huh? Wheresit?"

"I came in on the—the—" I made a gesture.

He grinned. "On the Dhoolh. Safternoon."

"Yes."

He smiled mischievously. "Thraxil's watchin'—seen you comin'" Another thought struck him. The smile faded to a brooding frown. "You're not like'm others," he said flatly. "You're li' me, Andrewgaffa."

I didn't argue. "I guess I am," I agreed. "More like you than them, Thraxil."

He glanced up at me sharply. Moods seemed to strike him quickly, then just as suddenly disappear. "Lissen, Andrewgaffa. They makin' you com'ere?"

"Who?"

"Them." He nodded glumly toward the settlement.

"No. I was on the other hill—"

He laughed, threw back his impossible head. "You're li' me—only you turnin' out some better!"

I couldn't argue that, either.

"Wheresit?" he asked again. "Where you comin' from?" He bit one corner of his lip. "You comin' ina Dhoolh. Saw that, Andrewgaffa. Howcome youridin' ina Dhoolh?" He was making himself angry, and I didn't know the answer he was looking for.

"Thraxil," I explained, "I just—got on the Dhoolh. That's all."

"Huh. Wheresat?"

"Out there. There were two rocks—"

Thraxil gestured impatiently. "'Fore that. Wheresit places y'beenin? Mhorit? Ahnsree?" His face clouded. "I wasto. Ahnsree onceit. Bad there, you seein' that?"

"Thraxil"—I leaned forward—"I don't know any of those places. I don't come from near here."

I didn't think it was the right time to go into the "me Earthman" business—"me professor of economics on the way to vacation on Merrivale."

"It's a long way from here," I said. "Somewhere you probably haven't been."

That seemed to satisfy him. He had already launched a new thought, anyway.

"Listen, Andrewgaffa—why you gotten stuff all overyou selfit?"

"What?" I looked down at myself, then realized what he meant. "Clothes? You mean clothes?"

"Cloze." He tasted the word suspiciously. "Sure. Whyyou gotten cloze, Andrewgaffa?"

"I wear clothes to keep warm."

One hairy brow shot up. "Warm? I'm not colden, Andrewgaffa."

"No. But it's colder where I come from."

"Oh." He nodded toward the settlement. "They don'gotten cloze."

"No."

"I thinkit I gotten cloze, though," he said thoughtfully. He reached behind him and came up with a dirty fiber mat. He drew it clumsily over his shoulders and grinned at me.

"Zis cloze, Andrewgaffa?"

"It looks fine. Listen, Thraxil—may I ask you something?"

The furrowed brows again. "Whasit?"

"Like you say, you and I are—not the same as they are. Down there. They don't say much and don't seem to do much, either. Why is that, do you know?"

Thraxil grinned. "They bes stupids, Andrewgaffa." He laughed at, that. "Stupids. Don' liken do stuff, seeit?"

As good an answer as any.

"Is—everybody like that?"

Thraxil shrugged. "Mos' ev'body." He grunted to himself, fell into some thought for a moment. Then something new hit him and he jerked up and glared at me. "Lissen—why you askit, huh?" His eyes glinted in the lamplight. "Why you askit, Andrewgaffa? You 'ready knowsat! They sendin' you to do somethin' tome? Satit?"

"Thraxil. No one—"

'Whathey wantin' me to do!" He moaned and rocked on his heels. "Whyn' they jus' leave melone!"

"Thraxil. . . ."

"Bein' tired," he snorted. "No more talkit, Andrewgaffa." He turned away abruptly and curled up against the far wall of the hut. I could hear his snores in less than a minute.

For a while, I watched the lamp flicker. I thought about going out for bulbs and decided it wasn't worth the effort. They'd be there when I wanted them.

Thraxil intrigued me—he was a whole new element in an already confused picture and I could think of about forty questions to ask him just for openers. Where did he come from, for instance? Why was he so extraordinarily different from the others? What was the rest of the world like? Where was there to go?

At the moment, I would have gladly settled for that last one.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The sun was up but still behind the low hill. The hut was in shadow, but light enough to tell me Thraxil wasn't there.

Not for the first time, I wished there was some way to get rid of the scratchy stubble that was becoming more irritating every day. In time, if there was any metal on the planet, I could possibly devise a razor of sorts. What would that entail? Finding ore, mining, refining, a handy forge, etc. I would probably not get around to this soon.

If there was any metal in use here, I hadn't seen it. These people were in the Early Straw Hat and Fiber Mat stage. Also, in the midst of the Pre-Soap and Shower period.

That subject brought Wallace McAllister to mind. A very dear and brilliant man whose big, sausagelike fingers could take the most intricate mechanisms apart and put them back together in wondrous ways. Sometimes things worked backward, sideways, or upside down after McAllister's ministrations—but they were always interesting. If Wallace were here he would scratch his bald dome and hum to himself and in no time at all he would have a hot shower going right here in the wastelands. It would work by wind action, worm-power, or God knows what—but it would work.

I pictured this happy scene. Hundreds of green pods marching up conveyor belts to be squished, heated, and sprayed over the broad McAllister back. Only, Wallace would not settle for that. He would get to the heart of the problem. He would see that if bulbs grew that near the surface—in ample supply—there was a great deal of water somewhere below. And he would ask: Where are the lakes? Streams? Rivers? What is all the water hiding from? How deep is it? Where does it come from and where does it go?

I stretched and walked out of the hut and into the semi-cool morning. Still shaveless and showerless, McAllister fantasies nowwithstanding. It would be well for engineering professors to be marooned on peculiar worlds, rather than economists. But I could not wish that on McAllister.

The sun pushed the last shadows aside. I spotted Thraxil, out on the flat plain. He was squatting on misshapen haunches, consuming his morning bulbs. I joined him, and we moved back to the hut together.

"You sleepin' good, Andrewgaffa?"

"I did. Thank you, Thraxil."

"Bettern' sleepin' in holes," he muttered.

"Much better."

"Dumbers. Stupids." He spat toward the settlement.

"I couldn't agree more."           

"Thems gotten holes. Thraxil hasn hut. Whasat maken me? Huh?" He seemed to be getting lost in a circle of thoughts again. When we reached the hut he turned and gave me a quizzical look.

"Andrewgaffa. Wheresit youcomin' from? Was people lookin' li' there? Li' you?"

I weighed the answer. "Everyone's different where I come from, Thraxil. But—yes, a lot of them look something like me. Not exactly the same, though."

His largest eye narrowed, and the smaller one gazed at me steadily. "Andrewgaffa—les go that places. Now."

I was filled with sudden pain for this creature. He was the ugliest, most grotesque being I had ever seen. But that was on the surface. There was no ugliness inside. Phretci and the others might be too detached from the world to care. But Thraxil knew there were places to go, and questions to be answered. And that's why the eyes filled with anguish. He sensed whatever was there was beyond his reach.

I looked at him and he turned away from me.

"No," he cried, "they not lettin' me do that. Not lettin' me goin', Andrewgaffa!"

"Thraxil—" I put out an arm to touch him.

"No!" He drew back, shook me off. "You goway, Andrewgaffa," he glared. "You goin' an leavit Thraxil alone!"

I stood a moment, hearing him in the hut. I did not want to hear more, and I moved quickly away down the hill.

The settlement was even more depressing, now.

I saw it through Thraxil's eyes, as well as my own. I barely repressed a shudder. If Thraxil was alone, locked from his own kind . . . what of me, then?

I wanted to be away from these creatures. I wanted to leave this place as quickly as I could. And if there were others like them at the next stop—why, I would move on from there, too.

I almost laughed at the mental picture. A modern-day Flying Dutchman, sailing the Great Grooves forever. An eternal commuter on the Alimentary Express.

The sun rose higher and I yearned for one of the straw hats. I suppose if I had simply snatched one from a passing head its owner would scarcely have known the difference. I had no idea when the next Dhoolh, as Thraxil had called it, would arrive. I would be here, and I would dutifully pay my fare in bulbs and be gone from this place.

Just before noon I took heart. A great many dun creatures had begun to mill about. Fellow travelers, I decided. Fine. I stood, stretched, and offered my bulbs to the growing pile below.

Farewell, Thraxil, I thought. I will not turn around to see if you might be watching from your hill.

To the left, a black smudge was eating up the distance, rapidly approaching the settlement. In minutes, it undulated to a halt, sides heaving. Pink patches shimmered through its body slits.

Half a dozen passengers got off, and I moved toward the nearest slit. Dun bodies blocked my way and I stepped past them. Another bottleneck. I tried again. Everywhere I turned—Great God, I thought, is everybody leaving town? Only they weren't. They were there, but no one was in any hurry. The hell with it, I decided. They could stand about all day if they liked. I saw an opening and made for it. Suddenly, the opening wasn't there. I moved to the right and four creatures shifted methodically to block me.

I stepped back, took a deep breath. Now, what was all this about? The Dhoolh wouldn't wait forever. I looked into ball-bearing eyes and smelled the stench of dun bodies. And in a sudden moment of near-panic I knew exactly what all this was about: No one intended to go anywhere. They were all here to keep me from going.

Why, though?

What brought on the sudden popularity?

As if in answer, the Dhoolh pulled out, and I watched it disappear down the spur line past the low hill. At the same time, dun bodies moved aside and formed a clear pathway through the pack. There was nothing subtle about it. I was to go that way, down the spur where the Dhoolh had disappeared. Out of the settlement.

Well, we were of one mind, if nothing else. They wanted me gone and I was all for that. Only—I would walk instead of ride. I was not to contaminate the public transit system.

And to hell with you, too. I marched through their ranks without looking back, passed the low hill, and started off across the flatlands. The Groove was to my left, the sun to my back.

"You. . . .

Someone spoke behind me and I turned. It was a dun-colored female. Following in my tracks. I couldn't have picked one from a hundred others but I would have bet my last bulb it was the scorned lover.

She caught up, stopped. "You don't come back," she announced flatly.

"And, lady, don't you worry," I told her. "Did you come all the way out here to tell me that?"

She gazed dumbly and gestured over her shoulder.

"Thraxil."

"What about Thraxil?"   .

"Thraxil crazy. Very much crazy. You go somewhere else."

That set me on my heels. "What?"

"Here." She thrust something at me. It was tightly wrapped in fiber. A little larger than a lemon, with a looped shoulder strap attached.

"What's that supposed to be?"

"Here."

I shook my head. "Thanks. But no thanks."

"Keep," she said, and thrust it at me again. "You keep. Go somewhere else."

"I think you've made that quite clear," I told her. I took the thing, whatever it was, and slung it over my shoulder. Mostly, so she wouldn't stand there all day until her arm dropped off. "Look," I began, "one thing—"

But she had nothing more to say. She turned and stalked off toward the settlement, showing me her unlovely bottom and dirty heels.

Well, Andrew, I told myself, you should have known. Your friend Thraxil is the village idiot. In their eyes, anyway. And guess what that makes you? Obviously, no settlement has to board more than one loony. You put them over their quota, so you've got to move on. Find your own village, Mac.

Thraxil, I said silently, don't let them get you down. You make a hell of a lot more sense than your keepers. And remember, you've got cloze and a hut and a cheery lamp, and they don't.

I kept my eyes on the horizon.

If I made the umber emptiness by midafternoon, I could be halfway to nowhere by nightfall.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Why recount events that didn't happen?

For the better part of three days, I walked along the spur, veering steadily south. I ate bulb food and drank bulb water. Late on the second day, a Dhoolh passed going back toward the settlement. Period.

There was ample time to think about all that had happened. Truthfully, though, I thought about nothing at all. No more intellectualizing for Andrew Gavin. The key word, I had realized, was lethargy. Nonthinking was the path to follow.

But the world never leaves a man alone. Near the end of the third day movement appeared ahead and to my right. A long line of figures inching toward the Groove. If they kept on course, we would meet somewhere ahead.

The old Gavin would have quickened his pace. Here was a chance to meet new people, gain fresh cultural insights. The new Gavin summed it up nicely for me: If the bastards will leave me alone, I won't bother them.

I sat down and waited.

They would reach the Groove and either turn toward me or away from me. If they came toward me, I could simply move aside and let them pass.

I dug up a bulb and drank it and chewed on the pink clusters inside.

It was a singularly uninteresting group. But then, I hadn't expected a colorful troupe of players trumpeting across the wasteland. There were a dozen dun creatures and four beasts loaded with bulky cargo. The beasts looked remarkably like their masters. Larger, with four legs. The same dun-colored hides, potbellies, and featureless heads. Clearly, the two-legged species were more intelligent, since the others were carrying the cargo.

The caravan fooled me.

Instead of turning right or left, it went straight ahead and disappeared into the Great Groove. Obviously, I had been here too long. I was becoming adjusted to rigid patterns of thought. It never occurred to me to cross the Groove. That was where Dhoolhs traveled. Other creatures kept to the high ground.

In a moment, they reappeared and moved up the other side. There was a sloping pathway, then, that allowed an easier climb. The creatures might have scrambled up the sides unaided, but not the beasts.

I watched them until they were only dun smudges, and realized I was falling back into old habits. Wondering where the caravan was going. What I might see there. I could argue with myself, but I had done that before, and knew how it would all turn out. So why sit and listen to a dull conversation?

I caught up with the caravan by nightfall.

Not actually. Because I had no intention of joining them. Loonies know their place. I was a camp follower, nothing more. If they were going someplace interesting, I wanted to go, too.

The caravan was some two-hundred meters away, settled in for the night. I scooped a shallow, body-sized hole out of the soil and crawled in. My nights on the wasteland had taught me any protection from the night air was better than none at all.

The sky was full of cold stars. I looked them over carefully, wondering which one was mine. It might not even be visible from here but I liked to think that it was.

It was a bad dream.

The capsule-eater shrugged out of the black pebbly soil and grinned at me. Its big maw opened to suck me in. I slapped at it. One of its lipless jaws grabbed my arm and held it hard. I jerked, but it wouldn't let go. I backed off, realized in horror there was another one behind me. I tried to move my legs but it was too late. Both arms and both legs were being swallowed. And I was in the middle.

I woke up with a start and sat up.

Or tried to.

I was suddenly cold all over. Great God, it wasn't a dream—the things have got me!

Something had me. But it wasn't a capsule-eater. I was still in my hole. My arms and legs were tightly bound and a trio of dun creatures were staring dumbly down at me.

I stared back at them. "Listen," I said. "What's with you people? I wasn't doing a damn thing to you!"

Nobody spoke. The silence made me mad.

"Say something, you goddamn dummies! Answer me!"

No one did. I kicked out. suddenly with bound feet. The nearest creature saw me, but he was too slow. My boots caught him just above the ankles and sent him tumbling. The other two didn't like that. They looked at each other and took cautious steps backward.

They were slow on their feet and mentally lethargic. They didn't quite know how to handle me. They weren't used to violent actions. I'd thought about that after leaving the settlement. Probably, I could have taken three-quarters of them apart before the others got moving. But what was the point?

This little business was something else again. I was more surprised than worried—I couldn't imagine why they'd bothered.

Still, they had.

And whatever they had in mind, I wanted no part of it. They were more frightened of me than I was of them, and that was some advantage. But it wouldn't untie ropes.

The one I'd knocked over looked at me with buckshot eyes and gestured. I understood what he wanted. I was to get on my feet and behave. I stared back at him and didn't move.

He looked at me a long time, then turned and walked out of sight. He was back in a few moments. I didn't like this new development. He. carried a long, slender pole, and he was pointing it at me.

"Now, look—" I started.

He very calmly jabbed the pole sharply into my groin.

I gasped, doubled up, and rolled away from him. He methodically jammed the pole in my kidneys.

"All right, I yelled, "all right!"

I scrambled quickly to my feet, or as quickly as you can scramble from such a position. I noticed the dawn was just lightening the east.

"Now what? Do you mind telling me what this is all about?" I glared at the little bastard with the pole. He wasn't getting too close. He wasn't sure I was tame, yet.

He pointed toward the caravan camp. "Go."

"What for?"

The two others had sticks, now. I moved off, taking deliberately long strides. They didn't like that. And let me know it. I got a sharp blow to the legs, and slowed down considerably.

By noon it was unusually hot. Probably because I was trussed up facing the sun and couldn't turn away. The camp was some fifty meters north. I was staked out with the rest of the livestock. My arms were still bound behind me, feet stretched in front. A painful sitting position. I could eitherlie down or stand up—but if I did, the two ropes looped about my neck to secure poles on either side would strangle me quickly.

I wasn't afraid of these creatures.

A peculiar thing to say, in my position. But first impressions are hard to break. Whatever they had in mind, I didn't think they'd harm me. Famous last words. I would probably wish I'd kicked a little harder when they fed me to the Dhoolhs, or something worse.

What in God's name am I doing here? I wondered.

How could you pick anyone more ill-suited to play Lost Survivor on a Strange Planet?

You would be proud of your disappointingly academic offspring, old Dad. While I am not carrying the pigskin to victory, as you would have liked, I am certainly athletically engaged, and I am finally "getting outside and using the old muscles." I hope to hell you are satisfied.

CHAPTER NINE

Toward midafternoon another caravan joined the first.

They came in from the east and set up their camp to my right. No one from my group went out to greet them. A great deal of activity was going on in both areas, though, and it was clear some sort of gathering was in the offing.

For these creatures it was an almost exhausting display of energy. First, my group unpacked their cargo and spread it neatly on the ground between their camp and the newcomers. The cargo consisted mostly of poles. I was already familiar with this item. The poles were standard in length, each a bit more than a meter. They closely resembled bamboo. It proved, anyway, that something grew on the planet besides bulbs.

The newcomers waited patiently, then spread their wares opposite the others. This time, woven fiber rope and straw hats. Then both parties stood behind their treasures and stared at each other.

The staring went on interminably. I wondered what in God's name was going through their heads. If you didn't care for poles, rope, or straw hats there was little else to think about.

Finally, one of the newcomers shuffled forward and set two straw hats and a length of rope a little ahead of the rest of the merchandise. Then he picked up five poles from my captors' display and set them beside his offering.

This move called for a great deal of thought. Eventually, one of my creatures stepped forward and put one of the poles back in its place and added two straw hats to the new corner's pile. A keen bargainer, that one. I was proud of him. If this sharpie from the east thought he was going to steal five poles for two hats and a bit of rope he had another guess coming.

More staring. More thinking. Then a counteroffer. Three straw hats and a length of rope for four poles. He was no fool either.

I was certain I'd lose my mind before the sun went over the horizon. What better way to torture a professional economist? Stake him out in the sun and make him watch a whole day of catatonic trading.

I had been given no food or water. I fell into an uneasy sleep and dreamed of Melisa Mills. She handed in a term paper which was supposed to deal with the relative importance of poles and straw hats on the world's economy—instead, she took the opportunity to pour out her heart to me. How she could not stand to sit in my class any longer without touching me, without tearing her clothes from her slim body and having me do this, and that, and a number of other things. Ah, Melisa. Where are you now? Married to some dolt, no doubt, who has presented you with a litter of wheat-haired children.

I got nothing to eat or drink the following morning.

The animals were packed again, and each of my neck loops was tied around the necks of one of the beasts. My leg ropes were loosed, and it was my job to walk between the animals, anticipating their speeds to avoid strangulation.

One thing: When my legs ropes were cut, I glimpsed a new cultural artifact. A crudely chipped knife made of brown stone. What a marvelous people. In another hundred-million years, who could say? Clay pots and bone tools? There'd be no stopping them after that.

As a small blessing, the landscape began to slope gently downward. It was a gradual decline, and hardly evident for the first hour or so. Then, I could look back and see that the horizon was, really, a great deal higher. The change was more evident ahead. We were moving into a vast, shallow valley. I guessed it was nearly a hundred kilometers wide—certainly farther than the eye could see. The soil changed from umber to dark sienna. Far out on the valley floor, the ground appeared almost black.

The second caravan had trailed along behind us. By midmorning, it curved off on a path of its own. We had been skirting the edge of a shallow, eroded ravine, and the other group simply angled into it and moved out of sight..

The ravine had impressed me. It was a singular tourist attraction on this featureless world. Finally, though, I decided it wasn't a natural wonder at all—just a long-abandoned section of the Great Groove. A disappointment, then. No postcards home from here.

Once, shortly before noon, the caravan showed some signs of life. The creatures stopped, stood still, sniffed the air. Clearly, something was bothering them. They looked at each other, and their round heads slowly swept the horizon. Whatever it was, the pack animals sensed it, too. They snorted nervously and pawed the ground. One skitted aside and tightened my neck rope uncomfortably. I moved along with him to slacken the rope.

When the sun was straight above us in a brassy sky we stopped for a rest. They untied my hands for this—one doing the job and two standing by with poles. It was some relief. With my hands free I could pull the pack animals close together and sit down. I dug—and gorged myself on bulbs.

With my hands free, I was not to be trusted. Two pole-handlers watched from a cautious distance. I waved a bulb at the nearest.

"I know we've been through this," I said, "but I'd like to know where you're taking me. And why."

Nothing. The ball-bearing eyes never moved.

I shrugged, drained another bulb, and picked at the starchy fruit inside. I decided to try the other sentry.

"Where are we going? Can't you tell me that?"

Nothing.

"Damn it, look—it's not going to hurt you to speak!"

The creature stared at me, then raised one skinny arm and pointed. Straight ahead.

"Right." I nodded. "That's marvelous. I appreciate your help. I might have guessed, friend, even if—"

The guard's head jerked away from me. His dun body went rigid. One of the animals made a small noise. The other creature had forgotten me, too. His gaze was locked in one direction. I looked about but didn't see anything.

They did. And they were all waiting for whatever it was. Stock still. Rigid as brown statues. Whatever they heard, or saw, or thought they saw—

A high, frightened wail cut the silence. I sprang up and the animal beside me bolted and scattered sand. I grabbed for his rope to keep slack. It burned through my fingers, finally held.

Too late, I remembered there was another rope. And another animal behind me.

I came up choking, spitting water.

The sudden motion made me forget about choking as pain took me around the neck and tossed me gasping and sucking for air.

"You gotten pullered ona neck real goods," someone told me. "S'gonna hurtim awhiles."

I didn't open my eyes. The choking had stopped for a minute. The other pain was still there, but not as bad.

"You wanter somore water?"

"God, no," I pleaded hoarsely, "please!"

"Awright," The voice sounded contrite. "'Msorries. I thinkit waters'll makin' you good sooners."

"Yes," I said. I opened my eyes a little. "I'm sure you thought that. Thank you." I pulled in more air.

"You wanners sitten up?"

"No." I shook my head, and winced. That hadn't been a good idea. "In a minute. Not now."

With that, something clutched me under the arms with ham fists and jarred me to a sitting position. Everything tore loose. I bit down a yell. The damn landscape started swimming and I was sure I was going to pass out again. No such luck. I leaned over and threw up between my legs.

"You gettin' sick." The voice sounded frightened. "I don' li' bein' sick, d'you?"

"No. Not too much." I took a deep breath, ignoring the pain. If whatever it was helped me again, that might be the end of it.

"You don' wanany water?"

"Look—" I opened my eyes.

"Mhar! Leave 'm 'lone!"

The second voice brought Mhar up short. I got a look at her for the first time. No use going into that again. She was made in the general manner of Thraxil—mottled, misshapen, a blur of features, wide, childlike eyes. She waddled off quickly, keening to herself. A pudgy, miscolored something-or-other.

"You better?" The second voice touched me with his shadow, then towered over me.

"I think so. I will be."

He laughed shortly. "Mhar's not smart as some is."

I thought that wrapped it up nicely. He wasn't as bad as either Mhar or Thraxil. His limbs matched to some degree, and his features were fairly well organized, though far from normal. There was that harried look I'd caught in Thraxil's eyes. But there was also the gleam of an intelligence that wanted to make itself heard. I pulled myself to my feet.

"You doin' OK?" He looked concerned.

"I'm all right." I faced him. "I'm Andrew Gavin. Thanks for the help."

He grinned widely. "Sterzet's me." The shadow of worry crossed his features again. "Listen. They's havin' you tied good by y'neck. You'as lyin' all flat an' the Bhanos was draggin' you everywheres."

I half-listened to his careful explanation of what had happened to me. It was really a story he was telling himself. And then my eyes wandered a little to my left, saw something, and I turned full around away from him.

It was one of those times when you do not immediately react. I suppose there is some sort of explanation. An emotional overload, perhaps. At any rate, I calmly watched this grisly scene as if I were quite accustomed to this kind of thing. All of the dun creatures were dead. Sterzet's crew was methodically skinning, gutting, and jointing each unlovely specimen. Handy quarters of haunch, chest, or thigh were wrapped and tied in fiber mats. Loaded onto skittish pack animals.

There was a great deal of blood. Much of it soaking through the fiber matting and running down the flanks of the animals. There were other unidentifiable items about. No packing plant worth its salt would hire these fellows, I decided. They were not tidy workers.

Eventually, the regular machinery in my head took hold again, and I walked a few paces from Sterzet and vomited water.

CHAPTER TEN

I was given a singular honor.

There were two pack animals not loaded with foul cargo, and these were ridden by Sterzet and myself. I was glad for the opportunity, regardless of the circumstances. I had surely done enough walking for a while.

Sterzet announced we would not be making camp, that we would be riding at night for a while. Again, I was grateful. It would not have been easy to spend the night in that place.

Twilight darkened the umber landscape. The valley quickly turned to shadow when the sun disappeared and the first dim stars topped the rim of the bowl.

Sterzet was in an expansive mood. I was a new audience, and there was a great deal he wanted to tell me. I listened with half an ear and kept my mount going in the proper direction.

Occasionally, Sterzet ran down. Or caught his breath. Then I could hear the animals shuffling along behind, or Sterzet's crew muttering to one another.

Surprisingly, the bloody carnage of the dun creatures didn't bother me much anymore. Oh, I hadn't forgotten. And wouldn't. It just occurred to me there was a more pressing question that needed answering: Why had such a thing happened in the first place?

What did we really have here—two races? Variations on a theme? There were the dun creatures, plus similar types such as I'd seen on the Dhoolh. And all of them much alike—dull, expressionless, rigid, noncommunicative. And opposed to that? Misshapen creatures. A genetic goulash. Minds that groped about in dark corridors, but at the same time, reasonably alert and responsive.

The duns called them crazies. Normal enough. Any society rejects individuals whose appearance or actions exceed local norms. Normals reject abnormals, then. And sometimes, abnormals rise up and slaughter their keepers. Not an unusual reaction.

But—why were the monsters monsters?

And were the normals really normal?

I shook my head and looked beyond the rim to the stars. A most peculiar "spread" between the two, I thought. I put together a mental graph, with Phretci at one end, and Thraxil at the other. Tossed in a few significant characteristics here and there. The results seemed rather chilling. Everything considered, the line curved sharply right at my own front door. I was the median. Andrew Gavin, human being.

A false conceit, perhaps. Setting humanity as a standard. But it seemed to make sense to me. Phretci was incomplete. Thraxil overdone. Two extremes, then. With me in the middle? Maybe. The fallacy here, of course, was that both these extremes were better suited to this world than I.

Somewhere past the middle of the night Sterzet changed our course and led us down a shallow ravine. It looked vaguely familiar and I had an idea where we were. We had doubled back and found the abandoned Dhoolh route, where the second caravan had left us after the big trading session. I hoped they hadn't lingered, that they were far away from here by now.

We came upon them, just as the false dawn grazed the landscape. Or where they had been. Two of Sterzet's crew met us there, with five pack beasts. I was suddenly very weary. I supposed they had discovered this group first, then, and backtrailed to mine.

Everyone had new straw hats, now. Everyone except Mhar. She giggled and whined until someone tossed her one to shut her up. I kicked my beast as hard as I could and pushed on ahead of the others. This happy scene and its accompanying stench was more than I could bear.

I needn't have bothered. There was more to come. When the sun came up they built a fire, and roasted meat.

"Andrew," Sterzet announced, "you bein' like me an' them—but not jus' like."

I had done this act before, and knew my lines.

"Sterzet, no one is just like anyone else. Everyone is what they are."

Sterzet shrugged. "Don't understan' that, Andrew."

"Well, then you don't," I said shortly.

Sterzet smiled amiably. It was a waste of time to turn my anger on him.

"Well, why you thinkin' this is?"

"Why do I think what?"

"Why ever'one's bein' not the sames?"

"I don't have any idea. They just are."

Sterzet grinned excitedly. "Hey, you bein wrong this time, Andrew. They're not different. The little uns. Theys all 'like!"

He was talking about the dun creatures he'd slaughtered.

"Ever' one. Can't tellit one from 'nother."

"Maybe they can," I said dully.

"Huh?"

"Nothing." I squinted at the sun. Noon, and time to move on again. With any luck, he'd talk himself out now, and leave me to myself on the road.

"You don' eatin' with me an' them, Andrew." Sterzet frowned. Clearly, it had just occurred to him I had made myself scarce during the morning barbecue.

"You jus' eatin' greenies, don't you?"

I assumed he was talking about bulbs. "Sterzet, as I said, everyone is different. OK?"

"Sure, Andrew." He was silent a moment. "You goin' stay with us, Andrew?"

"No, I don't think so."

"I have to—go somewhere."

"Wheresat?"

"That way." I stuck a finger in a random direction.

Sterzet laughed and slapped a mottled knee.

"What's funny?"

"You don' wannago that way, Andrew."

"Why not?"

"That's where them was takin' you!"

Well, that was interesting. "Where? They were taking me where?"

He pointed. "There. That way."

"Right. But what's there?"

His twisted features grew puzzled. "Andrew. Youwas goin' there. Don' you know wheresit?"

"I—I did, Sterzet. They told me, I'm sure. But I've forgotten."

"Oh!" Memory lapses were understandable. "Jus' a place is all."

"What kind of place?"

"Where the little uns live."

"A settlement, you mean."

He nodded. "'Cept there's no Dhoolh there. The Dhoolh don't go through there. Got to walkit, or be ridin' a Bhano if you can find one. Thems don' ride Bhanos, though. Jus' usem to carry stuff. We got lots good Bhanos now."

He thought about all that for a moment. His eyes glazed over and his mouth went slack, and I knew I was about to lose him.

"Sterzet."

"Huh?" He blinked and grinned.

"Why were they taking me to that place you were talking about?"

He looked at me. "I don' think they gots a crazy there, Andrew."

I decided he was probably right. A settlement without a loony. The traders knew about it and found me running loose and hauled me in.

"Sterzet," I said, while I had his attention, "I told you about Thraxil."

He thought a minute. "Sure. He's the crazy where you comin' from."

"Yes. Thraxil has a hut there by himself, Sterzet. Nobody makes him stay there. He isn't tied up or anything. He can get up and go any time he wants to." I pointed at him. "Like you. Or the others here. Only—why doesn't he?"

Sterzet leaned over and poked at the ground. He picked up a loose bit of soil and let it crumble in his fingers.

"Thas hard, Andrew." He didn't look at me. "I'm not good at hard things."

"That's OK. Just think about it a minute."

He did. "I guess," he said finally, "'cause Thraxil's different. I knewed him once."

"Yes, you told me."

"Well, Thraxil's smart. Lot smartern' me. Or any of thems." He nodded over his. shoulder. "Maybe he don' seem smart. But he is. Not smart liken you, Andrew. Wish you'd go with us." His mouth dropped. "You won' do that, though."

"Thraxil," I reminded him.

"Yeah."

"If he is smart, as you say, why doesn't he leave? Go away and do whatever he wants to do? He's not happy there. I know that."

Sterzet looked at me with one eye. And there it was again. That flicker of something else. The touch of knowing. Peering out at the world from inside.

"I tol' you he's smart, Andrew," he said slowly. "Some of 'em that's smart don' go 'way like the rest of us."

"Why, though?"

He looked back down at the ground again.

"Guess 'cause they know it don't make any difference, Andrew."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I liked the idea of traveling at night.

But I wasn't as sure of myself as Sterzet. Although I had never seen another capsule-eater after the first one, that creature had left a lasting impression.

Sterzet didn't give up until the last. I should stay, and why not, Andrew? Wheresit you going, etc. Still, he very generously let me keep the Bhano I'd been riding, and threw in a straw hat, two fiber mats of his own, a length of rope, and two poles. I accepted graciously, and thanked him. Mhar wailed sadly at my leaving, though she hadn't the slightest idea why. I waved at her, though, and turned the Bhano south into the valley.

No particular reason for that direction. It just felt right. And it was the route that would take me across the greatest expanse of that area, and give me the best chance to see whatever there might be to see.

It was hot, and a cloudless morning, as always. But I was in the best of spirits. Though I couldn't say why. I was an old hand on this world—or felt I was—and had no great hopes of finding wondrous lands. Sterzet had shattered most of my remaining illusions. Questions about "different" places brought nothing but blank stares. Everything was just like this, he explained, pointing to the ground. Wasn't that the way it was supposed to be?

Still, I had a mount and a straw hat and various poles, ropes, and mats. It was good to be ready for anything. Even if nothing could be expected.

A monumental discovery in midafternoon. The soil on the floor of the valley was darker, and looked considerably richer. I had noticed this earlier. Now, small clumps of green  began to appear ahead, becoming more plentiful the farther I rode. This interested the Bhano, and I stopped to let him chew eagerly on the plants, while I walked alongside.

The plants grew just above ground level. Long, gray-green leaves opposed one another on a central stem. The plants were mostly uniform in size, but a few had grown to half a meter in height. Studying the larger specimens, I decided there was something vaguely familiar about them. I snapped one off at the ground and looked at the stem. Of course—the same sectional growth, only smaller and greener. I had been soundly beaten with poles that had come from a plant such as this. I had samples in my pack.

Curious, I dug around the base of a plant, feeling its stem below the moist soil. Not far below the surface I made a second discovery. The bamboo plants and the green water bulbs were one and the same. When the bulbs matured, the green stems grew from the pink fruit inside. The bulb I examined was still partially full of water, but most of its moisture had gone to nourish surface growth.

Why hadn't the bulbs I'd seen in other areas matured? The answer, of course, was in the moist soil, and what lay beneath it—a closer, more plentiful supply of water. A fortunate ecological break for the creatures who depended upon "immature" bulbs for food and water.

What a frugal world this was. As far as I knew, one plant for food, water, and timber. A thought struck me, and I decided the odds were good that this was also the source of the fiber that was woven into mats, ropes, and straw hats.

The welcome patch of green disappeared after another half hour's ride. I was reluctant to leave it behind.

I passed two more of these oases in the next three days. One quite small—the beginning of green shoots above the ground. The second larger, and stretching as far as the eye could see. I was a full day getting through it. No hurry, though. And the Bhano relished these places as much as I did. His potbelly was full to bursting.

This second "forest" was a real delight. The plants were thick and hardy—tight, pale clusters everywhere, like green explosions. Some of these specimens were well over a meter tall.

One disadvantage: Paradoxically, where the bulbs matured and produced beauty, a man could dry up and starve. I stored ample bulbs for myself and the Bhano before we started through an extensive green area.

With no need to mark the days, a man loses track of the time. Now, I measured time and space at once. What was the time/distance between me and the far wall of the valley? I could see it, now—a dark line above the horizon. Was it a week away? Two weeks? Hard to say. Harder still to say why it mattered. Except that I was a man, not a dun-colored catatonic. And a man goes somewhere.

A peculiar incident that broke the sameness of the days. Six, eight, or ten nights after I had passed the thickest grove, I woke up suddenly just before the dawn. It was still too dark to see more than a few meters. The Bhano was a gray smudge, asleep on its feet.

I sat up and looked about, and listened. Then lay back and turned over. And was up again in minutes. I could feel something, more than hear it. As if something had turned over far beneath me—a faint tremble of thunder in the earth. I walked quietly away from camp, stopping now and then to listen. Nothing. But I could still feel that deep, rumbling trace of thunder. And when I kneeled to the ground and lay my head against the cool earth it was even stronger.

I was still awake when the sun blazed over the rim. The earth still rumbled, and there was something else. Far to the west, a long ribbon of dust lay against the ground. It paralleled my route and stretched as far ahead and behind as I could see.

I held my course, but kept a wary eye in that direction. The dusty ribbon was still with me that evening, and the next morning. No closer, no farther away. And there was still thunder in the ground.

That afternoon I forgot about clouds of dust and noises in the earth.

The sun caught a brilliant stretch of green against the landscape. I stretched over the Bhano's neck and squinted into the glare. Then I spurred the beast forward, and he seemed to sense what was about. He snorted noisily and took off at a fair pace beneath me. Even at a distance I knew this was no ordinary grove ahead. I had good perception, now, and was seldom fooled by what appeared to be far and wasn't, and vice versa. This grove was still far away, but its pale clusters told me all I needed to know. This was a place that was cool, thick, and green—with growth nearly as high as a forest on Earth.

I gave a yell that startled the Bhano. He threw back his round head, pranced to one side, then trotted on his way.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was everything I expected. And more.

So thick with plants a man could disappear in green shadow. The tall, pseudo-bamboo was more than six meters high, and appeared to be still growing rapidly. It was similar to bamboo, but not the same. The boles were lighter, almost a waxy gray-green; the leaves broader and fleshier. More like the petals that covered the immature bulbs.

I guessed the forest stretched ten or fifteen kilometers in every direction. It was hard to tell. I spent the next morning making a cautious survey on foot, leaving the Bhano tied just inside the grove. Nothing unusual. No sign that any creatures or animals had been here before.

My goal had been the far rim of the valley. That hadn't changed. I wasn't going to settle down forever in a bulb forest. But I had already made up my mind not to leave too soon, either. Later, I could see what lay over the rim. When I was ready. For now, the grove was enough. And I had no pressing appointments.

During the next week I fell into an easy routine. And since there was nothing really to do, I made jobs for myself. First I snapped off some of the relatively small shoots and made a lean-to, using my supply of fiber rope to weave the poles together. One of my mats went for a floor, the other for a roof. Then, stripping large piles of leaves from other plants, I carried them to the edge of the grove and let them dry in the sun. These became a mattress in the shallow trench I scooped out in my hut. It was not the softest bed imaginable, but it was quite a luxury after weeks on hard ground.

I did all the other things castaways do to pass the time. Washing clothing in bulb water—and wishing for soap and a flat rock. And of course, flat rocks were at a premium on this world—or any other rocks, for that matter. I had seen two—that more-than-subtle station-marker where I had first been introduced to the Dhoolh.

The absence of rock had struck me as peculiar. And still did. But I had no ready answer for it. I missed them. If there had been small round stones handy, I could have built useless patterns around my hut, and outlined a path that led from my front door to nowhere.

There was plenty of bamboo on hand. But after building the hut, I could think of no other use for it. Too bad McAllister wasn't here. He would think of something to do that would require the resources of the entire grove.

I considered building the Bhano a stable, but I was sure the Bhano had never had a stable, and didn't want one. He was happy wandering about loose—eating leaves, digging up bulbs to drink, and watching the peculiar things his master did with his time.

There were a number of things I realized I could do without.

There were also several items I wished I had. A razor. Or at least a knife or a pair of scissors. I didn't like having a beard. It was scratchy and bothersome. I thought often of toothpaste and toilet paper. Most of all, I think, I longed for something to write with. I tried to scribble things on my mat with my belt buckle, but that was hopeless. If I died, there would be no use searching for early Gavin pictographs and funny sayings.

Every morning I rode the Bhano around the outside of the grove for several kilometers. There was nothing to see, but both of us looked forward to this routine.

In the back of my mind was the thought that if I didn't like the fun and excitement of the grove, I could always get on my Bhano and go. True. But not yet, I told myself each morning. Not yet.

The bamboo grew at an amazing rate. Even in the few weeks I had been there, many of the plants had nearly doubled in size. Not that they had gone from six meters to twelve. There was some growth in height, but for the most part the plants were solidifying their positions, so to speak. More branches, thicker leaf clusters. And most obviously, an expansion in the girth of the waxy trunks. I could not get my hands around many of them, now.

Another project to pass the time, then.

I measured the girth of a random group of "test" trees with a length of rope, and promised myself I would follow their progress. The next morning, with rope in hand, I set out for my test grove. I was a scientist, now, not a castaway. I had responsibilities.

After I had measured the first tree I looked up and saw the creature watching me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I didn't move.

It was perhaps five meters away, and we exchanged stares for no more than a few seconds before whatever it was disappeared. I didn't even get a good look at it.

I didn't quite know what to do. I was a little alarmed, but angrier still. Goddamnit, it was my grove! No one had a right to be there.

The rest of the day I felt sure I was being watched. Maybe I wasn't, but the feeling was there. I looked over my shoulder a dozen times an hour. I checked the Bhano to see that he hadn't been disturbed.

No one had bothered me by late evening. Which didn't mean they wouldn't, I decided. After dinner I checked the Bhano again and sat for a while before my hut. There were two things I could do: Run. Take the Bhano and leave the grove. Don't wait to see what the thing has in mind. Or stay. Hold my ground and wait. Find out what it wants.

It was no choice, really. I firmly intended to stay. I would not be driven from my home. So with the day fading, I took four of the strongest dried poles Sterzet had given me and bound them tightly together with fiber rope. When I hefted this weapon in my hand, it had a nice, solid feel to it. I could do some damage if I had to.

I lay down on my mat, but I didn't sleep. One eye was on the darkness outside, and my weapon was close at hand. For more than an hour I waited and listened. Then I took my weapon and bellied out of the hut and crawled twenty meters or so into the thickest part of the grove. I could still make out the front of my hut, even in the darkness. I stayed awake for another hour, and then fell into sleep—hoping whatever it was out there had no better night vision than mine.

It was waiting for me in the morning. Squatting in front of my hut. I almost laughed out loud. All my preparations seemed a little ludicrous. Maybe, I reminded myself. Maybe not. Don't toss the weapon away just yet.

I stopped short of him—it was definitely a he—and we looked each other over. He was taller than the dun creatures. Thinner. His features were more fully developed, but they were anything but complete. A soft layer of hair, or fine down, covered his gray skin, and there was the spark of intelligence in his eyes.

He stood up, handed me freshly picked bulbs. And sat down again.

A nice opening, I thought. I thanked him and squatted down across from him and peeled one of the bulbs.

He let the amenities go and got right to the point. "Are you a crazy?" he wanted to know.

"No," I told him, "I'm not. I know the ones you are talking about. I'm different from them, and different from you—though not as much, I think."

He looked down and scratched his thin leg thoughtfully. "I didn't think you were. Some places take crazies. And let them live nearby. We don't do that. They came to give us one once. We refused. They were not happy about this, but there was nothing they could do. Another time a crazy found us and wanted to stay. We wouldn't let him."

"Do you think I should not be here," I asked him, "because I am not the same as you?"

His dark eyes looked into mine for a moment. "No. It is all right." He stood up and walked way, then stopped and looked at me again. "Our place is not far: Your hut is here. It is in a good spot."

Then he turned and the green branches closed behind him.

A budding diplomat, then. This is your place and that's ours. Period. All right. I could live with that. I had no great desire for neighbors, and would be pleased to live by the rules.

He was at my door the next morning.

Surprised, I stuck my head out of the hut and he said, "Why have you this?"

"Why have I what?"

He pointed to the thing hanging on the side of the hut. I had forgotten it was there. It was the souvenir or amulet or whatever that the female had given me when I was run out of town: the vaguely lemon-shaped something wrapped in matting and looped to a piece of rope. I had slung it over my shoulder and carried it with me and finally hung it outside the hut when it was finished.

I explained to this creature where I had gotten it. He was interested, and I told him about Thraxil, my quick departure from the settlement, how I had been taken by the caravan and what happened to it.

I left out the part about the capsule. He was fairly convinced I wasn't a crazy—no need to give him doubts.

When I was finished, he said, "You did not lie with this person?"

"No. That was what she had in mind, but I didn't."

He nodded. "And the other one did."

"Yes. Phretci."

Nodding. And scratching of the leg.

"Look," I said. "As I explained, I come from far away from here. I don't pretend to understand a lot of things. What is this?" I gestured at my hanging souvenir. "What am I supposed to do with it, if anything?"

For the first time, he seemed genuinely, surprised. "You do not know." It was a statement, not a question. He looked me over carefully, assuring himself I was honestly ignorant. Then he got up and left.

When he came back he had an armload of bulbs. He sat the bulbs down and stalked to the rear of my hut and began digging with his hands. I watched him curiously. He dug a shallow trench, no deeper than a hand's width. About a meter wide and a little longer than that in length. He used the dirt to build a very neat little wall around the hole, and he patted the soil in place. Then he took my souvenir and laid it in the exact center of all this. He walked around to the front of the hut again, paying no attention to me, and gathered up his bulbs, and took them to the hole. He peeled a dozen or so, poured the water over my whatever-it-was, and covered it with bulb petals, pressing each moist leaf carefully in place. Then he stripped bamboo branches from the surrounding trees and covered the whole thing.

I was certain he had gone out of his mind. He stood back, wiped his hands on his naked thighs, and carefully checked his work.

"You must do this every five days now. Water and fresh petals."

I looked at him. "Huh? Why? What is it?"

"Every five days." He held up a hand in case I didn't understand numbers.

"Look," I said. "I'd like to know—"

"You should do this," he said flatly.

"OK. But what for?"

He turned and stalked away, through the bamboo and back to wherever his "place" was. Everyone on this goddamn world had one maddening trait in common: they all walked away in the middle of a question.

I looked at the trench. What did I have here? A household god to watch over my hut? Did you feed and water gods once a week? Was that what it was, an offering?

I shrugged and decided to take the Bhano for a long ride. Whatever it was all about, it was clearly outside the field of economics. No doubt, if I was supposed to know, I would be told in good time.

My visitor didn't return for more than a week.

I dutifully fed and watered my garden. I couldn't think of it as anything else. I rode my Bhano, and carried on my project of studying the growth patterns of bulb bamboo. It was not growing as fast as I'd thought—or maybe it had gone through a quick spasm of growth and was settling down to business.

One gets used to doing without a lot of things. Teeth fuzz can be removed with split bamboo twigs. Leaves can substitute for toilet paper if absolutely necessary. And I had given up my search for a corner barbershop or speciality food store. But I didn't think I would ever adjust to the loss of writing materials.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I came to look forward to my new friend's visits.

By now, I truly thought of him as a friend. When he was ready, he told me his name, which was Rhamik. He was fascinated by the fact that I had two names, and for a while he delighted in repeating them to himself: "Andrewgavin . . . Andrewgavin." Eventually, he tired of this and I became simply Andrew.

There was a vague pattern to his visits, as if he might be deliberately spacing them out. Probably, though, he simply had other things to do besides pass the morning with me.

He could see, though, that I had nothing of importance to do. If he wondered about this, or even thought of it, I never knew. When he didn't come, however—and I expected him—I was disappointed.

Rhamik was an enigma because he happily violated all of my preconceived notions about beings on this world. He had a definite, though subdued, personality of his own. Certainly, he was far from outgoing or aggressive. By Earthly standards he was a near recluse a great deal of the time. But to me, a slight smile or the questioning arch of a brow said volumes. He was probably neither as warm nor as human as I imagined, but he came off well against the competition.

He was still a creature of this world, though. He wandered off at odd moments, blandly ignored questions, and sometimes simply stared at nothing. After a particularly trying conversation, he could see I wasn't pleased with him.

"Andrew. There are questions you must answer for me, too."

I must have given him a pained expression. "Rhamik, I have always been more than willing to tell you anything you wanted to know!"

"Yes. This is so."

"Then go ahead. Ask anything you like."

"No. There will be better times for questions, Andrew.

And that, of course, would be that. Until next time.

I had a hundred choice questions waiting in the wings and sometimes I would toss one into the silence just to see what would happen. Usually, I got it bounced back into my lap. Sometimes a quick, concise answer was forthcoming—to something I really didn't give a damn about in the first place.

"How high will the bamboo get, Rhamik?"

"Not much higher, Andrew."

"Do you have names for the stars?"

"The stars are not beings. Why should they have names?" Then, once he's off guard, toss in a ringer: "Why are you so different from Phretci's people?"

Silence.

I had a two-part dream.

The first part was predictable. After all, I was a castaway male without a female. Melisa Mills was the subject, and the activity was fantasy at its best. Delightfully unlikely antics. Melisa seemed to be popping up regularly. Not too surprising. There have been a number of women in my life, and for the most part we have gotten along well. Some of them have been quite lovely women—many of them have been very desirable and very good in bed. I didn't dream about any of these, of course. I dreamed about Melisa, whom I had never even touched, much less taken to bed. That's the way it is with fantasies. The grass is always greener, etcetera.

The second part of the dream was nothing like the first. But it was not unlike a dream I had had before on this world. Falling through space. Cold stars flashing by. Then loneliness. Loneliness so intense, unbearable, that the mind shrank from it. I woke up covered in a cold sweat and didn't sleep the rest of the night. I was awake, but I couldn't shake the horrible feeling of isolation. The dream wouldn't let me go.

Rhamik, on his first visit, had made it clear that he had his "place". and I had mine. That my hut was in a "good spot." Fair enough. I didn't push the issue. No doubt, there was a village or settlement somewhere in the grove. Either that, or he lived alone. And I didn't think the latter was likely.

I held back my surprise, then, when he plodded into my clearing and announced that this would be a good time to go to his place. I said, matching his tone, that it would, indeed, be a good time. I could play the inscrutable alien game, too.

It was less than an hour's walk.

I could have stumbled over it during my early explorations—and I could have just as easily come within two or three meters of it and never seen a thing. The thick stands of bamboo effectively masked both sight and sound unless you were right on top of what you were looking for.

"Stay with me, Andrew," Rhamik said quietly over his shoulder.

He always managed to con me with something like that. He was crazy about mysteries. What would happen if I wandered off? Was there some great danger? Would I violate a sacred taboo of the village? He liked to leave these fun answers to my imagination.

There was a ready picture of the village in my mind, cornpiled from village images I already had on hand. I was disappointed—no cluster of huts about the traditional clearing, hunters coming and going, females carrying things.

It was more like a quiet residential section on Earth, where you pay plenty for trees. The huts were like mine—bigger, better construction methods. And where I had used green wood, they had used dried materials. It made the huts look darker, ash-colored.

Privacy was the big thing.

I should have expected that. We would pass one hut, almost invisible before you were on it, then we'd wind among the bamboo along a narrow trail and finally pass another.

Privacy—and silence.

Occasionally I caught a glimpse of someone. But I never heard them.

I saw a man patiently stripping long strands of raw fiber from a split section of bamboo. A woman went about the same job farther along. A man wove dried fibers into rough matting. Both sexes did much the same labor.

We passed  the back of one hut and I spotted one of the bamboo-covered trenches. It was just like the one Rhamik had built for me. But the thing I glimpsed through the green covering seemed much larger than the whatever-it-was resting in my own garden. I paused to look at it. I didn't really pause. Just took a slower step.

Rhamik jerked around and gestured me on. I caught up with him quickly. His eyes brushed past me to the hut, then came back to me. And what was there? Irritation? Small sparks of anger? I gave him a shrug that said now what did I do? He just looked ahead and walked on, and evidently that was that.

Unexpectedly, the bamboo maze came to an abrupt end in a harsh blaze of sunlight. After the closeness of the forest it was a startling effect. The land had been cleared in a wide circle, shorn of all growth. Only green stubs remained and a scattering of dead branches, already turning brown. The far side of the clearing was filled with neat racks of bamboo logs. I looked questioningly at Rhamik.

"Over there"—he pointed—"you see?"

A dozen workers were hacking away at tall stands of growth, extending the clearing farther. He walked that way, Rhamik stopping once to pick something from the ground.

"Here. For you."

He handed me a flat, gray stone, crudely sharpened at one end. It was heavier than it looked and sparkled with slivers of mica.

"Thanks," I told him, and ran my fingers over the sharpened edge.

Rhamik gave me a slight grin. "It will not cut much," he explained. "It is used in another manner." He took the rock back and wrapped his hand around a fair-sized trunk, then struck it twice with the stone. On the second blow I heard a sharp crack go through the wood. Rhamik whipped out a spindly leg and struck the trunk just above the strike area. It snapped cleanly.

"See." He squatted down, and ran a stubby finger over the break. "The plant grows in sections. There is a small groove between the sections, and that is where it is struck."

I nodded and we stood. "Fine," I said, "so what's it all about, Rhamik?" I swept my arm over the clearing and the cut logs. "What are you going to do with all this?"

"It is to build," he said simply.

"To build what?"

He shook his head. "Not for now. Later. Very soon, Andrew."

Not much of an answer. All right. Very soon, then. Later. I did not contribute my opinion that there was enough lumber drying here to build three or four good-sized villages. That unless he planned to go into the bamboo apartment business it appeared that he might be stuck with one hell of an inventory.

Later, thinking about this, it occurred to me that Rhamik did not do things without a reason. Not anything. He had not shown me his village or his bamboo hoard simply to break up my day. There was something I was supposed to see, learn, or understand from all this. What that might be was my problem, not his. Rhamik was a subtle teacher. In a way, he was a good one. The student was not denied the opportunity to think for himself.

The next morning I tried my hand at the fine art of fracturing bamboo at the proper juncture, and was glad Rhamik hadn't decided to call.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When I woke I knew the morning was still far away.

A warm wind sifted through the tops of the bamboo and set it singing. Cold stars winked through the branches.

The other sound, though, wasn't the wind. I'd heard this one before.

The Bhano was nervous. He met me before I reached the edge of the grove. He usually stayed just outside the point where the bamboo began so he could roll in the soil and dig for bulbs. But something had driven him in tonight and I patted him reassuringly and spoke to him before I moved away.

The long ribbon of dust stretched across the flatlands. With nothing to color it but the stars it was ghost-white. Whatever it was, it was no more than a kilometer from the grove, and its thunder shook the ground. I held the trunk of one of the plants and felt it hum under my grip.

For a long while I watched, just standing there and not moving, and then I knew someone else was there.

"Rhamik," I said without turning. "What in hell is all that? I heard it once before. And saw the dust cloud. When I was camping out there, before I reached the grove."

Rhamik moved up beside me. "Look closely. You can see."

"I can't see anything but dust."

"Just below the dust. Where the dust meets the ground. Sometimes there is something."

There was. If you looked for it, and had a fair imagination. Movement. No—the suggestion of movement.

"All right," I told him, "yes, I see."

Rhamik was pleased.

"So what is it, then? What's out there?"

"Now that you see. What would you say?"

I tried to bury impatience. I didn't want to get into the teacher-student thing.

"I don't know. Something. Lots of somethings, to kick up that much dust." I looked at Rhamik. "Big. Big, with weight behind them. Heavy enough to shake the earth."

Rhamik seemed to think about that. "They are the Ghroals," he said after a moment. There was a note of finality in his voice, as if that explained everything.

"Well, what are they like? Big? Christ, Rhamik, if a herd that size ever changed course—toward the grove, for instance. . . .

"They will not bother the grove," he said. Then, he added thoughtfully, "And, yes—I would think they are big, as you say."

I looked at him. "You think they're big?"

"How could I speak of their size, Andrew? I see them as you see them. They are Ghroals. There have always been Ghroals passing this place. And they are always too far to see, and ever hidden in their dust."

All right. No one throughout history had seen a Ghroal. They had always remained hidden. None had ever strayed from the herd. The dust had never parted. Totally illogical, of course. Anywhere but here.

We sat with our thoughts and the Ghroals thundered endlessly by and the stars turned.

"Andrew," Rhamik said after a while, "I would ask you something. If you wish to answer things now."

I said I'd do the best I could.

"The things I would know are things about you. What you are, and where you come from."

Rhamik was ever an enigma. I had never really been sure whether he was totally lacking in curiosity, or just didn't want to ask. At any rate, I was surprised, and a little hesitant too.

"There is a—reason, Rhamik, why I haven't told you these things."

He looked puzzled. "But, Andrew, I have never asked before now."

"No, you haven't. But I've wanted to talk about such things. I was simply afraid you might find what I had to say—well, difficult to believe."

"Because they differ from our ways."

I glanced at him quickly. "Yes. For that reason." Well, he had taken it another way, and just as well. I decided I'd guessed right about Rhamik some time ago. He didn't understand the concept of one person telling an "untruth" to another. When you didn't want to talk about something, you avoided that subject, or ignored it. Rhamik was a past-master at that. But not lying. That wasn't in the vocabulary.

I did the best I could.

I tried to keep it simple. Not because I doubted his intelligence. Simply because a child on my world could more easily accept the complexities of other worlds. This planet was a poor training ground for knotty reasoning.

So I told him about the escape capsule, and where it had come from. That the ship itself had come from another world circling a distant star. Etcetera. I didn't go into the science of economics. I said I "taught things to others." I talked until the sky turned in the east, and Rhamik listened. He never stopped me, or asked a question. I knew, though, he would remember and consider everything.

When I finished, he didn't say anything for a long time. He watched the lightening sky, and the dark ribbon of the Ghroals. And when he looked at me his face was sober and thoughtful.

"Andrew," he said, "I knew you were from a distant place. This had to be, because so much is different about you. And there are so many things you do not understand."

I had to work hard at a solemn face because he wouldn't have understood I was laughing at myself. Earthman bring big knowledge to poor alien. Poor alien sympathizes with Earthman because the dumb bastard just doesn't have the proper background!

OK. I wouldn't argue that. "Rhamik, can I put a question or so to you—so that I might better understand?"

He nodded easily. Hadn't he always answered all questions promptly?

"You know I come from far away, now," I said, "so you can understand why you and I are different, and have different ways of looking at things. But I don't understand, Rhamik, why you are so completely different from Phretci and his people, or Thraxil and Sterzet. No one is exactly alike on my world, but the people I've seen here are as different from each other as—as"—I spread my hands "as Bhanos from Dhoolhs, or the thing that ate my capsule!"

Rhamik nodded. "What you say is true, Andrew. It strikes me as strange that your people live as they do. Clearly, our worlds are not the same. Always being together!" He shook his head in wonder. "I cannot conceive of that. It would not be right, here. It would surely not be right, Andrew."

"Rhamik—"

He stood. "There is much we should talk about, Andrew."

Later, he meant. Not now.

He disappeared into the forest and I gave a last, bleary glance at the horizon. The Ghroals had passed all through the long night. And were passing still.

A few days later when I went to the edge of the grove to ride the Bhano I found him dead. I asked Rhamik what could have happened and he told me that life begins, Andrew, and life ends. Well, so it does.

I buried the animal in a shallow grave out on the flatland. He had had no personality or character to speak of, but he had been cooperative and pleasant, and I would miss him.

I began cutting my own stands of bamboo, and setting timber aside to dry. Though God knows what I planned to do with it. Monkey see, monkey do. Rhamik was so pleased he took me on another trek to the clearing. Not via the huts, this time.

The sun was rapidly drying his bamboo. It was turning a silvery gray and had the hollow sound of seasoned wood when I tapped it.

More activity: Several of Rhamik's people were trying to build something out of some of the larger trunks. They were having a time of it. The project was a raised platform of some kind—four vertical corner poles and various angled struts and supports roped in at intervals. The problem was that the vertical pillars needed to be buried for stability. The workers knew that, but they had no tools to dig deep, pole-sized holes. It was a painful solution—dig a much bigger hole than you need, lower the poles and fill in around them.

"What are they building?" I asked.

"Oh, they are not really building anything as yet," he said absently.

"Well, what will it be when they do start building it?"

"It will be much taller than that, Andrew. Much taller."

Enough of that, then. Rhamik didn't like to burden me with things until I needed to know about them.

Later in the week he caught me making feeble efforts toward some construction of my own. I wasn't imitating anything I'd seen in the clearing—just experimenting; maybe I'd stumble upon some useful technique they'd find helpful.

Rhamik smiled at my efforts. "No, Andrew," he said, "not yet."

And when he left I looked after him and introduced this world to a new tradition. It is an ancient and revered gesture on my world—a gesture that does not utilize the entire set of digits on one hand.

Not yet, Andrew. He's a good child, Mrs. Gavin, just a bit headstrong. Tends to work ahead of the class. An attention-getter is what he is.

That was not the day l would have chosen to find out what it was I had been carefully feeding and watering in my garden.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Gardening was a subject we didn't talk about.

I dutifully fed and watered my whatever-it-was. This made Rhamik happy, and I didn't pursue the matter. Certainly, not after my subtle rebuke during our first tour of the village. I had not even touched. I had merely looked. Clearly, though, you did not gaze upon other people's deities. So I shelved whatever curiosity I had on this subject. Local religions are not to be tampered with. And—it must be said that since my amulet had been planted behind the hut, I had suffered no disasters.

All this was before I walked behind my hut to do my chores and saw my garden moving about.

I didn't move for a long moment. I stood dropping water bulbs like small bombs at my feet. Whatever it might be down there, it was no longer a lemon-sized household god. It had tossed its fiber wrappings aside, scattered its coating of bulb petals, and swollen to watermelon proportions—and then some. What the hell did I have here? I could see through its fresh, pink outer coating, and didn't care at all for what seemed to be thrashing about inside.

I let the green bulbs lay. If it got food and water, it would not get them from me. I was not about to encourage it further.

When my good friend and mentor arrived I was squatting at the rear of the hut. I was scraping together a large mound of wet soil, and when the mound got high enough, I planned to dump it into the trench and put an end to gardening.

"Andrew," he said, looking over my shoulder, "it is doing well."

I glared up at him. "Rhamik, I want some answers."

"You have not finished the feeding and watering. It is important that this is accomplished."

"Rhamik—"

"I will need more bulbs, Andrew. Please."

He moved me aside and began doing things, and of course it was useless to talk to him. I gave another salute to his back, and did as I was told. Fine, I told myself. He wants it, he can have it. We'll pot it and put it in his kitchen window.

He wouldn't look at me until he had thoroughly covered the thing with petals and watered it down, and added a new layer of bamboo leaves.

"Andrew," he told me finally, "it will require more frequent care, now. You—"

"Forget it." I cut him off. "It's not going to get frequent care. It's not going to get any care at all. I don't want that thing in my backyard."

Rhamik looked pained. "But you must do this, Andrew."

I stood up and walked around him. "It seemed like a fine idea, Rhamik. I did not want to offend anyone. But that no longer looks like a good-luck charm to me."

He ran a slim hand over his face. He looked troubled. "This is something we must talk about soon, Andrew," he said thoughtfully.

"Oh, no—this is something we must talk about now, Rhamik. What is it, where did it come from, and what does it do?"

He sensed we could not play teacher-pupil on this one. "Yes," he sighed, "we will talk now. Perhaps that is best."

"It is, Rhamik. It's something I need to know. It is behind my hut, where I have to sleep."

"It can't harm you, Andrew."

"Maybe."

"It is still quite dormant. It is simply, growing and needs care."

"I can see it's growing. I don't know about dormant. It looks alive, to me."

Rhamik looked surprised. "Well, Andrew—of course it is alive."

I sat up. "What do you mean, of course? Look. Don't play around, Rhamik—just tell me, all right?"

He shook his head wearily. "I must be forgiven, Andrew. Sometimes it is difficult to remember the degree to which you lack understanding."

"Never mind that. What is it?"

"Andrew, it is a new person. Your new person."

I stared at him.

"Did you really not know this? Truly? Sometime you must tell me, much more about your world. I am thinking now the life processes may differ considerably and—"

"Rhamik—" I tried to think of what to say. "What exactly do you mean by a new person? I don't have a new person or any kind of person. I've got a—a thing that you buried in a hole!"

"Yes, Andrew," he said calmly. "And the thing I put into the hole was the seed of a new person. As you explained, it was given to you by the female, when you left the settlement."

"That thing?" I looked at him. "That's the seed of a new person?"

"Yes, Andrew."

"In a little package. That I carried here on my shoulder."

"Yes."

I am no biologist, but I knew this was not the way you got "new persons." And even if it was—

"Look. There's been a mistake," I told Rhamik. "I explained—I didn't touch the female. That's Phretci's flower blooming back there, not mine."

Rhamik frowned painfully. I lacked great knowledge, and he was trying to be patient. "No, it is your new person, Andrew. It was given to you. Not Phretci."

"I don't care who it was given to. I didn't lay a hand on her!"

"There is more to patterning than touching, Andrew."

"Yes, but—" I stopped. "Wait, I didn't get that."

"I said there is more to patterning than touching."

"Patterning."

"Yes. The female's urge came upon her, Andrew. She felt a strong patterning for you. Your refusal to complete her did not change the patterning. Your acquaintance Phretci brought her to physical completion. But he had nothing to do with the act itself."

"He didn't?"

"No."

"He looked like he did to me."

Rhamik shook his head. "Andrew, it is hard for me to understand why no one on your world has explained to you about new persons."

"Like you say"—I brushed his words aside—"that's something we ought to talk about sometime. Not now. Rhamik—just because a female thinks about a male doesn't—"

"Andrew"—he smiled—"now you are gaining understanding."

"No. I am not gaining understanding."

He stood and brushed dirt from his knees. "In time, Andrew. In good time."

For several days I let my timber business go to pot.

I had many things on my mind, but bamboo was not among them. I wore new pathways through the grove. Probably, I ate bulbs. Mostly I thought about patterning.

Or tried to.

Where to begin, though? I didn't have the vaguest idea what Rhamik was talking about, though there was nothing new in that. Rhamik seldom took anything far enough for understanding. He hinted. Dropped little clues. Then I nudged the issue just to the edge of curiosity and left it there.

Take it from the top, then. Item: I didn't for a minute give any credence to Rhamik's explanation. I had no real or abstract relationship to the dun female's offspring. Rhamik, though, thought I did. And that's the trouble with the castaway business—you are ever faced with discerning what is real, and what the natives think is real.

Possible solution: Even in fantasy, look for a basis in fact. Superstition grows from fear. The superstition may be false, but the fear behind it is real enough. A mother's fear that something will be wrong with her baby. Don't look at a midget when you're pregnant—your child will be short instead of tall. Listen to soft music. Your child will be gentle. Read about great men. Your child will be a leader.

Patterning? Maybe. What's a pattern? A model. Something to be copied or imitated. So the female was attracted to me—for reasons of her own. And local custom had it that the "model" got the grand prize. Bad news indeed for popular models. One could find himself with a hut full of new persons, if be wasn't careful. And it occurred to me that the females on this planet were singularly uninspired, for the most part. Either patterning hadn't caught on in the flatlands, or no one was trying terribly hard.

For what it was worth, my timber was drying quickly. Rhamik was pleased. I had curbed my headstrong behavior and settled down to learning the course.

It was understood that I would not feed and water my "new person." Nothing was said. Rhamik simply took over these duties without further comment. Fine with me. It was bad enough just knowing it was there.

A reward for diligence. Rhamik arranged another trek to the clearing. I was amazed at the changes—the entire area was a maze of ladders, scaffolding, and bamboo towers. Ten meters or so above the ground a whole new village was in the making—huts, thatched roofs, the works. Each was apart from the other, as before, but each was connected by a shaky pattern of narrow walkways.

Again it seemed a senseless project. Were visitors expected? Were Rhamik's people going to abandon their huts and move to the heights? If so, why?

As expected, Rhamik thrust the question aside.

"Soon, Andrew. Soon you will see."

Sure I would.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

More surprises.

On the way back from the clearing Rhamik led me out of the grove and onto the flatlands—and for once, I guessed what I was seeing. No hints. No secrets. Rhamik's people had simply dug a trench. Not much wider than my shoulders, and two meters deep. There was a stratum of rock halfway down, and this was the reason for the hole. Two males worked below, working loose bits of stone which they tossed up to a male and two females. These craftsmen chipped the rocks into cutting tools similar to the one Rhamik had given me.

That, as far as I was concerned, was that. Rhamik, though, wanted to make sure I got the picture. He motioned me down and I followed. The two workers scampered quickly up the other side. No offense, right?

"Here," said Rhamik. He traced his finger along the moist soil. "See, Andrew? This is where the stones are found."

I muttered appreciatively. "They're nice rocks, all right."

"Yes"— Rhamik beamed—"these are good kinds!" He frowned, shook his head. "Hard to find, Andrew. Lots of soft rocks"—he kicked one to show me—"no, good for bamboo, though."

"No. I guess not."

"These, though. Good stones. Very useful."

"Yes. I can imagine."

"For cutting the ropes and mats, too."

"Uhuh." I was looking hard for an intelligent question. "Do you always have to dig?" I asked. Grubbing out trenches without shovels was a hell of a project. "Can't you find any on the surface that'll do?"

Rhamik looked puzzled. "Dirt is on the surface of the world, Andrew. Rocks are to be found below."

"Oh."

"You did not know this?"

"I did. I just forgot."

And of course he was right. Foolish me. I had forgotten. There was the ankle-high monument at the Dhoolh stop. A handful of pea-gravel here and there. No more.

Rhamik had moved on, leaving me staring at "good stones." I found him at the far end of the trench. He was on his hands and knees brushing soil from the dirt sides. Well, I thought, I am going to see another rock, and squatted down beside him. Not too far, though. The water table was quite near the surface in the valley, and the trench was more than a little muddy.

"There," said Rhamik, "you see, Andrew?"

I didn't, but I nodded. He kept brushing and chipping out stray bits of soil with his fingers and finally I did see something. Mica, maybe—imbedded in dull, gray crystal. Then, when he uncovered a larger area, it looked more like hard shell, or calcified bone.

Well, well. A closer look, then. A fossil? Could be. Quick mental image of a new field of interest. A hobby. I pounced on ideas such as this.

"What is it?"

"Wait. You will see." His brushing had bared a good-sized spot. I was certain I had guessed right. There was the beginning of a skeletal pattern—gray, bony ridges and more of the mica-like scaling.

Rhamik gestured. "More, Andrew. Longer." He stretched his arms wide and waved them in outward arcs. "Much bigger. From here, maybe"—he made one point with his finger—"to here."

He had walked off two meters or so down the trench and marked the soil again. Whatever it was, it was taller than I would be if I cared to stretch out in the trench and compare sizes.

"Do you know what this is, Rhamik?" I asked. "Something old. Something that lived a long time ago." I didn't want to say fossil.

Rhamik looked pained. "Old, Andrew?" He patted his stomach. "No, no. Good to eat. Real good."

I stood up. "What's good to eat?"

Rhamik grinned. "Good, Andrew. Not now, though. Later."

I looked at the spiny patterns and ran my hand over them again. Cold and brittle. For umpty-odd million years or so. This fine specimen was not going to be good to eat. Now, or later. Its eat-or-be-eaten days were over, and I decided Rhamik had been putting in too many hours in the bamboo mines.

I turned to give him what for, having had enough of this business for the day—but of course he had sniffed a question in the making, and was out of the trench and well on his way back to the grove.

We walked back to my hut together and Rhamik chattered about good rocks or something. I wasn't listening. I kept my mouth shut, fearing that whatever I might say at the moment would have no positive effect on our friendship. The fossil business had irritated the hell out of me. It was no great issue, but it had the makings of the proverbial last straw. More fuel for the guessing games. Another inanity to complement the timber business, patterning, new people in gardens.

In truth, I could not blame Rhamik any more than myself. He was what he was, and I couldn't expect him to be something else. Only—I didn't have to like it. Or the rather galling fact that I had, of my own free will, gone along with his fun and games—evidently willing to pay the price for the luxury of speaking to another living being now and then.

More than that. And harder to face, since it involved the old personal ego. I was not doing much of my own thinking anymore. Or going my own way. I had let myself become almost completely dependent on Rhamik.

I didn't much like that.

My timber racks were bare.

All the bamboo I had laid out to dry was gone. Clearly, for reasons of their own, Rhamik's people had come and hauled it off while we were looking at rocks, and fossils that would soon be good to eat.

I didn't ask for explanations. I took the bulbs I had dug on my way back and went into my hut and left Rhamik to his own ends. I could hear him feeding and watering my new person and finally I got up and wandered off in the grove by myself, and stayed there until I was sure he had finished and left.

I wished my Bhano were still alive.

If he had been, I'm sure I would have ridden out of the grove then, and headed for the rim of the valley to see what there was to see.

I gave myself a sound mental kick for that. A none too subtle evasion tactic, Andrew. You don't need a Bhano. A Bhano is optional equipment. You walked before you rode, and surely you can walk again.

Still, the idea was now clearly established in my mind. I felt somewhat better. The decision had been made. It was not a matter of what I would do, only when. I would go. In the morning. Or the day after, at the latest.

I did not leave the next morning, nor the next. Nothing had changed, it was simply that making the decision was enough for the moment. It had flushed the clogged channels of my mind, so to speak. I found myself free to think again—a most refreshing experience. I no longer brooded about the fact that Phretci was different from Thraxil, and Rhamik different from both. Or why there were no stones on the surface. Or that the villagers were building high-rise bamboo huts. I did not even think about the new person.

This was not my world and it was time I realized I would probably always face questions I could not answer. Frustration was no excuse for stagnation. I could not accept that. I was not ready to settle down placidly in my grove and grow old among the bamboo.

Even if there was nothing to find on this world, I could not let myself stop looking. I knew, instinctively, that that would be the deadliest error I could possibly make.

A few mornings later Rhamik led me into the forest near the edge of his village. A small clearing had been hacked out of the grove and one of the tall stilt huts had been constructed there.

"For you, Andrew," be announced. "Soon."

Sure, I thought. Soon. Later. Not now, Andrew. And I realized then that I would have to go quickly. And that I would probably not be able to tell Rhamik, or try to explain why I had to do what I had to do.

We walked farther, past the hut, and he showed me a high, narrow walkway—a maze of stilts and braces—that had been laboriously constructed from my hut all the way to the main village.

I was taken aback by that. Great God, I thought, and squinted back along the way we'd come. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep me segregated—and completely in touch. The walkway was a good seventy-five meters long—closer to a hundred—from my hut to the nearest hut in the new project.

"Mine, Andrew." Rhamik grinned. He pointed to the hut above, then to himself.

OK. That hit me where it hurt.

An ungrateful bastard, then, who faulted other creatures for being what they were. And I would repay this creature by departing like a thief in the night. No good-byes. Surely, he deserved more than that.

Well, I could think about that in the morning. Though I knew I'd already thought about it and knew what I was going to, do.

That evening I sat at the edge of the grove and watched the stars. The ribbon of dust on the horizon marked the enigmatic path of the Ghroals across the tired landscape. Maybe they did thunder endlessly around the globe, I decided. Maybe the front end met the tail and held the world together.

Around the middle of the night I sat up in my hut and listened, and finally got up and stood outside and looked up at the sky. The stars were gone. And while I had never seen even the wisp of a cloud on this world, the first tentative drops of rain spattered against my cheek and rustled the leaves overhead.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I couldn't have been more delighted.

It was a light, easy rain like a spring shower on Earth. Just enough to bring a clean smell to the air and a quiet drumming on the roof. The mat Sterzet had given me was reinforced with bamboo thatching, and I listened to the drops rustle dry leaves until the sound lulled me back to sleep.

When I woke again it was still an hour before dawn. The rain was coming down harder and there was a steady rumble of thunder in the distance. Occasionally, sheet lightning lit the grove.

The temperature had dropped several degrees, and I recalled days at the university when a good storm would coincide with weekends at home. I pictured my fireplace crackling, thunder shaking the windows. Flames would send yellow shadows across the high bookcases that lined the walls, and there would be good music on the tapes, and a drink in hand. And if it was a particularly fine weekend, there would be a pleasant companion on hand to share the rain, the music, and whatever other joys we might devise.

Now, though, there was none of that. And no prospect of such delights. The rain only served as a wet reminder.

A cold jet of water jolted me abruptly back to this particular world. I moved aside, groped about trying to fix whatever had gone wrong, and worsened the matter considerably. The jet was now a stream. In moments, the stream was a deluge, and it was wetter inside the hut than out.

I jerked my spare matting off the floor before it soaked up any more water and wrapped it over my head and hunched out of the hut. There was nothing left for me there. My home was a disaster area.

The full force of the rain nearly beat me to the ground. This was no longer a spring shower, or anything of the sort. I stood there inanely, holding my wet mat over my head, and wondered where in the hell I thought I was going. Drop by the neighbors? A friendly tavern?

Still, a man does not simply stand in the rain. He runs away from where he has been and toward something else. A flash of lightning gave me direction. I lowered my head and followed the path I'd worn to the edge of the grove. I huddled there and squinted out at the flatlands.

Quick flashes told me there was a shallow sea beyond the grove. The rain was pelting the earth with such force that a solid veil of whiteness rose from the ground. I wondered how the Ghroals were enjoying the weather.

My feet were slowly numbing and I looked down and saw the water was just past my ankles. For a while, I raised one foot out of the water, lowered it, and raised the other—then realized this idiocy would not keep me dry.

It was a first-class storm, and there was nothing else for it. But—should the water be rising that fast? It hadn't been raining all that long, really. And it struck me, then, that little of this water was running off into the ground. The water table was too near the surface. Everything that fell now was going to stay with us.

I checked my ankles again. The water was slightly higher, or I imagined it was. Lightning lit the flatland sea and I thought about it raining all over the great valley, and beyond that. The thought made me decidedly uneasy. There were more forces at work here than rain and a high water table. The valley was a big bowl, with flat, even terrain beyond. The water table was relatively high there, too. Rain that fell there would have no place to go. Except here.

It was not a happy thought.

I pictured tons of water rushing down the shallow rim to fill the great sea that was forming about my ankles. No, past that. Well on the way to my knees.

A sudden moment of panic, then. What was I to do and where was I to go? I was on my own, and Rhamik couldn't help me out of this one.

I stopped. Great God, I thought, he has, though. He already has! I kicked myself mentally and wondered how I could have forgotten the stilt village. High up over the water. Rhamik's Folly.

I plunged back toward the grove through rising water, feeling angry and relieved. You son of a bitch. You, knew about this and didn't tell me. Another stinking surprise.

It was hard going.

Rain lashed out in blinding sheets. Branches whipped across my face. More than once, my feet bogged in mud or tangled in bamboo and sent me flailing into the water.

It was up to my thighs. And climbing. I moved toward the stilt house Rhamik had built for me and hoped to God I wasn't going in the opposite direction. It was a long trip on a dry day—and there were no landmarks now.

My foot caught in bamboo and twisted painfully. I sucked in air, grabbed for a handful of trunk, and went under. I came up sputtering. The foot hurt like hell. All I needed, now—a broken ankle.

Lightning. A quick flash and the afterimage of a gaunt figure. Hands wound about a green trunk.

"Rhamik, here!"

He saw me. Wide eyes full of fright. I bit my lip against the pressure of the foot against the ground and splashed toward him. I grabbed his arm and a great curtain of rain lashed out at us.

 "Where is it," I shouted, "back that way? Did you come from the village?"

He stared at me. "Andrew—" Rain stung at his eyes and he blinked. "Andrew, you do not have the new person."

Listen I told him I am having one hell of a time with the old person. Come on, we've—"

"No." He shook his head. "First we must get the new person, Andrew."

"Rhamik," I yelled, "forget it! There's no way. There isn't even a hut back there." I jerked at him but he wouldn't budge. The water was up to my waist. Now what the hell was I going to do?

Rhamik answered that. He was away from me and plowing through the water like a wet cat, pulling himself along from one trunk to the next. I ground my teeth and sloshed after him and the ankle told me what it thought of this business.

"Rhamik!"

Just how did he expect to find the hut in all this? I wondered. And why? The Great Flood was upon us and what we needed was a stilt-house and a roof. We needed a new person like a bucket of water.

I lost him once. Then found him in a flash of lightning. He was clinging to a trunk looking frightened.

"Are you satisfied?" I yelled at him over the rain. "Can we go back, now?"

"Here, Andrew," he said weakly.

"Here what?"

"Here is the hut. You must get the new person quickly."

I stared at him. "What hut? Rhamik, you don't even know where we are!"

"Yes, Andrew. The hut is here. I am touching its walls with my feet. The new person is behind you. Please, Andrew. It is important to hurry."

I knew I might as well argue with the rain. He intended to stay right where he was until I got the new person. Or drowned.

Do it, then, and get it over with and get on the road. I took a quick breath and went under. No problem finding the new person. My hands touched it. I jerked them back. Good God, it was like reaching out in the dark and clutching a handful of cold worms. It seemed to know I was there. It pushed anxiously against my fingers.

I came up for breath. "Rhamik, I can't find it."

"Yes, Andrew."

"All right. So I found it. But I'm not going to touch it. Not again. It can stay right where it is."

He looked at me somberly. "Then I must stay too, Andrew."

"Why, Rhamik—it's----my new person, not yours! What the hell difference does it make?"

He didn't answer. He clutched his hands tightly around bamboo and stared into the rain and shook.

OK, friend, it's your choice, I thought. Go or stay. I considered a quick blow to the jaw, but knew I'd never get him to the stilt hut. I'd be lucky to make it myself. The foot was producing small explosions.

So I made a sound, sensible decision. I left him clinging to his bamboo and struck out through the rain.

I looked back at him.

He hadn't even watched me leave. I turned around and held my breath and felt around for the new person. I could do it if I didn't let myself think about how it felt. Or how it squirmed when I touched it. Damn, it had grown! Even in the water it felt like a good hundred pounds.

"It's heavy," I shouted to Rhamik, "but looks like it'll float enough so we won't be dragging dead weight! We'll be better off if we swim for it now and pull it between us. We'll have to in another couple of minutes—water'll be too high to walk!"

Rhamik looked at me blankly. "Swim, Andrew?"

Sweet Jesus, I moaned to myself. The word's not even in his bloody vocabulary.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A lifeguard can shout at a drowner all day.

He can curse him soundly, and ask him why he was in the goddamn pool in the first place if he couldn't swim. These questions never do any good.

We were a great team. Rhamik was terrified of the water, I had to pry his fingers from every branch—between branches, he clung fiercely to me. The new person, of course, was all mine.

I wondered how high the water would rise and how long it would be until morning. And if we would be around to see it.

Sheet lightning ripped the skies, and the wind had risen to a high pitch. It drove the rain in stinging bursts of needle spray almost horizontally above the water. Branches whipped and flailed us and I blinked once and Rhamik was gone. I went under where he should have been. He wasn't. I came up for air and a ragged branch tore a hole in my side.

On the second dive he found me. His hands clawed at my face and found the death-grip and I hit him in the stomach as hard as you can hit someone underwater. It took the steam out of him. But not before he got in a very accurate kick squarely on the ankle I had not intended to ever touch again.

I almost let him go.

Pain rolled in like a warm wave and nearly carried me on its crest to a dark and peaceful sleep. The temptation was very real—frightening enough to jerk me coldly back to business. Rhamik was vomiting water in my face. One arm gripped my neck. The other was holding us both out of the water, tight against a frail green trunk.

I yelled something at him— Was he all right? Could I do anything? He answered with another great surge of water, so I didn't worry about him. Anyone who's retching up his insides is still at the party.

The next flash of lightning confirmed a fear. Diving after Rhamik had completely turned me around. I had no idea which way we had been going. One bamboo stalk looked much like another.

At least, all I had to worry about now was Rhamik. When I'd gone after him, I had left the new person to its own devices. If Rhamik objected to being first choice, he would have to work that out for himself.

We had a chance, then. Daylight had to come eventually. We could cling to branches a little longer.

"Andrew—"

He opened his mouth and choked on rain. I did the best pounding job I could manage, keeping the ankle out of his way.

"The new person, Andrew!"

"Rhamik, that's not important now."

His eyes locked on mine. "The new person is gone?"

"You went under," I told him. "What was I supposed to do?"

He wouldn't buy that. "A new person is more meaningful than an old person."

"That's your opinion."

"Andrew—"

"Knock it off, Rhamik," I said sternly. I'd had quite enough of this.

"Andrew!" he shouted suddenly. "See!" He stared past me. Lightning flashed. I ground my teeth. Sure enough, the new person was floating in its vile cocoon, stuck in branches ten meters away.

"There, Andrew. The new person is not lost."

"So I see." I loosed his arm from my neck.

"What are you doing?"

"I am going after your goddamn new person, Rhamik. If you will let me go for a moment."

"I cannot stay here, Andrew."

"Why not?"

"I will fall under the water."

"You won't if you hang onto that branch."

"No, Andrew!"

I relaxed. "Fine. Then we'll forget about the new person."

"I will go with you."

"I don't need you to go with me."

"But that is the proper thing to do, Andrew," he insisted.

"The new person is on the path we must follow."

I looked at him. "Rhamik. . . ."

"This is right, Andrew!"

A wet branch slapped my face. I tore it aside. I remembered I had established in my own mind that he often evaded truth, but didn't lie. Well, we would see.

"Hang on," I told him, "and, Rhamik—stay away from the foot. That's important. Do you understand?"

He nodded, relieved.

Rhamik was happy after we retrieved the new person. I told him now that we had accomplished this task, I did not intend to risk any more swimming and groping in the dark. Even if we were headed in the right direction. That it was dangerous, and that I did not have the strength for it. We could best use what strength we had by hanging on until we could see what we were doing.

Rhamik objected violently. "No, Andrew. We must keep going!"

"Why? We have almost drowned several times in the past hour, Rhamik. What's the hurry?"

"Andrew," he said, "it would be pleasant if we could cling to the branches until the light. But that will not be possible."

"It takes less strength to—"

"No, this does not have to do with strength. The water is rising, Andrew. By morning the trees will be covered almost entirely. The branches that remain above the water will be inadequate to hold us. You see? We must go now, Andrew."

I thought about that. "You're sure? The water gets that high—to cover the tops of the trees?"

"Yes, Andrew."

"Rhamik," I said, suddenly angry, "you could have told me about this yesterday! It wouldn't have hurt anything, would it? To let me know?"

"Andrew," he said simply, "the rain began a day early. I am most sorry about that. I did not know it would be early—this has never happened before."

I didn't bother to answer. No doubt, he was quite right. Why would you give anyone two days warning of the Great Flood?

There was no way to judge progress.

It seemed to me we were hardly moving, but I knew this couldn't be so. Rain lashed out, but I couldn't feel it anymore. I could feel my ankle just fine. It had its own heartbeat, and someone had started many small fires to keep warm.

Each time the sky turned white I searched for the stilt huts. Nothing. And Rhamik was right. The water was still rising—faster than I cared for. It wouldn't be long before we were swimming without the aid of branches. When that happened, I was certain I could drag Rhamik and the new person a good two meters before the fun and games were over.

And then I saw it.

Rhamik saw it too and we both shouted hoarsely at each other. Right on target—the stilt house Rhamik and his friends had built for me. Solid against the wind, firmly thatched, and still high above the water. In another flash I caught a glimpse of the long walkway leading off into darkness and the village beyond.

I guessed seventy or eighty meters.

After we'd made half of that I guessed again. My heart sank. We weren't getting anywhere. The wind was pushing us back and we were going against the lashing sheets of rain. Rhamik clung to me like a leech, weighing me down. I pushed the new person along with one hand. The wind nearly jerked it away and tossed it into the current.

I gripped branches with raw hands.

Everything hurt.

Except the foot. I couldn't even feel it anymore.

Just keep the eyes shut against the rain and grip the next branch. Pull. Swim. Next branch. Pull. Swim. . . .

Rhamik was shouting at me. Damn irritating. It interfered with my routine.

"Andrew!"

"Go away, Rhamik."

"Andrew, we are here!"

"Huh?"

"We are here, Andrew!"

I opened my eyes. Shut them again against the rain. When I looked again I saw my fist in front of me. It was clutched about bamboo. I followed the bamboo with my eyes to the hut above. It was only about a thousand kilometers away. I looked at Rhamik, and the new person, and thought about my foot.

Rhamik guessed my thoughts. "You must do it, Andrew."

I was too tired to be angry. "Just listen," I said. "Just listen, Rhamik. There is something very wrong with my foot. I might be able to make it up that ladder by myself. I doubt it. There is no use even thinking about going up there with a hundred-pound load. It would difficult if there was nothing wrong with my foot and I had a good night's sleep."

"All right." Rhamik nodded. "All right, Andrew."

I didn't like the sound of that. "All right, what?"

"It is all right. I will stay here with the new person. When it is light, perhaps. . . .

I moaned under my breath. "Rhamik, you won't be here when it's light."

"That may be so."

"Damn it," I shouted at him, "it's my new person, Rhamik! I don't want it. Don't you understand that? I want to get up that ladder!"

He smiled wearily. "Yes, Andrew. I understand."

I knew I was licked. And—what the hell difference did it make? Whether I fell off the ladder with or without the new person? I could not let Rhamik do what he was thinking. And I knew very well that he would.

The system was theoretically simple.

Using my good foot, I balanced on the ladder. The new person lay across my chest. It rested on my arms, and my hands gripped the ladder behind it. I let my arms take the weight while I moved my good foot up a notch at a time. Then I nudged my hands up another rung. Slowly. So that the new person rose evenly.

The whole idea was totally absurd. I would make about one meter and then I would fall into the water and drown.

But I had to try. I didn't want the little bastard's suicide on my hands. My suicide, though. That was OK.

I did make one meter.

Then two.

Three. Maybe—

The wind caught me and tried to toss me away. I gripped the ladder and the new person squirmed violently against me. My face came up against something terrible and my stomach turned over. No, I thought, God, no—don't let me get sick. Not now.

Another meter.

My hand touched the floor of the hut. I closed my eyes, let my chest push the thing up and over. I hung there, for a long time. I sucked in air, but the wind tore it away. I couldn't see anymore and I knew I was getting dizzy. I wasn't going to make it. I was going to let go and fall off the damn ladder.

I moved everything at once and tore my arms on the rough floor of the hut and dragged myself up and over.

I knew exactly what was going to happen.

My bad foot slammed hard into the new person and I went down. There was a great deal of screaming. I finally decided it was me.

I was glad when I stopped.

It was much better when I wasn't making noises.

The noise made things hurt more.

There was lightning for a while. And the black hulk of the new person, Rhamik huddled beside it. Then Rhamik put something over the door of the hut and the lightning became only three sharp lines around its edges. . . .

I was very angry with myself.

I had promised I wouldn't make noises anymore and I was still doing it.

Then I decided it wasn't me.

Rhamik? No. Rhamik's foot didn't hurt. Something else, then.

The new person. Small sounds. Like baby kittens. And when there was enough lightning and I was awake again I knew it was frightened and that it was tearing at itself and trying to get free of the cocoon.

Oh, Christ, I thought. I hope it doesn't do that. Don't let it do that while my foot hurts so much I can't even get away from it. . . .

The sound was different because there wasn't any.

The wind had died and the rain had stopped. Dull gray light peeked through the sides of the hut and around the mat curtain.

Rhamik squatted by the door.

The new person had stopped making noises, but it was breathing hard. Rhamik had found a piece of matting and he was cleaning the new person with it, peeling away thick, viscous layers of jelly.

Rhamik carefully saved the jelly, and when he had a nice pile of it on the floor he fed it to the new person.

My stomach churned. It hurt too much to turn away. There was more gray light now and the new person wasn't as terrible as I had thought it would be. It had full, ivory breasts. Rose-colored nipples that stood erect when it breathed. Wheat-yellow hair and high cheeks. A narrow waist and a flat tummy and long legs.

My foot was worse than I'd imagined.

I was burning up with fever and hallucinating. The lighter the hut became, the more the new person looked like Melisa Mills.

CHAPTER TWENTY

A narrow bamboo railing faced the door of the hut and precariously circled the left wall. From there the walkway between my hut and the village snaked crookedly over the water through a perpetual veil of gray fog.

Gray was the color of the day.

Gray skies sagged to meet the leaden face of the water. The tips of drowned bamboo lay listlessly on the surface, their pale greens faded to match the general scheme of things. We were color-coordinated throughout, but our decorator had limited means.

Leaning against the wall of the hut, I rested one leg gingerly on the walkway and let the other hang over the edge. Rhamik had done the best he could. But he knew nothing about the treatment of sprained or fractured ankles or whatever it was that was wrong down there. So I simply stayed off the bad limb for a week while the swelling subsided, and now, I was doing a little preliminary hobbling about, and a great deal of sitting.

Something churned the water to a fine froth below, and bumped against one of the stilt poles. I didn't bother to look; I knew what it was, and didn't care to think about that at the moment.

Which did not mean that it would go away. The silvergators were with us, playing their part in the ecological scene, and whether I cared to believe in them or not didn't bother them greatly. Rhamik called them Choan, but they were silvergators to me. They looked a little like dull, platinum crocodiles and all the world like the nasty little silverfish I used to discover among old books and papers. They were more than two meters long, and spent their time skimming hungrily through the shallows below. Since there was not a single thing to eat down there except wet bamboo, they necessarily ate each other.

That was what all the churning was about. And why I didn't care to watch. That, and the fact that if I wanted to eat, I, too, would be having raw silverfish filet for dinner. And lunch, and breakfast. Though I seldom managed more than one of these seafood delights per day.

Eventually, maybe I would no longer be surprised at the way this world casually solved its problems. Bulbs grew in profusion. And in the valley, there was enough water to nurture them to maturity. Naturally. Because the valley flooded every year and bamboo was needed to make stilt huts, so the population wouldn't drown. There were no bulbs, then, but there were silvergators, who revived themselves annually when needed, then returned to their fossilized state after the general emergency. All of this, as I explained to Rhamik, was quite impossible. The hipbone's connected to the thigh bone, etcetera.

I found it difficult to believe there were really such peculiar laws of nature at work on this world. Such things simply did not happen. Somewhere, there was a logical explanation. Or so I assumed. But that was before the new person growing in my garden turned into Melisa Mills.

There was a fever that went with the ankle. Complicated, I suppose, by exposure in the water. When it was better, Rhamik announced that he could leave me for a while, and I said that was fine, I had greatly appreciated his help, and that when he left, he could take it with him.

"No, Andrew," he explained, "the new person is yours. I could not take her with me."

"It," I corrected. And I did not glance at the creature that had decided to look like Melisa Mills. It huddled quietly in its corner, and did not look at me, either.

"It, Rhamik. That's not what it seems to be. I want it out of here."

Rhamik shrugged. He had heard all this before. "Andrew, what a new person becomes is determined by its patterning. In this case, the patterning is yours."

"I had nothing to do with that."

"But you did, Andrew. We have talked about this before. The female desired you and accepted your patterning."

"I did not touch the female. Therefore—"

"Andrew," Rhamik sighed, "we have discussed this before, too."

"Fine. We've discussed this before. When you go, take it with you."

I was doing a great deal of sleeping at the time. And during one of those times, Rhamik left, and of course he did not take the new person with him.

I'm a normal enough male and I have daydreams and fantasies. Even when I'm not marooned on other worlds. I've dreamed about Melisa Mills. More than once. And I have sat at the edge of the grove in the evening and looked out across the flatlands and thought about people I remember.

There should not be much to remember about Melisa. I spoke to her maybe a half dozen times in the course of a semester, just as I spoke to a great many other students. However, I cannot remember any of the others. I have no trouble remembering Melisa.

Seated in the front row. Not overly enthralled with economics. A little too tall for her build. Lank-slender. But the planes of her face and body were softened to the proper degree. Her angularity only served to accentuate the delightful curves and hollows. Small-breasted. Hips that flared gently into tearfully long legs. Her skin was olive-gold, stretched over high cheekbones. A too-wide mouth and oversized eyes. I used to wonder if the olive-gold skin was the same texture and color all over, and this led to some improbable mental scenarios.

So I had forgotten nothing at all. And the new person, of course, was not Melisa Mills. It had come out of a smelly cocoon in my garden. Before that, from the dun belly of a female commuter. And however implausible it might appear to me, that love-starved ugly had drawn the Melisa-dream from the dark and moist regions of my mind, and set the image breathing.

It sat on the other side of my hut. Olive-gold and naked-lovely. It did not look as if it had come out of a cocoon.

During those first few weeks in the hut, after Rhamik's desertion, there were several conversations of note with the Melisa Mills thing. Some of them one-way. It talked, but I didn't answer. This didn't bother it at all, and eventually I tired of monologues and joined the fray. It was there, and wouldn't go away. And I had talked with less likely creatures on this planet.

"You are really being an ass about this, Andy. You know that, don't you?"

"Don't call me Andy. I hate that. I've told you about it before."

"Sure. But you think of yourself as Andy sometimes. I know that because it's in my head, and it wouldn't be there if it wasn't true."

"Just because something is in one's head doesn't make it true."

"It does for me. Because it wouldn't be in my head unless it was in yours, too."

"Quit saying that. You don't have the slightest idea what's in my head."

"We went over that, Andy—Andrew. I'm not reading your mind or anything, it's just there like a lot of other things. You made the pattern, not me."

"Don't keep reminding me."

"If you didn't want me to know things you shouldn't—"

"What else is in your head? About me?"

"Ho!" A quick little laugh. "What's the matter—afraid I know all your dark fuzzy secrets?"

"I am not in the least interested, one way or the other."

"You are. And I don't. Know all about you, I mean. Just some things. Patterning's like that. You come into the world with little bits and pieces from the—what's the word? Donor. Mostly, they're not facts at all. Just feelings about things. It's the same for everybody on this world. When you get here, you know things. It's there in your head."

"But you learn things, too."

"Well, of course."

"We do it a little differently. To say the least."

"I know. And that scares me, Andrew."

"It does?"

"It's something I already knew; you didn't have to tell me. So I guess you gave it to me. A lot of me is you, Andrew, but I was, born here. And I can't really imagine that. It frightens me."

"What?"

"About your world. Being born very small. And helpless. Not knowing anything at all. It scares me to think about that."

"Don't, then. Think about something else."

"Andrew?"

"What?"

"Why do you try not to look at me when you really want to?"

"I think I've made it clear that I don't want to discuss that."

"Does it make that much difference? Really? That I'm not Melisa Mills? It's what you wanted, Andrew. Or I wouldn't be here."

"I did not intentionally will you here. So I do not feel burdened with any responsibility, if that's what you mean."

"I am here, though."

"Yes. You certainly are."

"And do you like the way I look, Andrew? I think you do. You watch me move around. When you think I won't notice. You won't touch me—but your eyes do. I can feel them on every part of me. They—"

"Well, what the hell do you expect! You look enough like her to—"

The big eyes flashed anger, then "—to be human? Right?" The laugh again, a true Melisa-type laugh. Full of hurt, this time, and I was instantly sorry. That hadn't been necessary.

"Look—"

"No. You look. What's the big thing about being human, Andrew?  And what's human, anyway? What you are, and everybody else isn't? Is that it? If I'm so goddamned repulsive, why do you want to do the things that you think about doing every time you look at me?"

"I do not want to do things to you, I assure you."

"Crap, Andrew. You've already done everything to me in your mind. I can feel that."

I didn't answer.

"I am not Melisa Mills, Andrew. I don't suppose I'm human, either, according to your definition. But I am what you ordered, whether you like it or not. And you are too damn pompous and stubborn to realize what you have is probably a great deal better than the true Melisa Mills ever was."

"Just how do you figure that?"

"How do you figure it, Andrew? Don't you have things a little turned around? She's the fantasy, not me. She never really existed for you because she was never yours in the first place. Only in your mind. I'm the real one, Andrew." Admittedly, that little piece of logic left me somewhat shaken. I decided not to pursue it further.

She was leaning against the far wall of the hut. This had become an established routine. I would sit in the doorway and stare at nothing, simply because I could not watch the naked, tawny-skinned creature that shared my hut for any length of time.

I was aware that she was not leaning against the wall anymore. I could feel her feet touching the bamboo flooring, and hear the whisper of one thigh against another.

"Look. I've asked you—"

"I know." She was standing above me in the doorway. It was a small door. No matter how hard I stared at the leaden water, I could still see honey-colored legs. It occurred to me that I had probably made the legs somewhat longer than Melisa's. This sort of thing is allowable in the patterning business.

"I know I'm supposed to stay on my side of the hut."

"Good. I'm glad you understand that. I'd appreciate it if you'd remember."

"I know why, too."

No comment.

She laughed lightly. "You're not doing badly, Andrew."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You've lived in a tiny hut with a naked girl for two weeks. More than that, now."

"Look—"

The legs disappeared, and I let out a lungful of air I had not recalled inhaling.

"You know what they say," she called to me. She was back on her own side of the hut again. "And I never knew this before, so it must come from your head. The longer you're on the islands, the better the natives start to look. . . ."

There is no need to go into details.

The creature was not human and it was not Melisa. I vowed never to give in to the temptation of believing it was anything but what it was.

I did not break that vow. My new person solved the dilemma by simply choosing a night that suited its purposes, and moving to my side of the hut. A great deal of very warm female flesh—never mind the species—moved against mine, and that, essentially, was that.

I sullied the banners of humanity as we know it. It was an alien coupling. A meeting of diverse cultures. And, certainly, all a poor castaway could hope for.

The next morning Melisa prepared our breakfast of water and raw silvergator steak and announced that she was pregnant.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"That's impossible," I told her. "And even if you were, you wouldn't know about it yet. Three or four hours is a little early to tell, Melisa."

"Andrew. . . ." She gave me one of those patient female smiles. "You forget—the body part of me comes from this world. We natives may be simple folk, but we know when we've been patterned." She laughed smugly and wrapped bare arms about me. "Mmm, have I been patterned!"

"Don't call it that."

She let me go and walked to the door and stretched, and brushed her fingers through her hair. "OK. I am pregnant. Knocked up. Whatever you want to call it, Andrew. I am, though."

I looked at her, and she met my eyes. I had to believe her, whether I liked the idea or not. "Great," I said, and sat down and leaned against the wall. "Just what we needed." A sudden thought struck me. "Melisa—how will you . . . I mean, is it—"

She shook her head. "I don't know yet? Anyway, you kind of decide that."

"I do?"

"You want to know how I'll have it, right? The way it's done on your world, or mine. How much do you know about female insides?"

"Huh?"

"How a girl's put together. Where all the equipment goes."

I shrugged. "I don't know; I've got a vague idea. Why?"

She laughed. "Well, I don't feel vaguely put together, Andrew. And if you didn't imagine any parts for me, I must be built like everyone else here."

"Believe me," I said, "you are not built like anyone else here that I have seen, Melisa."

"That's not what I'm talking about. Anyway"—she forced a sleepy smile—"you know what to do with everything, Andrew—seems like you'd have some idea what it's all for—I mean besides that."

"An economist cannot be all things to all people," I told her. "There simply wasn't time in my academic schedule for a course in gynecology."

That was a word she didn't know, and I explained it. Melisa wanted to know more, or at least pretended a great interest in the correct terminology of the various female parts. And since I had accurately imagined all the visible, and some of the not-so-visible elements, I happily pointed them out, and named them, and we advanced from there to activities normally outside the province of those gynecologists who do not wish to create extra problems for themselves.

The next morning she asked me to kindly leave the hut and go watch the fog drift in for a while, and that she would call me shortly.

When I returned she explained that the new person had arrived, and was receiving nourishment. I looked at her, and she laughed.

"No, the breasts are strictly for decoration, Andrew—and you don't need to comment on that. Not right now, anyway."

I glanced behind her, in a corner of the hut. There was a familiar lemon-sized object hanging on a peg there, wrapped in matting, and something else.

I sniffed and frowned. "What the hell's that for?"

Melisa sighed. "I'm sorry, Andrew. I know you don't like the smell of silvergator, but there isn't anything else. It's got to have something."

I was appalled, but of course she was right. Bulbs were out of season, and the new person had to absorb energy from somewhere. I supposed a little more silvergator around the house couldn't hurt us.

Later, Melisa announced that although she didn't see why I wanted to do it that way, we would be having a young new person, and not an old one. "It seems very inefficient to me," she said, shrugging a bare shoulder in resignation. "It won't know anything at all, Andrew."

"Where I come from," I told her, "new persons aren't supposed to know anything. Anyway, how can you be sure what it's going to be, Melisa? Old, young, or in between? You just now—"

"I knew I was pregnant, didn't I?"

I couldn't argue with that, and in a moment she came over and sat beside me and laid her head against my shoulder.

"I don't know how I know things, Andrew. I honestly don't. And it's very confusing sometimes because I belong to this world and yours too. I know you can't understand that. I'm three weeks old and I was born when I was twenty-two, because that was her age, and that's the way you wanted me. And that doesn't seem peculiar to me at all, really—not as peculiar as your way."

Melisa explained, in detail, how the birth process worked on this particular world, though I didn't really want to know quite that much about it. In the first place, since new persons were normally born as adults, they couldn't very well be carried about in the mother. That concept, incidentally, did not appeal to Melisa.

There was the usual business of the male sperm and the female egg—only, when that process was completed, the story began to differ. Both of these elements were trapped within a porous nurturing organ about the size of a lemon, which detached itself from the female some twenty-four hours after impregnation. It merely dropped down an interior passage, and was retrieved by the new mother, who wrapped it in a thin layer of matting, and gave it a coating of whatever nourishment was available.

That, she said, was all there was to it.

Not for me it wasn't.

I had enough questions about this "simple" process to drive a good physician or biologist to drink. How did the new person grow at such a fantastic rate? If my mental calendar was working properly, Melisa had arrived somewhere around ten weeks after the dun commuter had copulated with Phretci! And most of her growth had been accomplished during the last third of that.

And—how did a new person arrive in the world knowing nearly as much as any other functioning adult?

Most exasperating of all—how in the hell did you pattern someone, without laying a hand on them?

Melisa would have told me anything she could, but she really didn't know much more than I did. Things just happened. You were born knowing that they did—but not necessarily why.

My descriptions of the universe outside her own sent her into alternating gales of laughter, and spells of deep depression. For instance: she thought the concept of horse racing was dismal and distressing. Why would a person desire that one animal get someplace faster than another? Did it really matter, as long as they got there?

Pornography, on the other hand, sounded like more fun than anything. She decided it was a "pretend" game—which was the way I'd described books and motion pictures. Could we play pornography sometime? I said that some might feel we already had a fair start on this, and she said she didn't see how this could be, when she'd just that moment heard of the game.

She reacted with neither joy nor dismay at my announcement that people on other worlds spoke a wide variety of languages, and thus, frequently, did not understand one another. She simply didn't believe me, though she didn't say so.

I missed Rhamik. With all his shortcomings.

He had not returned since the day I'd gone to sleep and he'd disappeared, leaving me to discover Melisa for myself. Did he think I was angry about that? I was, before I came to my senses—or rather, before Melisa resolved the issue for us both.

Several times I walked a few meters down the shaky walkway that led from my hut to his. I could see where he lived, sometimes, through the mist. On a particularly clear day parts of the rest of the village beyond appeared—dark, boxy smudges against a lighter gray.

I debated simply strolling over the walkway and saying hello. I always lost that argument. One would have to be terribly dense to miss Rhamik's point: my hut had not been built at the center of social activity.

I was curious, though, and concerned. And there was, of course, a compromise position. I did not have to go all the way to Rhamik's hut. I could go a little farther. Halfway, perhaps.

And halfway it was. A fairly conclusive answer to my question. A three-meter section of the walkway simply removed and hauled away or dropped into the water. Subtle, no. But effective.

I wondered why. And asked Melisa. No, she had no idea, really—but she turned her head away slightly while we were talking, and I had learned this was a silent signal that the subject in question contained material she did not care to discuss. So I didn't press the matter further.

This did not mean Melisa knew the answer, and held it from me. Merely that she "felt" the conversation might lead to areas which would confuse or frighten her. It was a part of Melisa's dilemma. She was a child of two worlds. Beings on her planet were born with instinctual feelings about the nature of their world. Certain things were, or were not—these things were neither questioned nor understood. They just were. Melisa, though, was a part of me, and through me, of my world. Thus, she both felt and questioned. And this ability to question was the thing that frightened and often confused her.

At the end of the week it rained fairly hard, and this was unusual. We had grown accustomed to the continual fog, the condition of "almost raining," in which you were always wet, but had no visible weather to show for it.

After the rain, the corpse of some large, unidentifiable animal floated by some twenty meters away, finally drifting out of sight. Whatever it was, it was a most distasteful creature, for even the silvergators wouldn't touch it.

Melisa had been pensive and somewhat withdrawn for several days. I left her alone, thinking she might rather work out whatever it was for herself. But one morning when she was curled up in a warm golden ball against me I asked her if something was troubling her, and what I might do to help.

She said nothing for a long moment, then, "I want you to tell me more about her."

"More about whom?"

"Melisa. The real one."

She said "the real one" in such sad and lonely tones, and I pulled back a strand of wheat-colored hair and kissed her ear.

"Hey. That sends shivers all over me." She shivered for me, and pressed somewhat closer.

"I know it does. That's why I do it."

"It is, huh?"

"Right."

"You know an awful lot of things to do, don't you?"

"This is just kid stuff. Wait'!! I really get going."

She stifled a laugh against her shoulder.

"—And Melisa. Why do you want to know more about the other Melisa Mills? Because you think she was important to me? More important than you are?"

A little pause. "I want to be what you want. So you'll love me, too."

"Hey—" I held her away from me, then brought her close again. There were the beginnings of tears. "And what makes you think I don't love you? Already."

She wouldn't look at me. "You love me because of her, Andrew. Because of what she was, or what you imagined her to be. Maybe I'm not the same. Or not close enough."

"I never really loved her at all, Melisa. That's the truth. I thought about loving her, and how loving her might be—but you have to know someone for that. I didn't. It was all in my head."

"Sometimes what's in your head is better than what's real."

"Yes. Sometimes it is."

"So?"

"So this is definitely not one of those times, Melisa. You're the real one. You made me see that, right in the beginning. Remember? She's the fantasy. The one I imagined. You are no daydream, Melisa."

"Honest?" She sniffed through tears.

"Honest."

She closed her eyes, and in a moment a sly grin crossed the too-wide mouth.

"Andrew?"

"Yes."

"Andrew, I want to play the pornography game. I don't really know what you have to do, but I can learn if you'll show me. Just tell me what I do wrong."

"Melisa," I said, "you are already off on the right foot. Nothing is more dear to a teacher's heart than a student's willingness to learn."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was a particularly gray day.

A light rain dimpled the water, and silvergators finned cursive arcs just below the leaden surface. I sat against the outside of the hut, eyes more or less on the stilt village. The huts were dark blurs floating above the fog bank, anchored by the dim suggestion of vertical shadows.

As I watched, one of the shadows seemed to fade, bend, and casually fold itself in two. Another, followed. Then another. All very slowly. The huts above lazily chased the collapsing stilts, tumbling in easy circles to the water.

There was no sound track to any of this, and I guessed the fog and the distance effectively smothered any noise. Maybe a half dozen huts in all had disappeared. No doubt there were creatures inside, but of course I couldn't see them. Hopefully, the silvergators were swift and merciful.

I had no idea what had brought this catastrophe about, but the point had been well made. The neighborhood was deteriorating, and Melisa and I were vulnerable. Of course, I said nothing to her about what had happened.

What a change Melisa made in my life! Somehow, I had managed to pluck a bright gem from this dunghill world. How, no longer greatly mattered. She was there. She existed. And I believed she truly loved me.

Not because she had been created for that purpose. But because she wanted to. And this was extremely important to me. I had given it a great deal of thought and felt I had points in my favor. I had patterned my fantasy and brought it to life, but now she was a separate individual, with a will of her own. She could be stubborn and petulant, moody, gay, willing, and unreasonable. Anything but a pliant, submissive toy made for Andrew's enjoyment.

Sometimes, the thought struck me that if I had really willed Melisa into being, my unconscious self would have created her as a whole woman, with all the attendant virtues and faults. In other words, much as she was now.

I preferred to think differently. That she sulked, pouted, laughed, and loved because she felt such emotions, and expressed them of her own free will.

It was Melisa who noticed the water was receding. I couldn't see it at all, but I marked a spot on one of the stilts with my eye, and checked it several times during the day. On the second morning I knew she was right. Not much of a drop, but something. I made a special scratch on the bamboo slat that served as my calendar. It had been seven weeks and two days since the first drop of rain fell on the grove.

"When it's gone, Andrew, then what?"

Melisa knew my mind. "When it's gone, Melisa, we leave this place."

"Leave. And go where?"

"You know I can't answer that."?

"But we—just go."

"Yes."

"But you don't know where."

I bit off a sharp answer. It was my lack of purpose and direction involved here, not hers. Instead, I gave her a reassuring smile.

"Listen. It'll be all right."

"I know it will, Andrew."

She didn't, though. She was merely passing my own assurance back to me.

"I think it would be best if you said what you were thinking," I told her.

She looked at me with the oversized eyes. "OK. But I don't know what I'm thinking." She bit her lip thoughtfully. "Andrew, the thing is I know what you feel, but I don't always understand why."

"Yes, I know that."

"I feel some of what you feel. Sometimes. But the other part of me doesn't at all."

"And that part of you doesn't see why I have to leave. Go somewhere else."

She shook her head and laughed nervously. "I know it's silly, but—the idea of doing anything like that scares me. Something awful. It—just doesn't seem right."

"Melisa—"

She leaned forward and squinted her eyes and straightened her jaw. "People go somewhere because they have a reason to go somewhere," she said flatly. "If they don't, they should stay where they are."

I stared at her. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn she'd memorized the lines. "Why, though?" I asked her. "There's no rule, Melisa. It doesn't make sense to say that you—"

"It does to me!" she exploded. "Just because it doesn't mean anything to you doesn't mean it isn't true! You don't know—you don't even belong here!"

Her hands balled up into tiny fists and I pulled her to me and buried a flood of tears.

Small revelations emerged from my conversations with Melisa. Pieced together they formed the germ of some larger truth. I began to see Rhamik, Phretci and the others in a different light.

There were rules. Unspoken. There were ways things were done and ways people lived.

People go somewhere because they have a reason.

There are places for rocks and places for dirt.

Places for Phretcis and places for Dhoolhs.

Why? Melisa didn't know. None of them did. They lived their structured lives because that was the way of the world. No one had to tell them these things. They were born knowing what they knew. And no one asked why.

I did, though. For instance: Why rules that set the pattern for everything from silvergators to the Great Flood? Who wound up this palsied planet in the first place?

The water level was a great deal lower. There were fewer silvergators about, and the days were less dreary and gray. Maybe, I thought, the perpetual cloud cover has moisturized itself to death.

The walkway was for exercising. Also for Rhamik watching. Only, never a sign of life across that gap that separated his territory from mine.

"Andrew," Melisa announced, "the new person is doing nicely."

"Good," I said, "that's fine, Melisa."

"You could be a little more interested."

"Melisa, I'm interested."

"No, you're not."

I grinned at her. "OK. No, I'm not. And I don't know why I bother to lie—you always know what I'm thinking."

"Not always."

"Often enough. And it's not that I'm not interested. It's simply that having a new pers— a child, is about as foreign to me as anything I can imagine. The possibility never crossed my mind."

She threw out a hip and arched a brow. "It doesn't have to cross your mind, Andrew."

"True."

"You probably have lots of new persons running around somewhere. You just never bothered to ask."

I laughed. "I hope not. I don't think so. Where I come from we have ways to prevent that."

She wanted to know about "ways" and I told her. I couldn't be sure she was amused, or horrified, or a little of both.

I had watched her, and seen her glance at the new person's place on the wall of the hut. Warm, tender looks.  Typical of motherhood. Which puzzled me somewhat. Being a mother on this world wasn't all that big a deal. You plopped out a little ping-pong ball twenty-four hours  after conception, fed and watered it a while, and—bang! Out jumped a full-grown adult as big as you were, who promptly walked away and went about his business. Not even a "Thanks, Mom."

"It's not the same with me," said Melisa, and there was the defensive fire of motherhood in her eyes. "I'm Melisa Mills, Andrew—no matter where or how I was born. And that's Andrew Gavin's child over there. I love Andrew Gavin dearly, and I'll love his child, too."

"You'd better wait and see what it looks like." I grinned. "It may be ugly as sin."

"It will not!" She made a face. "It will be very beautiful. A little boy. Just like you."

"God, what a thought."

"Besides, don't blame me if it's ugly as sin—whatever sin is—you are the big pattern-maker around here, not me."

A sobering thought, indeed. Certainly, the subject had crossed my mind before. "Pretty scary," I admitted. "I haven't the vaguest idea what I was thinking about at the time."

"Hah." She made a mouth. "I know what you were thinking about at the time."

"Don't change the subject."

"I'm not. And, Andrew—I'll love your child. Our child."

"Maybe," I said. "People don't always."

"Andrew!" Her eyes widened. "What kind of talk is that?"

"Real talk," I told her, and I was sorry I'd started that business, and cut it short. "It's simply one of the fun things we Earth people do, Melissa.  Screw up our children."

"How?"

"It's like patterning. Only worse. You make a child and love it and think the things it does are very cute. Only, the more it acts like itself the less cute it becomes. The less it wants to be like you, the more you resent it. Ungrateful little bastard. So you push a little. Put a little pressure on the soft spots. Wear down some of the edges. Until—"

I stopped. Wondering where the hell I intended to take this.

Melisa looked at me queerly. "I thought you hadn't had a child before."

"I haven't."

"You're talking about somebody, though. You didn't just make that up. Not the way you said it."

I didn't answer.

During the night, someone pulled the plug out of our tub.

I was up at dawn and saw it and shouted at Melisa. She came to lean over the railing with me, and grinned because I was grinning. There was less than half a meter of water below. You could see the bottom clearly, and the bits of garbage left there by the rain and the silvergators. The silvergators were nowhere to be seen, and I guessed they had all squirmed themselves back into the wet earth. Well, by God, when they defossilized themselves for the coming season, they could do it without Gavin and company. We would not be here to watch.

To make this gala event complete, the gray clouds scudded into ragged bits and pieces as the day wore on, and in the evening, I held Melisa close and watched the first real sunset I had seen on this cloudless world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The water was gone, but it left a dreary mess behind.

The grove, with its green depths and cool shadow, had turned to pulp. For the first half of the morning, it was a walk through muddy spinach.

Melisa, though, instinctively found the stuff useful. She stopped twice to pack layers of goo about the new person's small cocoon.

This great pile of garbage was already reeking with the first touch of the sun. I was glad enough to leave it behind. From the outside edge, I looked back at the little square huts on their shaky legs. Did the villagers stay there, until a new crop of bamboo rose high enough to give them shelter? Maybe. Or perhaps there was interim housing—a third stage in the cycle. Something akin to Phretci's rabbit burrows.

So good-bye, Rhamik, wherever you are. I suppose I will never know exactly what offended you so greatly. But even if you were here to explain it all, I could easily misunderstand, and possibly offend again.

I had underestimated the sun, or forgotten its ferocity. It blazed out of a cloudless sky, determined to make up for lost time. We were fried mercilessly from above, while the moist earth steamed us from below. Melisa dropped in a pitiful heap every hundred meters or so, and I could have cried for her. I dug up bulbs and sponged her with water. That seemed to help for a while, but she was losing moisture faster than she could take it in. Good thinking, Andrew. You forgot Melisa was born in the rain, and has never seen the sun or felt its heat before.

Early in the day I gave her my tattered shirt. She wouldn't take the trousers, which I had ripped into shorts the month before. So in the midst of a first-class heat stroke, she looked quite provocative.

I kicked myself mentally. If I was in such a goddamn hurry, we could have traveled at night.

When the day finally ended and the sun disappeared we dropped where we were and simply lay on the ground and looked at the sky.

"Melisa, I'm sorry."

"It's OK, Andrew."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. I'm fine, Andrew."

Which wasn't true. She looked terrible. Her dark eyes were sunken and rimmed, and she was pale through the red flush in her cheeks. Her brow was cold and clammy. When she began trembling I wrapped the light matting around her as well as I could, but of course it didn't help. The best way to treat heat stroke in the evening is to avoid the sun the preceding day. And it was a little late for that. She held the new person tightly and I wrapped myself around them both as well as I could to still the trembling.

The night was fairly cool. But now I knew what to expect in the morning. Fact: Melisa would not live through another twelve hours of walking under the sun. I couldn't possibly get her back to the village. Even if I carried her all night—which I couldn't—we'd have to stop too many times along the way and the sun would still catch us in the open.

I was sure, now, we were fighting more than just the sudden return of the sun, or moisture in the ground. The heat was too intense for that. While the clouds had covered us, the world had moved closer to its star. We were in for one hell of a fine equatorial summer.

Melisa fell into an uneasy sleep and I moved away from her quietly and plodded off across the wastelands. The star's were hard and cold in a black sky. I wished I had remembered to take a look at the rim before sundown. A lifetime ago, when I'd ridden into the grove on my Bhano, the lip of the valley was not impossibly far away. Two, maybe three days. If you were riding.

I kicked up a spray of wet soil and cursed myself soundly. What difference did it make how far it was to the rim? By foot, Bhano, or snowshoe? What did I think I'd find when I got there?

Melisa was right. On this world, it was foolish to want to be somewhere else, simply because it was there. There were no other places to be. Only different corners of where you were.

When in doubt, do as the natives do. I dug. Scooped dirt with my hands and scattered it behind me like a dog after a bone. My skin was burned to a crisp and I was too weary to move. But I was properly motivated, as we say in the classroom. If I stopped, Melisa would die. Simple enough, I decided. The sun will arrive on schedule, Andrew, and you had bloody well better be ready for it.

The ground was wet or we would never have made it. The burrow, when I stood back to inspect it, looked ominously like a grave. But this was no time for interesting mental pictures. It was a meter wide, two long, and a half meter deep. The dirt I'd removed was piled up around it, packed into a solid wall. Before the dawn blurred the east I had Melisa and the cocoon inside, and the matting stretched over the top. Then I dug up bulbs until the sun rose and piled them in one corner and collapsed beside Melisa.

When I woke again she was watching me.

"I'm better now, Andrew."

"I was worried, Melisa."

She laughed lightly and looked about. "It's a very nice home."

"It's not much," I said, "but it's paid for." She didn't understand that, but I laughed at it, so she did too.

And in a moment, "Andrew?"

"Yes."

"What's going to happen to us?"

"Nothing, now. We'll be OK as long as we stay out of the sun. It was hotter than I thought. If we walk at night—after you're better I mean. . . ."

"No." She touched my cheek. "I don't mean that. I— You know. . . ."

I sat up. "What you mean," I said flatly, "is when will we get to where we're going and where might that be."

She pulled away from me. "Well, I'm sorry. I just don't understand, that's all."

"You don't have. to understand everything."

"Well, that's good, because I sure as hell don't!"

I looked at her. "I don't think you ever said that before."

"What? Hell?" She bit her lip into a pout. "Why shouldn't I. You say it. I say a lot of things you say whether I know what they mean or not. What is it?"

"Hell?"

"Yes."

"Kind of like yesterday," I told her, and put my arm around her again. "Only hotter. But not much."

Melisa felt better by nightfall. But I decided to give her another day in the burrow. It was cool enough there, and plenty of bulbs on hand. She could move around at night if she wanted.

Right after sundown I heard thunder in the earth again, and knew the Ghroals were rumbling across the flatlands. Where had they gone, then, while the waters covered the valley?

During the night Melisa seemed restless, disturbed. Once, I woke to find her tending the new person. Again, she was standing well away from the burrow, slim arms holding my tattered shirt about her. Simply standing, looking out at something, or nothing at all.

Wide awake.

Jerked up out of sleep catching a breath. Afraid it wouldn't he there. Lean back a moment. Let the heart stop pounding to get out.

Whatever had me was a big one. Nasty. Couldn't remember what it looked like and didn't want to.

Look around for Melisa. Huddled against the far wall of the burrow. Still gray, indistinct in the false dawn.

"Melisa?"

No answer.

"Hey. You all right?"

The face still in shadow. Just two eyes. A star in each corner.

"Melisa? What's wrong?" Move toward her easily. The slim form shrinks back. Scuttles away like a cornered animal.

What the hell, then? Closer, a small bundle in her arms. Knows I've seen it and jerks it to her breasts.

"Go away, Andrew. . . ."

Stop. A warning chill in the voice.

"Melisa, it's the child, isn't it?"

Nothing.

"Something's wrong. What's wrong with the child, Melisa?"

"Go, Andrew. Just go!"

"Melisa, be reasonable. Let me see it. I'm sure—"

"No!"

The eyes so wide they fill her face. No gentle curves there now. Harsh planes and angles. No gentleness in the voice, either.

"You are what is wrong, Andrew. . . . Don't you know that? You don't belong here—this is my world, not yours! Oh, God, Andrew!"

The voice shatters in tears. She doesn't resist when I take the bundle from her, and hold our child, and pull the thin matting away and look at it as the sun blazes over the flat rim of the valley.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Living in a logical, well-ordered world has its advantages. If I walked toward the rising sun, for instance, I would eventually reach it. It might take time. But I would get there. And I could step into its warmth and that would be that.

Something was wrong.

I was moving in the proper direction, doing what I was supposed to do. I have always done what I was supposed to do, and listened to what they said. So why was the sun going away, up into the sky? I didn't do anything wrong! I didn't mean to. Don't go away and leave me.

You're a bastard, sun!

I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to use words like that. I didn't mean to use a bad word, but you shouldn't leave me! You're a big bastard, sun. . . !

. . . the little bastard's no son o'  mine. . . .

hush, Charlie, he'll hear you. . . .

well, goddamn, Ellen, look at him. that all he knows how to do, cram his nose in a book? a kid needs to get out and mix it up, take some knocks. . . .

just because Andrew's not athletically inclined. . . .

athletically inclined my butt. and his name's Andy, for God's sake. Andrew. Jesus! no wonder he's a skinny-assed little fag. . . .

Charlie. . . !

OK. but if he's not he will be, if you don't straighten him out and quit babyin' him. . . .

he makes good grades. . . .

he makes good graaaaaades. Christ. grades don't mean shit. no girl wants to go out . . .

. . . for the team, Andy. you give any more thought to that. . . ?

not a lot, Dad. anyway, I'm not the right size for it. a lot of the guys. . . .

hell with the other guys, Andy. you've got a good build. remember? you used to lay some damn good blocks on me, son. knocked the wind out of my sails a couple of times. right. . . ?

Dad, that was playing around in the back yard. it's not like. . . .

it's the same damn thing! it's conditioning—getting in shape for what's out there in the world. Andy, what was it all for? I tried to . . .

. . . teach? what kind of job is that. . . ?

it's what I want to do, Dad. . . .

well, where's it going to get you? you know what teaching's for. . . ?

all right, what's it for. . . ?

for do-nothings who can't do anything else! what happened, Andy? what was it all for? Christ, Charlie Gavin's. . . .

. . . sun a white blaze high in the sky, too high. how am I ever going to reach you, Dad, if you keep getting higher and higher and. . . .

"Here. You drink, Andrew."

"Don't call me Andrew. It's Andy. I don't like to be called Andrew because—"

"Yes, Andy. Drink. You have much sickness from the sun."

"Am I your son? I want to be, but you go so high, so—"

"Drink, Andy."

"Dad?"

"It is Rhamik, Andrew."

"Andy!"

"Yes. Andy."

"Rhamik?"

"Yes."

"You don't look like Rhamik. You look like him."

"I am not the same as I was. But I am Rhamik."

"Rhamik doesn't come to see me anymore. I guess I didn't do things like he wanted me to. I tried to, but— Dad? It's dark out. Where's my sun? I want my son! Melisa!"

"She is here. Rest, Andrew."

Oh God, my son! Melisa, I didn't mean to do that—you can't make anyone be something they don't want. to be. You can't—you can't just—"

"Can't you do something, Rhamik?"

"He will be all right. He needs rest. And water."

"He looks—awful!"

"Another night. Here in the burrow, out of the sun."

"Rhamik?"

"Yes."

"Andrew—changed you."

"Yes."

"You let him do that."

"Andrew did not know this. It was a need in him. As you were a need. And the new person."

"Oh, Rhamik, please! Will you take the child?"

"It is his patterning. Andrew's."

"But he doesn't want it, Rhamik."

"No. But I think he will."

"After what he's—"

"Understanding will come of what he has done. This world of his—I do not think it is like our world. I think it is a strange and frightening place."

"The child looks like him."

"Yes. I think the child is Andrew. And Andrew is the child. Melisa, you want the new person, do you not?"

"Yes. Oh, yes! It's his, Rhamik. I have to want it."

"Strange indeed. Small new persons. And females who would remain with their offspring."

"Rhamik, what's to become of us? I'm frightened, I— Andrew wants to be somewhere, and I don't understand this. A place is a place, but Andrew. . . ."

"This is not in my understanding, either. But it is the way of his world, I think."

"But all the world is just—the world. It's not right, Rhamik. We can't just keep—going!"

"Andrew will know, I think."

"Know what?"

"When he finds what he is looking for."

"But what is there to find!"

The rim of the valley is four nights' walk from the burrow I dug in the wastelands. It is a half night's climb up the long, gentle slope. Two nights farther beyond, an arm of the Great Groove slashes across the arid plain and drives a shallow arrow into the east. Following this arrow brings you to the edge of a high escarpment—high, by this world's standards.

Below is a cluster of mud huts packed against the base of the escarpment like careless dauber-wasps. And beyond that, a dun-colored stretch of sand that meets a brown and tideless sea.

"This must be where we are going, Andrew," Melisa said listlessly, "because it is the edge of the world. You can see there is nothing more."

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe it is."

I think that was the most we had spoken to each other in the time we had been traveling. What was there to say? What could we tell one another?

We stood there, and the sun rose over the brown sea.

"We'll stay here," I told her. "I'll make a burrow for shade, and we can rest until it's dark."

"Until it's dark," Melisa said woodenly. "Then what, Andrew?"

"There are boats down there of some kind. Pulled up on the beach. Maybe they fish or something, though I doubt it. We'll take one of the boats when it's dark."

She sat up and stared at me. "Why Andrew? Where will we go in the boat—off the edge of the world?"

"No. North." Though I had no idea why I chose that particular direction.

"North?"

"To the right. Up the coast."

"What's up there, Andrew?"

"I don't know," I told her. "I haven't the slightest idea, Melisa."

While the sun blazed overhead and Melisa slept I held my son and washed him and gave him water, and let him suck green bulb petals.

I think I love him and I think I hate him. But I will not cast him aside, dear old Dad, just because he did not turn out exactly as I had in mind. I will not castigate him, or berate him, if he decides he does not want to be just like me. Though I know this flaunts a fine family tradition. It may be that I have not entirely fulfilled my own goals, but through the courtesy of the fears and failings you so generously planted in my mind, I have bloody well fulfilled yours.

Here at last, you miserable bastard, is the son you wanted. He smiles up at me with my own childish face. A fine lock of golden hair curls over his brow. And above the brow, extending from just over his eyes to the back of his neck—covering his ears and curving back to the brow again—is a thick, bony structure colored Homecoming-red. A billion tiny capillaries have joined forces to create this fine illusion.

There's more. The bright yellow jersey—or the fine pelt of short fur, rather, that serves as one. And emblazoned on the small chest is a vivid red "22," which, of course, is your number.

Fortunately, my unconscious did not do its work below the belt. Or perhaps it did. He is normal, and exceedingly well hung, which is necessary, of course, for balling coeds after, the big game.

Still, he smiles at me. Why shouldn't he? He has no idea he is our monster—yours and mine—a Cy Hzerkowitz, Herb what's-his-name, or good old Charlie "Chuck" Gavin.

I would strangle him quickly, now, and bury him in the sand. For his sake, not mine. But that would be your way. And whatever I am, I am my own brand of son-of-a-bitch. Not yours.

It was absurdly easy to steal a boat.

Not because I have any talents as a master thief—though there is a great deal in the science of economics that deals with this sort of thing—but because it had never been done before on this world. There are two prerequisites for crime, as I see it. One, the energy and initiative to steal, and two, the presence of something worth stealing.  Both of these requirements are rarities on this planet.

I was more excited about stealing the boat than being in it. It resembled a canoe, made of bamboo, of course—but to call it a canoe is unfair to all canoe builders.

Melisa was terrified. Though not too frightened to tell me what she thought of this business.

"I can't stand it, Andrew. I really can't."

"It won't be for long, Melisa." I didn't know, however, whether this was true or not.

The stars were bright, and appeared on the water as curly patterns of silver. If I hadn't seen this drab ocean by day, I might have taken it for a calm night on an Earthly sea. Though no sea there was ever as calm as this. It was like rowing on a still pond, and I kept us moving easily up the coast with no real effort.

"Andrew?"

"Yes, Melisa." She was huddled in the far end of the boat, the child bundled close to her breasts. I could just make out her golden head and a hint of legs against the beginnings of dawn. I felt a sudden longing for her. Could I ever hold her again, hear her cry out in joy against me? So much had passed between us. Things neither of us clearly understood.

"I shouldn't ask again."

"It's all right if you do. I only wish I could give you an answer. You deserve that, Melisa."

"Andrew, it's not your fault."

"Some of it is. Some of it isn't, and a great deal of it is being a man on a world where a man doesn't belong."

"I'm sorry, Andrew."

"About what?"

"That I said that. That I screamed at you and told you that you didn't belong here."

"You were right, though."

"But you belong with me. You don't belong on my world, but—half of me doesn't belong on it, either. I want you to belong with me, Andrew."

"Do you, Melisa? Do you really? After everything?"

"Yes, Andrew. Oh, yes!"

I would have answered, but over Melisa's shoulder by first light I saw the sea dotted with boats moving for us from the shore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"I knew it," Melisa moaned. "We shouldn't have taken the boat, Andrew!"

"Just take it easy," I told her. "Nothing's going to happen."

"Something always happens," she said.

Watching them, I decided we were probably in no danger. The sun was brightening the brown water and the boats weren't coming after us. There were six of them, in canoes like our own. They had stopped in a ragged line fifty meters away, back-paddling, and making no attempt to overtake us.

"What are they doing now?" Melisa asked. She could have seen for herself, but she didn't want to know if something bad was about to happen.

"They're not doing anything."

"They're not coming after us?"

"I don't think so."

"They want their boat back," Melisa decided. "They'll come after us."

I didn't bother to tell her these beings weren't from the same settlement, that we hadn't taken their boat at all. I could see their mud-hut cluster on the shore. Exactly like the other one. They didn't want us, though, I was sure. They simply wanted to let us know it would be well to move on. That there were no picnic or docking facilities available.

I put a good ten minutes behind us before pulling in for the day. The sun was fierce enough, and we kept to our shallow burrow. I was becoming rather adept at burrow building.

By noon the sun passed over the rim of the escarpment and put us in shade, and it was not unpleasant at all. We bathed in the brown sea, and washed our piece of matting, and her shirt and my shorts. My son liked the water, and laughed at the feel of it.

"Are we there now, Andrew?" Melisa wanted to know.

I told her that we were somewhere, all right, but that I didn't think this was where we were going.

I honestly believed I had a goal.

That I was not just "going somewhere" as Melisa put it. I had firmly believed this, even before we left the grove. But of course it was what I wanted to think, and I examined the feeling as objectively as possible. It did not go away. I did not feel I was merely running from one place toward another. There was a place to go. A right place. And I would go there.

It may be that the dream strengthened my belief. Not that there was anything there to give me hope. God, just the opposite! The darkness, the cold stars, the terrible loneliness. Maybe it frightened me so that I would not let myself believe that was the only answer.

The land to shore was subtly changing. The escarpment faded, until it was no more than a low dune—and then, finally, it met the brown sea and disappeared altogether.

We were at land's end. Beyond, tiny sandspits reached out from the headland toward the sea. I guided the boat around the narrow peninsula and followed the coast until the shore lifted above the beach again, and we could find good shelter from the sun.

Since we had stolen the boat I had been following the coast in a general southeasterly direction. After we swung around the headland we were facing due west. The shoreline curved into a wide bay, and beyond that arced out again toward the southeast. I pulled ashore just as the first trace of dawn brightened the sky over our shoulders, and made an easy burrow out of beach sand. It was by no means as hot here as it had been on the flatlands, or in the valley, but both Melisa and I were still sensitive to the heat. And there was the child to consider, too.

Once, during the heat of the day, I left Melisa and climbed the low escarpment and let my eyes roam about the horizon. Far inland, nearly out of sight, a dark smudge moved slowly across the flatlands. I watched it for a long time until it disappeared. All was still well with the world, then. The Dhoolhs were in their places, and the Alimentary Express still carried its dun cargo from "here" to "there."

Each time we made camp I waded into the shallows to look for sea life. We had both kept an eye out for signs of fish beneath the boat. No such luck. There wasn't a fish, shelled creature, or any other form of life to be seen. It was another strange phenomena of this world. None of the smaller life-forms existed. In or out of the water. If they ever had, they were gone, now. And since they were not here, it seemed unlikely to me they had ever been here at all.

And why not? Where were the multitudes of birds, insects, small animals—the thousands of species that should be teeming across this planet?

My poor Melisa. I watched her as she slept out the day. She still clung to my tattered shirt, but it didn't pretend to cover her, I had created impossibly long and shapely legs for this fantasy of mine, and now they were colored soft, flesh-gold by the sun. How I longed to reach out and touch her again, to feel all of my Melisa curl in against me.

Instead, I sat miserably in my own cramped corner of the burrow and watched her breasts rise beneath my shirt.

How could I go to her now—make her understand, when I understood so little myself? It made no sense to tell her I simply knew there was something I had to do, a place I had to be. . . .

When , I looked at her again, I saw that her eyes were open, and knew she had been watching me. "Melisa," I said, "I know this has been hard for you. . . ."

She shook her head, and a little cry stuck in her throat, and suddenly she was in my arms. And it was as if nothing had ever come between us. . . .

"It's been a long time, Andrew."

"Much too long."

"I'm—sorry."

"For what?"

She ran a finger across my chest. "For being—like I am."

I tilted her chin and looked at her. "It isn't your fault for not understanding. I've given you very little to hold on to, Melisa."

"No." Her lips clamped together. "I'm sorry for believing that I have to understand, Andrew. Don't you see? If I loved you like I should, it wouldn't matter if I—didn't see why you do what you do."

"That's a nice way to love. But it's hard to do, and asks a great deal of a person."

"I should do it, though."

"No. You want to understand and I can't ask any more than that. God knows I've asked you to accept a hell of a lot. And it's frustrating to me because I want you to know things. Just saying my world is very different from your world doesn't make it. Even if it's true."

"I understand some of it, Andrew."

I squeezed her shoulder and touched her hair. "I know you do. Just seeing how different I am from these people tells you a lot. Or how different you are, Melisa. Because you're not like them at all. Any of them. You were born here. Period. That's as far as it goes."

"Maybe you're wrong, Andrew."

Her eyes were somewhere else when I looked at her. "How do you mean?"

"You know I–feel things."

"Like it's wrong to want to be someplace else."

"And other things."

I waited. "Look. You don't have to talk about it."

"I don't know if I know how to talk about it. I just"—she shrugged bare shoulders—"know things you don't know. Things I know you can't feel, Andrew. Like—" She stopped, and held my head between her hands and searched my eyes. "You know how you feel when you make love to me? I feel that way, too, and it's not something you can put into words, is it? Telling somebody about it doesn't really work. Well, I feel—other things. Everyone on this world feels them. I know that. I don't as much because I'm a part of you. But the feelings are there, Andrew. They really are."

I put my arm around her and held her to me.

"I don't know why the Ghroals roam forever out on the flatlands. But I feel them doing this, and it feels—right. And sometimes I think I can feel the whole world breathe, Andrew. I'm part of that breathing and sometimes I don't want to be. Sometimes it scares me terribly."

I thought about this. It was the most she had ever said about "feelings," though she had alluded to this before. And I told her that maybe it was like the feelings I couldn't explain. About how I had to go somewhere, and find something. I told her that on my world that was the nature of a man. That we were curious beasts. That we demanded answers to things that puzzled us, and never stopped looking or asking.

I told her this. But I knew it wasn't the same thing at all, and so did she.

The land sloped up steeply behind our beach—a sandy dune perhaps seven meters or so. I climbed it late in the afternoon, with an eye to checking the shape of the coast ahead before we launched the boat after dark. Topping the ridge, I peered out over the sea and followed the long coastline.

Then I dropped quickly to the ground.

Melisa called after me and wanted to know what was wrong and I waved her quiet, and bellied up to the edge and looked over. Three creatures just below me. I'd caught the hint of movement before going to ground. They hadn't seen me because they were intent on watching for danger from another direction. Two dug hurriedly in the sand and there was a small pile of bulbs beside them. The third had the job of keeping watch—though he wasn't to be trusted, for the other two continually looked over their shoulders.

Now what in the hell was all this about? I followed their glances, but there was nothing to see. Low mounds of dun-colored sand that scarcely cast a decent shadow.

I noticed something else, then. These creatures were armed. Each carried a cluster of bamboo sticks gathered at both ends with a strand of fiber rope: the standard deadly weapon on this planet, though these were fairly sophisticated models.

The creatures were standard issue, too, with minor local variations. Gaunt, dark brown with a tinge of purple, long-faced and simple-featured. They didn't need a wide array of expressions, however, to show they were scared out of their wits. They weren't sure they really wanted those bulbs badly enough to stay and dig for them. And who, I wondered, could care if they did or they didn't?

Look for trouble, though, and you'll find it.

It came in the form of five creatures exactly like the others, loping across the sands to my right, and God knows where they came from. The bulb-diggers saw them too, and there was no time to do more than take up weapons and make the best of it.

It was a difficult spectacle for an outsider to follow. Seconds after invader and defender came together I could no longer tell the teams apart. Gray sand flew under splayed feet and there was a blur of bamboo and bodies. Then three of the bodies were quite still—with the kind of stillness that might take hold forever.

For a long moment, I followed the path of the five victors. One was limping badly. One carefully counted his ribs. They left the way they had come, then veered back toward the coast. Past them, now that I knew where it should be, there was a mud settlement close to the water. Three hundred meters or so beyond, there was another. If we continued down the coast we would have to pass them both in the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"What do you think they'll do?"

"I don't know," I told her honestly, "but I'm not overly anxious to find out. They are not a happy people."

The situation was not to my liking. More than that, I was completely puzzled. I had witnessed assault, murder, and cannibalism on this planet—but Sterzet and company were in a class by themselves. The mayhem below the dune was completely out of character. The sluggish dun folk did not take bludgeons to one another. And over waterbulbs?

We waited an extra hour after sunset before launching the boat. It was an agonizing delay. I didn't want to linger here. But I wanted to pass this group in full darkness. And though there was no moon on this world, the stars were thickly gathered in the sky, and lit the night with their own cold brilliance. So I spent the better part of that hour crouched on the rim of the dune. If someone wandered our way, Melisa and the child were ready by the shore, and I could launch the boat quickly.

Ordinarily, we hugged the coast—a good idea because the water there was hardly deeper than my chest. Now, though, it seemed wise to give these creatures a wide berth, and I paddled farther out to sea than I cared to. A good two hundred meters or so, I guessed, and if the little craft foundered now . . . I had a quick mental picture of swimming to a hostile shore with Melisa in tow. I had explained the art of swimming, but she did not care to listen. And of course there was the child, too.

There was an alternative, of course.

Melisa was kind enough not to mention it. An added burden of guilt, but no fault of hers. I could have turned back, and not risked our lives, and we were both aware of this.

Once, I almost reversed our course. For God's sake, the sea was brighter than high noon! It wasn't, of course, but might as well have been. Anyone who cared to could spot us without half trying.

You are a fool, Andrew, I told myself. And an irresponsible fool, at that. Your own life is yours to spend, but now there is Melisa and the child. You brought them both into the world, but you've no right to see them out of it so quickly.

The two settlements were both behind us, now, if I'd judged correctly. Giving us an extra few moments for good measure, I rowed quietly toward the shore and took up my regular shallow course again.

We'd made it then. And before we beached at the dawn, I would do a very thorough scouting job of the area.

And then the child began to cry.

I straightened with a chill at the sound. This was no ordinary cry. He had come awake out of a full-scale nightmare. I whipped the boat about and thrashed toward the open sea.

"Can't you—do something, Melisa?"

"What, Andrew?" she said sharply. "What should I do, strangle him?"

I didn't answer. I kept rowing, putting distance between us and the shore. The child kept crying. Maybe they're all asleep, I thought. Fat chance. Then Melisa sucked in a breath and I looked back over my shoulder. Great. A whole horde of gaunt shadows on the beach, howling and waving their arms about. Behind us and to the left. Maybe a hundred and fifty meters downshore.

Melisa whimpered something and rocked the boat.

"Be still, damn it!" I yelled at her.

"Andrew!" she wailed.

"Melisa. We'll make it. I'm sorry I screamed at you. Just don't—"

They set up a fierce bellowing ashore—and Melisa started from her end of the boat to mine. I stared at her, then the stars tipped over and I swallowed brown water.

"Andrew, the child!" Melisa came up gagging.

"Take it easy, I've got the child," I told her, and I did, though I didn't know where it had come from. It was wailing and jerking about and was scarcely damp.

"Help me, Andrew!"

"Melisa, stop it!" I jerked her hands from my neck and pushed her toward the shore. The water was waist-high. Melisa floundered about as if we'd gone down in fifty fathoms.

"I can't swim, Andrew."

"This isn't swimming," I told her, "this is walking." I looked past her. We were maybe twenty meters from shore. The creatures were running toward us along the beach, thumping bamboo weapons against the sand. I guessed we'd all arrive at the same spot together.

I thrust the child at Melisa to give her something to do, and urged her along. Just a few more meters. If they caught us in the water. . . .

I was still towing the canoe along behind. I pulled it to me and began ripping at it frantically as I went. It was tougher than I'd thought. OK, to hell with it. I wanted a light weapon, but heavy artillery would do. I pushed past Melisa to dry land and urged her behind me. Just in time. The first two creatures bounced over a shallow dune and made for us. They hooted like mad owls and blinked round eyes and I heaved the canoe off the ground and swung it in a wide circle.

I heard it whistle. The bamboo warriors stopped in their tracks. This was something they hadn't seen before. The boat caught them squarely in their respective midsections and took the air out of them. It also splintered my weapon into handy staves. I gathered as many as I could carry and yelled at Melisa and pointed at the nearest dune. She was to get herself up there, and keep down.

I glanced down the beach. The second wave was nearly on us. I lurched after Melisa and took the dune running.

"Just stay behind me," I told her, and took in a lungful of air. The dune was less than four meters high, but it was a good, steep climb all around. They couldn't bound up here like rabbits. Not without casualties.

I caught myself, then. Suddenly aware of what I was doing. Andrew, you stupid bastard. What is that supposed to mean, "not without casualties"? There must be hundreds of these gangly killers. You intend to stop them all, do you? Yes, I answered, since there was nothing else to say. A cornered economics professor is a dangerous beast. Suitably aroused, I would probably be merciless.

I flattened the first two easily. They fell back and tumbled another pair. The third came up on their left to flank me and I shoved the blunt end of my pole hard into his crotch. He looked surprised and sick.

Melisa screamed a warning and I ducked and felt my shoulder go numb. He was on me, bad breath and all, clubbing away at close quarters. That was fine with me. He couldn't do much with the weapon a nose-length away and I clung to him like a lost lover. He backed off for swinging room and I dropped my own club and brought up a clean right under his jaw. He went down like a log and I helped him over the side.

It was a startling feeling. By God, I remembered I had never hit anyone before in my life! It was a satisfying experience.

Fine, I thought grimly. If you enjoy this sort of thing, all kinds of opportunities are in the offing. I rubbed my shoulder, stood over Melisa and the child, and hoped my legs would stop shaking before the next wave.

No one was after us for the moment. They were clustered about the base of the dune, howling and waving their weapons. Reevaluating the situation, I decided. Killers they might be, but they were cowards as well, and not overly bright. They had a strange beast cornered here, and they were puzzled over its actions. I'd learned a few useful facts. They swung their weapons over their heads like bludgeons, and evidently didn't know what else to do with them. I instinctively used mine like a broadsword to gain wide, horizontal strikes, and as a pike for jabbing. They'd never thought of that. Also, more bewildering, I used my fists and my feet. These tactics weren't in the books here.

A couple of advantages, then. If you set aside the fact that I was only putting off the inevitable—that Melisa, the child, and fighting Andrew Gavin were as good as cooked. It was only a question of time.

It took them a while.

They finally saw the obvious tactic: Everyone take him at once. Strength in numbers. So they howled and clambered up the sides of the dune and I decided this was it, as they say in the tape thrillers. I didn't even want to look at Melisa.

In my few moments of grace I had knotted a half dozen staves together with scraps of fiber rope. I wanted the heaviest club I could manage, and I stood firmly over Melisa and swallowed the bile that kept rising to my throat.

The club made a wide, killing arc and I felt it snap bone and flesh and the shock that trembled up my arms sent new strength through my body. I gave a rousing war cry better than any hoot the enemy could manage, and saw them pull back in surprise. I was Andrew of Gavin, warrior of strange planets, and my boots were rooted in sacred soil over my lady and heir, and I would not give way to these heathens. Then something hit me hard just above the kidneys and I dropped the club and felt tears sting my eyes. My God, it hurt! It hurt terribly, and all I could do was yell and double up on the ground over Melisa and let the bastards have at me.

I couldn't feel the blows anymore.

That's bad, I decided. It couldn't be long, then.

Melisa was shaking me and screaming about something. Evidently, I wasn't quite dead. I looked up, bleary-eyed, and shook my head. There was blood in my mouth. I got one leg under the other and fell on my face. Tried again and made it. I blinked, stared into the darkness, and decided I couldn't feel anything anymore because no one was beating on me. They were too busy beating on each other.

I stood shakily atop the dune and watched this insanity. I guessed what had happened. The rival settlement had heard all the clamor. There was fighting underway, and they wanted a piece of the action. Maybe there were new bulbs to be gained from this midnight hassle. They were beating the daylights out of each other, and the new beast atop the dune was temporarily forgotten.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Putting aches and pains aside, I guided Melisa hurriedly down the back of the dune and through the darkness. I explained to her quietly that this scene had all the makings of a good massacre, and that it would be an excellent time for our side to withdraw from the field.

Melisa may have caught some of this chatter, though this is unlikely. She was in a mild state of shock and content to do as she was told. Just as well. I needed a tractable companion, not a committee. It was important to put great distances between where we were and where we were going. I would need all my faculties for that.

No great navigational problem. The idea was to make a wide circle around our enemy. There were small hummocks of sand here and there to make us difficult to see, and the stars kept us from stumbling.

"Andrew, can't we stop?" Melisa said numbly.

"Back with us, are you?" I halted briefly, then pulled her along. "We have to keep going, Melisa. Someone's going to win back there eventually. Then they won't have anything else to do. I want to be far away from here when that happens."

She nodded wearily. "You were very wonderful, Andrew. I was proud of you."

"Don't be."

"You saved us, didn't you? And you fought marvelously well."

"I also got soundly beaten. You forgot that part. And the fact that I got us into that hassle in the first place. Jesus. Gavin's Last Stand."

"What?"

"Nothing." Squinting ahead, I could make out the open sea again and decided we could safely angle toward it now. We wouldn't walk along the beach just yet, but we could keep it in sight.

As commander of troops, I began to set a slightly easier pace. Without the shock factor to push her along, Melisa wearied quickly. I carried the child, and she hung on to my bamboo pole. The child had slept peacefully throughout the fight on the hill—waking only at sea, long enough to set the enemy upon us.

I do not mean we made a leisurely walk of it. There were still three hours or so before dawn, and I wanted to be far from the scene of battle before the sun found us.

Only—did that make sense? I stopped and thought about it. If the creatures wanted to come after us, what difference did it make how far we went? I had made a mistake. Thinking in terms of a rational enemy. If this group got it into their dun heads to follow, distance would have no bearing on the problem. Would it bother them to pound along the beach and thump their poles against the sand for a couple of days? What the hell. else did they have to do?

I frowned down at the sand.

"What's the matter, Andrew?"

"In a minute, Melisa. I'm thinking."

"Oh."

Oh, indeed.

"You think they're going to get us, don't you?"

"No. Of course not, Melisa."

"Yes you do." Her voice told me the tears were on the way again.

"Now look." I held her shoulders firmly. "We beat them once. We can beat them again." Even I didn't believe that. "We'll find a way," I said. "Don't worry, Melisa."

She didn't answer.

There was more than a hint of morning in the sky and I didn't like that. Choices, then: the beach and the water to the left. More coastline straight ahead. Whatever lay inland behind, and bamboo wielders where you find them. I did the whole compass again, inland, the coast—the beach. My eyes stopped at the beach. Moved past the dun sand and over the water. I pulled Melisa along for a closer look.

"Andrew," she said, "what are you doing?"

"Looking at something."

"What?"

"I'm not sure. There's something out there. It's too dark to tell."

"I don't like it."

"What?" I turned to her. "You don't like what?"

"This place," she said absently. She laid the child down on the beach and walked a few steps away from me. She hugged her shoulders, and one long leg curled around the other. Wheat hair fell over one eye and she stared at me balefully from the other.

"What's the matter with you?" I asked her. "What do you mean you don't like 'this place'? It's just a place. Sand and water. Are you cold or something? You're going to pull your shoulders out, Melisa."

"I'm not cold." She pouted. Oversized eyes met mine. "I'm scared, Andrew."

I walked over and tilted her chin. "OK. I don't blame you. I'm scared, too."

"No." She shook her head. "I don't mean them. I mean right now. Here."

"What about here?"

She didn't answer. She simply thrust her head under my chin and trembled. I held her and looked over her shoulder. There was more light, now—and there was something out there. Humps in the water. Like whales asleep in the shallows. . . . Islands. Of course! A string of small, sandy islands stretching out to sea. I gave Melisa a reassuring pat and moved past her a few steps. Hope springs eternal, as they say. The nearest was no more than thirty meters offshore. The next, closer to the first. Sandy stepping-stones leading out over brown water.

Surely, I thought, the water's shallow enough to wade from one to the other. Thirty meters offshore. And the beach maybe a hundred from where we stood.

"Melisa—"

"No, Andrew."

"No what?"

"No, I won't go out there."

I stared at her. "Melisa, it's just a string of islands. That's a pretty rigid bunch of maniacs back there—the odds are fair they won't follow us, even if they guess where we've gone."

"They won't."

"Won't what?"

"They won't follow us, Andrew," she said flatly.

I let out a breath. "Well, great, Melisa. I'm glad to hear that. Someone told you this?" I was getting a little impatient with this business. It was light enough to see clearly, and be seen.

"Look—"

"Andrew." A weary smile. Why didn't I understand? "This is not a good place. I can't go out there."

"Right here is going to be a very bad place," I said sharply, "if those characters catch us arguing on the goddamn dunes. And what's that supposed to mean—it's not a 'good place'?"

"I don't know. I just can't—go out there."

A question in the eyes. "What?"

"You don't have to, Melisa," I said, and grabbed the child and handed it to her and lifted her off her feet before she figured it out.

"Andrew!" Legs flailed and little fists protested. I moved out of the dunes toward the beach.

"Andrew—"

"Melisa, be still and shut up."

"I can't!"

"We'll talk about it later."

"You don't know what you're doing!" she wailed.

I did, though. I had taken a quick glance up the beach. The sun was touching the rim of the world, and long shadows were running before it. Long shadows with clubs. A hundred meters. Maybe ninety. And we were maybe seventy-five from the water. I have never been a great sprinter, and carrying an obstinate female who doesn't want to go where you want to go tends to cut into your time.

Never mind, Andrew, I told myself. Remember how the Business School faculty clobbered Engineering. I remember, I answered. I went in for Grundig at the half and broke my ankle.

Melisa saw them, too, and I was hoping she wouldn't. She screamed in my ear and caught my neck in a stranglehold. A little quick physics problem in the head: The bamboo wielders would not beat us to the water. It would be a tie, and of course ties went to them.

"Melisa," I said, "I'm sorry. I love you very much and I'm sorry."

"Oh, Andrew, no!"

I stopped, put her down, and held her shoulders until they hurt. "Now listen to me and don't argue. They're too dense to split their forces. At least I think they are."

Her eyes widened and she shook her head dumbly.

"Yes, damn it'!--I shook her—"you will!"

I pushed her aside. The first pair, twenty meters. I clutched the bamboo pole and slapped it against my palm. A sickening sound, and I examined it hurriedly. Oh, Jesus. Cracked. Two dozen clubs back there on Gavin's Hill and I picked this one.

OK. More dirty fighting, then. Some, but not a lot. Not with a whole beach full of the bastards. Shoving Melisa behind me, I regretted scorning an invitation to take Karate lessons at the university gym, at greatly reduced rates.

It was taking a long time. What the hell was keeping them? And then I realized it was taking a long time because no one was moving. They had all stopped in their tracks. Stock still. Then, one of the creatures broke the silence—hooted like an owl and tossed his weapon in the air and left it there. The others took up the cue and turned heel, making for high ground.

I stared after them. Now, what?

Melisa made a sound behind me and clutched my arm. I turned, looked past her, and threw back my head and laughed.

She looked at me strangely. "My God, Andrew!"

"It's OK"—I grinned at her—"they're friends."

Another strange look. And then they came loping over the dunes, yelling, waving their arms about, and kicking their Bhanos to death. Crazy Sterzet, fat Mhar, and the whole unlovely crew. A bizarre troop of cavalry to the rescue, but mine own. Melisa looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Funny peoples, Andrew," said Sterzet, "you knowin' that?"

"No," I said, "not terribly funny."

"They's crazy," he giggled, "pretty crazy!"

I let that pass. We were cross-legged under one of Sterzet's dirty lean-tos, liberated, no doubt, from some poor soul who no longer needed it.

Melisa was down the beach with the child, under a mat of her own. She would have nothing to do with Sterzet. The whole bunch horrified her.

"Very funny peoples, Andrew." Sterzet was enlarging upon his theme. "This be one fine place, you know?" He smacked his lips, a gesture I could do without.

I looked at him. "What's so fine about it?"

He rolled lopsided eyes. "Ground's bad here, Andrew." He shook his head. "Not too many bulbs growing."

"That's good?"

"Sure! Them crazies"—he pointed down the beach—"all time fighting and killing each other for bulbs. They's huntin' each other. We's huntin' them."

A mental picture flashed on my screen, but I let it pass.

"Sterzet—" I leaned forward and made scribbles in the sand. "Sterzet, if there aren't enough bulbs here, why don't both settlements just get up and leave? All they'd have to do is walk about a half a day or so. There are plenty of bulbs everywhere."

Sterzet frowned painfully. "Andrew, they's not doin' that."

"Why not?"

"They's livin' here. Always bein' in this place. Why they goin' 'nother place?"

All right, I thought. Why indeed? I refused to pursue that. Instead, I gazed out at the brown sea. The sandy islands were still there. In full daylight there seemed no end to them. Dun stepping-stones that marched with military precision toward the horizon.

"Nice," I said almost to myself. "A pretty scene, even if the sea's brown instead of blue."

Sterzet looked up warily. "Andrew. What's bein' pretty?"

"The beach, Sterzet. The sea and the islands. You don't think so?"

"Huh?" He spat past me in disgust. "Andrew, I think you bein' a crazy, too."

I sat up. "Why? Because I like the scenery?"

He grinned patiently. "Andrew. Islands is pretty?"

"To me, anyway."

"Ugly's better," he grunted, and looked right at me. "Them's not good places, Andrew. You know that?"

I closed my eyes wearily, then opened them and glanced down the beach at Melisa. Why in hell did everyone know, everything except me?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I squatted down outside Melisa's shelter and dropped my offering of waterbulbs.

"I thought you might be hungry or thirsty. It's been a hard night."

"Thank you, Andrew," she said wearily. She didn't drink herself, but she fed the child, letting him suck moisture from the wet petals. He glanced up at me with wide, curious eyes from under his crimson helmet. A star fullback in the making. All suited up and not a game in sight.

"He looks OK," I said. Meaning he didn't seem sick or anything.

"He's fine. Just tired."

"Yes. Well, I guess he should be." I leaned over and ran some beach sand through my fingers.

"You've been talking to him," she said. "About the islands."

"Yes."

"I saw you pointing out there."

"He said they were bad places. Or not good places, anyway."

"He's right."

I squinted at her. "Now how do you know that, Melisa? You kicked up a hell of a fuss about this—when that bad place looked awfully good to me."

"He's right, Andrew," she repeated firmly. Her mouth twisted in that nervous little way that told me she didn't want to talk about this.

"OK," I insisted, "but how do you know that? You've never seen them before. You've never even been here."

She turned on me and glared. "How does he know? Ask him, Andrew!"

I reached over and took her hand. She didn't pull away. "Melisa, that's why I'm asking you. You've seen him. Sterzet's not exactly college material."

"I don't know what that means."

"I'm sorry. Melisa—"

"I don't like him, Andrew. I don't like any of them."

"I don't much either. But I was very glad to see him this morning. This is the second time he's showed up at very ugly moments. I told you about that. Whatever his faults, there's nothing wrong with Sterzet's timing. Why don't you want to talk about the islands?"

She gave me a quick little laugh, somewhere on the edge of irritation. "Andrew, there's nothing to tell."

"You don't know anything."

"You just—have a bad feeling about them."

"Yes."

I suppose I looked frustrated, and her own impatience fell away for the moment.

"We talked about that. Remember? How there were things I felt that you didn't because I was born here. You said you understood, or that you'd try to understand."

She touched my cheek and made me face her. "Andrew, that's all I can say. I don't like that place." She started to look out at the islands, but didn't. "Do you see?"

I did, but of course I didn't understand any more than I had before.

Past Melisa's shelter, Sterzet's crew plodded about the landscape, making dizzy circles in the sand. They carried bundles from one unruly pile to another, frequently dropping things, forgetting them, and punching each other with smug giggles. As if they knew the secrets of the universe, but had promised not to tell.

"You think that's where you're supposed to go, don't you?" she said suddenly. "Why we couldn't just stop and stay in one place, like everyone else."

I was a little surprised, and had to think about that a minute. "Melisa," I told her finally, "when I spotted the islands they were a convenient place to hide. I can't honestly say I have any feelings about them beyond that. OK. I'm not entirely uninterested. But I don't feel anything, no." I shrugged. "I told you men are strange creatures. They spend part of their short lives looking for places they haven't seen."

Melisa looked at me. Telling me she could hear what I was saying, but didn't have the slightest idea what I was talking about.

"It might be a place I want to see," I admitted. "I don't know if it is or it isn't."

"It's not, Andrew," she said firmly.

"Oh?"

She put the child down and rolled over on her stomach, legs in the air, chin in her palms. A delicious portion of bare bottom peeked from under the shirt.

"Andrew. It's easy to see why that is not a place you want to be. If men on your world are always looking for places, they'd look for places they liked. You can't like a place if it's a bad place instead of a good place. She smiled and spread her bands. "See?"

I guess I was supposed to fall apart under this relentless assault of logic.

"Melisa." I pushed myself up. "I'm going to go. You know this and I know it and we are just batting the ball back and forth."

She sat up and looked at me. "Well, good-bye, Andrew. Come back when you're through doing whatever it is you're going to do. The child and I will be here."

"No." I shook my head firmly. "I wouldn't leave you here on a bet. For God's sake, Melisa—are you really that frightened? Of a—a string of sandpiles in the water? You'd rather stay here and wait for those bamboo freaks to beat you and the child into flat little mounds?"

She let out a breath. "Your friends will take care of me."

"Oh, no. My friends are totally unreliable. They might vanish over yon dune any minute." I didn't add that they might also decide she looked good enough to eat, once I was out of sight and they forgot what good buddies we were.

"Well, I'm not going, Andrew."

"You are sure as hell not staying here, Melisa."

The evening was almost pleasant.

An hour or so before sunset, and a reasonable breeze topping the water.

"Andrew, I don't like sitting on top of this thing," Melisa complained. "I'm going to fall off. I know I am going to fall off!"

"No you're not. Just relax. Nobody ever fell off a Bhano."

"Remember, you said I could go back any time I got scared."

"That was the agreement."

"I'm scared."

I ignored her. We were four islands from the gray shore. So far, so good. As I'd guessed, the islands had all the characteristics of an offshore sandspit. That is, the chain was essentially a serpentine extension of the continent, with some areas just above the water, and some below. Which meant we could probably explore them for a considerable distance The deepest water we'd run into had only wet the Bhano's knees.

Good old Sterzet. Could friend Andrew borrow two Bhanos to check out the islands? Andrew could, though there were many expressions of dismay, regret, etcetera. Why would Andrew want to go to such a bad place? He wouldn't wait around to claim the Bhanos, he said. The implication being that we would not be coming back from such a disastrous journey.

It was relaxing to lie under the stars and hold Melisa without digging a burrow. The sea breeze now made it easier to travel by day, and we were both getting used to the sun, and had turned as brown as berries. Melisa looked twice as inviting. She had discarded the shirt and turned it into a wrapping for the child. I watched her, riding splendidly naked over the sand, sitting straight atop the Bhano with those incredibly long legs against the animal's flanks, wheat-colored hair curling over golden breasts. A delightful, distracting picture.

"Did you sleep all right?"

"All right, I guess."

Which wasn't true. She had tossed half the night, and cried out once and come into my arms and trembled against me. Truthfully, I hadn't slept much myself. The dream was with me again—much the same as ever—fear, falling through space, great loneliness. And with the loneliness, an awesome feeling of time, as if I were experiencing the age of the planet itself. An inconceivable press of the ages. The dusty weight of a billion summers.

"You've seen them now, haven't you, Andrew?"

"What?" I turned and she was riding beside me.

"The islands. We've seen seven islands." She squinted her eyes toward the horizon, then back to me.

"OK," I said, and pulled the Bhano to a halt. "I get the point, Melisa. I can't argue with you. It's a classic example of 'if you've seen one you've seen 'em all.' Seven islands very much alike, and a whole sea-full ahead. So what's the point of going farther."

She didn't comment. Just looked at me.

"I don't know. It doesn't make a great deal of sense, does it?"

"But that doesn't mean you'll go back now."

"No. I don't think it does."

She looked down at her hands and covered the child from the sun. "You'll have to go on without us, Andrew."

"Why, Melisa? Nothing's happened to us. Nothing's going to.

She reached over and absently touched my leg with hers a couple of times. But still looking at her hands, and not at me.

"I understand," she said simply. "I mean I understand that you have to do what you have to do. But I have to do that too, Andrew. And I'm terribly frightened and I can't go any farther and please don't ask me what I'm frightened of because I don't know that!"

And I didn't doubt her or ask her more. The fear was there in her eyes and in the strained little lines about her mouth. I got off the Bhano and buried my head against a warm and golden thigh and told her I loved her, and asked her to try to understand, and forgive me, if she could, and that I would be back and then everything would be all right.

I don't think she believed that, but she touched my head and pressed it close against her.

It was either island thirty-seven or thirty-eight or close to it. I knew it was the fifth day past Melisa. In the beginning, the little mounds of sand had nestled close to one another, but now they put distance between them. I had ridden through shallow water half the morning before reaching this particular gray hummock.

And as Melisa had put it—what exactly was the point?

I was still sleeping fitfully, still dreaming. I decided I had been thoroughly brainwashed by Sterzet and Melisa—if I had been a less practical person and prone to emotional antics I'm sure I could have made a great deal out of the whole business of my adventure in the bad places.

So it was the most practical of all creatures, then, that finally thrust the fear of God down my unemotional throat, and raised the fine hairs at the back of my neck.

The Bhano had been irritable for the past day or so. Skittish, uninterested in its share of bulbs. Unusual behavior for a Bhano, who is ordinarily the most dull and placid of creatures.

When I awoke sometime in the middle of the night I saw it standing there, stiff-legged against the stars. It was making some sort of sound—or trying to, and I thought this peculiar because I hadn't known a Bhano could make any sort of noise at all.

It stood rigid on spindly legs. The whole body trembled and the slope-head canted straight out to sea, at the dark islands beyond. I got up and walked up to the beast slowly and looked at its pinhole eyes. Nothing. It didn't see me. I touched it gently behind the neck. It gave a strangling cry and bolted away, darting crazily about the island, stumbling over its legs, jerking spasmodically. It desperately wanted to gain control of itself, but the signals were hopelessly jammed. Finally, it twisted in a violent convulsion and, threw itself into the sea. The water brought it back to its senses for a moment, and it began to swim away in stiff, jerky, motions. There was nothing I could do. I watched it for a long time, and listened to its fearful moans, and finally I couldn't see it anymore. Eventually, the sounds stopped, too.

And that's when the chills began and the friendly night seemed full of shadow. For the first time since I had landed on this world, I was afraid of something I couldn't see.

The Bhano felt something.

And Sterzet.

And Melisa.

I couldn't feel anything at all. But I didn't have to feel because I knew something was there.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Island forty-four. . . .

Fifty-four?

And five days since the Bhano disappeared. I think. And that bothers me because I don't forget things. But I'm forgetting things now, and remembering. And the remembering's the frightening part because a lot of the things I remember are things I don't remember.

That doesn't make sense, but it does. It's simply that things pop into my mind that don't belong there. They may belong to someone, but they don't belong to me. I'd like very much to set this nonsense aside. I've always been good at that—Andrew Gavin, the voice of reason and common sense. Right now, I'm having a hard time living up to my reputation.

Island number—what?

Something is happening here. It's not just a question of peculiar memories that don't belong to me. I'm hearing things. I never did that before.

Mostly at night. Not always.

It feels like I have a very bad radio in my head and a nervous listener keeps switching the dial from one station to another.

Some of the stations are rather pleasant.

Interesting smells.

The good taste of water in a dry throat.

The climax of lovemaking.

Some of the others aren't so nice. I think the Bhano tuned in to one of those.

Death.

Pain.

Fear. Fear, more than anything. I caught some of that the night the Bhano plunged into the sea.

The dreams are stronger. Loneliness. And that terrible sense of the passing of the ages. I had one fleeting moment of understanding. A micro-microsecond. What a billion years really means. How far it is between the stars. It went quickly and none too soon. Just a hair more of that and I think all the little think-cells would fry in their juices. We're not built for that.

Island umpty-seven. . . .

The shore has long since disappeared. I can stand and look in either direction and the islands stretch forever ahead, forever behind. Yesterday I woke up and looked about. Sudden, terrible sense of panic. Couldn't remember whether I had come from the left or the right. Ahead or behind. Which way the shore, and which way the sea? I couldn't remember where the sun was supposed to rise, where it was supposed to set.

Simple answer.

There are footsteps in the sand where I've been. None where I'm going.

I miss Melisa terribly.

I long to be with her.

But I can't go back. Got to wait. Looking for something. Or something's looking for me.

I've run out of islands.

If there are any past this one they're too far below the horizon to see. And I don't buy that. This one has an air of finality about it. A period at the bottom of the page. Finis.

So now?

So now I can draw a little chart with eleventy-nine dots marching out to sea and I can name it the Andrew Archipelago.

I'm terribly tired.

It's not even sunset and I feel the weight of a thousand hours on my shoulders.

I can't think straight anymore.

No more radio stations.

Or fears.

Or good smells. Just the quiet, soft humming of bees. There must be a million sleepy bees buzzing about.

Can't be. No bees on this bloody world. Wouldn't allow that sort of thing here.

I guess I'm asleep.

Peculiar thing to say, Gavin. You're asleep or you aren't. If you're asleep, close your eyes.

Can't look up and see the stars with my eyes closed.

Sometimes you can.

What?

Sometimes you can see them better that way.

Melisa?

No, Andrew.

Listen, what the hell are you doing out here? You're supposed to be on island seven. Or nine. Somewhere.

Not Melisa, Andrew.

I don't like that.  It doesn't feel good!

Don't think. Just be.

Just bees.

Think about bees, then.

There aren't any bees.

Imagine there are.

Yes.

You like the humming.

Yes.

I can use that, if it makes it easier. Better?

Better.

You understand now, Andrew?

Yes. Only— Oh. It's you, isn't it?

You know me, now.

I know something.

Just be.

I know you had to be here. Or somewhere.

Yes.

It was you I was looking for, then. Not a place.

You were looking for answers.

You could have made it easier.

No.

You could have—brought me here in the first place.

I didn't bring you here at all, Andrew. I can't do that. You brought yourself.

You're the one who dreams. About being lonely and old.

No. It was about me. But you dreamed, Andrew. I gave up dreaming. It didn't help.

No. No, I guess it didn't.

It's bad enough remembering. You can stop the dreams, but you can't stop the remembering.

Don't! You're doing the thing with the years, again. I can't handle that.

I forget that we're not the same.

We're not. But I understand. Some, anyway. About you and about me.

Yes.

You're here. Close to here.

Past the island. Not far.

Under the sea.

Under the sea and under that. It's the place I think most about being, if I can be in a "place"—it's a strong place for me.

The capsule fell there. Only not a capsule.

You see that, then.

I thought it was my capsule. In the dream. It wasn't, though.

No, it was mine, Andrew. It fell here, but there was no sea, then. There wasn't much of anything.

Wait. Wait, now.

You see the rest of it.

I don't know what I see.

Don't think. Just be.

Good God!

You see it.

It was you, wasn't it? They're like they are because of you!

There's more to it than that.

Is there?

I thought you'd understand, Andrew. We're alike in that way.

No. We're not.

We are. Would you create a world like this? What for? So there'd never be anyone to talk to?

You made them that way.

They made themselves that way. All right, because of me. But there's a difference. I didn't ask to come here. No more than you.

But we are here.

Come on, Andrew. Don't talk to me about responsibility. I've had plenty of time to work on that one. I landed. I was alive. I chose to stay alive. What happened, happened.

Because of you.

Things have happened here because of you, too, Andrew. Could you stop them from happening?

Look—

The child.

You son-of-a-bitch! It was your presence—

Blame me, then. For being alive.

I don't blame you for being alive. That's not it.

Hypothetical question: If your breath poisoned the atmosphere of this planet—

All right. Your point, maybe. I could kill myself for the sake of the planet. I can't say what I'd do. I think I would. I hope I would. Obviously, you didn't.

You think I knew what I was doing here.

Didn't you? How could you not know?

You don't sense what I am.

Some. It's not clear.

I'm in my natural environment, if you can call it that on this sandpile. That's like saying your normal element's a city of a million people. Only, there's no one else around. The city's there, but it's empty.

You're saying you're alone. And—you're showing me the years again. Don't!

No, I'm not. You're just seeing more. Sensing me better.

Some. Not much.

I don't expect much now. But it's important that you understand, Andrew. What I am has everything to do with what happened here. I'd like someone to see that.

I'm trying.

You can see something.

Something. You, or a lot of yous.

No. Just me.

Wiggly lines. Patterns. . . .

It's an abstraction. The thought of a mind/body. Like a—what? Network? I'm picking the word-image from you. Roots. Capillaries. Even better—you, Andrew. Strip away the bone, flesh, and muscle and leave the circulatory and nervous systems. Multiply the size of that a hundred thousand times and you have me. Only it's not the same. The analogy's limited.

Yes. I know that. I see something—dark and cool. Under the earth.

Right. Deep enough to find the cool places. Not too deep to feel the sun, though. You'd see us—how? A multiple network of life? Your words, not mine. It's hard. . . .

You're doing something with—music? Only not music.

Good. You understand that. How the notes and chords are different. They come together to be something else when they want to.

Yes.

You can be what you like on my world, too. But you're never alone—not unless you want to be. There's always sharing and knowing, and half a billion lives to touch. Maybe we had bodies, once, but if we did we put them aside a long time ago. We took to the earth instead, and wove a life fabric there and learned as we grew. We put mind things and real things together when we wanted to—and finally we sent little pieces of ourselves out to the stars. Male and female pieces, Andrew, though that's not the same, either. We wanted to bring other worlds alive—only we never took a world where something else had a beginning. Not deliberately.

All right, but there was life here. And something happened to it.

Yes, I happened to it. But I couldn't know that. It was a young world and there was life—or the beginnings of it, anyway. I didn't bother it. I burrowed into the earth and grew. And if the other piece of me had survived we would have multiplied, and I wouldn't have covered the world alone. It didn't, though.

And the life that had started here?

Like the beginnings of life everywhere. Trial and error. One proto-creature, and then another. Only it was a long and agonizing process here. It didn't make sense to me. They broke all the rules, and I couldn't understand that. The active, curious species couldn't adapt. Cunning and intelligence were handicaps. And if you had anything going for you at all you disappeared rather quickly. It was survival of the fittest in reverse, Andrew. When the winner finally appeared it was the most unlikely candidate in the race.

Uhuh. Our dun-colored friends.

Of course. And I couldn't imagine why the dull had inherited the earth. I thought, maybe this is a beginning. A proto-type. Since it survived, maybe it'll grow and develop into something else. Only it didn't.

Not at all.

Oh, a few individuals showed promise. But the group found them out quickly enough.

You saw that. But you didn't do anything. . . .

I knew what had happened, yes. But it was too late, then.

Was it?

Andrew. Why don't you just ask me? Why didn't I destroy myself then, and give them a chance?

All right. Why didn't you?

Because it wouldn't have made any difference. Besides—

It might have.

Besides, you don't know what I am. Not really. Suicide isn't that easy for us. I could have done it when the capsule fell, when there was no more of me than there is of you. After I grew, I was incapable of that.

Why?

It's a matter of complexity.

Physical or philosophical?

You're quick to judge, Andrew. Are you confident you have the knowledge to do this?

No. I know I don't.

But you've found me guilty.

I can't find you guilty. Maybe it sounded like that. It wasn't supposed to. It's just that I can't understand what's happened here. How a whole world went down the drain.

I haven't denied the responsibility for that, have I? It went down the drain because my presence was the survival factor on this world, and it was a factor that didn't work for the strong. The fit couldn't survive. I didn't have to interfere. I was here.

How, though? If you weren't aware. . . .

What I am and how I am is a beautiful thing on my world. It links all our lives together. It lets us know and be one another. Remember the bees? That's the sound of life, Andrew.

Not on this world it isn't.

No. Not on this world.

And you're talking to me now. With this—humming.

Yes.

Telepathy? ESP?

No. It's—like an electrical current? And I'm the wiring. My body that's webbed beneath the world. That's why it isn't telepathy. If you weren't within range of where I am, you couldn't hear me. Only that's not what you're doing.

A radio you can't turn off.

Yes. Like that. Only not quite. I don't "send" like a radio. I don't because I don't have anyone to talk to here. I'm a transmitter, but I don't transmit.

Good God. . . !

You see what happened here? They do the transmitting, Andrew. Not me. I make it possible, of course. I'm a vast, auxiliary nervous system that links every creature here to every other. An individual with strong drives or emotions "touches" everyone around him. That's why strength and intelligence got you stoned out of the tribe here from the very beginning. Dominant individuals affected the group's behavior. The group sensed this danger, though they couldn't know where the trouble was coming from—only that once a certain individual was out of the way, the trouble stopped. Isolation and conformity became survival factors. A placid mental profile and ritual life patterns.

That's why they kicked me out of the settlement. . . .

Yes. Your emotions were disturbing. You didn't know how to nonthink.

But—isolation, you said. They live with each other.

They know how to turn it off. You don't. And there's something else. The settlements are always in areas where my—roots?—aren't overly extensive. They instinctively pick spots like that.

The crazies. Sterzet and his bunch. Poor Thraxil.

The creatures on this world have developed an instinctive dampening factor, Andrew. You've seen it. Mental withdrawal. They turn off something in their heads so they won't be vulnerable to each other. It may even be a genetic factor, now. I don't know. But Sterzet and Thraxil don't have it.

So they get the best and the worst of everything. Awareness and intelligence they can't handle. And every stray emotion that comes down the pike. Christ!

Sad, Andrew. Because they're the only hope, here. And no real hope at all. They can't stabilize themselves mentally or physically because they don't have the dampening factor. And if they had the dampening factor they wouldn't be what they are.

The mental thing I can understand. Some of it. But the physical—thoughts did that? To Sterzet and Thraxil?

You made Melisa and your son. Unconscious acts, but the manifestation of strong emotions, Andrew. Do you wonder that the creatures here stopped thinking? Can you imagine what kind of chaotic world this could be? You're relatively unaffected by anything transmitted on this planet. That's because you weren't born repressing your emotions. If anything, you use the transmitter, and magnify your will. But Sterzet and Thraxil are vulnerable to every small fear that leaks from the racial unconscious.

The unconscious makes monsters, then. I have to believe that. I made one myself.

Didn't you know the unconscious was a physical force, Andrew? Look at the world around you.

What? What about the world?

It's their world. The way they want it. Or the way their unconscious told them they wanted it. It's never been much—it didn't have a chance to get started because they held it down to size.

No. No, I can't believe that. Thraxil and Sterzet, but a whole world. . . .

Why not? Lowest common denominator, Andrew. Mountains and trees and magnificent scenery are distracting. Disturbing to nonthought.

But, my God!

It didn't happen overnight. They simply wore it away—what there was of it. Along with birds or insects or anything too small to stand up under the racial drive for simplicity. That's the key word here, Andrew. The food and waterbulbs—an unconscious agricultural project nearly a hundred million years old. The noncontroversial answer to nourishment.

A hundred million years. . . !

It's an old world. And nothing happens very quickly, here. How long since your species emerged? Two million years? Three million? Everything here has been much the same as you see it now for more than four hundred million years. The dun creatures developed about then, or a little later.

Any other race in that time. . . .

Would have conquered the stars. I know. I'm afraid there'll be no star-conquerors here.

Well, they built the Alimentary Express. That's something.

Yes. And it only took three hundred thousand years, Andrew, for that idea to develop. It comes as close to a complexity as you'll find here. It's a plain and artless world, and everything upon it is designed to fit the basic pattern of simplicity. A language everyone understands. That's a side effect of my "transmission" capabilities, and the unconscious will toward sameness. The bamboo-flood cycle in Rhamik's village. The life-death pattern of the silvergators. The weather. The march of the Ghroals. And even the pattern of violence in the killers that attacked you and Melisa, Andrew. Violence isn't the norm, here, but it is with them. They were hunters, once—an unusual and progressive strain. But the game they hunted is gone, and it's been gone three million years or so. But the pattern hasn't changed. To change is to become vulnerable. So they hunt each other, now. For them, violence is safety. Conformity to the pattern. A deviation from that would endanger the sanity of the group.

We could have been marooned on better worlds.

That thought has occurred to me, Andrew.

Rhamik. Rhamik was not the same as the others.

He means much to you.

He does. He did a great deal for me. Things I understand and things I don't.

Yes.

I did something to him. I don't know. Melisa knows, but I wouldn't ask her.

When you were sick. After the child.

Yes. And Rhamik— Was that part of the sickness? Rhamik— My father was mixed up in all that and I thought—

Yes. You changed him, Andrew. But he let that happen. Don't you know that? He responded to you, but because of what he is. Maybe there's hope for us here, yet.

Why?

Because you changed him in other ways, too. He saw a need in you and accepted it. He knew what would happen. But Rhamik's a most unusual creature. Not just because he—

He stopped coming after that.

Yes.

Because of what I was doing to him.

Because he didn't want you to know what you were doing to him.

Oh.

And because he couldn't keep coming. If he had— You're the most dangerous beast on this planet, Andrew. Don't you know that? Nothing like your will has ever shown itself here. Melisa—your creation of a fantasy. . . .

The birth of my son.

Yes.

Dangerous beast. You hit it, all right.

Does your son sadden you that much?

You've seen what he's like. My father's goddamn ambitions. Working through me.

Andrew. You changed Rhamik.

So? Now, wait—

You have the power. You just have to learn how to use it.

Christ, I wouldn't dare. I botched the job once!

Unconsciously. Do you really think you'd do that again?

Yes. No, I don't know.

It's already begun, Andrew. You started to change him as soon as he was born.

Maybe you shouldn't have told me that. Maybe I'll. . . .

What, Andrew?

Nothing. Funny, isn't it? We can make people to order. Just one thing we can't make here. . . .

Yes. There is one thing.

Your race built ships. To take you to the stars.

My race, Andrew. Not one individual. We're alike in that. It's a thing for the flow of many minds. I am woven about this world, but I am still alone.

I didn't think. You've had the time—if you could have built a ship, you would have.

Yes. And sent at least a small piece of me from this place.

It's just— I can't get used to the idea of spending the rest of my life here. Maybe my years aren't a spit in the ocean to yours, but they'll sure as hell seem as long!

It doesn't have to be that bad.

No?

There are things I can do, Andrew. I said that I never willingly influenced the lives of these creatures. But I cheated a little with their world. It was a small luxury, and it did no harm. While there were still trees and grasses and I could see what was going to happen here, I decided that I would not let it all disappear. I saved a place—it was a strong place for me, as this is. To the south of here. Quite far. But it's green with plants and trees nearly as old as the world.

I'd like that. Very much.

You'll need a boat.

Melisa will kill me.

She'll be happy when she gets there.

She will. I will, too. Only—

Yes. I know.

I don't think I could do that. Just—stop thinking. Did you? Did you ever give up? In all that time?

No. I've never stopped thinking, Andrew.

Ha! There's a bizarre thought. What do you suppose Melisa would say if I got her pregnant with a spaceship? If my unconscious wanted one badly enough. . . .

Andrew. You are a dangerous beast indeed.

He's right. I am. As all men are, wherever they go. For their nature is to change things. They are not content with their lot, and yearn for other places. The beast has not broken out of his cage. He lives with his woman and his child in the shade of green ferns and mosses as old as the world, and he is not unhappy.

But he has not stopped thinking, either. . . .