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KEITH LAUMER • BE W. MacFARLANE

SPECIAL WONDER

The Anthony Boucher Me- morial Anthology of Fantasy and Science Fiction

As editor, writer, critic and friend, Anthony Boucher af- fected the lives of a consid- erable number of people.

When he died in 1968, some of them decided to create a unique memorial— twin an- thologies of the kinds of stories he had been most closely identified with. Beagle Books is proud to publish the paperback reprints of-these antholoqies, beginning with SPECIAL WONDER.

Vol. 1: Stories by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, R. Bretnor, Grendel Briarton, Fredric Brown, John Brunner, Doris Pitkin Buck, Mildred Clingerman, Avram Davidson, Jon De Cles, Miriam Allen DeFord, Richard Deming, Gordon R. Dickson, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jos6 Farmer.

Vol. 2: Stories by Horace B. Fyfe, Randall Garrett, Damon Knight, Kris Neville, William F. Nolan, Alan E. Nourse, Chad Oliver, Mack Reynolds, Margaret St. Clair, Howard Schoenfeld, Robert Silverberg, Jack Vance, Richard Wilson.

We will also publish shortly the companion anthology, CRIMES AND MISFORTUNES, containing stories by Queen, Stout, Carr, and twenty-six other top mystery writers. Like SPECIAL WONDER, it will appear in two volumes.

950 each wherever paperback books are sold.

The Beagle science fiction and fantasy list also includes:

The Arkham Edition of H. P. Lovecraft

THE TOMB AND OTHER TALES, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MAD- NESS, THE LURKING FEAR, THE LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD Lady Cynthia Asquith, ed.

THE SECOND GHOST BOOK, THE THIRD GHOST BOOK Edward Wellen

HIJACK Beagle Books An Intei0 Publisher

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WORLDS OF

US

SCIENCE

FICTION

Morch-AprH, 1971 Vol. 20, No. 10 Issue 153

ALL NEW STORIES

IjUr Jakobsson, Editor Lostor do! Roy, Foaturo Editor

Judy-Lynn Benjamin, Managing Editor Franc L. Roggori, Art Diroctor

Jay Tunick, Circulation Diroctor L. C. Murphy, Subscription Diroctor

Jack Gaughan, Associato Art Diroctor

NOVELETTES

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD, W.MacFarlane 24

RETIEF, INSIDER, Keith Laumer 134

SPACE SLICK, Gerard Rejskind 170

NOVEUA

STAR CROSSING, Greg Benford and Donald Franson 84

SHORTSTORIES

GAMBLER'S CHOICE, Bob Shaw 4

SLAVES OF SILVER, Gene Wolfe 68

CASEY S TRANSFER, Lee Saye 159

FEATURES

HUE AND CRY: Readers Write-and Wrong 2

READING ROOM, Lester del Rey 163

SF CALENDAR 169

Cover by GAUGHAN, suggested by ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD

Arnold f. Abramson , Publishor Barnard Williams , Associato Publishor

IF is published bimonthly by UPD Publishing Corporation, a subsidiary of Univorsal Publishing A Dis- tributing Corporation, Arnold E. Abramson, Prosidont. Main offices: 235 East 45 Stroot, Now York, N.Y. 10017. 75C par copy. 12-issuo subscription: $7.50 in tho United States, elsewhere $0.50. Second class postage paid at Now York, N.Y. and additional mailing officos. Copyright ® 1971 by UPD Publish- ing Corporation under International, Univorsal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. All rights reserved. Tho publishor assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All stories printed in this magazine are fiction and any similarity between characters and actual persons is coincidental. Title registered U.S. Patent Office. Printed in U.S.A. The company also publishes Award Books, Nova Books, Tandem Books (United Kingdom), Vocational Guidance Manuals, Golf Magazine, Golfdom, Ski, Ski Business, Ski Area Management, Home Garden, The Family Handyman.

Dear Editor:

I have been meaning to protest for some time, and finally got around to it. In the Hue and Cry column in IF, why don’t you publish complete addresses ? It would hardly take up enough time or paper to be a bother, and the lack oj address is occasionally infuriating. For a blatant example, in the May-June issue you published a letter from one Brian Hval, who wanted information on organizing a local science fiction club. Since you provided no address to which information could be sent, why did you bother publishing his letter at all? It was certainly no help to Mr. Hval; okay, you published one reply, which was too general to be much help. With a published address, he might well have bombarded with informa- tion— I’m certainly not going to send items specifically directed to one person to your magazine in the hopes that you’ll publish them, and other fans feel the same way. They write di- rectly or they don’t write. If Ted White can publish complete ad- dresses, why can’t you?

Not everyone wants his address pub- lished— many people object to being targeted for mail-order solicitations, doorbell ringers or someone who just wants to argue. Mailing lists have be- come a marketable commodity and 1 don’t want Hue and Cry so used.

This policy will continue in effect, but you do raise a point. Let’s try it this way — contributors who want their addresses published may request that we do so and we’ll try to oblige.

Starting with you. Your comments continue:

. . . What’s all the alleged editorial confusion about Monarch being an “ enigmatic ” ending to the Dr. Dilling- ham series? The story fits, chronolog- ically, parallel to Equals Four, which you ran in your July- A ugust issue, with the ending of Monarch coming somewhere in the middle of Equals Four — some time between the time the Jann leaves the observation booth and the time it returns to it. What’s so enigmatic about that? Don’t you read the stories you publish?

Sincerely,

' Robert Coulson Route 3 Hartford City, Ind.

Gentlemen:

Monarch was a good story. I didn’t read the first story or two of the se- quence. The stories have seemed light- hearted, but there just is no way to be lighthearted about a slave-labor camp! To say the least, that was grim.

Now, about the ending — it’s not enigmatic at all. The next-to-last story of this series, so far, was Equals Four, roughly simultaneous with this story (excluding trips to the past, of course), ends with Dr. Dillingham’s robot presenting him with Judy. The robot rescued her — so the story ties in.

Sincerely, Michael N. Tierstein Brooklyn, N. Y. ( Continued on page 189)

2

IF

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When you're choosing between living and dying — odds are all-important!

GAMBLER'S CHOKE

novelette

BOB SHAW

5

I

MIKE TARGETT stared morosely through the for- ward transparency of Module Five. The vehicle was traveling at a height of a few feet— and at its maximum survey speed of five hundred knots — across a flat brown desert. Apart from the plume of dust which roiled con- stantly in the rear screen there was no sign of movement anywhere on the broad face of Horta VII. And no sign of life.

“Eight dead worlds in succes- sion,” he grumbled. “Why do we never find life?”

“Because we work for the Car- tographical Service,” Dave Sur- genor told him, shifting to a more comfortable position in the mod- ule’s other seat. “If this were an in- habited world we wouldn’t be al- lowed to buzz all over it like this.” “I know, but I’d like to feel there was some chance of making con- tact with somebody. Anybody.”

“I would suggest,” Surgenor said peacefully, “that you join the diplomatic service.” He closed his eyes with every appearance of a man about to drift into a con- tented after-dinner sleep.

“I’m indebted to you.”

Targett glanced resentfully at the older man’s relaxed profile. He had a deep respect for Surgenor and his vast experience in the Ser- vice, but at the same time he had no desire to emulate Surgenor’s

career. It took a special kind of mind to withstand an endless suc- cession of treks across bleak, ali- en globes, and Targett was aware that he did not have it. The thought of growing old in the Service filled him with a dismay that strengthened his resolve to make some money quickly and get out while he was young enough to en- joy spending it. He had even de- cided on where he would have his fling. Next furlough he was going to visit Earth and try his luck on some of the legendary race courses there, the ones where it had all started. A gambler had no trouble finding facilities on any of the Federation’s inhabited worlds — but actually to stand on the historic turf on Santa Anita or Ascot . . .

“Dave,” he said wistfully, “weren’t you in the Service in the old days when they used to allow the modules to break the search pattern and race back to the ship for the last five hundred miles?”

Surgenor’s eyelids flickered. “The old days? That was only a year or so ago.”

“That’s the old days in this line of business.”

Targett glanced at the instru- ments on the control panel, which told him there were less than three thousand miles between Module Five’s present position and the planet’s north pole, where the Sarafand was waiting. The moth- er ship had disgorged its six sur-

6

IF

vey modules at the south pole and — solely under the control of the AESOP computer — had done a half circuit of Horta VII, leaving the six modules to traverse the planet with their geodesic sensors.

“We used to race back to the ship, but it led to trouble once and they introduced a regulation specifically forbidding it.” Sur- genor sounded more interested in getting to sleep.

“Did you make any money out of it?” Targett persisted. “By lay- ing odds on the winner?”

“It wouldn’t have worked.” Sur- genor yawned theatrically, mak- ing his point about not wanting to talk. “Every module had exactly the same chance — one in six.”

“Not exactly the same chance,” Targett said, warming to his sub- ject. “I happen to know that Aesop tolerates a dispersion of up to twenty miles when he’s setting the Sarafand down at a pole — and if it worked out right at both ends one module could have a forty-mile advantage over its opposite number. All you would have to do to set up a profitable book would be—”

“Mike,” Surgenor interrupted tiredly, “did you ever stop to con- sider that if you poured all that in- genuity into a legitimate busi- ness enterprise you’d be so rich you wouldn’t need to gamble?”

Targett was appalled. “What has getting rich got to do with gambling?”

“Is that not the whole idea?”

“Go back to sleep, Dave — I’m sorry I disturbed you.” Targett rolled his eyes skyward and settled down to scowling through the for- ward transparency again. A range of low hills had appeared a few miles to the right, but other- wise the brown deserts of Horta VII were featureless as ever. He had been slumped in his seat for perhaps ten minutes when the module’s computer — which was actually a sub-unit of Aesop — made an annoucement.

“Receiving atypical data,” it droned. “Receiving atypical data.”

OMPUTER FIVE, give V-/ details,” Targett said, nudging Surgenor.

“Bearing two point sixty-three, cosine increasing with module dis- placement. Range fifty-oiie point eighty-one miles, tangent decreas- ing with module displacement. Metallic objects on planetary sur- face. First estimate of number — three hundred sixty-three. Concen- tration and consistency of metallic elements indicate refining. Analy- sis of reflected radiation indicates machine-finished exteriors.” Targett’s heart began to jolt powerfully. “Did you hear that, Dave? What does it mean?”

“It sounds to me as though you’ve got your wish — those can’t be anything but artifacts.” Sur- genor’s voice betrayed no excit- ment, but Targett noticed he was

GAMBLER'S CHOICE

7

now sitting upright as he made a bearing check. “According to the reading they must be in those hills on the right.” .

Targett scanned the slowly un- folding slopes trembling in the yellowish heat haze created by Horta. “It looks pretty dead over there.”

“The whole planet is dead— oth- erwise Aesop would have noticed something during the prelimi- nary orbital survey.”

“Well, let’s go over and take a look.”

Surgenor shook his head. “Ae- sop won’t agree to our breaking the search pattern unless there’s an emergency. It distorts his world map.”

“What?” Targett bounced impa- tiently in his seat. “Who cares about the world map? Are we sup- posed to run straight on and ig- nore a real archelogical find? I tell you, Dave, if — ’’ He stopped speaking as he noticed Surgenor’s smile. “You were doing your Oldest Member bit again.”

“I guess I was.” Surgenor nodded. “Don’t worry about pass- ing up a find. We aren’t archeologists, but there's a provi- sion in Survey Regulations for this kind of thing. As soon as we get back to the Sarafand Captain Aesop will send a couple of modules out again for a closer look.”

“Everybody won't be in on it?”

“If Aesop thinks it’s important

he might bring the ship down here.”

“But this has got to be important.” Targett gestured helplessly towards the hills drift- ing by on his right. “Hundreds of machine-finished objects just ly- ing on the surface. What could they be?”

“Who knows? My guess is that a ship put down here, possibly for repairs, and dumped a load of un- wanted canisters.”

“Oh?” Such a prosaic explanation had not occurred to Targett, and he fought to mask his disappointment. “Recently?”

“Depends on what you mean by recent. The Sarafand was the first Federationship to enter the Horta system— and it’s been four- thousand years or more since the old White Empire withdrew from this cluster, so — ”

“Four-thousand years!”

Targett experienced a brief headiness strangely reminiscent of the sensation which had once come over him — the time he had brought off an eight-throw anti- martingale on the gaming tables of Parador. This was a new kind of gambling — one in which a man staked lonely hours of boredom as he skimmed across the surfaces of dead worlds and the prize was a swift, clear look at the crazy spark- ling treasures of reality, a hand- shake from the ghost of an alien being who had been computing his way across the ionic tides of space

8

IF

before the pyramids were planned. Suddenly, and for the first time, Targett was glad he had signed on with the Cartographical Ser- vice— but suppose he was not among the group Aesop was go- ing to send back to investigate the find?

“Dave/’ he said carefully, “how will Aesop select the modules he wants to come back here?”

“Like a computer.” Surgenor gave a wry smile. “For an un- scheduled foray he likes to use the modules which have clocked up the least engine hours — and this old bus is due for — ”

“Don't tell me— a complete overhaul next month.”

“Next week.” .

“That's great,” Targett said bit- terly. “Two modules out of six. Odds of only two to one against me and 1 couldn’t even bring it off. With my luck I’d — ” He fell silent as he saw the slow grin spreading over Surgenor's face.

“May I make a suggestion?” Surgenor kept his gaze straight ahead. “Instead of sitting around here calculating odds, why don't you get suited up and take a walk over into those hills? That way—” “What? Can you do things like that?”

Surgenor sighed. “I would also suggest that you read Survey Regulations when you get back. Iiach suit is fitted out for an EVA of up to fifty hours for precisely this — ”

“Skip all that stuff, Dave — I can bone up on regulations later.” Targett’s mounting excitement overrode his respect for Sur- genor’s seniority. “Will Aesop clear me to leave the module and take a look at — whatever is over there?”

“He ought to — the logistics make sense. You could give him television coverage and a verbal report while I’m taking this mod- ule back to the ship. Only one module would need to return to pick you up. And if your report shows the find is worth bringing the Sarafand down for, there'll be no extra engine time on the mod- ules at all.”

“Let’s talk to Aesop right now.”

“You're sure you want to do this, Mike?” Surgenor's eyes had become serious. “The Carto- graphical Service has an occupa- tional disease all to itself — there's a tendency for us to confuse the map with the territory.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means that no amount of thinking about a ten-mile walk on an alien world can be equated with the actual experience. That’s why Aesop hasn't' already taken the initiative and ordered one of us to investigate these ob- jects— the Service doesn't require a man to walk new ground alone.”

Targett snorted and pressed the TALK button which would con-

G AMBLER'S CHOICE

9

ncct him directly to Captain Ae- sop, the vast artificial intelli- gence which occupied one entire deck of the Sarafand.

II

ODULE FIVE lifted into the air, dipped its nose slightly and whined away to the north in a cloud of brown dust. Targett watched it vanish, mildly sur- prised at the speed with which all sign of the vehicle vanished. He took a deep breath of the suit’s plastic-smelling air. It was early afternoon and he had about six hours of daylight to go — ample time to reach the group of metal objects which lay due east at a dis- tance of just over four miles. He began to walk toward the hills. Horta VII’s atmosphere con- tained no trace of oxygen and the planet had never known any in- digenous life, yet Targett found he was unable to keep his eyes from scanning the sand underfoot for shells and insects. Intellectually he could accept that he was tra- versing a dead world, but on the in- stinctive and emotional level his consciousness simply rejected the concept. He walked quickly, feeling a little self-conscious each time the holstered ultralaser pis- tol bumped against his thigh.

“I know you don’t need it,” Sur- genor had said patiently, “but it’s standard EVA equipment and if you don’t wear it you don’t go out.”

10

The planet’s gravity was close to 1.5 and by the time Targett neared the hills he was sweating freely in spite of the suit’s cooling system. He unbuckled the pistol— which seemed to have maliciously quad- rupled its weight — and slung it over his shoulder. The ground was be- coming increasingly stony and on reaching the hills he found they were composed largely of naked basaltic rock. He sat down on a smooth outcropping, glad of the chance to rest his legs. When he had sipped some cold water from the tube that nuzzled against his left cheek he pressed the TALK button on his communicator.

“Aesop,” he said, “how far am I from the objects?”

“The nearest is nine hundred and twelve yards west of your pre- sent position,” Aesop replied without hesitation, drawing on the data continuously fed to him by his own sensors and those in the six converging survey modules.

“Thanks.”

Targett scanned the slope ahead of him. It formed an ill-defined ridge a short distance away. From there he should be able to see the objects, provided they were not buried under the accumulated dust of forty centuries.

“How are you making out, Mike?” The voice was Surgenor’s.

“No problems." Targett was about to add that he was begin- ning to understand the differ- ence between the map and the ter-

IF

ritory when it dawned on him that Surgenor had maintained radio silence till then with the deliberate intention of making him feel cut off. “How about you?”

“I’ve got decisions to make,” Surgenor said comfortably. “I’ll be back at the Sarafand in less than three hours and the question is whether to eat now or wait for a proper steak dinner on board. What would you do, Mike?”

“That’s one of those tricky deci- sions you have to sort out for your- self.” Targett kept his voice level with an effort. This was Sur- genor’s way of reminding him that by waiting a few hours he could have done his investigating in comfort and on a full stomach. As it was, he was going to spend an uncomfortable night with nothing to keep him going but water and surrogate.

“Yeah— I think I’ll sleep on it. See you, Mike.” Surgenor’s voice faded into a yawn.

“See you.”

Targett rose to his feet with a new determination to make his private expedition worth while. He moved up the slope, being care- ful not to slip on the loose surface stones and dust which cascaded around his ankles at every step. Be- yond the ridge the ground leveled out for perhaps a mile before ris- ing sharply to the rocky spine of the hills. The small plateau was bounded to the north and south by tumbled palisades of boulders.

almost as if it had been cleared by bulldozers. Scattered across the level ground — in random group- ings— were hundreds of slim black cylinders, the nearest only a few dozen paces from Targett. They were about twenty feet in length and tapered at each end. Tar- gett’ s heart began a steady, peace- ful pounding as it came to him that the alien objects certainly were not discarded canisters, as Surgenor had suggested. He took the miniature television camera from his belt, plugged it briefly into the suit’s powerpack and aimed it at the nearest cylinders.

“Aesop,” he said. “I’ve made visual contact.”

“I’m getting a moderately good picture, Michael,” Aesop replied.

“I’ll go closer.”

“Do not move,” Aesop com- manded sharply.

TARGETT froze in the act of taking a step forward. “What’s the matter?”

“Perhaps nothing, Michael.” Aesop was speaking at his normal tempo again. “The picture I’m re- ceiving from you would suggest that the surfaces of the objects are free of dust. Is this correct?”

“I guess it is.” Targett exa- mined the shining black cylin- ders, ruefully wondering how he had failed to notice their condi- tion. They might have been scat- tered across the plateau only that morning.

GAMBLER'S CHOICE

11

“You guess? Does some visual defect prevent you from being positive?"

“Don't be funny, Aesop — I'm positive. Does it mean the objects have been put here recently?"

“Improbably. Has there been any accretion of dust in the vicinity of each object?"

Targett narrowed his eyes into the brilliantly reflected sunlight and saw that the cylinders were ly- ing in cradles of accumulated dust, the upper edges of which were a few inches clear of the black metal. He described what he could see.

‘'Repellent fields," Aesop said. “Still effective after a possible four thousand years. Itns not nec- essary for you to study these ob- jects any further. Michael. As soon as the planetary survey has been completed I shall bring the Sarafand to your present loca- tion for the purpose of a full in- vestigation."

“Thanks, but I have no inten- tion of cooling my heels for four or five hours." Targett made his voice firm, although he was un- certain of how good Aesop was at interpreting inflexions. “I’m going to take a closer look."

“I will permit that, provided you continue to supply uninter- rupted television coverage."

Targett almost pointed out that, with close to three thousand miles separating them, the computer had no way of imposing its will on

him, but he suppressed his irrita- tion. During his months in the Ser- vice he had managed to swallow the facts that his crewmates ad- dressed the ship's computer as “Captain" and obeyed its every instruction as though they were serving a three-cluster marshal. There was no point in blowing up about it just when something of genuine interest had come along to break the routine.

He crossed the level ground, keeping the camera trained ahead. And as he walked, some- thing about the general appear- ance of the cylinders began to disturb him. They looked like military materiel. Torpedoes, perhaps.

The same thought must have oc- curred to Aesop. “Michael; have you made a polyrad check of the area?"

“Yes." Targett had not, but he held up his left wrist as he spoke, examined the suit’s polyrad dial and saw it was registering nothing unusual. He moved the dial into camera view for a second. “All clear. Do these things look like tor- pedoes to you, Aesop?"

“They could be anything. Pro- ceed."

Targett, who had been pro- ceeding anyway, clamped his mouth shut and tried to put Aesop out of his* mind. He approached the nearest cylinder, marveling at its gleaming electrostatic fresh- ness.

12

IF

“Hold the camera three feet from the object,” Aesop said in his ear. “Walk around it and re- turn to your starting point.”

“Yes, j/>,” Targett muttered, moving crab-wise around the cyl- inder.

ONE end of it tapered almost to a point, in the center of which was a one-centimeter circular hole, reminding him of the muz- zle of a rifle. A ring of black glass, practically indistinguishable from the surrounding metal, was located a few inches back from the point. The other end was more rounded and covered with smaller holes like those on a pepper shak- er. In the cylinder's mid-section were several plates set flush with the surface and secured by screws of a surprisingly Earthlike de- sign. There were no markings of any kind.

“Thank you, Michael — now see if you can remove the plates from the center section.”

“Right.”

Targett was mildly surprised at Aesop’s instruction, but he set the camera where it could cover his actions and unsheathed his knife.

“Just a minute, Mike,” Sur- genor’s voice cut in unexpected- ly, loud and clear in spite of the hundreds of miles between Tar- gett and Module Five. “You men- tioned torpedoes a minute ago. What do those things look like?”

“Dave,” Targett said wearily, “why don’t you go back to sleep?” ' “I’ve got indigestion — now tell me what you’ve got there.”

Targett described the cylinders quickly and with a growing feeling of exasperation. His projected stroll down the centuries, among the relics of an ancient civilization, was somehow getting him more tangled than ever in the petty re- strictions of the present.

“Do you mind if I get on with the job?” he concluded.

“I don’t think you should touch those things, Mike.”

“Why not? They look like tor- pedoes. But if there were any dan- ger Aesop would have warned me off.”

“Would he?” Surgenor’s voice was hard. “Don’t forget that Ae- sop is a computer — ”

“You don’t need to tell me that. You guys are the ones who per- sonalize him.”

“ — and therefore thinks in a very cold, very logical manner. Didn’t you notice his sudden change in attitude just no\y? At first he wanted you to stay clear of the objects — now he’s telling you to take one apart.”

“Which proves he thinks it’s safe,” Targett said.

“Which proves he thinks it could be dangerous, you bonehead. Listen, Mike, this little jaunt of yours has turned out rather dif- ferently from what any of us ex- pected and, since you were the one

GAMBLERS' CHOICE

13

who volunteered to go out on the limb, Aesop is quite prepared to let you saw down the tree behind you.”

Targett shook his head, al- though there was nobody to see him. “If Aesop thought there was any risk he would order me away from here.”

“Let's ask him," Surgenor snapped. “Aesop, why did you in- struct Mike to remove the casing from one of those cylinders?”

“To permit inspection of its in- terior,” Aesop replied.

Surgenor sighed audibly. “Sor- ry. What was the reasoning behind your permitting Mike to proceed with this investigation alone instead of waiting for the arrival of the customary two modules or the entire ship?”

“The objects in question resem- ble torpedoes, tanks or bombs,” Aesop replied without hesitation, “but the complete absence of elec- trical or mechanical interfaces sug- gests that they may be self-con- tained automated devices. Their contamination repellant systems are still active, so there is a possi- bility that other systems are either active or capable of being acti- vated. If the objects prove to be ro- bot weapons it is obviously bet- ter that they be examined initial- ly by one man rather than by four or twelve.”

“QED,” Surgenor commented drily. “There you are, Mike. Cap- tain Aesop is a staunch advocate of

the greatest good of the greatest number.”

“I cannot risk the ship.”

He can’t risk the ship, Mike. Now that you know the score, you are entitled to refuse to chance going near those objects until a team arrives with full probe in- strumentation.”

“I don’t think there’s any risk worth mentioning,” Targett said steadily. “Besides, everything Ae- sop said makes sense to me. I’m going ahead.”

Analyzing his own feelings,

Targett was surprised to dis- cover that he was slightly disap- pointed in Aesop. He had always objected to personalizing the com- puter, yet in his heart he must have regarded Aesop as a benign entity who looked out for Targett’s wel- fare with greater scrupulousness than could have been expected of a human skipper. Possibly there was something there a psychoanalyst could get his teeth into, but his im- mediate concern was with the in- terior of the nearest cylinder. He unclipped the heavy back- pack, set it on the ground and kneeled beside the sleek black tor- pedo.

The screws holding the mid-sec- tion plates had Y-shaped slots, which did not provide a good pur- chase for the point of his knife but were spring-loaded and turned easily when ’depressed. He lifted the first plate carefully, exposing a

14

IF

mass of components and circuit- ry, much of which appeared to be duplicated and arranged sym- metrically about a central spine. The conduits were drab and not color-coded, but looked fresh enough to have been installed the previous day. Targett, who was not an engineer, suddenly felt a profound respect for the long-de- parted beings who had created the cylinders. Within five min- utes he had stripped off all the curved plates and laid them in a row beside the cylinder body. An inspection of the complex interi- or told him nothing about the ob- ject’s function, except that a mechanism in the sharper end had the hard uncompromising lines he associated with machine guns.

“Hold the camera about two feet from the object,” Aesop in- structed, “and move along its en- tire length.”

Targett did as he had been told. “How’s that? This looks like an engine section but the metal looks queer — a bit crumbly.”

“That would be caused by ni- trogen absorption associated with — ” Aesop stopped speaking in mid-sentence, a strangely human mannerism which Targett had never known the computer to ex- hibit before.

“Aesop?”

“Here is an instruction you must obey instantly.” Aesop’s voice was preternaturally sharp.

“Scan your surroundings. If you see a rock formation that would give you protection against ma- chine rifle fire — go to it immedi- ately!”

“What’s the matter?” Targett glanced around the shimmering plateau.

“Don’t ask questions,” Surgen- or’s voice cut in. “Do as Aesop says. Run for cover.”

“But—”

Targett’s voice faded as his pe- ripheral vision picked up a sudden movement. He turned toward it and saw that — in the center of the plateau — one of the hundreds of cylinders had reared its sharp end at an angle into the air. It was swaying slowly and blindly, as though supported by a loose wire. Targett gaped at it for a moment, filled with an almost superstitious dread, then ran north toward the nearest barricade of rock. Ham- pered by the suit and the extra gravity, he found it impossible to pick up any real speed. On his right the cylinder spiraled lazily in- to the air like a mythological crea- ture awakening from millennia of slumber. It drifted in his direction.

Two others stirred in their dusty cradles. Targett tried to move fast- er but felt as if he were waist deep in syrup. Ahead he saw a black tri- angular hole formed by tilted slabs of rock. He swerved toward it.

THE sky to his right was clear again, giving him the impres-

G AMBLER'S CHOICE

15

sion the cylinder had vanished. Then he saw it moving around be- hind him, foreshortening, aiming itself. His thighs pumped harder in the nightmarish slow motion and the dark opening swung crazily ahead, but too far away. He knew he was going to be late.

He threw himself at the open- ing— just as a massive hammer sledged ferociously into his back. The television camera spun from his hand as he was lifted off his feet and flung into the space between the rocks. Astounded at finding himself still alive, Targett bur- rowed desperately for cover. The triangular space proved long enough to take his whole body. He squirmed into it, moaning with panic at the thought of- another bullet finding him at any instant.

Vm alive , he thought numbly, buthow?

He slid a gloved hand around to the lower part of his back where the bullet had struck, felt an un- familiar jagged edge of metal. His probing fingers discovered a crumpled, boxlike object — the ruins of his oxygen generator.

He started to reach for the back: pack containing the spare gener- ator, then remembered the pack was lying out on the plateau where he had set it down before going to work on the cylinder. He clawed feverishly at the con- fining rock until he had reversed his position, then peered outside. The small segment of open sky he

could see was crossed and re- crossed with the black silhouettes of torpedoes in flight. Targett inched forward a little for a bet- ter view. His jaw sagged as he saw that the torpedoes had taken to the air in hundreds, swarming si- lently upward, their shadows rippling over brownish dust and rocks. Even as he watched, a few laggards angled their noses into the air, swung groggily for a mo- ment and drifted up to join their fellows in the circulating cloud. A slight fold in the ground made it impossible for him to see where the backpack lay, or if the cylin- der on which he had worked had al- so taken flight. He raised his head slightly and fell back amid a sud- den shower of rock splinters and dust. The banshee howl or rico- chets left no doubt in his mind that several of the torpedoes had noted his movement and used their guns.

“Report on your position, Mi- chael,” Aesop’s voice seemed to come from another world.

“My position isn’t too good,” Targett said hoarsely, trying to- control his breathing. “These things seem to be robot hunters fitted out with machine rifles. The lot of them are airborne now — perhaps the radiation from my television camera trig- gered them off — and they’re swarming about like mosquitoes. I’m hiding out under some rocks but—”

16

IF

“Stay where you are. I will have the Sarafand there in less than an hour.”

“That’s no good, Aesop. One of the torpedoes took a shot at me as I was getting in here. The suit isn’t punctured, but my oxygenerator is out of action.”

“Use the spare from your pack,” Surgenor put in before Aesop could reply.

“I can’t.” Targett made the strange discovery that he felt em- barrassed rather than afraid. “The pack’s lying out in the open and I can’t get at it.”

“But that gives you only—” Sur- genor paused. “You’ll have to reach the pack, Mike.”

Targett could feel his lungs be- gin to labor as the suit’s residual oxygen was depleted.

“That’s what I was thinking.” “Look, perhaps the torpedoes respond only to sudden move- ment. If you crawled out very slowly — ”

“Hypothesis incorrect,” Aesop interupted. “My analysis of the sensor circuitry in the torpedo which Michael opened indicates that it was a duplex system, both channels of which use movement and heat for target identification. Any exposure of his body would be certain to draw more fire.”

“It already has — I tried to poke my head out of this hole a minute ago,” Targett said. “I almost lost it.”

“That shows my conclusion

about the sensor circuitry was ac- curate, which in turn — ”

“We haven’t time to listen to you congratulating yourself, Aesop.” Surgenor’s voice crashed in the suit’s radio. “Mike, have you tried your sidearm on them?”

Ill

TARGETT reached for the ul- tralaser, which was still slung over his shoulder, then pulled his hand back. “It wouldn’t help, Dave. There are hundreds of those things buzzing around out there and an ultralaser pistol holds— how many charges?”

“Let’s see. Twenty-six.”

“So what’s the point of even try- ing?” r

“Maybe there isn’t any point, Mike, but are you just going to lie there and suffocate? Blast a few of them at least.”

“David Surgenor,” Aesop inter- upted. “I instruct you to remain silent while I deal with this emer- gency.”

“Deal with it?” Targett felt an illogical stirring of his former blind faith in Aesop. “All right. What do you want me to do?”

“Can you see any of the tor- pedoes without endangering yourself?”

“Yes.” Targett glanced at the triangular area of sky as a black ci- gar-shape drifted across it. “Only one at a time, though.”

“That is sufficient. Your record

GAMBLER'S CHOICE

17

shows that you are a good marks- man. I want you to use your side- arm on one of the torpedoes. Hit it.”

“What's the point?” Targett's brief, irrational hope dissolved' in- to anger and raw panic. “I've got twenty-six charges and there are three hundred of those robots out there.”

“Three-h u nd red-and-sixty-t wo, to be precise,” Aesop said. “Now listen to my instructions and obey them without further delay. Direct an ultralaser burst against one of the torpedoes. Hit it as close to the nose section as possible and describe the effects of your action.”

“You smug — ” Realizing the fu- tility of trying to insult a com- puter, Targett wrenched the ul- tralaser free of its holster and flipped the tubeless scopesight up into position.

He set the sight for low magnifi- cation and wriggled around in the narrow space between the rocks until he was in a reasonably good firing position. The controlled breathing essential for high-ac- curacy shooting was impossi- ble— his lungs were working like bellows in the suit’s stale air — but the torpedoes were a relatively easy target. He waited until one came questing across his segment of sky, put the cross-hairs on its conical nose section and squeezed the trigger. As the first capsule in the weapon’s magazine yielded its energy a quarter-second burst of

violet brilliance lanced out, flar- ing briefly on the torpedoe’s nose. The black cylinder seemed to fal- ter slightly, then recover and cruise out of sight, apparently un- harmed. Targett felt perspiration prickling out on his forehead. In- credible as it seemed, he — Mi- chael Targett, the most import- ant individual in the uni- verse— was going to die, just like all the anonymous beings who had gone before him.

“I hit one,” he said through numb lips. “Right on the nose. It just flew on as if nothing had hap- pened.”

“Was there any searing or scar- ring of the metal?”

“I don’t think so. I’m seeing them in silhouette, so I couldn’t be sure, though.”

“You say the torpedo flew on as though nothing had happened,” Aesop persisted. “Think carefully, Michael— was there no reaction at all?”

“Well, it seemed to wobble for a fraction of a second, but — ”

“Just as I expected,” Aesop commented. “The internal ar- rangement of the torpedo you ex- amined suggested it had a duplex sensory and control system. The new evidence confirms this.” “Damn you, Aesop,” Targett whispered. “I thought you were trying to help me but you were just gathering more data. From now on, do your own dirty work — I've retired from the Service.”

18

IF

“The ultralaser radiation would have been sufficient to burn out the prime sensory inputs,” Aesop con- tinued unperturbed, “causing the back-up system to take over. Another direct hit on the same torpedo would make it fall out of control and the probability is high that the impact would cause catastrophic failure of the mo- tor casing, which appears to have deteriorated. The high level of prolonged nondirectional radi- ation normally associated with failure in a motor of this design would in turn be sufficient to overload both sensory channels in the other torpedoes, causing them—”

“That’s it!” Targett felt a fierce pang of relief— it faded almost as quickly as it had come. He fought to keep his voice level. “Except that 1 could see no mark on the tor- pedo I hit — and if I try to poke my face out for a better look I’ll get it blown off. Maybe that would be the best thing that could happen— at least it would be quick.”

ET me say something here, -LrfAesop,” came Surgenor’s voice. “Listen, Mike — you still have a chance. You’ve got twenty- five energy capsules left in your magazine. Blast away at the tor- pedoes as they go by and maybe you’ll burn the same one twice.”

“Thanks, Dave.” A gray mood of resignation settled over Targett as he realized what he had to do.

“1 appreciate your concern, but remember I’m the gambler in this outfit. Twenty-six into three- sixty-two put the odds at about thirteen to one against me right at the start. Thirteen’s a bad number and I don’t feel very lucky.”

“A superstitious gambler’s a loser, Mike. Let Aesop figure your odds. It’s your only chance.”

“Not the only one.” Targett gathered his legs beneath him in preparation for violent action. “I’m a pretty good shot with radi- ation weapons. My best bet would be to get outside fast — out where I can track one of the tor- pedoes long enough to take two shots at it.”

“Don’t try it, Mike,” Surgenor said urgently.

“Sorry.” Targett tensed himself and edged forward. “My mind

is—”

“Your mind appears to be con- fused,” Aesop cut in. “Possibly due to oxygen starvation. Have you forgotten that you dropped the television camera outside your shelter?”

Targett hesitated in the act of diving forward. “The camera? Can you see the swarm?”

“Not all of it, but enough to let me follow individual torpedoes for a considerable portion of their circuit. I will instruct you when to fire and by timing your shots to match the general circu- lation rate of the swarm we can bring the probability of a second

GAMBLER'S CHOICE

19

hit on one torpedo close to unity.”

“All right, Aesop— you win.” Targett settled down again, bur- dened by the dull certainty that nothing he could do would make any difference to the situation. His breathing had become rapid and shallow as his lungs rejected their own waste products. His hands were clammy inside their gloves. He raised the sidearm and peered through its sight.

“Begin firing at will to initiate the sequence.” Aesop’s voice came faintly through the roaring in Targett’sears.

“Right.” He steadied the wea- pon, waited until a torpedo drifted across his segment of sky and directed a burst of energy onto its nose section. The tor- pedo wavered for an instant, then flew on. Targett repeated the se- quence again and again, always 'with the same result, until the pile of expended capsules spat out by the weapon numbered more than a dozen.

“Where are you, Aesop?” he breathed. “You’re not helping me.

“The ultralaser radiation leaves no visible marks on the surfaces of the torpedoes, so 1 am forced to work on a purely statistical basis,” Aesop said. “I now have sufficient data to enable me to predict their movements with a tolerable de- gree of accuracy.”

“Then start doing it.”

There was a slight pause. “Each time I say, ‘Now — ’ fire at the next torpedo appearing in your field of view.”

“I’m waiting.” Targett blinked to clear his vision. Bright-rimmed black spots had begun to dance across it.

“Now.”

A torpedo appeared an instant later and Targett squeezed the trig- ger. The ultralaser ray raked along the nose section — but after an initial tremor the black cylin- der drifted steadily out of view without changing direction.

“Now.”

Targett fired again, with the same result.

“Now.”

Once again the beam of energy flicked across a torpedo— with no effect.

“This isn’t working out too well.” Targett focused his eyes with difficulty on the indicator on the butt of his weapon. “I’m down to eight charges. I’m beginning to think I ought to go ahead with my own idea while I — ”

“You are wasting valuable time, Michael. Now.”

Targett squeezed the trigger and another torpedo drifted heedlessly on, effectively unharmed.

“Now.”

Hopelessly, Targett fired again. The torpedo had passed out of sight before it dawned on him that perhaps it had begun to change di- rection.

20

IF

“Aesop," he managed to say, “I think maybe—"

He heard a dull explosion and the triangular segment of sky turned a blinding white. Light seared Targett’s eyes before the helmet filters automatically clicked into place. The brilliance continued unabated for seconds. He imagined it burning out the primary and back-up sensors on the swarming robots, which would in turn blunder down and —

JUST in time Targett jammed his eyes shut and buried his head in his arms. When the pro- longed rumble of explosions and the almost palpable flood of bril- lance had died away he crawled out from under the rocks and forced his legs to accept his weight. He opened his eyes cautiously. The plateau was littered with hundreds of inert torpedoes, their motor compartments glowing red, vapor- ing. Several of the torpedoes were still airborne but they paid no attention to him as he ran, weaving drunkenly, toward the spot where he had left the back- pack. On the way across the pla- teau the thought occurred to him that one of the torpedoes could have landed right on the pack, but he found it lying safely beside the stripped-down cylinder, which apparently had not flown. He 'opened it with trembling fingers, took out the oxygenerator and experienced a moment of exqui-

site dread as the ruined generator refused to let itself be detached from the suit’s breather hole. With the last dregs of his strength he wrenched it off, clicked the re- placement into position and lay down to await oxygen.

“Mike? Are you all right?"

Targett breathed deeply. “I’m all right, Dave. Captain Aesop got me through."

“Did you say Captain?"

“I said Captain." Targett rose to his feet and surveyed the littered battlefield upon which he and a distant computer had van- quished an enemy host which had lain in ambush for four thousand years. In all probability he would never know what the torpedoes’ original purpose had been, or why they had been dumped on HortaVII— but his taste for ar- cheology seemed to have faded. It was sufficient just to be alive in the present. As he scanned the in- credible scene one of the torpe- does which was still aloft flew blindly into a ridge more than a mile away. The resultant explo- sion drenched the plateau with ra- diance.

Targett shielded his eyes. “There goes another one, Aesop."

“Your meaning is not clear to me, Michael," Aesop replied.

“Another torpedo, of course. Didn’t you see the flash?"

“No. The television camera is not functioning."

“Oh?" Targett glanced towards

GAMBLERS' CHOICE

21

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his former hiding place, where the camera had fallen. “Perhaps all those explosions burned it out.” “No.” Aesop paused. “Trans- missions ceased when you dropped the camera. There is a good prob- ability that the switch got jarred to the off position.”

“Very likely. 1 was moving — ” Targett stopped speaking as a disturbing thought occurred to him. “Then you lied to me. You weren’t able to track the torpe- does—”

“That is correct.”

“But you were telling me when to fire. How did you know I would hit one of the torpedoes twice?”

“I didn’t.” Aesop’s voice was precise, unruffled. “This is some- thing you in particular should understand, Michael. I simply took a chance.”

(( A LL this is great stuff for my Abook, Mike.” Clifford Pol- len’s reedy voice was pitched high with excitement as he leaned across the mess table on the Sarafand, “There were three-sixty- two torpedoes skimming around and you had twenty-six shots. That means Aesop staked your life on odds of about thirteen to one— and the gamble came off!”

“You’ll never make a successful gambler, Clifford.” Targett smiled pityingly as he cut up a king-sized steak. “You’ve no idea of how to calculate odds.”

Pollen looked offended. “I can perform a simple calculation.

IF

22

Twenty-six into three-sixty-two — ” “Has nothing to do with the actual mathematics of the situation, my friend. It was nec- essary for me to hit one of the tor- pedoes twice, right?”

“Right,” Pollen said grudgingly. “My first shot could hit any torpedo. There was one chance in three-six-two that my second shot would hit the same torpedo — or three-six-one in three-six-two that it would not. For the third shot to coincide with either of the first two, it was two chances in three- six-two — or three-sixty in three- six-two that it wouldn’t — and so on. In this sort of calculation it’s easier to work out the probability against something happening, so all you have to do is multiply three- six-one over three-six-two by three- sixty over three-six-two, and so on right up to the odds against my last shot which would have been three- three-seven over three-six-two. Multiply it all out and you get odds of around two to one that I would hit a torpedo twice. It wasn’t much of a gamble, really.” “That’s hard to believe.”

“Work it out for yourself.” Targett put a piece of steak into his mouth and chewed apprecia- tively. “It’s a good example of the difficulty of judging complex probabilities by common sense.” Pollen shook his head. “It’s too complicated for me.”

“That’s why you’d never make a successful gambler.”

Targett smiled again as he worked on his steak. He did not mention the fact that his own common sense had been outraged by the mathematics of probability, or that it had taken a long and tedious conversation with Aesop on a private link, after all danger was past, to convince him of the truth. And he would never men- tion the cold, lonely feeling which had come over him when he gen- uinely realized that Aesop — be- hind all the illusions — was simply a logic machine. At one point, wedged between the rocks, it had dawned on him that it would have been more comforting, while wandering on alien worlds, to address Aesop as “Captain”, and to think of him as a superhuman being who never came down from his isolated command post on the Sara/amTs computer deck.

“We’ll be putting down on Parador at the end of this survey,” Dave Surgenor said from the opposite side of the table. “Are you going to give us a practical demonstration of how a successful gambler operates?”

“I don’t think so.” Targett put another forkful of steak into his mouth. “The syndicates who run the gambling houses are probably sneaky enough to use computers to calculate the odds."

He glanced at the nearest computer terminal and raised his cup of coffee. “No disrespect to Captain Aesop, of course.” •

GAMBLER'S CHOICE

23

W. MacFARLANE

"T7ie worlds exist in the mind alone —

Who knows this truth can dance with fire Or fly through the air or float on stone . .

GENERATION NEW WORLD

25

I

AVENSHAW stood against the wall of the railroad station in San Francisco. There was a long, withdrawn, melancholy honk down the tracks in the windy sunshine. Squashed popcorn paved the floor, all the glass was grimy, a quickshot bar with pain- fully exotic decor usurped a sec- tion of the lobby. Only the maga- zine stand on the platform was bright and clean. A chubby station guard with a Fu Manchu mus- tache ambled to the gates. Raven- shaw decided one efficiency de- rived from the shambles: no one would lounge here by choice.

General Craddock brought up the rear of the hustling commuter crowd. He said, “Good morning,” and didn’t say another word until they had driven through the fac- tories to the 5th Street on-ramp and were into thick traffic on the Bay Bridge approach. Then: “I would not choose to live at any other time, but tell me this, Ar- leigh, why do some very pretty girls at Stanford dress like refugees from a Ukranian potato bog?”

“To match their young men as romantic vagabonds.”

The general snorted. “Roman- tic?”

“Dictionary says imbued or dominated by idealism.” Raven- shaw followed the great arc of the suspension cables with his eyes. “Irrational idealism is a starv-

ing snake finding its own tail around a tree.”

Craddock took off his black- rimmed glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You have a pretty way with words,” he said, “but watch your tongue when we meet the think-tank.”

“Yessir,” said Ravenshaw. “Be- sides Rand Corporation and Sys- tems Development and the Hud- son Institute, what is a think- tank?”

“Throw ’em a problem and they bark like a herd of seals — a condi- tioned reflex — how do I know? I never met one before. I take a dim view of the whole thing.” They were running downhill from the anchor block of the twin suspen- sion spans. It was a sparkling day, brisk and sunny, but Craddock was in a heavy fog of thought. “This outfit is supposed to be unique. They don’t make egregious pronouncements. It’s a club with a clubhouse. Very exclusive. They pick their own members. You’ve got to have a pretty good introduction to meet them.”

“How’s their batting average?”

“I asked that question. About eight-eighty, but a lot of the work is not susceptible to percentage analysis. There’s another yard- stick, and that’s the hundred thousand dollars they got for investment fifteen years ago when they cranked up this brain ma- chine. They have something over seven million in the kitty now.”

26

IF

“Wow,” said Ravenshaw, “a bunch of financial experts.” They rumbled through the Goat Island Tunnel and onto the can- tilever span.

“They’re a bunch of generalists,” said Craddock, “not nuts-and-boltsers. But anyone who doesn’t pay attention to money is obviously not quite bright. One of the secondary ob- jectives of this group was to become self-sustaining — and they are that.”

“Why have we got to talk with them?”

“Because the man said so. While there are no fingers but my own in the day-to-day pie, I have author- ity to which I respond. Authority wants us to meet with the wise men.”

The East Bay spread out ahead of them, wind-polished and bright. Ravenshaw automatically found the Campanile on the Berkeley campus and the tall buildings of Oakland with the skyline hills be- yond. There was no question in his mind that the Bay Area was among the most dramatic postcard pictures in the world, but he ig- nored it today.

“Complete disclosure?” he asked.

“Not on your life!” snapped Craddock. “The arguments about honesty and open dealing are byproducts of a mistaken ap- preciation of the nature of things. We’ll put a hypothetical

question to these people and see what happens.”

Ravenshaw angled through traf- fic onto the Bayshore Freeway north. “Well, sir, who are they? How do you make a think-tank?”

“In this case, the man in Washington had some discretion- ary funds tucked away after the Korean War. It occurred to him that wise old men could be re- cycled like used copper wire. It was a tough job, because how do you evaluate wisdom? What he did was pick a couple of anchor men and let them do the recruit- ing. Questionnaires went out to a wide spectrum of groups, the Na- tional Association of Manufac- turers, the Retail Clerks, the Geophysical Union, the Benevo- lent and Protective Order of Elks, the Farm Bureau, the Amalga- mated Pretzel Benders, the Amer- ican Association for the Advance- ment of Science — you name it and they got an inquiry over a hot-line signature. Give us five names in your outfit,' give us five names outside, of the best general con- sultants you’ve ever come across. Out of eight thousand names, six hundred were mentioned more than four times. A grading scale was set up and the number cut down to just under a hundred. The anchor men interviewed these peo- ple and twenty were offered jobs. Eight accepted. They are a hard- nose bunch. I’ve seen a couple of their recommendations and have a

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD

27

good opinion of their ability.'9

“But you don’t trust them/’ said Ravenshaw. He turned onto the university off-ramp.

“Stop after the next light/’ said Craddock. “Park the car. I want to throw a little dust in the air. I want to obfuscate things a little.’’ He brooded as they crossed San Pablo and Ravenshaw pulled to the curb. “Trust them? I trust them to do what they want to do. 1 can nail responsibility upstairs, but it’s a bitter exercise to fix blame when the horse is gone.’’

RAVENSHAW asked sudden- ly, “Do you see any end to this?”

He meant the entire perplexing problem of the infinite worlds he had stumbled into when General Craddock had pulled him out of Vietnam to head Wide Blue Yonder, Inc.

Craddock did not misunderstand him. “I see dozens of unaccept- able solutions and very few I like. Arleigh, I used to go to the Satur- day afternoon movies when I was a boy. In one serial a goat ate what they called a ‘biscuit bomb’ and followed the hero around. The caption read: ‘Tick-tick, tick- tick.’” At the time my sympathy was not with the goat. Now, with this funny feeling in my stom- ach— ” His attention was caught by a girl walking toward them. She was in a benny, a maxicoat from the Salvation Army. Crad-

dock sighed. “Will hemlines go up again in our time?”

Ravenshaw pursued his thought further. “I could go back to ac- tive duty— hide out in a jungle war,” he said tentatively.

“Cut and run? Turn back the clock? Cop out? Stop the world, I want to get off and spit?” Crad- dock pulled his suitcase from the back seat and opened it. He slammed it shut again.

“Ravenshaw, you and I are lucky beyond the dreams of for- tune. We stand at a hingepoint of history. How we act, what kind of men we are, is a question of weight and import, [ thought I was a for- tunate man, being placed to write a footnote to a footnote. Now it’s large type in the main copy. Very sobering. We are involved in af- fairs of genuine consequence.’’

Ravenshaw nodded doubtfully.

“And if there’s any constant but change, it’s Start From Now,” Craddock went on. Tattoo that on your heart. I believe in sins of comission and to hell with virtue by default.”

“Yessir,” said Ravenshaw.

“Right,” said Craddock. He turned his attention to a large, leather-covered shaving kit from his case. He took an ivory tooth- pick from his breast pocket and stuck it into one of the covered hinges. He turned the kit upside down and pulled one snap. He looked at his watch. “I also be- lieve in a few small precautions,”

28

IF

he said mildly. “One minute for- ty— ” he pulled the other Snap— “and here are your papers, Mr. Bill Quintard. Go through your pockets. Match books, laun- dry lists, the rental contract for this car, wallet, the works into the kit. Got a label in your coat?” “Eddie Bauer in Seattle, out- door gear and goosedown gar- ments, a national mail-order house that imports Harris tweed.” The general nodded and Ravenshaw read the letters ad- dressed to Bill Quintard, checked the address book and put three scraps of notes into his pockets along with a swizzle stick labeled Plainsboro Jughandle with a lit- tle green mermaid on top. In the wallet, his picture was on an ID card from the James Forrestal Research Center.

“Do I show off this stuff?”

“It’s subliminal support. I am Marcus Holloman and I am your boss. Be secretarial and a little bodyguardish. Questions?”

“Why did you say a minute-forty when I made it a minute-ten?” “Complete disclosure? Hell no. If you got smart and' opened this case, you’d get fogged with ethyl mercaptan plus an interesting dye that usually wears off in six weeks. Also, an acid eats the papers inside.’’ The general grin- ned. “Other questions?”

“What is the think-tank called?” “Cassandra Investment Compa- ny.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Raven- shaw. He started the engine. “Are we off in a blizzard of skunk?” Craddock put on a pair of glasses with thin gold rims. They gave him a mild, scholarly air. He whistled the first notes of the Air Force Academy Song and Raven- shaw pulled into the traffic.

II

THE building was modern non- descript, with a row of thirty- foot arches filled with glass. An old five-story, brick apartment house stood behind it. To the left of the lobby was an open floor with desks, secretaries and business ma- chines. To the right were stairs to the mezzanine, a guard in uni- form, vaults and private offices. And a pretty girl.

“My name’s Holloman. Mr. Quintard and I have an appoint- ment.”

“Yes, sir.” She ticked their names on a list. “John, will you take these gentlemen to the ele- vator.”

They followed the guard to a door in the rear and around a cor- ner. The hall was too deep by twenty feet, Ravenshaw noted. They were in the brick apartment house. The guard used a key at the elevator and pushed the button for them. When the door opened they stepped into a reception

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room between chromed poles two inches in diameter set in foot- square boxes. There was an immediate bizz-abizz-bizz noise. The man walking to meet them stopped in his tracks. He waited until another man appeared from 'a side door.

“As you know, gentlemen, this is a sensitive area. Will you please empty your pockets onto the desk.” He was urbane, competent and sincere. Craddock had a pock- etful of change and Ravenshaw had his four-inch stock knife. On invi- tation they stepped back between the poles and the buzzer was silent. The man examined their creden- tials. They retrieved their belong- ings and were escorted down a cork-floored corridor to a pair of disguised fire doors with top qual- ity panic hardware.

There is nothing ostentatious about a dead solid floor and dead quiet ventilation except both are as rare as the owner who can af- ford them. The room Craddock and Ravenshaw entered was equally low key, but the carpet was wool of theater quality, guar- anteed to show no wear after a mil- lion people had tromped on it. The egg-crate lighting probably did not vary ten lumins in any part of the room and the bookcases were solid oak of meticulous crafts- manship. There were no windows, there was no fireplace, and the chairs and tables had a well-main- tained and well-used appearance

with no offensive smell of cedar or lemon oil.

Two groups of men were gossip- ing. A gray man was consulting a London Times Atlas on a stand. Another fellow had his hands cupped over his eyes in a deep chair. A third man came to greet Craddock and Ravenshaw. He had a head like a patent-leather owl, with close-set ears and black Irair too flat and polished to be anything but real.

“I’m Swafford Jain,’’ he said, “moderator for this month. I hope our security didn’t bother you. I’m convinced precautions are pro- tective to us and not primarily di- rected to our visitors. Mr. Hollo- man and Mr. Quintard, right? Coffee? Later, then. We’ve found it works best to brace the board with the question and socialize with a common background. Agreed?” His eyes were as direct as a living owl’s and, to Ravenshaw’s pleas- ure, he swiveled his head on fixed shoulders.

He led them to chairs at the end of the room behind a low table with a fresh bouquet of single roses. He pushed aside an air copy of The Economist and rapped on the table with his knuckles. The groups broke up and Jain plunged directly into business.

“This is our first general meet- ing of the year and will be con- ducted on a no-record basis. We have a new member, Mr. Sam Asabian, but my reminder to put

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doodlings into the security wastebasket on leaving this room is not directed to him as much as to his absent-minded elders in terms of service. Sam, will you do me the favor of making certain I carry away nothing?” A man with a bronzed moon face nodded and Jain bowed to Craddock.

The general stood, slouching a little, and said, “I’m Marcus Hol- loman and Bill Quintard is with me. I am engaged to offer no source for the information be- hind the question I’d like you to consider. It should be regarded as a preliminary inquiry into a totally speculative condition. We are after guidelines and no reasonable guesses will be re- fused. An analogous situation might be that of a group gathered to consider the implications of flight before the Wright brothers got into the bicycle business.

“We are aware that our fundamental premises may be in error. We appreciate the impos- sibility of detailed forecasts. I can’t enlarge on the background, but I’m allowed to say some tenta- tive evidence exists. This is the question: what happens if it be- comes practical to travel to an in- finite number of alternate worlds?”

THE twelve men were in a loose semicircle. Their ears did not flap nor were they at rigid atten- tion, but Ravenshaw had a feeling

that they saw more casually than a pride of Admirals would see on purpose; he would bet that every man could write a thousand words about Craddock by the end of his sixty-second speech. This was a re- doubtable group.

The man who had been cupping his eyes dropped his hands. “Break out the Second Coming type,” he said in a bullfrog voice. “I’m Alonzo Johnson,” he added, “and I thank you for such a notion.”

“Who’s coming? Aimee Semple McPherson? Buddah, Ogier the Dane, King Arthur?” asked a small man, his feet stretched out in front of him. He had a face like a wedge of putty with home-cured olives pressed in for eyes.

“The Honorable Joseph Levering,” murmured Swafford Jain.

“Exactly the point, Joe,” said a man with a classic Roman profile, worn by time. “If you have infi- nite worlds, presumably every- thing can, has, or will happen. Aimee Semple McPherson has returned from the dead again somewhere, and the Four-Square Gospel Church rules the world in righteousness. I’m Ed Master- son. What I want isn’t hard. Just give me a world where Shake- speare wrote Charlemagne or Boadicea or whatever title you like. Give me a world where the li- brary at Alexandria was pre- served so I can read Euripides’ Andromeda and give me a world

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where the Bishop of Yucatan was a scholar instead of a fanatic.” “What did Keats write at sixty?” asked a bald stocky man. “I’m Brander Lugard. What are the limiting factors, sir?”

“Unknown, Mr. Lugard,” said the general.

“Then anything is possible, inva- sion from Mars, peace declared, the Greeks stop biting themselves in the small of the back and devel- op the scientific method.”

“Why not?” said a big man with stooped shoulders. “And Count Dracula has just put electric lights in his Transylvanian castle, sure he has. The whole thing’s too open for meaningful discussion. Walt Milias.” He nodded to Crad- dock and Ravenshaw.

“Not so. I’m Cyrus Pfister. The same laws would apply — forget a chlorine world — and any real world has to be self-consistent. If you want intelligent animals, you’ve got to give up steak or eat your friendly neighborhood cow. There is an irreducible rationale in human affairs because of the inbuilt nature of the creature. That’s your limiting factor. If intelligence is not human it’s a dif- ferent ball game.”

“You’re saying that a world must be psychologically viable? Then there’s no world of reason, if you rule out fantasy.”

“Who needs one hundred per- cent reason? Panic saves, just like Jesus.”

“You’re talking about un- knowns, not irreconcilables — ”

“ — mystique about cold steel until some pragmatist with a Colt forty-five blows out the cobwebs the swordsmen use for brains — ”

“ — another Mesabi to work over — ”

“ — you can’t move a society by example. What influence do the Swiss have on the world except the gnomes who drill holes in the mon- ey structure and cheese — ”

“ — buffalo management and herds of native meat — ”

“ — but even knowing it can be done is vital. Look at the four-min- ute mile. As soon as one man did it, so could a dozen — ”

“ — existence is all the proof logic requires — ”

The discussion became general and Ravenshaw was content to look and listen. Sam Asabian was puzzled by his peers as they sup- ported preposterous structures and toppled them with snorts of laughter. The men were alert and mischievous as a cageful of mon- keys, some solemn, some jocular. Milias was pompous with a twinkle in his eye, a happy target who would sit on a pigmy with ele- phantine grace whenever he could lure one close enough. The hottest argument was not heated. Asa- bian’s face cleared as he under- stood this was for fun, deadly earn- est and candy-castle spinning all at once. Ravenshaw wondered what firm base of values made the

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bedplate on which these men could bounce ideas like ball bearings.

In a lull, Alonzo Johnson asked, “Mr. Holloman, what is your point of view? What do you want? Where do you stand?"

“Good of mankind," said the general promptly. “Good of the United States. Good for you and good for me."

“Open-ended enough," said Brander yLugard. “What I’d like to see is a world with no World War I. That was a generation cut short of brilliant fruition — a truncated generation."

“So is every generation sir, not only that illuminated by star shells and the crepitating light of Vic- torian putrescence — "

“ — show me a people whose goal is not sloth, indulgence and self- gratification — "

“Contentment is the seed of destruction." Asabian threw that into the pot and settled back with a contented smile as two of the old wolves began to growl at it.

With the discussion fragmented again, Ravenshaw found Swaf- ford Jain’s sardonic eyes on him. “Well, Mr. Quintard, what do you think of Our tank? We shock a good many people."

Ravenshaw was off guard. “I suspect you’ll resolve the ques- tion and touch reality like a cus- tard pie spilled on the floor."

“Or a bowl of applesauce?" said Jain softly. “Gentlemen, it’s time for refreshments."

RAVENSHAW was relieved to get away from the Cassandra think-tank. General* Craddock sat at his side, bemused behind a pair of dark glasses by the exotic youngsters hitchhiking along University Avenue. He mar- veled at the “heshes" but when he saw one couple dressed in Eliz- abethan costume holding a card- board sign reading “Sack- amenna" he evidently decided it would be all downhill from there and asked, “Do you want lunch?" “After that a la cart? No, sir."

A security man had driven in a battery-powered tea cart and plug- ged it into a wall socket. It was the size of a hospital bed and had fea- tured three general sections. Coffee, tea with cozies over the pots had occupied one end. The center had been taken up by a buf- fet of doughnuts and pastries, cold cuts and sun-cured olives and pickles and San Francisco sour- dough. The other end had held a brave display of ice, bottles and bar tools.

“If we turn right," said the gen- eral, “isn’t there a bridge at Rich- mond? Then we can cut back over the Golden Gate and on to the air- port." Ravenshaw nodded. “My feelings are mixed," said the gen- eral. “I was throwing rocks ahead on that foggy trail and a couple of times I didn’t hear them hit. Who spilled the drink on your coat and sent it out to be sponged off?" “Rameses Three, the spry old

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devil with the criss-cross face. He was browsing the atlas.”

“Austin Mummery,” said Crad- dock, and fell silent.

Mummery had approached Ravenshaw and said, “Come with me, Mr. Quintard. I’m a leading local spiritualist.” He had led Ravenshaw to the cart and ex- pertly popped a split of cham- pagne, pouring two tall glasses half full. He had topped them off with a bottle of Guiness and said, “Cheers. What do you think of our little group?”

“A pleasure,” * Ravenshaw had said. He had looked admiringly at the cart. “How do you get into this club?”

“It’s a little tricky. You’ve got to be right.” Austin Mummery’s eyes were black and his upper lids drooped a little.

“I have another question,” Ravenshaw had said. Hooded eyes — that was the technical term. “How did you pick the name?”

“Cassandra? She was right, you know, but nobody believed her. She was the daughter of Hecuba and Priam and she was cursed by Apollo. I’ve not been able to sat- isfy myself whether the curse was knowing the future or the char- acter flaw of telling other people about it.”

“I don’t know how inquisitive I’m allowed to be,” Ravenshaw had said, “but has Cassandra dug any bomb shelters?”

“No. Whether the consensus

derives from hope, rationality or futility, I cannot say.” Mum- mery had smiled. “Those who en- deavor to pin our butterfly beauty to statistical charts give us about ninety percent, which is a long way from being right all the time.”

“You speak of consensus — ” “The powerful force behind democracy. Forget ephemeral intellectual fashions and forget the committee that built a camel instead af a horse. The fuel for Cassandra is accord.”

“Agreement on what, sir? Your approach seems—”

“Frivolous?” Even Mummery’s lips were seamed and the terrain of wrinkles changed when he smiled. “We were solemn once, until we found we were friends and party people. We only suspected this on the outside because we felt obli- gated to wear a mask of sobriety in front of the peasants.” He was a provocative old scoundrel. “This is Liberty Hall, Mr. Quintard, and we do as we damn well please.” “And the price of liberty?”

“We have no formal philoso- pher to keep us vigilant with Ps and Qs.”

“So what is' your base phil- osophy?” Ravenshaw was certain that Mummery examined arid ig- nored the word “base” in a milli- second. He had to be over seventy, but he wq$ a man like an antique beartrap, old and powerful, with steel teeth in the jaws.

“We all want to be heroes,”

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Mummery had answered. “Carlyle pointed out, ‘It is the property of the hero in every time, in every place, in every situation, that he comes back to reality; that he stands on things and not the show of things/ ”

Ravenshaw had shuddered. Grue is a thin ice that floats in Scot- land— he had felt as if someone had scooped up grue and dropped it down his back. Only serious men can afford comedy, buffoons crack jokes. Remembering Mum- mery’s eyes, Ravenshaw shivered again.

General craddock

looked over at Golden Gate Fields from the overpass as they left U.S. 80 for State 17. “A Chinaman said he was already convinced that one horse could run faster than another. Do you bet races, Arleigh? Who’s fast horse?”

“Could be a dead heat. Jain and Mummery. What control do they have on Cassandra?”

“I don’t know,” said Craddock. “It’s a pretty plush setup. Each man has an office; they pay them- selves about twenty-five thousand and the club picks up the tab for common expenses. Let me see. Those people in the front of- fice-smarter than average guards — manager — overhead — ” He brooded as they zagged and zigged through Richmond to the hill suffused with hydrogen sul-

phide from the refinery and drifted down to the toll plaza of the bridge. They were on the whaleback with a spectacular view in all direc- tions when Craddock said “Yup. Maybe so. Well, well. When I get back to Washington I’ll put a lit- tle heat under this pot and see if it percolates.”

Ravenshaw winced. “What about their conclusion?”

“‘We recommend the positive action of doing nothing/” the general quoted. “Well, that’s the course we’ve been following. I am the king of an island and I own one boat. I keep that boat busy fishing and I’m scared to let it explore. It has been caught in storms and blown away to strange coasts a couple of times, but so far it’s come back home. One boat and there aren’t any more.’’ He glanced at San Quentin to the left and sighed. “How is the fishing go- ing, Arleigh?”

“Got a sad rascal on a bare hook the other day,” said Ravenshaw. “Maybe he thought I was a book- ing agent. He opened his cooler and took out a Manhattan in a plastic container with a lid. It had a slice of orange and a maraschino cherry in it. He drank the dfink. He put the cherry, stem and all in his mouth. He took it out with the stem tied into an overhand knot. He went through the same routine with another Manhattan and spat out a square knot. He said he was retired Navy and he was going to

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work on it until he could tie a bow- line with his tongue, but all the drinks were expensive. I sug- gested putting the cherry in a glass of beer and he walked out mad."

The general had a pained ex- pression.

While he drove around the hill and snaked over to 101 south, Ravenshaw told about the man with the pickling method for rust- clad steel. It seemed the material took a while to oxidize and dripped rust on the passersby. Then there was a real estate broker with -an in-tank fuel pump, and the postman who had built an elec- trostatic dry-wash machine for flour gold in the desert. As they drove past Mill Valley* Raven- shaw pointed out it was still a materials handling process even though the mill was supposed to have a ninety-four percent re- covery capacity.

“Anyone following us?" asked Craddock.

“No, sir. I’ve been checking."

“How about that chemical ore- reduction process?"

“It’s another thing I don’t understand very well. I once had a fair background in chemistry and physics, but not any more. Maybe we ought to have a smart young man in the office instead of me. I’ve been away too long."

“I wouldn’t say that. WBY has been a surprisingly successful ♦vendor of R & D. Others want in."

“The word gets around," said

Ravenshaw. “We’re getting a caseload of technical hotshots. We see anybody who walks in the door, and the last time I checked, we hit one out of fourteen. A year ago it was one out of thirty-three. We’re getting people from all over, not just locally."

“Our primary mission is still in- explicable phenomena," said the general. “How come you weren’t tempted by that offer from Lyne Jolley, about twice what you make as a lieutenant colonel."

“I guess I like fishing."

“How about Nell Rowley?"

“Delightful," said Ravenshaw. The freeway ran through the hills above Sausalito. It was compara- tively old and had the faults of youth. It leaped canyons on bal- anced fills from eucalyptus-sloped cuts. The leaves reflected the cold afternoon sun, thin gold and green. “But with that lady, you’ve got to learn to bob and weave."

They ran downhill to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I wonder if you can have crooked wise men?" mused the general. “I’m going to bob and weave with those boys. How do you buy wise men? They’ve got every- thing they want. Knaves don’t bat eight-eighty. What is their price, do you suppose?"

Ill

ARLEIGH RAVENSHAW had i ordered his life to smooth out

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the ups and downs of exuberance and depression. He didn't like to wallow in the troughs or be blown by the high winds of exhilaration. A side effect of this position was detachment, and he had no shame about leaving his opinions sus- pended in the air, like Moham- med’s iron coffin.

He filed the Cassandra affair in the back of his head and went about his business as chief of WBY. It was a refreshing period of quiet work and modest pleas- ure, when problems were chal- lenging and solutions appeared with gratifying regularity.

Jethro Wellaby had made a hat with a propeller on it. “Swamp cooler,” he said. “Sweat evapo- rates. Cool in shade.” The electric motor was powered by selenium cells mounted on the brim of a solar topi. Ravenshaw took it to the window to catch the sun and the propeller picked up speed and sounded like a wasp. “Next model inside hat,” said Wellaby. “Prob- lem, not enough power for bigger fan.”

Ravenshaw asked about more cells on the side of the topi, a four- bladed propeller and an inner shell to conceal the machinery without clipping ears. Wellaby said he had grape pickers in mind and had to hawkeye expense. Ravenshaw said it looked more like a luxury item and maybe the thing to do was encase the fan in a glittering expanded metal cage

on top* It would be a novelty and status symbol for fishermen and golfers and Abercrombie & Fitch. Wellaby said be liked grapes. Ravenshaw said he would like to see Mark II and Wellaby said thank you and stumped out of the office.

Nell Rowley opened the door and asked what Beany wanted and Ravenshaw told her he had read about such a gadget years before, but had never seen one in action. “So it’s been a variegated day,” he said. “Miss Moffet and Leggitt in the morning, and artificial sun- light and Beany in the afternoon.”

“You have a man named Tim- berline Binghorst at four,” she said. “He’s from someplace in Utah and wants your advice.”

“Did you ever see a cat like that?” said Ravenshaw. Nell said Miss Moffet had to be out of her head to put a cat on her stomach to cure indigestion, no matter what she believed about sympathetic vibrations. Ravenshaw said it was not just any cat, but a cat from this particular quaint old English village.

Nell asked what he was going to do about Leggitt, the polywater man who had followed Miss Moffet, and Ravenshaw said he had phoned the Advanced Re- search Projects Agency at the Pen- tagon and they were going to have Dr. Hugo Trumble fly down from Seattle for a look-see. They doubted that any druggist could

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come up with a catalyst for poly- water, orthowater or anomalous water. Ravenshaw didn’t know anything about the polymer waters except they boiled high, froze low and turned into a funny kind of ice.

Their eyes met and Ravenshaw kept a carefully straight face. Nell said composedly that she would get out the rest of the letters.

Ravenshaw stood at the window and watched a cruiser driving down San Diego bay, headed for Point Loma and the open sea. He did not admire the Navy, but for a moment he wished he were leaning on a rail watching San Diego drop down the curve of the world, away from the question of Nell Rowley. Oh well, he thought,~~the Navy served a purpose. If it didn’t exist, the Army would have to invent it.

Nell Rowley now, she boiled low and froze high and turned into a very funny kind of ice.

She had been his secretary for eighteen months and together they had found a black box that de- livered air from 5000 feet up or water from 5000 feet down. They had encountered a robot watch- man redesigning common house- hold appliances to standards of its own technology. Most recently they had scrambled through the infinite worlds together. Some- times, at night, Ravenshaw awoke, taut with alarm, and turned on the radio and a pot of coffee to reassure himself he was a lieu-

tenant colonel in the U.S. Army on. special duty and was safe in his own apartment in his own world.

HE COULD not decide if Nell attracted the lightning bolts or if the endeavor was mutual. Pre- sumably she was a Mier, a mem- ber of a family or tribe or race from an alternate world, but her memory had been blanked out as a child and Ravenshaw lived in anticipation of the day it would re- turn.

“Nameless dread,’’ he said wryly.

Nell tapped on the door and an- nounced Mr. Timberline Bing- horst.

Binghorst walked into the room, said, “Heh, heh — ’’ and blushed. He wore store clothes, a hairy double-breasted blue suit, prob- ably purchased for an occasion thirty years before. His shirt was pale yellow and his fruitbowl tie had slipped off center. He said, “Heh, heh — ’’ again and Raven- shaw asked him to sit down.

“I won’t take much of your time,!’ Binghorst began in a voice likje rocks rolling down a distant canyon. “Heh, heh.’’ He cleared his throat and started again. “I read about you in the San Diego Union because I have a friend who works in the maifroom and Ben Knell thinks the Union has a bet- ter flavor than most, so sometimes when we’re snuggled around the Ashley with the snow hip-high

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outside and we’re tired of Clarence E. Mulford— ” He ran out of breath and panted, his brown eyes beseeching Raven- shaw for patience. He took a deep breath and started again like a man running uphill.

“It’s just that we live at Red Warrior in the Pine Valley Moun- tains in Washington County Utah not awfully far from St. George but the road is pretty rough even with the ’dozer work I had done last spring because it was a high- water year and made the Narrows so infernally rough I hung up on the gearcase — and almost busted the housing — and after that — I said to myself — ” He was dis- tressed that he had to stop to breathe again.

“1 have a house in St. George," said Ravenshaw kindly, “just off Tabernacle on Third West. I in- herited it when my wife died. It's a yellow waterstone built in the nineties."

“You LDS? asked Binghorst.

“My wife’s father and uncle were Mormon — Zadok and Syl- vanius Sandler — ’’

“Syl and Zad, old, old friends! Dead now. My, but this is nice, Mr. Ravenshaw. Oh, but that Syl was comical! He said there were four liars in Washington County and I was one and Zad was the other three!" The old man laughed joy- ously. “Once Zad returned from Cedar City and said the people there mistook him for Syl and Syl

said quick as a wink, Tm just as ashamed of it as you are!”’ Bing- horst choked with joy and Raven- shaw grinned in sympathy.

“Oh, that Sylvanius Sandler! He was laid up on his death bed and somebody remarked he couldn’t get around as well as he used to. Know what Syl said? He said, ‘If my fool body could keep up with the dictates of my head, I could still get over this country better’ n a mountain goat.’ Indeed I do, I miss them both. So you knew the Sandler boys! Married Zad’s girl, didn’t you? Big eyes, bundle of springs, whip bright?’’

Ravenshaw nodded.

“How this takes me back. Sylvanius, he was a comical fel- low. Oh, years ago, he took some grain to Stanley Mossis to have it ground to flour. Syl became impatient and said, ‘Damn it, Stan- ley, you grind so slow that I could eat that flour as fast as you grind it.’ Stanley wanted to know, ‘For how long?’ And Syl, he said, ‘Until I starved to death!”’ The old man laughed until he had to wipe his eyes with a blue bandana. “Ah, Mr. Ravenshaw, it’s a great pleasure to meet home people in a big city like San Diego.’’

“How can I help you here, Mr. Binghorst?’’

ELL, sir, I do have some- - ▼ ▼ thing on my mind besides reminiscences." The old man blew his nose on the bandana. He ex-

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plained he had been clearing out an abandoned stope and had come across an old trunk Zadok Sandler had stored there when he had left the country for California. It was filled with oddments of no par- ticular value, but it also contained Zadok’s journals. Binghorst leaned forward, his hands on his knees.

“You see, that’s the entire point. Ben Knell and me’s the only ones left at Red Warrior. The road’s twenty-seven miserable miles to St. George and in the winter there’s not much to do, so I sup- pose we read over the journals two- three times. There’s something naggy , something I can’t quite see, and I am troubled in myjnind. Ben Knell would be rolling cigarettes on his machine out of the San Diego Union and we’d both be puz- zling away — and I still don’t know what the matter is.”

“What sort of man was Cay’s father?”

“Quiet, quirky, fifteen years younger than Syl. Oh, for instance, he speculated on the names of things. He wanted to hire a phar- maceutical house to manufac- ture liquid hair soap so he could make a label that said REAL POO. Things like that. Little secret jokes, like the summer of ’forty- one when he bought a pound of columbine seed wholesale. McKana’s Improved, I think the name was. Went into the Sierras after tungsten and sprinkled the

seed all up and down Mono Creek and the Recesses where colum- bines grow. Said the native flower was pale gold and all the reds and purples and pinks ought to pop peoples eyes. He found scheelite so far back and high up nobody could get at it.

“Another thing Zad did was paint apples. Down in Santa Clara they grow very sprightly apples. He stirred up some whitewash and painted punkin faces on Romes and twenty-ounce and Wolf Rivers over at the top end of Mother Jep- person’s place when the fruit was a month from harvest. Just before picking time, he went in and wiped off the whitewash — and left the pale jack o’ lantern face on the red skins. Caused a stir- Never knew who did it until I read his journal.”

“What would you like me to do, Mr. Binghorst?”

“Well sir, I’m not a poor man. Even at thirty-five dollars an ounce, Ben Knell and me shoot just twice a year. Then we high-grade and concentrate and go over to Denver to the mint. Me and my partner bought the discovery mine when all the smart fellas quit.’’ Binghorst stuck out his tongue and raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Don’t really need to shoot twice, but it makes a change. So I can indulge myself.” He took a record book out of his coat pocket. It was five by six and half an inch thick. “I’d like you to read it, Mr. Ravenshaw. This is

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the last one, nineteen-forty to nineteen-forty-one. What will it cost?”

“Nothing. It might take a while.”

“No-no, whatever’ s right. I am not easy in my mind.”

“How do I get in touch with you?”

“Qh, Sylvanius! I do miss him.” The old man's voice was gentle and his smile was very sweet. “Some- body asked Syl how the weather was on Pine Mountain and he said, ‘We have nine months of hard winter and three months of damn- late-in-the-fall.’ It snowed after we got out and we can't get in a while. Just write to St. George.”

NELL ROWLEY was drowsing in the back seat of the 210 Cessna. She had folded her wind- breaker for a pillow and wore a plaid wool shirt that would drive a Scotchman to drink. Ravenshaw looked through the window and marveled that the pioneers ever reached the Pacific. This section of desert was desolate and deserted as it had been a hundred years before. The sun flooded the cabin as they flew east at 9000 feet at nine on a Saturday morning. The pilot chewed gum, watched the instruments and the sky, listened to his earphones and occasion- ally adjusted the trim. He was a fine, narrow-minded young man, interested only in flying. Ravem shaw approved of him, however

dubious he might be about the trip.

General Craddock woke him at six with a report on Cassandra Investments. Alonzo Johnson owned a string of newspapers in Nebraska and the Dakotas. Brander Lugard had been chief of the Charleston Port Authority. Cyrus Pfister had built a medical supply house into a mini-con- glomerate that dominated certain phases of the industry.

“How about Jain?” said Ravenshaw.

“Georgia Christian College, Rochester Institute of Tech- nology, University of Chicago. That’s a mixed bag. A commodity speculator, presidential economic advisor. World Bank expert. A very sharp and shifty sort of man.”

Asabian was a highway contractor, Milias was railroads. DeWitt, Masterson and Roeh- lich, O’Conner, Taddonio and Levering, all were low-profile suc- cess stories. They were models of financial acumen, but in some as- pects, slippery as greased pigs. Jain had once kept a mistress in all the Bowash cities and, when threat- ened by a blackmailer, had said, “Publish and be damned.” The invulnerability each man made for himself seemed to be a com- mon factor.

“Mummery is a wild westerner, old school. He was up and down in sheep and cattle and minerals until the war made him sell. He par- layed that money into a fortune

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD

41

when the Salt Lake exchange went wild with uranium in the early ’fifties. He’s into primary re- sources now, and holds things to- gether with an agrochemical company in Stockton.”

Ravenshaw asked if Cassandra had cooked the books and Crad- dock replied if they had, they were smarter than the IRS men he had combing them. He asked what was new with WBY. Ravenshaw told him about the man growing Holland cucumbers in an old citrus packing shed under red and blue lights. Ravenshaw had told the grower that incandescents gave off the same colors and the system was not patentable. The man accused him ~ of floc- cinaucinihilipilification and he con- descended to explain it was the ac- tion or habit of estimating as worthless.

“So maybe I’m overreacting to the charge. I’m going on a wild hare chase in a couple of hours. I made a deal with Fabio Marquien for his plane and a pilot. I’m vic- tim of my expressed opinion that I should be Johnny at the rathole.”

HE HAD taken Nell to dinner at an Italian restaurant and told her about Binghorst. She asked to see the journal while they were waiting for the pizza. Raven- shaw studied the Lombardy pop- lars on the wall, and the sheep and shepherdess with a rougish twinkle in her eyes, while Nell looked

through the old record book. She read by the light of a candle stuck in a wax-encrusted bottle. Her pal- omino hair was in disarray and her jumper, if he had the term right, was just as handsome a weave as Binghorst’s suit. Her eyebrows were mahogany brown and smooth and her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. She looked up and Raven- shaw’s heart stopped beating.

“Listen to this,” she said. “May fifth, nineteen-forty. Germany in- vades Holland, Belgium and Lux- emburg. The cold war is hot. I have no faith in Gamelin or Weygand. Cay asked why I was so excited by a war five thousand miles away. Must get new battery for all- wave Zenith. Mucked out today. Drill tomorrow.”

How could he ever have thought her voice high when it was silky velvet? Pitched above middle reg- ister, it had a sheen like sun through a bottle of clover honey.

“September twenty-two, nine- teen-forty. Kraut-Wop-Jap pact. Should not familiarize the enemy. Now it’s sure we won’t keep out of the war. School people agree Cay can stay at Red Warrior as long as Betty will teach. They supply books. Betty was onstage when Melchior watched the swan boat pull out ahead of time. How odd to have an opera star at Red Warrior and teacher for Cay.”

Her honey voice had lime in it, or lemon, or alum or quinine. Ravenshaw relaxed. A voice like

42

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cough syrup, that’s what.

“Are you listening?” She marked a page with a finger. She had violet eyes that ranged from soft lavander to purple. “Do you want to know what happened on December second? I’ll tell you what, Arleigh. Pearl Harbor.’’

“Sure. Zadok’s interests were Cay, the war and mining.’’

“December . second? Pearl Harbor?’’

“Uh-oh. I see what you mean.’’

“And I don’t think the Germans invaded Russia on June seven- teenth. If the error’s constant, he’s always five days off.”

“That could be what puzzled Binghorst. Wait a minute— I know — Zadok had a nineteen- thirty-five calendar in nineteen forty.

“Sure he did. And he used the. same calendar in nineteen-forty one.”

“Nineteen-thirty-six would keep the five-day differential. Bing- horst said Zadok had a fey sense of humor. Quirky practical jokes a specialty of the house. This is a chuckle from beyond the grave, that sort of thing.”

“Are you being intentionally obtuse? Sometimes you are. Just suppose you could see five days into the future.”

“ ‘If you’re smart, why ain’t you rich?’ ” said Ravenshaw.

“When her father died, was your wife poor?”

“We were married a year later.

Now look, Nell. The old man played the market. He went down to Fresno once a week and sat around at brokerage house. Cay got a fat wad of stocks and more money than anyone ever figured. But tell me this, if Zad could read the future, why should he piddle around with mines? I don’t believe it.”

“Arleigh, are you rich?”

“It runs to pie i la mode , if that’s what you want.”

“Arleigh, why have you stayed in the Army?”

“Just so I could meet you,” he said promptly.

“You’re a devious man.” She leaned back. “An evasive scoun- drel.”

Ravenshaw sighed heavily. “There used to be a popular philo- sophic ploy called free will versus predestination. It was just as much fun as counting angels on the point of a pin — ”

“Arleigh—”

“All right. I suppose we’d better look at the other journals. Thank God, here’s the pizza. I’m hun- gried to death.”

General craddock had

listened to all this and said, “Give a man enough rope and he can tie it around his world and measure it.”

“Isn’t there something about hanging himself?”

“Then hang loose,” the general had said and hung up.

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD 43

They were flying over Lake Mead now, the rock hills turned into peninsulas and the barren valleys into ragged coves by the startling blue water. The day was speckless. Boulder City was a sharp miniature in the crisp air.

Ravenshaw studied the map and asked, “Could we cut over by Pine Valley Mountain?”

The pilot said, “It’s a little up- hill. Ten-three, isn’t it?” Raven- shaw said he didn’t want to fly over, just parallel the range on the Pirte Valley side for a few minutes, then back and south to St. George. The pilot said, “No sweat.”

The Virgin River gorge made Ravenshaw glance at the snug in- terior of the plane, but the instru- ment panel with the full avionic pack, the toggles, switches and dials did not reassure him when he looked down again at the chopped- up land. He was intricately pack- aged, but he was conscious of the ^fragility of his protection. The amazing red sandstone country crawled lumpily below and built to the sweep of Pine Valley Moun- tain. While, the canyons were dun atid black with brush and ever- greens, every shelf and valley was white with snow.

“Maybe we’ve had a nice outing,” he said to Nell. “Enjoy the scenery.”

They banked and went downhill to St. George. The Temple was white and the cliffs were red, the cottonwoods and poplars were

44

leafless. The landing gear clunked and they set down at the airport. They taxied to the tie-down line and the pilot said he’d get gas and lunch and maybe a nap.

A medium-sized helicopter with private markings was being fueled by a small tanker. Standing to one side was a lean figure in cavalry twill pants and coat. The man had a paisley scarf at the open neck of his shirt.

He said, “Hello, Mr. Quin- tard,” and touched the brim of his dove-gray Stetson. Gray eyes in a gray, seamed face. Austin Mum- mery.

IV

LIKE most men, Ravenshaw had 20-20 hindsight. He could have said, “Nice to see you — ” and gone his way. When Mum- mery said he was going over to Red Warrior to check the cabin after last week’s blizzard, Ravenshaw might have said it was a fine day to fly up to Salt Lake City. Mummery said he had grubstaked Timberline Binghorst years before and they were partners in a mine. He had flown over from his ranch up Meadow Valley Wash from Glendale and why didn’t they come along to Red Warrior with him? The Vought Aloutte III cruised at 1 17 mph and they might enjoy the, experience.

So, like a cheerful idiot, Raven- shaw told his pilot they’d be back

IF

in a couple of hours and the pilot said if they were delayed, the Cessna flew well in the dark and he liked instrument flying.

Mummery introduced them to Ned Vasu, his pilot, a Filipino whose parents had come to Wenat- chee before the war. He had learned to fly in the Army and had spent three years in Germany. He was a quiet man with an impas- sive face and obviously an expert. The Aloutte rolled ten feet and bounded into the air. The noise level was lower than Ravenshaw had expected and there were none of the windleaks he associated with helicopters.

Flying a bird was the same as patting your head and rubbing your stomach. Mummery ex- plained. It took dexterity and tim- ing to handle the cyclic stick, the collective stick and the foot pedals all at once. “It’s expensive in time to learn,” he said, “and you’ve got to ration time. I’ll never be a lapidary because I can’t afford the patient hours. Op- tions close in as you get older.” Ravenshaw said, “Hadn’t we better turn north?”

“We’ll run over to the ranch for lunch,” said Mummery. His hooded eyes were not smiling.

“No way,” said Ravenshaw. “Turn this thing around. My time won’t wait for lunch.”

“Nor for any man. Colonel Ravenshaw?”

“Back to St. George.” Raven-

shaw unlatched his seat belt.

“Relax and enjoy, ” said Mummery. He had an old S&W revotver in his hand. “You are being kidnaped.” The gun had a bore like a sewer pipe. “Fasten your belt. No shenanigans or I'll plug your girl first.”

Ravenshaw raised his voice. “Vasu! They jug accessories.”

“Mr. Vasu came to me from Ft. Leavenworth on the intercession of a quite influential congress- man. Ned, is there anything criti- cal in that panel under the win- dow?”

“Only insulation, sir.” *

“Then don’t be surprised.” Mummery squeezed the trigger.

The bullet grazed Nell’s knee. Ravenshaw surged against his belt and dropped back. His ears rang. The .38 was fastened on him. Mummery coughed. Nell was white, staring at the rip in her pants and the blood beginning to seep from the scratch.

Mummery coughed again as the fumes sucked out. “That should establish my bona fides. Don’t de- lude yourself. I was curious enough after our first meeting to put men at the airports. Hollo- man lost himself at O’ Hare, but Quintard turned into Ravenshaw in San Diego — and he turned out to be a mysterious Army officer who was once married to Zadok Sandler’s daughter.”

Nell patted the slow seep of blood with a handkerchief. Raven-

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45

shaw turned his attention back to the mad old man. At the same time he went onto war status. Perhaps it showed, because Mummery’s big hand tightened on the pistol grip.

“What do you have in mind?” asked Ravenshaw.

“Friendly persuasion.” Air whistled through the hole in the panel. “Stuff your handkerchief in there, girl.’’ Nell did as she was told and the shrilling stopped. Mummery smiled and Raven- shaw noted that only his teeth and eyes were unwrinkled. “You are going to tell me about the alter- nate worlds and how to get there.’’ “You’ve flipped your wig.’’

“Lace your fingers behind your head, Ravenshaw. Don’t * fiddle with the belt. The life you save may not be your own. I don’t like waste, but there are lots of scrubby wom- en around.’’

NELL was sniveling. Her hair straggled over her face; one shoulder and elbow were pulled in toward her body. She looked like a charwoman after a twelve-hour shift. She may have convinced Mummery, but Ravenshaw thought she was as frightened as a nest of hornets.

“My colleagues at Cassandra are resigned to fate,’’ said Mum- mery in tones of sweet reason, “except for Jain — and I beat him to the punch. No question, the great achievement of the human brain is association, the assembly

of disparate facts to a purpose. What good is bumbling, innocent Binghorst, or Sandler’s crazy journals mildewing in a stope. Good for bait. Before we land, we’ll radio your pilot and tell him to drop off your bags at McCar- ran in Las Vegas and to go on home.’’

The revolver cracked again. The cut on Nell’s knee was paralleled by another. Mummery coughed and his eyes watered. The pistol did not waver. “I'll tolerate no more tomfoolery,’’ he told Nell. “Next time I take off your kneecap.”

“I duh-duh-didn’t mean any- thing,” she blubbered.

“You’re raising hell with a good secretary,” said Ravenshaw.

“You won’t be needing one — un- less you cooperate.”

“A carrot (or the donkey — what’s in it for me?’’

“Surcease,” said the old man. “And if you can persuade me to it, something better. I have only the simplest inducements to offer: food, water and warmth. That ought to be enough.” He glanced through the window and back at Ravenshaw. “We’re over the Tule Desert now and we’ll land on the Meadow Valley side of Mormon Mountains. There’s an old line house by a spring. Remote, isn’t it?”

There was no sign of a road, not even a game trail. Snow salted the tops of the ranges. Clouds were gathering to the north. It was lonesome lost country where in

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summer a coyote would pack a canteen. Vasu was mumbling into the mike about St. George and Las Vegas and leaving gear at McCar- ran.

Mummery said, “About a week ago Ned and I sawed off four-foot lengths of light rail — fifty pound — and fixed them in con- crete. Got some old logging chain and welded it to the tops of the posts, six inches off the ground. It’s twenty-foot chain and the spring is thirty feet away. Got some cuffs and tacked them on. One post on each side of the little creek. Nothing fancy. You can listen to the water until it freezes. When you want to talk with me. I’ll be in the cabin drinking coffee.”

“What do you want?’’ said Ravenshaw.

“Twenty or thirty or fifty years.” The old man was in dead earnest. “Is it a gate? A door? An entrypoint at Forrestal? Or is that a stinking red herring? I don’t ex- pect a fountain of youth. Maybe Jain had that in mind. There have got to be worlds where a man is not cut off in his prime. Too much to ask? I think not.” That answered General Craddock’s question about price. Mummery wanted something money couldn’t buy.

The helicopter was descending. Ravenshaw caught a look at a crooked stream in the bottom of the valley. Beyond, on a low mesa, was a large house with outbuild- ings. Jn the clear air he could see a

caterpillar tractor painted cat-yel- low by a corral. Dust swirled as they hovered a few feet above the ground. They landed — whup-whup, whup — the bird was quiet. Ned Vasu flicked switches. In a careful ritual dance, he stepped behind Mummery and opened the door, never blocking the pistol.

Mummery ordered his guests to the ground. “Don’t make a break for it. I gave the hands a week off with pay. There’s nobody around for twenty miles minimum.” The air was sharp and smelled of snow and sagebrush. Nell winced as she stepped down. Mummery backed off and Vasu stood slightly to his rear.

The Aloutte was across the creek from the old line shack and Ravenshaw got a good look at the posts and chains. The ground was sandy and had been cleared of brush. Thunder grumbled miles away. The little creek was rimed at the edges and the white trunks of the bare aspens made the land- scape even chillier.

Vasu stepped behind Mummery and whipped an arm around his neck, seized his right wrist and bent it behind his back. The cabin door opened and Swafford Jain walked toward them, an incongruous figure in high-laced boots of another age, whipcord breeches and a cashmere sweater under an old duffle coat. He wore a sheathed hunting knife. He carried a pump shotgun as if he knew how to use*

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD

47

it. ‘‘Join your friends, Austin,” said Jain.

Vasu had the .38. Mummery stumbled over to Ravenshaw and Neil, coughing and rubbing his wrist.

"Two items to mull over in hell, Austin,” said Jain, swiveling his head like an owl. “Ned is tired of driving your chopper and the important figure in our little puz- zle is Holloman — General Bill Craddock in real life. You should 7not be taken in by appearances.” He pushed his fur cap back on his polished hair. ”1 can do without the three of you.” He raised his shotgun. The stakes were high. He was a pragmatic old man.

Nell switched worlds.,

V

A HURTLING body knocked Ravenshaw off his feet. A shotgun bellowed. He was in the middle of a melee and he got up with a broken branch in his hand. A man in mottled brown and red came at him and Ravenshaw broke the length of punky aspen on his head. The man went down. Over the grunts and blows and shouts of the donnybrook came a whooping, steamy whistle — whoo-woo, whoo - wow, A man in green spun him around and Ravenshaw mashed his nose sideways with the heel of ' his hand. He caught a glimpse of Nell being dragged off before he

48

was blindsided and hit dirt. His fingers closed over the shotgun barrel. The stock was bent but solid. He swung it right and left with satisfying thunks and shoved the butt into the stomach of a man who staggered into Austin Mum- mery and knocked him over. The whistle sounded again.

The fight stopped as suddenly as Ravenshaw got into it. Men in red and brown ran downhill to a pecu- liar vehicle with a fiat platform. It began to move with a stately achoof-achoof noise. Jain had been dragged aboard with Nell. Raven- shaw ran toward it and sprawled over a body. The platform picked up speed on eight big wheels, mashing the sagebrush, lurching and creaking at 10 mph.

“My God, what’s happened?” Mummery clutched his arm. “Where did all those crazy Indians come from?”

“Custer’s last words,” snapped Ravenshaw. The man who had tripped him was Ned Vasu, dead and already dusty with a shotgun blast in his chest. Mummery was babbling. The old n\an drew back in alarm when Ravenshaw pulled away, and did not follow him down the slope. No one followed.

Ravenshaw jogged through the sagebrush, thinking about the revolving barrel at the funhouse in Santa Cruz. Once you slipped, there was no way to go but head over heels until you found your feet again. Nell Rowley had the pre-

IF

posterous ability to slip into the infinite worlds with as much ef- fort as falling through tissue paper hoops. He did not know how she did it, he only knew he had the nightmare sensation of being dropped into the middle of noon- time Istanbul with no trousers. A worse nightmare was being sepa- rated from Nell and marooned in an alternate world.

A wide shallow river ran down the valley with flourishing cotton- woods on either side. The sage was tall) and the bunch grass thick. Aspen and low oak grew on the slopes. The leaves were just begin- ning to turn color and this country obviously had more rainfall than his own world. The mechanical platform disappeared behind a low hill and Ravenshaw dropped to a walk with a stitch in his side.

Beyond the river was a rise to a bench, a low mesa with broken hills beyond. There were two long, enor- mous blurs on the bench, unlike anything he had ever seen before. A smaller blur squatted between the two. The sun was warm and the temperature in the seventies; there were no heat mirages and the air was crystal. The platform forded the river and struggled slowly up the slope on the other side. The passengers dismounted and pushed. He could see them clearly against the long reach of the northern blur.

A shallow wash meandered to the river and he stopped into a clump of screwbeans and looked

back. Austin Mummefy was walk- ing with some men in green. Even a half-mile away he looked chirlcy as a cricket. Ravenshaw waited until Mummery and his friends crossed the river and made their way up the rise. Ravenshaw went up to his chin in a channel near the far shore. There was no footpath and no road. He climbed the slope and crawled to the crest.

THE mesa had been leveled, but the ground was gullied to within a hundred yards of the blur. A concrete apron ran to the reach of his fuzzy vision. It was broken back here and there, in spite of a riprap and gravel base. He had a corner view of the enigma. It was rectangular and ran half a mile to the west and a full mile south. The middle blur was much smaller and oval in shape. He stood and followed the concrete apron south, to cut the tracks of the lum- bering steam vehicle. There were no friendly beer cans or gum wrappers. A low dune of rippled sand ran for two hundred yards along the blur, piled there by some subtlety of wind and configur- ation. He walked over a stretch of mud puddled halfway up the slop- ing concrete, curled and crazy- cracked since the last rain.

The wall was sixty feet high and cast a shadow beyond the river by the time he crossed the tracks. The tracks ran near the end of the struc- ture and vanished into the blur.

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD

49

Ravenshaw examined the build- ing closely for the first time. He tossed a rock at it. The stone slowed and fell to the ground. He broke a switch and poked. It was the same as poking a pound of butter on a boulder. When he whipped the branch, the energy of its motion was soaked up before it reached the surface. He had seen this phenomenon once before in the protective clothing worn by a man who called himself a Drish- na. It was evidently a physical principle unexploited on his own world.

Because he was unable to knock and there was no doorbell, he con- tinued around the structure. The south side was also featureless. He thought a strobe light might help and blinked, but he was not in any kind of synchronization. He reached the southwest corner and walked off the concrete for a bet- ter view. The terrain was ir- regular at a slightly lower level than the pad. If he crossed to the hills, he could at least see over the wall. They were a mile away but he get a look before dark.

Ravenshaw found himself walk- ing in an area intricately inter- cut by vertical channels. Sparse brush and a few rocks dotted the top; the cuts in the hard white clay bottomed out at twenty to twenty- five feet. The sun set and a few pink clouds reflected from the wa- ter standing at the bottom of a lit- tle gorge. He scrambled down for

a drink. His thirst satisfied, he continued along the narrow trench to an intersection with another and followed it upstream to meet a blank wall. He returned to the first channel, missed his way. It was al- most dark before he made it to the surface. A chilly wind had picked up, but he stood and thought that he had put in an outstandingly stupid day. Given a choice, he un- erringly picked the door that dropped a bucketful of slop on his head.

He groped for a handful of rocks and pitched one at a darker patch. It rattled down the side of a cut. He broke a branch of brittle wood and had to cut the leathery bark with his knife. He tasted the cam- bium and it was bitter. He thought of long-rats, the freeze-dried long range patrol rations issued by the army in Vietnam. He wished he were there and poked ahead with his stick.

Eleanor Farjeon said. The night will never stay I The night will still go by/ Though with a million stars/ You pin it to the sky . . . Ravenshaw thought this was a damn lie. It was the dark of the moon and the night had gone on for several weeks. He felt like a printed man in a maze puzzle for children: Little Arleigh wants to * get into the picture. Pick up your pencil and help little A rleigh.

HE HAD just proven to him- self that he was standing on a

50

IF

surface totally surrounded by moats. It was impossible. He tossed a pebble. He could touch the other side with his stick. He jumped in the dark and sprawled on another impossible tabletop. On legs rubbery from hunger, he followed a gray streak that led into a gorge. He could see the North Star and much good it had done him. He had been as directional as a hot Mexican jump- ing bean. The wind was cutting cold. The walls rose on either side.

He stepped into ankel-deep mud and was too tired to swear. A little later his foot slipped and he sat down in water. He was not as tired as he thought. He got up vigor- ously and bumped like a bee in a bottle between the clay walls. He hit a dead end, swore and turned back, turned around and threw a rock at it. Clang .

The bottom of the metal door was chin high. This particular cut in the clay was four feet wide, so he gouged steps in either wall with his knife and did the splits up to a bar in the middle of the door. The step caved away, the bar tilted and he fell to the muddy bottom. When he squirmed through on the next, try, the door closed on the small of his back, leaving his mug tangled with a short ladder inside and his wump dangling.

He was in a dark tunnel. He could scrape his Fingers and whack his head at the same time. Pru- dence made him crawl along the

rough bottom. When his knees gave out, he walked backward painfully, like a bear. It was bit- ter cold and when he kicked the end of the tunnel, he was surprised he did not shatter like a Dresden Figurine. He wanted to smile until he stood and hit his head against a metal rod. It was the rung of a Fixed ladder and he climbed itr

It went straight up for eight miles and when he topped out, his muscles were trembling uncon- trollably. When the twitches were spasmodic, he found he was in a closet about Five by eight with a low ceiling of slats. The walls were made of large smooth rectangles. He groped around, nearly felj down the shaft and found a rec- tangle with fingerholds in it. A plug came out of the wall, letting in blessed light. He squeezed into the hole and found himself looking at cardboard boxes across a width of floor: Goodbody and Son, Cal- cutta, Arizona. Select, Choice, Tenderfresh Collard Greens.

He closed the door through which he had squirmed. It was the middle case of a pallet load marked: Kohlrabi. Greens were piled three tiers high on either side. He walked to a cross aisle past case after case of Cardoon, Salsify, Florence Fennel and Spinach Dock, none of which interested him. Across the aisle were Broad Beans in Ham Gravy. He climbed twelve feet to the top pallet with only a glance at the blurred wall in

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD

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the distance. The cartons were not cardboard, but honeycomb plastic, and opened by turning an inset circle at either end of the case. The cans were institutional size, square and also plastic. They opened with a finger ring. It was almost warm so close to the dim ribbon lights in the ceiling. He ate a quart of beans with his fingers. He was thirsty, but he stretched out on top of the cases. He kicked the can of beans over the edge. He blinked his eyes. He fell asleep.

RAVENSHAW was perfectly willing to believe that other people had memorable dreams, but his own experience lay on what Nell Rowley once called “the shores of sleep.” He slept and his mind made figures of dreamdust in the hypnogogic state, the re- turn to wakefulness after sleep.

His wife had black eyes and shin- ing black hair. Her face was tri- angular and she moved like a dancer. When she stopped, she stopped like a statue. She spoke in a grumbly lovely voice without punctuation. He learned to listen to the melody as much as the sense. She strutted when she walked, went willowy when she chose, danced as she pleased: lady, loose lady or gamin. She had died instantly of an embolism while throwing dishes ten years before.

Cay Ravenshaw had been quick as sunlight through shadows, salt and sweet, with facets like a hand-

ful of emeralds. He remembered her beside a bed of tall cannas, red and yellow in the Oklahoma sun, caught with the flowers in an afternoon stillness. He saw her slim white body like a white velvet otter in the warm, willow-scent- ed Nacimiento River on the val- ley side of the Hearst San Simeon estate.

He was drowsily pleased with this true color representation. There had been other occasions when the topic was handled in off- purple hues to illustrate her chancy temper and blind demands for a better moon. There is a lady sweet and kind/ Was never face fo pleased my mind . . .

He murmured the words aloud. The brilliant black hair snapped to palomino without a fadeout or any prqper transition. Almost awake, he was too wary to un- bridle his imagination. He opened his eyes.

A woman was sitting crosslegged on top of Broad Beans and Ham Gravy, looking at him, statue still.

“You are a horrible sight,” she observed, “muddy and. mazed and bean-bespattered.”

Ravenshaw stifled a groan. “I hurt, too,” he said.

“What’s to be done and weary- deary,” she grumbled. “I prowl for pleasure and this is the onus of conspiracy and no benefit from it. I set a turkel to scrubbling your beans and mess from another world, no doubt. Oh willow woe,”

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IF

she said, “is me.” Her eyes be- trayed her languishing speech. They snapped with excitement.

“Excuse the expression,” said Ravenshaw, “But where am I?”

“In twenty-three-Kah-eight-sev- en-two.”

He waited and wondered if the sensation in his chest were fibril- lation. She was very much like his memory of Cay, vivid as the arc of an electric welder. She was also a little grimy. The smudge on her cheek and the dirt under her fin- gernails were misplayed notes in a symphony — oboe or contra- bassoon.

“This is the One Generation New World and I am of that gen- eration. If of an equal age, you wear less well than we.”

“What is a One Generation New World?” She looked to be in her early twenties. He ignored her grubby appearance and admired her straight-backed, crosslegged grace.

“We were set as babes on a multiple world with the bent philo- sophic to perfection in secret-—” Ravenshaw groaned. “Will you start from the beginning?”

She spoke slowly to a backward child, “A Floridian spirited to Cheyenne will be Cheyennese. A child of Texas grown in Boston will be cod-stiff and constant to its guidance. Or should the son of the King at Bonneville be childhood- ed at the court of Porfirio III, would he not on all counts but

color be conformable to his up- bringing?” She rubbed her nose with her wrist. “Therefore in us, the folly of our fathers is extir- - pated. We are the men beyond man, the ideal realized, experi- ment perilous carried to glorious fruition.”

“I’m thirsty,” said Ravenshaw, who had his doubts. He swung his legs around and hung over the edge of the cases on his stomach. “‘An ape’s an ape, a varlet’s a varlet, whether his clothes be green or scarlet,’” he said and climbed down to the floor. “Does this brave new world have a bath in it?”

SHE dropped beside him, nimble as a boy. “You are besotted with dirt and ignorance, an im- mensely improvable subject for the huffinpuffin,” she said with a flash of white teeth. She wore a rust and gold garment, a close fit- ting jumpsuit with stretch materia) at the waist and shoulders.

She turned down the canyon of boxes, around corners and to a narrow transparent door in a thick cross wall. When Raven- shaw hesitated, she. stepped into the cubicle herself. Dust sprang out in a cloud and was sucked through the floor. He would not easily forget her eyes squinneyed shut in her gamin face and the black sunburst of her hair. He found the huffinpuffin much like a sandstorm. The external mud fell into clay and sand com-

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53

ponents, there was a smell of ozone and his hair stood out from his head.

“Water solves thirst, too,” he said. “I feel scraped.”

“Water is an emotional concept currently but in allowance of obligation and generosity as well, I have potables stashed.”

She banged a vertical panel and a large door slid open, leading to another room piled high with boxes. They zigzagged through different sorts of vegetables, evidently more popular than those in the warehouse they had left. Ravenshaw stopped and quenched his thirst with a can of orange-colored tomatoes from a broken stack of boxes. She opened a can and ate a tomato, threw the rest away.

A humped, rectangular machine hauling a caboose crawled down the aisle, scuffed up the spilled to- matoes, swallowed the can and left the floor clean and shining. She said turkels wopld eat anything, but tomatoes were too lumpy for her, just like the lake, and led him to a narrow room with dusty fork- lifts along a wall. The girl rum- maged in a cupboard behind spare parts and brought out two tall cans. A flattish tube emerged when he pulled the tab. It was di- vided into larger and smaller sec- tions and when he drank, alcohol and pineapple juice mingled in his mouth. She said she had hidden the drinks three years before when

it became obvious that desirable items were in shorter supply. In a closed system there was no replacement. And she did miss swimming.

Ravenshaw asked how it could be a closed system when he had seen men outside? She choked and spluttered. She jumped to the floor and ran down a corridor and through a room filled with bales of cloth, into another with pipes and plumbing fixtures racked in rows, and turned abruptly into an area piled at haphazard with boxes. She danced over, around, through and across them with sure feet. Ravenshaw followed until she brushed three stacked containers that poured out feathered, scarlet balls. The girl was gone by the time he blundered through them. So was his sense of direction.

HE WANDERED through end- less rooms. There wlas no sound but his own footsteps in the whole enormous warehouse. The pattern of storage was random from his worm’s eye view and he felt like a bug walking over a blue- print. He stifled a feeling of panic when he thought of Nell Rowley and took the only sure direction open to him. When he founds stairs or ramps or a circular staircase, he went up. He stopped in a con- geries of rooms that held him in horrid fascination. He inter- preted them as roboticized nurs-

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cries with mimic mothers grown dusty beside individual pens.

One of the figures said, “You must take your nap, dear,” and ad- vanced toward him.

He fled in panic. The air was motionless and the floors were spotless, but when mother moved silently toward him her figure was alive with dust.

He ran across padded floors and infant toys into an artificial turfed gymnasium and lost the series when a corridor opened to an S-curved space with toys and games suitable for ten-year-olds. There was a row of booths against a wall and when he sat on a low bench at a table, a door closed and he was trapped.

A panel opened and he was served a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. His mouth was dry and the milk helped the peanut butter down. When he returned the plate and glass to the recess, the panel closed and the door opened.

A voice said, “Good child.”

He wondered if the children had dreamed of people behind walls, and decided that by ten they would be conditioned to accept taped voices. He tried anbther booth and was served the same menu. He was trapped again and ate the sand- wich but did not finish the milk. He thought milk was great for young cows. The door did not open when he returned the glass to the recess. He spilled it on the floor

and a small turkel scrubbed up the mess.

A voice said, “Finish your milk, dear — ” and he was served a full glass. He drank it and got out.

A little later he was caught in a study carrel. The voice had him solve problems in geometry with a stylus on a ground glass desk. The notation was different from his own, but the voice was patient and the explanation simple enough. The drawings remained until he tapped the erase bar. When the lesson was over he esti- mated the warehouse was five stories high and figured a little. He ended up with forty-three mil- lion plus square feet in the build- ing. The Pentagon had six and a half million. He got out of the carrel and stayed out of similar traps. What if he had befcn stuck in a history class? He found a com- pass in a room stocked with sup- plies for simple physical experi- ments. He went east and down at every opportunity. He opened one more door and stepped out- side.

He was in an enormous en- closed park, with hillocks and trees and grass and rocks. He could see a strange green surface through a screen of trees. There were cabanas and tents and tree houses. At least a hundred people were in view in almost a hundred different costumes. They were in their early twenties, though the va- riety of clothes and hairstyles gave

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the illusion of a much wider age range. A few were gathered around a youngster dyed bright pink who was reading from a manuscript. A woman dressed in ribbons caught at her neck and ankles was working at a crude loom. A man in a full spade beard and a red-lined cape was swinging in a swing with his eyes shut. The park was in hard use and the grass was badly scuffed. A mechanical gardener, a variety of the turkel, was planting marigolds in blos- som, followed by a girl who picked the flowers and tore them to shreds.

It was a contented scene with lit- tle cohesion. A woman engaged with some sort of dice looked at Ravenshaw, shrugged and went back to her game. He walked two hundred feet to the screening trees and through them to the shore of a lake, where a large group was following the progress of a four- wheeled steam vehicle. It had a central steering bar and the girl in the jumpsuit was dancing around on the platform with a dozen others. The man at the tiller pulled a large lever and the thing whistled like a horsedrawn 1890 popcorn wagon. The girl threw her arms around his neck as a wheel hit a rock and turned to the lake. Achoof-achoof it waddled into the thick water. The passengers jumped and struggled ashore through stinking mud, algae and ' weeds. There was an underwater

explosion, an intense burp that bubbled the surface before it flung gollops of green-brown slime into the air. It was a spectacular and ridiculous performance that hypnotized Ravenshaw. He looked around just in time to see Austin Mummery swing a short baseball bat at his head.

VI

Ravenshaw folded like a

cardboard skeleton.

He did not lose consciousness, but his thoughts went random. The old man doesn't pull his punches — with a length of sausage — tries to slam the ball into the centerfield stands — a very sincere effort — had to be a twenty-year-old sausage— a picnic in the park with friends— how nice . .-.

He was heaved upright by a cou- ple of men on each arm. They marched him back into the build- ing. He tried to keep his head from hobbling as he pedaled an invisible bicycle through what could have been a foyer if it had featured potted palms, through administra- tive offices to a large bare room lined with dull blue cabinets stuffed with electronic gear. Rows of jewel lights blinked; machined metal spools turned behind panels and a low drone filled the dry electric air.

The room lurched. Ravenshaw screwed his eyes shut. He sat down abruptly, as a chair hit the back of

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his knees. His head lolled forward. He opened one eye to see an earn- est young man with the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth walking around and around him in a dizzying pattern, and Ravenshaw was trussed with a white rope like a fly for a spider’s dinner.

Nausea surged and was gone. His eyes focused. Mummery was sitting in a cylinder of light. Ten feet away, Swafford Jain sat in an- other. They looked like two tom- cats full of canaries.

“ — so cream rises to the top,” said Jain complacently. “Is your mechanical genius going to build another steam wagon?”

“We have better equipment in storage and so do you,” said Mummery. “There’s a kind of fly- ing carpet I want to check out.” “What amazes me is the build- ing— the computer says the roof is laser-structured, absolutely dead flat — have you poked around in your library yet?”

“Enough to begin the lake. So much to do, so little time — ” “Time? Have you looked at the medical section?”

“Hah!” said Mummery and both old men smiled. “But I do wish you had dedicated yourself to scholarly pursuits. Do you sup- pose a mechanical background is essential to—”

“Technical,” said Jain. “With- out a technical base you stand on an intellectual skateboard — until you move. I wish you’d been an

absentee rancher and market ma- nipulator.”

“Too bad,” said Mummery. He looked at Ravenshaw from his cyl- inder of light. “We’ll take them one at a time, of course.”

“Certainly. If he wears out, we have the woman in reserve. We’ll find their method yet. Austin, I congratulate you on the idea. If this were Rome, I’d call you P.T. Barnum. Give ’em circuses.”

Jain faded and the projection vanished in a twinkle of light. Mummery yawned as his own cyl- inder dimmed to the light level of the room. His eyes were hooded. Rameses Three brooded.

Ravenshaw’s head throbbed in a slow drumbeat. He regretted his tendency to see the infinite worlds as dismal fantasies on the part of the natives. He could not over- come the idea that this was a fun- ny-money world. Funny-money, even though Ned Vasu had found death negotiable. He could even admire the old men for their cat- quickness to land on their feet. No energy wasted in recrimination. He had reservations about their situa- tional estimate, but, tied to the chair, all he could do was sit tight His grin was sour.

It was somehow comical that he had found the wrong warehouse — he had had a choice of three struc- tures— after his search for Nell in the night and it was fairly humor- ous that Mummery had slugged him with a salami. It was less fun-

ONE-GENE RATION NEW WORLD

57

ny that this world's young inhabi- tants seemed to have fallen into line so easily with the suggestions of the two old men. Cream rises to the top . Granted that Jain and Mummery were charismatic char- acters, it was an accomplishment for them to have assumed author- ity here with such ease. He said as much to Mummery.

“How about it?”

“They are anarchists. They be- lieve that everyone should do what he wants to do. The idea of com- mon good is alien to them. They live in a vacuum of the present without historical perspective, so they have no judgment. Push the proper button and they drool like

“Big deal, cleaning the lake. Why didn't they do it themselves?’’ “Change filter and flamer and flow patterns. I've been thinking about that. No responsibility? Ev- ery man his own master? They have no children to test themselves against— something to do with the closed system — so pride incurs no obligations and accepts none. Only ^ stranger can kick his way out of this paper bag.’’

“They don’t look stupid to me.’’ “Ravenshaw, I wouldn’t think you stupid leading a squad or maybe a platoon — but I’ve noticed that army officers, clergy and pro- fessors always buy enough phony oil stock to paper their walls. You people live in a protected situation, inside a security framework, like

monkeys in a zoo. You are public welfare cases. Me? I had to cut out a tin beak and peck around with the rest of the chickens.’’

“So why did they fight at the springs — when we first came here?’’

“That was a joint venture. A limited-liability company had gone out to get fresh water and exercise the eight-wheeled steam hoopee. Another band of gentleman ad- venturers jumped them. We just happened to show up in the mid- dle. Ravenshaw, how did we get into this world? Tell me, and I’ll arrange some accommodation.’’ “Just lucky, I guess.’’

The old man favored him with a basilisk glance and shrugged. “Call me stout Cortez,’’ he said.

“Pizarro is a real sweet guy, too,’’ said Ravenshaw.

“I’ll miss your conversation,’’ said Mummery, “but not much.’’ He stood and stretched and left the room.

THE girl walked in and patted Ravenshaw’s cheek as she crossed to the phone. She activated the light cylinder. A person ap- peared. Ravenshaw didn’t care if the instrument was a vid or a see- easy or an Ojo de Dios, an Eye of God. This was a funny-money world. Where was Nell Rowley? They ought to cut out of here. f The girl spoke to a man with red hair and a freckled face who ap- peared in the cylinder of light. “I

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think the woman is something called a Mier and they’re a trick- some species. It turns out they dis- appear and the library hahs and hums about whys and hows and whatever — keep an eye on her.”

Freckles leaned forward to touch controls. “She’s solid enough,” he said as the cylinder enlarged to include Nell.

Nell had a stony expression. Her head stuck out of a box that was like a steam cabinet. She looked at Ravenshaw in his wrappings and smiled. “Well, Arleigh. Quite a world, isn’t it?”

“Amscray!” said Ravenshaw in a choked voice.

“Utsnay,” said Nell. “How do I get out of this box? Besides, I’ve been to a lot of trouble over you. I might not be able to get back.”

Colonel Ravenshaw said, “That’s an order!”

His detachment had vanished. It fried the edges of his soul to see Nell with her head sticking out of a box. He turned red, lurched for- ward and tumbled to the floor, chair and all. He got a sideways look at her eyes before Freckles dimished the cylinder to himself. He had never thought violet could be such a hot color. He was wet with sweat,

“ — keep them around for jollies maybe, why not?” the girl said, and the projection faded. She walked over and nudged Raven- shaw with her toe. “Don’t go away. A closed system needs variety and the entertainer should be worthy

of his audience. Those two old men have amusing ideas and men are as alike as feathered balls and what does one ball more or less matter?” She hunkered down and regarded him more closely. “And yet — you are a beast of some char- acter— who can tell? Raised under a different sun — or the same sun — there’s disagreement on the ques- tion.” She frowned. “Still, it might be best if you were scrubbed.

Her words registered for later examination. Ravenshaw lay on the floor and repeated Nell’s jin- gle. With all the intensity he could command, he wanted her back in their own world. He screwed down his eyelids until his eyes hurt. He had not forgotten a vivid picture she had once given him of a small girl in the shade of a chinaberry tree, singing a lonely song to her doll, Elinor:

The worlds exist in the mind alone —

Who knows this truth can dance with fire

Or fly through air or float on stone .

They were not magic words that spilled you through worlds like a riffled deck of cards. The song was conditioning to the idea that infi- nite worlds existed thicker than fruit on a chinaberry tree. It might also indicate that labels of body and mind were devisive and if an individual held unity at a level of

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60

belief, such things as dancing with fire or jumping worlds or sailing on a boulder were possible. Id, ego, super-ego? Jargon. Don't look at the tree trunks or the snake or the wall of the building, dammit, look at the elephant whole.

Then all worlds were funny- money worlds, just like a Pancho Villa ten-peso note when Pancho himself presented it to a store- keeper. It was irrelevant that it was homemade. It was legal tender when backed by a .45 revolver. If the storekeeper thought it was fun- ny-money, he had a weak grip on reality.

Go, Nell, go!

Just because Ravenshaw had been an idiot when he stepped into the helicopter and it seemed inad- visable to change worlds in the air, and he was fuddled when Ned Va- su jumped Mummery all this was no reason why Nell should be stuck in a box.

Go, Nell, go!

Two husky young men heaved the chair back onto its legs. Rav- enshaw opened his eyes because he had been washed over by a sense of comfort. He drew the conclusion that Nell had escaped, switched worlds, was out of danger. It was the same relief a skindiver knows after two minutes under water.

Mummery was back in his chair talking with Jain.

Jain enlarged the cylinder of vi- sion and there was Nell Rowley with her eyes shut and a faint

61

smile on her face, still prisoned in the box.

VII

WHEN three men unrolled the rope and led him to another room, Ravenshaw waited until his reflexes seemed dependable before he kicked one in the stomach, backhanded another in the adam’s apple and chopped the third under the ear with the side of his hand. Cay appeared and pointed to a door. He slammed it open and ran into a crowd. He turned and Cay had another gang of men running to meet him. It was a brief excur- sion into freedom.

They spreadeagled him over their heads and carried him through the interminable ware- house. When one tired, another took his place. Ravenshaw had no idea that gripping hands could be so painful. They were whooping and yelling and singing, men and women, the whole mob, and all his addled brain could do was repeat, “If it wasn’t for the honor of the thing — if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing — ’’ He was too scram- bled to finish Mark Twain’s re- marks about the man tarred and feathered, riding on a rail. When he was stood on his feet with the world reeling around him, he knew he would rather be elsewhere — ex- cept for the honor — and he would have fallen to the floor except for two dozen hands supporting him.

His vision cleared and he identi- fied the wet stuff as a nose-bleed dripping off his chin. He might as well have stayed dizzy, because the building in which he found himself was unreasonable, unfamiliar and unlike anything in his experience. Bleachers followed the curve of the oval dome on either side, but between the tiered seats was a gulf, a void where a basketball court might have been. There was a pier, a stack, a tower in the middle, a central oval island rising from the depths, repeating the curve of the seats. The tunnel from the north was on the east side. The tunnel through which he had been hauled was to the right. The gulf was a constant width from one end of the building to the other. The roof arched overhead in the ambiguous blur.

Latecomers straggled in. The bleachers were almost full. The spectators got to their feet when the doors of the tunnels closed. It was kickoff time. A cylinder of light appeared in the middle of the oval platform. A man with a be- nign expression stood there. His voice carried without distortion, but Ravenshaw could catch only parts of the speech, due to the tu- mult of boos and catcalls.

“ — resources and ingenuity of our community — twenty-six years in conception and planning, eight years to build and supply — chosen genetic stock — no immediate re- turn from this colossal investment

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” When the audience chanted along with the speaker, Raven- shaw realized this must be a re- cording and wearisomely familiar. 44 — transmogrified to men beyond man, mankind changed in one gen- eration— ” He lost the rest in the hoots and shouting and caught only the conclusion. “ — so in trust and love, bless you, our chil- dren.”

The projection faded. A bridge like a tongue of steel arched to the island. It rose up and out, three feet wide with no rails. It was white and made a smooth join at the far side. First class engineering, was Ravenshaw’s opinion.

The girl who looked so much like Cay walked onto the island dressed in ice-blue, a shimmering garment that must have been un- comfortably tight from her toes to her neck, where it broke into a frothy collar framing her face in blue ice. She waited for relative quiet.

“Anybody want to jump?” she said. “I deplore private suicide. It’s deprivation of us all, selfish and a nuisance, and you might just as well make an occasion of this. If you need something fanci- er than jumping — remember, only two people missed all the pipes and there’s a challenge — talk it over with your friends. The spirit of our new world demands a little con- sideration, not much maybe, but some. We’ll arrange anything rea- sonable, hanging, head-chopping.

whatever you want. Any takers?” She waited and said, “Second item’s transfers. Come on over, anybody.” Eleven men and women crossed the bridge and stood to one side. The girl stepped on and the bridge retracted. The bridge from the other side slid out to the island. Freckles rode it over. Eight people followed him and cleared the way for the transfers.

“I have old business and con- tinuing business and dammit,” said Freckles. The gabble of the audience dropped. “I know we got entertainment tonight and I don’t want to naggle anybody, but those clowns who busted out after water had a good time and a nice fight, but they’re going to yince us up. Maybe a session tomorrow? Think about it, dammit — we’re either a closed system or we’re not. They had us programed to bury seeds in the ground, dammit, three years ago dammit, and build houses arid raise kids and all that, and I still say the hell with it and those clowns are going to yince us up good. Think about it.”

His bridge sucked in and the girl’s went out. The transfers walked over and found seats. She said, “Don’t yell the bridge, the bridge at me because nobody’s fig- ured how to schtunk the system yet. Library says we’re positive and negative and you shove some- thing between and bang, it blows. And those guys who busted out found out how to bust out, so why

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worry about a bridge anyway?” There was a chorus of boos and die thumbed her nose at both sides. She stuck out her tongue, patted her head and pointed a fin- ger down. That was evidently a ruder gesture because it was greeted with shouts of laughter and anger. “Fahngulah!” she said. A witty riposte, thought Raven- shaw, because everybody laughed. “Entertainment!” she yelled, and he was shoved onto the bridge.

LONG bamboo sticks urged 'him forward. He stumbled and got a good ldok at an oily, churn- ing liquid two hundred feet below. A wind sucked down. There was a maze of large and small pipes from the wall to the stack, color coded, entering at all angles and elevations. Offhand, he didn’t be- lieve a sockful of oatmeal could make it down to the liquid without hitting a pipe. A stick popped him in the neck and he wrenched it out of the hands of a man behind him, and staggered to the island. He turned to the girl, but she avoided him neatly. He could have tipped her into the void, but saw no point to it.

When she cleared the bridge, a turkel started briskly up the far side.

“This is a heat-seeker,” said Mummery. “Don’t suppose it’s been activated for a coon’s age.” Ravenshaw found the old man di- recting a horn at him from the

middle of the bleachers. “Big problem with warehousing is ver- min. If the rats don’t get you, the mice will.”

The turkel turned toward Rav- enshaw as the bridge retracted. It spawned two sixteen-inch snakes before he got his stick under the edge and tipped it into the gulf. Three more wriggled out in the air. There was a cling-clang- whanging noise as they bounced on pipes. The snakes darted at him. They were covered with short, fine wire for traction; their micromin- iaturized sensing gear was elegant. When he tried to smash one with the stick, it avoided the blow and kept coming in. It chewed on his toe and he stomped it with the oth- er foot. He bent down and swept off the second with his stick.

“Watch out, Arleigh!” Nell shouted over the crowd noise. She, too, had a horn.

From the other side another tur- kel unloaded snakes and they wrig- gled toward him. He ran to the far end of the oval. The little mechan- ical monster had chewed through his boot with a rotating blade and he had a shuddersome idea of what a dozen might do. Cut off my legs and call me Shorty. He kneeled with the gulf behind him and, as the snakes converged, he swept them away with the stick, one side and the other, until they were gone. Both bridges were re- tracted now. He tipped the mother turkel off and had time to look for

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Nell. Jain had wrestled the horn from her hand and spoke into it.

“See how you like the old hot- foot.”

“Pre-emergence weed flamer,” said Mummery from the other side. “Give you something to think about. Of course, you can use it for mature row crops if you have the right baffles — ”

Ravenshaw ran to the center of the oval. The first turkel was al- most to the island, shooting out blue flame around its edges. Fol- lowing across the bridge were, five more firespitters. Ravenshaw leaped onto the back of the first through a blast of heat, caught his balance on the rounded surface and took desperate six-foot strides on the backs of the others over the bridge. With momentum, he scat- tered spectators right and left as he leaped up the bleachers.

He had Mummery by his an- tique throat before he heard Jain yelling on the horn, “Choke the old bastard and I stab the girl!”

HE LOOKED across the gulf.

Jain had. his knife at Nell's breast.

“All right. Maybe we can make a deal.” Ravenshaw tucked Mum- mery's head in the crook of his arm, told him to come along or he’d tear it off, and returned across the bridge to the island. The crowd was in a tumult. They enjoyed the action and took a while to settle down for the next act.

Jain said, “l changed my mind.. Go ahead and strangle him.”

The girl. Cay, had followed Rav- enshaw across the bridge. She came up and kissed him full on the mouth. “It’s immoral, but go ahead and stick her,” she shouted to Jain. Ravenshaw dropped the old man. She announced further: “I’ll take him dirty and forlorn and we’ll make you silly clowns cringe, won’t we, poppet?”

“In a pig’s valise you will,” said Ravenshaw.

She slapped him broadhanded. He jerked her to him by the collar of her suit and spanked her over his knee. The crowd went wild. This was the best entertainment in years. He dropped Cay and caught Mummery before he reached the bridge and dragged him to the mid- dle of the oval. He could not see Nell in the surging crowd. Cay was back on her own side and Freckles rode his bridge to the is- land with Jain in his grasp.

“Weapons are immoral and vio- lence is nasty,” said Freckles. He dropped the old man and retreated. Ravenshaw welcomed him aboard with a kick that drove him sprawl- ing after Mummery to one end of the oval.

He looked again for Nell and could not see her in the cheering crowd. The bridge was alive with fire. New turkels advanced, shoot- ing a blaze that made the bleach- ers waver in the heat. The six tur- kels already on the island met

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65

those from the other side. The twelve formed a line and advanced slowly on Ravenshaw. The old men were at the other end of the oval. Both bridges were withdrawn.

“Uh-oh, dance with fire or fly through air?” said Ravenshaw soft- ly. He retreated. He was bloody and battered. He was on an alien world with the choice of being broiled or bouncing two hundred feet through a web of pipe to the sewer works.

The wall of flame advanced. He stood on the edge of the drop. He looked at the ceiling. It was prop- erly described as a surface of re- volution around an axis. These people had revolved around an un- expected axis, no matter the fore- thought and idealism of the build- ers. The far limits of the beast are unknown, though certain predis- positions have been observed in 6000 years of history. A revolting development. Ravenshaw sheltered his face from the furnace blast with his hands and said, “It only hurts when I laugh.1'

So why couldn't he be all things at once, scared spitless, raging mad, filled with apprehension for Nell and laughing?

Look at the elephant whole. Keep cool^ Ravenshaw.

A creeping blue flame licked the fuzz of his trousers.

Believe or bum, my dear Raven- shaw.

A whole man vanished from the One-Generation New World.

IT WAS dark and cold. Raven- shaw brushed out the little fires. Hard pellets of snow rattled on the ground. He was standing at the corner of a corral next to Mum- mery's ranch house up Meadow Valley Wash in his own world. That thing was the D-8 tractor, cat-yellow, cat-black in the bitter night. His foot slipped on the ice when he climbed up and he just avoided breaking his neck. He took the tin can off the stack and put down the seat. He was shiver- ing with cold by the time he got the big diesel going. It blew smoke rings, tattered away by the wind, and he shuddered as the engine smoothed to a responsive bellow. He advanced the throttle and raised the blade in front and the rippers behind. He located a gear, pulled the friction, spun around and rumbled to the corner of the corral in which he had found him- self. He rode over the posts, and stopped.

“Come back often, now that you know the way,'' he growled.

Cat and man vanished.

THEY appeared just about where Ravenshaw wanted to be, on the island between retracted bridges. Only a few people were left of the crowds on either side. Jain was sulking at one end of the long oval, Mummery at the other. Nell was nowhere in sight. He left the diesel idling and stood up. The two wise men stared at him, wild

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and bloody on the snow-encrusted cat.

“I’ll read the future/' said Rav- enshaw, “not that you'll take the advice. Hang together or you'll hang separately."

Mummery said, “They left us here — awfully nice of you — "

Jain blinked his owl eyes.

“Angle the blade and bridge the cat," said Ravenshaw. “Maybe you can reach the side before the balance point. Maybe you can't. I'll miss you, gentlemen, but not much."

He vanished.

NELL ROWLEY fell into step beside him as he walked from the corral to the house. “I got lost," she said.

The kitchen door was unlocked or Ravenshaw would have kicked it in. When he turned on the light switch a generator started up, fluorescents stuttered to brightness and he got a good look at her. There was blood, still wet, on her horrible plaid shirt. He held him- self stiff as a glass man.

“A dozen frantic worlds," she said, “all wrong."

He cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you what let’s," he said huskily. “Let’s not touch a thing — ’’

“I homed on you," she said. “That’s what let’s not touch. I want a shower and shave and a set of the old man’s pinks. I don’t like this place, any part of it— there’s bound to be a car or pickup — we’ll

get our stuff at McCarran — save water in Las Vegas — if you like — " The hottest violet eyes in the world blazed affirmation.

“With a friend?" she said in her honey voice.' “All right to touch a coffeepot?" she asked and the bones melted in his legs.

“Yarp," he croaked and stum- bled away.

MUCH later on that night she said drowsily, “Break the pipes or make a permanent bridge —either opens the closed system."

“Uh-huh, they gotta turn to the real world, cat or no."

“Two buildings are sound psy- chological engineering," she mused. “You get rivalry, romance, mystery, someplace to go — " “Uh-huh." He was altogether relaxed. “If you’re going to change a world, how do you program the programers?"

“Very carefully." She yawned. “What time is it?" He thought of a cat yawning, the tip of its pink tongue quivering. He grinned with pure delight in the dark. She stuck an elbow in his ribs. “What do we tell the general?"

“Lady, we’re on our own time." “We ought to catch the seven- o’clock plane."

“All right," said Ravenshaw, “but hush for now. This is the first morning of the rest of my life and I want to start it right."

“Sententious, Arleigh dear — ’’ she said, and fell silent. •

ONE-GENERATION NEW WORLD

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GENE WOLFE

SLAVES

OF

SILVER

No room left in the world — but there

THE day I formed my connec- tion with March B. Street has remained extraordinarily well fixed in my memory. This shows, of course, that my unconsious— my monitor, 1 should say; you must pardon me if I sometimes slip into these anthropomorphic terms; it's the influence of my profession- What was I saying? Oh, yes. My monitor, which of course sorts through my stored data during maintenance periods and wipes the obsolete material out of core, re- gards the connection as quite im- portant. A tenuous connection, you will say. Yes, but it has endured.

The hour was late. 1 had finished the last of my house calls and it was raining. I may be more careful of my physical well-being than I should be, but my profession makes me so and,, after all, quite a number of people depend on me. At any rate, instead of walking to my quarters as was my custom 1 bought a paper and seated myself in a kiosk to read and await the eventual arrival of the monorail.

In twenty minutes I had read everything of interest and laid the paper on the bench beside my bag. After some five minutes spent watching the gray rain and think- ing about some of my more trou- blesome patients I picked it up again and began (my room being, in several respects, less than satis- factory) to leaf through the real estate ads. I believe I can still re- member the exact wording:

Single Professional wishes to share apt. (exp. cist.) Quiet hbts, no entrtnng. Cr8/mo.

The cost was below what I was paying for my room and the idea of an apartment —even if it were only an expanded closet and would have to be shared -was appealing. It was closer to the center of the city than was my room, and on the same mono line. I thought about it as I boarded, and when we reached the stop nearest it (Cathedral) I got off.

The building was old and small, faced with unlightened concrete time had turned nearly black. The address I sought was on the twen- ty-seventh floor; what had once been a single apartment had been opened out into a complex by means of space expanders, whose all-pervading hum greeted me as I opened the door. One had, for a moment, the sensation of tumb- ling head first into gulfs of empti- ness. Then a little woman, the land- lady, came fluttering up to ask what it was I wanted. She was, as I saw at once, a declassed human.

I showed her the ad. “Ah,” she said. “That’s Mr. Street, but I don’t think he’ll be wanting any of your sort. Of course, that’s up to him.”

I could have mentioned the Civil Liberties Act, but I only said, “He’s a human, then? The ad said, “Single Professional.” Naturally I thought—”

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“Well, you would, wouldn't you,” the little woman said, look- ing at the ad again over my shoul- der. “He’s not like me. I mean even if he is declassed, he’s still young. Mr. Street’s a strange one.”

“You don’t mind if I inquire, then?”

“Oh, no. I just didn’t want to see you disappointed.” She was looking at my bag. “You’re a doc- tor?”

“A bio-mechanic.”

“That’s what we used to call them — doctors. It’s over there.”

It had been a hat and coat closet,

I suppose, in the original apart- ment. There was a small brass plate on the door:

MARCH B. STREET CONSULTING ENGINEER &

DETECTIVE

1WAS reading it for the second time when the door opened and I asked, quite without thinking how it might sound, “What in the world does a consulting engineer do?”

“He consults,” Mr. Marche Street answered. “Are you a client, sir?”

And that was how I met him. I should have been impressed — I mean, had I known — but as it was I was only flustered. I told him I had come about the apartment and he asked me in very politely. It was an immense place, filled to bursting

with machines in various stages of disassembly and furniture. “Not pretty,” Mr. Street remarked, “but it’s home.”

“I had no idea it would be so big. You must have—”

“Three expanders, each six hun- dred horsepower. There's plenty of space out there between the galax- ies, so why not pull it down here where we need it?”

“The cost, I should say, for one thing. I suppose that’s why you want to — ”

“Share the apartment? Yes, that’s one reason. How do you like the place?”

“You mean you’d consider me? 1 should think — ”

“Do you know you talk very slowly? It makes it damned diffi- cult not to interrupt you. No, I wouldn’t prefer a human. Sit down, won’t you? What’s your name?” “Westing,” I said. “It’s a silly name, really — like naming a hu- man Tommy or Jimmy. But the old ‘Westinghouse’ was out of style when I was assembled.”

“Which makes you about fifty- six, confirmed by ihe degree of wear I see at your knee seals, which are originals. You’re a bio- mechanic, by your bag— which should be handy. You haven’t much money; you’re honest — and obviously not much of a talker. You came here by mono, and I’d almost be willing to swear you presently live high up in a fairly new building.”

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“How in the world — ”

“Quite simple, really, Westing. You haven’t money or you wouldn’t be interested in an apart- ment. You’re honest or you’d have money — no one has more and better chances to steal than a bio- mechanic. When a passenger with a transfer boards the mono the conductor rips up the ticket and, half the time, drops it on the floor — and one is stuck to your foot with gum. And lightened con- crete and plastic facades have giv- en us buildings so tall and spindly- framed that the upper floors sway under the wind load like ships. People who live or work in them take to bracing themselves the way sailors used to — as I notice you’re doing on that settee.”

“You are an extraordinary per- son,” I managed to say, “and it makes me all the more sur- prised— ” And here I am afraid I stopped speaking and leaned for- ward to stare at him.

“Extraordinary in more ways than one, I’m afraid,” Street said. “But although I assure you I will engage you as my physician if I am ever ill, I haven’t done so yet.” “Quite so,” I admitted. I re- laxed, but I was still puzzled.

“Are you still interested in shar- ing my little apartment, then? Shall I show you about?”

“No,” I said.

“I understand,” Street said, “and I apologize for having wasted your time. Doctor.”

“I don’t want to be shown the door, either.” Though I was upset, I must admit 1 felt a thrill of some- what guilty pleasure at being able to contradict my host. “1 want to sit here and think for a minute.” “Of course,” Street said, and was silent.

LIVING with a declassed human (and there was no use in my de- ceiving myself — that was what was being proposed) was a raffish sort of thing. It was bound to hurt my practice, but then my practice was largely among declassed humans already and could not get much worse. The vast spaces of the apartment, even littered as they were, were attractive after years in a single cramped room.

But most of all, or so I like to think, it was the personality of Street himself which decided me — and the fact that I detected in him, perhaps only by some professional instinct not wholly rational, a physical abnormality I could not quite classify. And there was, in addition, the pleasing thought of surprising my few friends, all of whom, I knew, thought me much too stuffy to do any such outlandish thing. I was giving Street my money — half a month’s rent on the apartment — when he froze, head cocked, to lis- ten to some sound from the foyer.

After a moment he said, “We have a visitor, Westing. Hear him?”

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“I heard someone out there.” “The light and tottering step is that of our good landlady, Mrs. Nash. But there is another tread — dignified, yet nervous. Almost certainly a client.”

“Or someone else to ask about the apartment,” I suggested.

“No.”

Before I could object to this flat contradiction the door opened to show the birdlike woman who had admitted us. She ushered in a dis- tinguished-looking person well over two meters tall, whose po- lished and lavish solid chrome trim gave unmistakable evidence, if not of wealth, then at least of a suf- ficiency I — and millions of others — would only envy all our lives.

“You are Street?” he asked, looking at me with a somewhat puzzeled expression.

“This is my associate, Dr. West- ing,” Street said. “I am the man you came to see, Coniissioner Electric. Won’t you sit down?”

“I’m flattered that you know my name,” Electric said.

“Over there past the nickelode- on,” Street told him, “you’ll see a cleared spot for tri-D displays. There are several cameras around it. Whenever a man I don’t know appears I photograph the image for later reference. You were inter- viewed three months ago in con- nection with your request for ad- ditional expanders for the hiring hall, made necessary by the de-

pressed state of the economy.”

“Yes.” Electric nodded and it was plain that Street’s recital of these simple facts, accurate as it was, had depressed still further spirits already hovering at the brink of despair. “You have no conception, Mr. Street, of how ironic it seems that I should hear now — here — of that routine re- quest for funds, and so be re- minded of those days when our hall was filled to bursting with the deactivated.”

“From which,” Street said slow- ly, “I take it that the place is now empty — or nearly so. I must say I am surprised; I had believed the economy to be in worse condition — if that is possible — than it was three months past.”

“It is,” Electric admitted. “And your first supposition is also cor- rect— the hall, though not empty, is far from crowded.”

“Ah,” said Street.

“This thing has been driving me to the brink of reprograming for six weeks now. The deactivated are being stolen. The police pretend to be accomplishing something; but it’s obvious they are helpless — they’re only going through the mo- tions now. Last night a relative of mine — I won’t name him, but he is a highly placed military officer — suggested that I come to you. He didn’t mention you were a de- classed human, and I suppose he knew that if he had I wouldn’t have come, but now that I’ve seen you

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I’m willing to take a chance.” ‘That’s kind of you,” Street said dryly. ‘‘In the event I succeed in preventing further thefts by bringing the criminals to justice my fee will be — ” He named an astro- nomical sum.

‘‘And in the event further thefts are not prevented?”

‘‘My expenses only.”

44TVONE. You realize that these -l-^thefts strike at the very fab- ric of our society, Mr. Street. The old rallying cry, Free markets and free robots , may be a joke now to some, but it has built our civiliza- tion. Robots are assembled when the demand for labor exceeds the supply. When supply exceeds de- mand— that is, in practical terms, when the excess cybercitizens can’t make a living — they turn them- selves in at the hiring hall, where they’re deactivated until they’re needed again. If news of these shortages should leak out — ”

‘‘Who would turn himself in to be stolen, eh?” said Street. ‘‘I see what you mean.”

“Precisely. The unemployed would resort to begging and theft, just as in the old days. We already have — I hope you’ll excuse me — enough of a problem with declassified humans. You yourself are obviously an exception, but you must know*what most of them are like.”

“Most of us,” Street replied mildly, “are like my landlady: peo-

ple who lost class because they re- fused death at the end of their na- tural lifespans. It’s not very easy to learn to earn your living when for a hundred years of life society has handed you an income big enough to make you rich.”

It wasn’t really my affair, but I couldrrt help saying, “But if you can help Commissioner Electric, Street, you’ll be helping your own people in exactly this area.”

Street turned his eyes — which were of an intense blue, as though his photosensors were arcing— to me. “Is that so, Doctor? I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you.”

Electric said, “I should think it’s obvious. Surely the motive for stealing our deactivated workers must be the desire to use them as forced labor, presumably in a se- cret factory of some sort. If this is being done, the criminals are com- peting illegally with everyone try- ing to earn an honest living — in- cluding the declassed.”

I nodded my emphatic agree- ment. The thought of an illicit fac- tory, perhaps in a cavern or aban- doned mine, filled with dim figures laboring without cease under the threat of destruction, had already come to haunt my imagination.

“Slaves of silver,” I muttered half aloud, “toiling in the dark.” “Possibly,” Street said. “But I can think of other possibilities — possibilities you might find more shocking still.”

“In any event,” Commissioner

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Electric put in, “you will want to visit the hiring hall.”

“Yes, but not in company with you. I consider it quite possible that the entrance may be watched. Human beings do visit the hall from time to time, I assume?” “Yes, usually to engage domes- tics.”

“Excellent. Under what circum- stances would you deal with such visitors personally?”

“I would not ordinarily do so at all, unless all my subordinates were engaged.”

Street looked at me. “You seem to want to be a party to this, West- ing. Are you game to visit the hir- ing hall with me? You must con- sider that you may disappear — for that matter we both may.”

“Oh, no,” Electric protested, “the disappearances occur only af- ter dark, when the hall is closed.” “Certainly I’ll come.”

Street smiled. “I thought you would. Commissioner, we will fol- low you in one half hour. See to it that when we arrive your subordi- nates are engaged.”

WHEN the commissioner had gone I was able to ask Street the question that had been nagging at my mind during the entire inter- view.

“Street, for God’s own sake, how was it you knew Commis- sioner Electric hadn’t come about the apartment before Mrs. Nash had opened the door?”

“Be a good fellow and look in the drawer of the inlaid rosewood table you’ll find on the other side of that camera obscura to the left of the tri-D stage, and I’ll tell you. You ought to find a recording am- meter in there. We’ll need it.”

I didn’t know what a camera obscura was, but fortunately the rosewood table was a rather strik- ing piece and only one instrument was in its drawer, lying amid a lit- ter of tarot cards and bridge score pads. I held it up for Street to see and he nodded. “That’s it. You see. Westing, when someone arrives in answer to a newspaper ad he almost invariably — ninety-two point six percent of the time, ac- cording to my calculation — car- ries the paper with him and shows it to the person who answers the door. When I failed to hear the telltale rattie of the popular press as our visitor addressed Mrs. Nash I knew there was little chance that he had come about the apartment.”

“Astounding!”

“Oh, it’s not so much,” Street said modestly. “But get a move on, won’t you? It wouldn’t do to ride down in the same elevator with Electric— but on the other hand it’s seldom a waste of askance to view a public official with it. We’re going to shadow him.”

Despite Street’s suspicions, Commissioner Electric did noth- ing untoward that I could see while we followed him. To give him time to prepare for us, as Street said, we

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idled for a quarter of an hour or more at the window of a tri-D store near the hall. The show being carried on the display set inside was utterly banal and 1 could swear that Street did not give it even a fraction of his attention. He stood, absorbed in his own thoughts, while I fidgeted.

The hiring hall, when Electric guided us around it, we found to be a huge place; impressive from outside but immensely larger with- in and filled with the hum of ex- panders. The corridors were lined with persons of every age and state of repair— they stretched for slight- ly curved miles like the vistas seen in opposed mirrors. Gaping spaces showed where the disappearances had taken place, but, sinister as they were, in time they seemed a relief from the staring regard of those thousands of unseeing eyes. Street asked for data on each theft and recorded the date and the number of persons missing in a notebook; but there seemed to be no pattern to the crimes, save that all the disappearances took place at night.

At last we came to the end of that vast building. Commissioner Electric did not ask Street for his opinion of the case (though I could see he wanted to), nor did Street give it. But once we were fairly away from him, Street pacing im- patiently alongside the sidewalk while I trotted to keep up, he broke forth in an irascible tirade of self-

abuse: “Westing, this thing is as simple as a two-foot piece of aluminum conduit and I’m confi- dent I know everything about it — except what I need to know. And I have no idea of how I’m going to find the answer. I know the robots are taken — I think. And I believe I know why. The question is: Who is responsible? If I could get the patrol to cooperate — ”

He lapsed into a sour silence, unbroken until we were once more back in the huge, littered apart- ment I had not yet learned to call “ours.” Indeed, my arrangement with Street was so recent that I had not yet had an opportunity to shift my possessions from my old room or to terminate my tenancy there. I excused myself — though Street seemed hardly to notice — and attended to these things.

WHEN I returned nothing had changed. Street sat, as be- fore, wrapped in gloom. And I, re- duced to despondency by his ex- ample and with nothing better to do in any case, sat watching him. After an hour had passed he rose from his chair and for a few mo- ments wandered disconsolately about the apartment, only to re- turn to the same seat and throw himself down, his face blacker — if that were possible — than before. “Street — ” I ventured.

“Eh?” He looked up. “Westing? That’s your name, isn’t it? You still here?”

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“Yes. I’ve been watching you for some time. While I realize you have, no doubt, a regular medical advisor, you were once kind enough to say that you might call me. On the strength of that — ’’

“Well, out with it, man. What is it?’’

“There will be no fee, of course. I was going to say that though I don’t know what means of chemi- cal reality enhancement you em- ploy, it would appear to me that it has been a considerable time — ”

“Since my last fix? Believe me, it has.” He laughed, a reaction I thought encouraging.

“Then I would suggest — ”

“I don’t use drugs. Westing. None at all.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest any- thing strong— just a few pinks, say, or—”

“I mean it, Westing. I don’t use pinks. Or blues. Or even whites. I don’t use anything except food, and little enough of that, water and air.”

“You’re serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“Street, I find this incredible. We were taught at medical school that human beings — being, after all, a species evolved for a savanna landscape rather than our climax civilization — were unable to main- tain their sanity without pharma- ceutical relief.”

“That may well be true, West- ing. Nevertheless, I do not use any.”

This was too much for me to ab- sorb at once and while I tried to encode it Street fell back into his former gloom.

“Street,” I said again.

“What is it this time?”

“Do you remember? When we first met I said that I detected in you, perhaps only by some profes- sional instinct not wholly rational, a physical abnormality I could not quite classify?”

“You didn’t say anything of the sort. You may have thought it.”

“I did. And I was right. Man, you don’t know how good this makes me feel.”

“I have some comprehension of the intellectual rewards attendant on successful deduction.”

“I’m sure you do. But now, if I may say so, a too-avid pursuit of those rewards has led you to a se- vere state of depression. A stimu- lant of some sort — ”

“Not at all, Westing. Thought is my drug — and believe me it is both stimulating and frustrating. My need is for a soporific, and your conversation fills the bill better than anything you could pre- scribe.”

This was said in so cheerful and bantering a way, albeit with a bare- ly perceptible touch of bitterness, that I could not resent it — and, in- deed, the marked improvement this little spate of Xalk had brought to Street’s mien emboldened me to continue at whatever risk to my vanity.

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So I answered, “Your powers of concentration, admirable as they are, may yet be your undoing. Do you remember the quarter-hour we spent in front of a store window? Where the tri-D had such poor reception? I addressed you several times, but I would swear you heard none of my questions. ”

“I heard every one of your ques- tions,” Street said, “and since none admitted to intelligent responses I ignored them all. And that tri-D, if not of the most exquisite quality, was at least better than passable. I apologize if I sound peevish, but really, Westing, you must learn to observe.”

“I am not an engineer,” I re- plied, perhaps rather too stiffly, “and so I cannot say if the recep- tion in fact was at fault — but acute observation is a necessity in my profession and I can assure you that the color stability of the set on display was abominable.”

“Nonsense. I was looking direct- ly at it for the entire time and I could, if necessary, describe each stupidity of programing in se- quence.”

“Maybe you could,” I said. “And I don’t doubt your assertion that you were watching with com- mendable attention while we waited outside the hiring hall. But you quite obviously failed to ob- serve it when we left . You were talking excitedly, as I recall — and as you spoke we passed the win- dow again. The actors were blush-

ing— if I may use that expression here — a sort of reddish-orange. Then they turned greenish blue, then really blue, and finally a shade of bright, cool green. In fact, they went through that whole cycle several times just during the time it took us to walk past the window.”

THE effect of this perhaps over- ly detailed and argumentative statement on Street was extraordin- ary. Instead of countering with ar- gument or denial, as I confess I ex- pected, for a few moments he sim- ply stared silently at me. Then he jumped to his feet and for half a minute or more paced the room in silent agitation, twice tripping over the same ball-clawed foot of the same late Victorian commode.

At last he turned almost fiercely back to me and announced: “Westing, I believe I can recall the precise words I addressed to you as we passed that display. I will re- peat them to you now and I want you to tell me the exact point at which you noticed the color insta- bility you mentioned. I said: ‘West- ing, this thing is as simple as a two- foot piece of aluminum conduit and I’m confident I know ev- erything about it — except what I need to know. And I have no idea of how I’m going to find the an- swer. I know how the robots are taken — I think. And I believe I know why. The question is: Who is responsible? If I could get the patrol to cooperate — ’ at which

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point I broke off, I believe. Now, precisely where did you notice the reddish orange color you men- tioned— I believe that was the hue you noticed originally?"

“To the best of my recollection. Street, it coincided with the word believe."

“I said, 4I know how the robots are taken — I think. And I believe — ' and at that point you noticed that the figures in the tri-D illusion blushed a color you have described as a reddish orange. Is that correct?"

Dumfounded, I nodded.

“Excellent. Among my other antiques. Westing, I have assem- bled a collection of paintings. Would it interest you to see them? You would be conferring a favor of no mean magnitude upon me."

“I don’t see how— but certainly, if you wish."

“Excellent again; particularly if, while drinking in their loveliness, you would take the trouble to point out to me the shades which most closely match the four colors you saw when the tri-D malfunctioned. But please be most exact — if the match is not perfect, you need not inform me."

For an hour or more we pored over Street’s pictures, which were astoundingly varied and, for the most part, in a poor state of pres- ervation. In size they ranged from Indian miniatures smaller than coins to a Biblical cyclorama five meters high and (so Street told me)

more than three kilometers in length. The greenish-blue long es- caped us, but at last I located it in an execrable depiction of Susanna and The Elders and the art display was abruptly terminated. Street told me bluntly— his manner would have been offensive if it had not been so obvious that his mind was totally engaged on a problem of formidable proportions — to amuse myself and buried himself in an assortment of ratty books and dusty charts, one of which, as I particularly remember, was like a rainbow bent into a full circle, with the blazing colors melting into one another like the infinitesimal quantities in a differential equa- tion.

While he pondered over these the hours of evening rolled past on silent rubber wheels. Others, their day’s work done, might rest now; I waited. Humans, rich and fortu- nate or declassed,