(qsmos Vol. 1, No.

DAVID G. HARTWELL, EDITOR

JACK GAUGHAN, Art Director
ROSE KAPLAN, Managing Editor
July 1977

JANET R. WILLIAMS, Science Editor

flflD FfiflTft/V BARBARA CLUM, Assistant Editor
ROSA GOLDFIND, Editorial Assistant
fnO^LA7lft£
1 1 lr1S7n^ll 1%
GERALD LEVINE, Circulation Director
NORMAN GOLDFIND, PUBLISHER

CONTENTS
SERIAL
FRITZ LEIBER, Rime Isle 2
fart: Freffand Gaughan)
NOVELLA
GORDON R. DICKSON, Monad Gestalt 47
(art: Vincent DiFate)
SHORT STORIES
ROGER LOVIN, Waiting at The Speed of Light 28
(art: Gaughan)
THOMAS F. MONTELEONE, Camera Obscure 41
(art: Douglas Beekman)
SPIDER ROBINSON, Tin Ear 22
(art: George L. Schelling)

CENTER SECTION
ROBERT SILVERBERG, Books 33
CHARLES N. BROWN, The Media Scene 34
GINJER BUCHANAN, A Fan 's Notes 35
WHX EISNER, Color Centerpiece 36/37
JACK GAUGHAN, The Spirit Was Willing 38
NORMAN GOLDFIND, From The Publisher 39
FAN ART, BillRotsler 33, 34, 35, 70, 71
Lettereolumn 40

CLASSIFIED ADS 72

Cover by Vincent DiFate for MONAD GESTALT

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 ^FlgT^EEIBEI^

RIME
ISLE CONCLUSION

The climax of the great new sword and sorcery

novel, in which Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser
discover that the gods are dangerous allies.
SUMMARY OF RIME ISLE, PARTI

Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser, after battling

a horde of vicious Sea Mingols and saving
Rime Isle, arrive at the island kingdom to
find that the councillors who rule the land
know nothing of the battle and are quite
suspicious of the battered band of adventur-
ers. "Shameless ingratitude!" says the
Mouser.

For the beautiful Council women, the ladies

Cif and Afreyt, approached the heros in
Lankhmar and paid them to undertake
their journey far north to Rime Isle and —
now refuse to acknowledge this in public.
Yet secret messages are passed arranging
meetings between Cif and the Mouser
and Afreyt and Fahfrd, at which a complex
situation is revealed. Two gods from another
world, Odin and Loki, have appeared on the
godless Rime Isle and Afreyt and Cif have
been chosen as their representatives. Afreyt
and Cif plan to use the powers of these
weakened and controllable gods to defend
Rime Isle from the evil plots of the Demon
Khahkht, who controls the Sea-Mingols
and plans to begin a career of chaos with the
domination of Rime Isle. Afreyt and Cif
cannot explain the mysteries of Odin and
Loki to the godless businessmen of the Rime
Isle council — their own political position
is fragile — so Rime Isle must be saved in
secret.

Two attacks are launched by Khahkht, one

on the far end of the island, where Fahfrd
must go to defend the villages with Odin
and the other a sea attack on the capital,
which the Mouser, with the help of Loki,
must fend off, using a magical golden
cube to control the great whirlpool off Rime
Isle. Unfortunately the cube is one of the
treasures of Rime Isle and must be stolen
by Cif from the council treasury. The
councilmen, observing mysterious carryings-
on, become suspicious. And the gods, Loki
and Odin, gain strength from their active
part in these affairs. Matters are coming
to a head when the Mouser returns from a
scouting voyage. Cif and Afreyt have been
arrested by the council and asked to account
for the missing treasure.

Yet the Mouser, accompanied by the two

whores, Hilsa and Rill, who carry the living
flame in which Loki resides, proceed con-
fidently from the docks to the council hall for
a showdown.
 RIME ISLE
Groniger reared up and thundered at passed ... or an eternity.
him, "You dare to laugh at the gathered His return to awareness (or rebirth,
authority of Rime Isle? You, who come rather —
it seemed that massive a tran-

And linking arms with Hilsa and Rill bursting in accompanied by women of the began with whirling yellow lights
sition)
he set out briskly, telling himself that in streets and your own trespassing crew- and grinning, open-mouthed, exalted
reverses of fortune such as this, the all- men?" faces mottling the inner darkness, and the
important thing was to behave with vast The Mouser managed to control his sense of a great noise on the edge of the
self-confidence, flame like Rill's torch laughter and listen with the most open, audible and of a resonant voice speaking
with it! That was the secret. What matter honest expression imaginable, injured words of power, and then without other
that he hadn't the faintest idea of what innocence incarnate. warning the whole bright and deafening
tale he would tell the council? Only Groniger went on, shaking his finger scene materialized with a rush and a roar
maintain the appearance of self- at the other, "Well, there he. stands, and he was standing insolently tall on the
confidence and at the moment when councillors, a chief receiver of the massive council table with what felt like a
needed, inspiration would come! misappropriated gold, perchance even of wild (or even demented) smile on his lips,
What with the late arrival of the the gold cube of honest-dealing. The man while his left fist rested jauntily on his hip
fishing fleet the narrow streets were quite who came to us out of the south with tales and his right was whirling around his
crowded as they footed it along. Perhaps of magic storms and day turned night and head the golden queller (or cube of
it was market night as well, and maybe vanished hostile vessels and a purported square-dealing, he reminded himself) on
the council meeting had something to do —
Mingol invasion he who has, as you its cord. And all around him every last

with it. At any rate there were a lot of perceive, Mingols amongst his crew— the Rimelander— councilmen, guards, com-
"foreigners" out and Rime Islers too, and man who paid for his dockage in Rime mon fishers, women (and Cif, Afreyt,
for a wonder the latter looked stranger Isle gold!" Rill, Hilsa, Mikkidu, needless to say)—
and more drolly grotesque than the Cif stood up at that, her eyes blazing, was staring at him with rapturous
former. Here came trudging those four and said, "Let him speak, at least, and adoration (as if he were a god or
fishers again with their monstrous bur- answer this outrageous charge, since you legendary hero at least) and standing on
dens! A fat boy gaped at them. The Mouser won't take word." my their feet(some jumping up and down)
patted his head in passing. Oh, what a A councilmen rose beside Groniger. and cheering him to the echo! Fists
show was life! "Why should we listen to a stranger's pounded the table, quarterstaves thudded
Hilsa and Rill, infected by the Mous- lies?" the stony floor resoundingly. While
er's lightheartedness, put on their smiles Groniger said, "I thank you, Dwone." torchmen whirled their sad flambeaux
again. He must be a grand sight, he Afreyt got to her feet. "No, let him until they flamed as yellow-bright as
thought, strolling along with two fine speak. Will you hear nothing but your Rill's.
whores as if he owned the town. own voices?" Now in thename of all the gods at
The blue front of the council hall Another councilman got up. once, the Mouser asked himself, continu-
appeared, door framed by some gone
its Groniger said, "Yes, Zwaaken?" ing however to grin, whatever did I tell or
galleon's massive stern and flanked by That one said, "No harm to hear what promise them to put them all in such a
two glum louts with quarterstaves. The he has to say. He may convict himself out state?In the fiend's name, what?
Mouser felt Hilsa and Rill hesitate, but of his own mouth." Groniger swiftly mounted the other
crying in a loud voice, "All honor to the Cif glared at Zwaaken and said loudly, end of the table, boosted by those beside
council!" he swept them inside with him, "Tell them, Mouser!" him, waved for silence, and as soon as
Ourph and Mikkidu ducking in after. At that moment the Mouser, glancing he'd got a little of that commodity
The room inside was larger and at Rill's torch (which seemed to wink at assured the Mouser in a great feelingfu!
somewhat more lofty than the one at the him) felt a godlike power invading and voice, advancing to make himself heard,
Salt Herring, but was gray-timbered like possessing him to the tips of his fingers "We'll do it — oh, we'll do it! I myself will
it, of wrecks. And it had no
built —
and toes nay, to the end of his every lead out the Rimic contingent, half our
fireplace, butwas inadequately warmed hair. Without warning— in fact, without armed citizenry, across the Deathlands to
by two smoking braziers and lit by knowing he was going to do it at all he — Fafhrd's aid against the Widdershins,
torches that burned blue and sad (per- ran forward across the room and sprang while Dwone and Zwaaken will man the
haps there were bronze nails in them), atop the table where its sides were clear armed fishing fleet with the other half and
not merrily golden-yellow like Rill's. The toward Cif s end. follow you in Flotsam against the
main article of furniture was a long heavy He looked around compellingly at all Sunwise Mingols. Victory!"
table, at one end of which Cif and Afreyt (a sea of cold and hostile faces, mostly), And with that the hall resounded with
looking their haughtiest, while drawn
sat, gave them a searching stare, and then cries of "Death to the Mingols!" "Victo-
away from them toward the other end well, as the godlike force possessed every ry!" and other cheers the Mouser couldn't
were seated ten large sober Isle-men of part of him utterly, his mind was perforce quite make out. As the noise passed its

middle years, Groniger in their midst, driven completely out of himself, the peak, Groniger shouted, "Wine! Let's
with such doleful, gloomily indignant, scene swiftly darkened, he heard himself pledge our allegiance!" while Zwaaken
outraged looks on their faces that the beginning to say something in a mighty cried to the Mouser, "Summon your
Mouser burst out laughing. Other Islers voice, but then he (his mind) fell irretriev- crewmen to celebrate with us — they've
crowded the walls, some women among ably into an inner darkness deeper and the freedom of Rime Isle now and
them. All turned on the newcomers faces blacker than any sleep or swound. forever!" (Mikkidu was soon dis-
of mingled puzzlement and disapproval. Then (for the Mouser) no time at all patched.)

5
 RIME ISLE
The Mouser looked helplessly at Cif also. From the corner of his eye he noted confidence, he answered one repeated The Mouser nodded, though he one could remember any of it) but it did
though still maintaining his grin (by now Hilsa and Rill bussing all and sundry question with, "No, I'm no orator — never shrugged in spirit. Oh, he knew what had leave one feeling empty, that is, except for
he must look quite glassy-eyed, he really, all these kisses had no meaning at had any training — though I'vealways happened all right; he even checked it out the ever present Mingols-to-their-deaths
thought) — but she only stretched her all, including Cifs of course; he'd been a liked to talk," but inwardly he seethed a little later with Rill. jingle — that he'd never get shut of, it

hand toward him, crying, flush-cheeked, fool to think differently — and at one with curiosity. As soon as he got a chance, "Where did you light your torch?" he seemed.
Til sail with you!" while Afreyt beside point he could have sworn he saw he asked Cif, "Whatever did I say to bring asked.
her proclaimed, 'Til go ahead across the Groniger dancing a jig. Only old Ourph, them around, to change their minds so "At the god's fire, of course," she
Deathlands to join Fafhrd, bringing god for some reason, did not join in the utterly?" answeced. "At the god's fire in the Flame
Odin with me!" merriment. Once he caught the old "Why, you should know," she told Den." And then she kissed him. (She
Groniger heard that and called to her, Mingol looking at him sadly. him. wasn't too bad at that either, even though
"I and my men will give you whatever And so the celebration began that "But tell me in your own words," he there was nothing to the whole kissing
help with that you need, honored council- lasted half the night and involved much said. business.)
lady," which told the Mouser that besides drinking and eating and impromptu She deliberated. "You appealed en- Yes, he knew that the god Loki had
all else, he'd got the atheistical fishermen cheering and dancing and parading tirely to their feelings, to their emotions," come out of the flames and possessed him
believing in gods — Odin and Loki, atany round and about and in and out. And the she said at last, simply. "It was wonder- for a while (as Fafhrdhad perhaps once
rate. What had he told them? longer it went on, the more grotesque the ful." been possessed by the god Issek back in
He let Cif and Afreyt draw him down, cavorting and footstamping marches got, "Yes, but what exactly did I say? What Lankhmar) and spoken through his lips
but before he could begin to question and all of it to the rhythm of the vind ictive were my words?" the sort of arguments that are so
them, Cif had thrown her arms around little rhyme that still went on resounding "Oh, I can't tell you that" she convincing when voiced by a god or Next morning Fafhrd's band got their
him, hugged him tight, and was kissing deep in the Mouser's mind, the tune to protested. "It was so all of a piece that no delivered in time of war or comparable first sight of Cold Harbor, the sea, and
him full on the lips. This was wonderful, which everything was beginning to dance: one thing stood out— I've quite forgotten crisis —and so empty when proclaimed by the entire Mingol advance force all at
something he'd been dreaming of for "Storm clouds thicken round Rime Isle. Content you, it was perfect."
the details. a mere mortal on any ordinary occasion. once, as sun and west wind dissipated the
three months and more (even though he'd Nature brews her blackest bile. Monsters Later on he ventured to inquire of And really there was no time for coastal fog and blew it from the glacier,

pictured it happening in somewhat more
private circumstances) and when she at
last drew back, starry-eyed,
another sort of question he was of a mind
to ask her, but at that moment tall Afreyt
grabbed him and soon was kissing him as
soundly.
quicken, nightmares foal, niss and nicor, Groniger, "At what point did my argu- speculation about the mystery of what on the edge of which they were now all
drow and troll." Those lines in particular ments begin to persuade you?" he'd said, now that there was so much to making their way. It was a much smaller
it was seemed to the Mouser to describe what "How can you ask that?" the grizzled be done, so many life-and-death decisions and vastly more primitive settlement than
was happening just now— a birth of Rimelander rejoined, a frown of honest to be made, so many eventful trains of Salthaven. To the north rose the dark
monsters. (But where were the trolls?) puzzlement furrowing his brow. "It was action to be guided to their conclusions crater-summit of Mount Hellglow, so
And so on (the rhyme) until its doomful all so supremely logical, clearly and once these folk had got through celebrat- lofty and near that its eastern foothills
and monstrously compelling end: "Min- coldly reasoned. Like two and two makes ing and taken a little rest. cast their shadows on the ice. A wisp
still

This was undeniably pleasant, but it gols to their deaths must go, down to four. How can one point to one part of it would be nice to know just a
Still, of smoke rose from it, trailing off east. At
took away from Cif s kiss, made it less weedy hell below, never draw an easy arithmetic as being more compelling than little of what he'd actually said, he the snowline a shadow on the dark rock
personal, more a sign of congratulations breath, suffer an unending death, ever- another?" thought wistfully. Some of it might even seemed to mark the mouth of a cavern
and expression of overflowing enthu- lasting pain and strife, everlasting death "True, true," the Mouser echoed have been clever. Why in heaven's name, leading into the mountain's heart. Its

siasm than a mark of special affection. in life. Mingol madness ever burn! Never reluctantly,and ventured to add, "I for instance, and to illustrate what, had lower slopes were thickly crusted with
His Cif-dream faded down. And when peace again return!" suppose was the same sort of rigorous
it he taken the queller out of his pouch and snow, leading back to the glacier which,
Afreyt was done with him, he was at once And through it all the Mouser logic thatpersuaded you to accept the whirled around his head?
it narrow at this point, stretched ahead of
surrounded by a press of well-wishers, maintained his perhaps glassy-eyed smile gods Odin and Loki?" He had to admit it was rather pleasant them north to the glittering gray sea,
some of whom wanted to embrace him and jaunty, insolent air of supreme self- "Precisely," Groniger confirmed. being possessed by a god (or would be if surprisingly near. From the glacier's not-
very-lofty foot, rolling grassy turf with Afreyt will have my head if aught befalls

occasional clumps of small northern you. Tell them the truth about our
cedars deformed by the wind stretched off numbers. Tell them to hold out and to
to the southwest and its own now-distant if they see good chance.
feint a sortie

snowy heights, wisps of white fog blowing
eastways and vanishing across the rolling
sunlit land between.
Glimpses of a few devastated and
deserted hill farms late yesterday and
early this morning, while they'd been
trailing and chivying the retreating
Mingol marauders, had prepared them
for what they saw now. Those farm-
houses and byres had been of turf or sod
solely, with grass and flowers growing on
their narrow roofs, smokeholes instead of
chimneys. Mara, dry-eyed, pointed out
the one she'd dwelt in. Cold Harbor was
simply a dozen such dwellings atop a
"Mannimark! Keep one man of your
squad and maintain watch here. Warn us
of Mingol advances.
"Skor and the rest, follow me. We'll
descend in their rear and briefly counter-
feit a pursuing army. Come!"
And he was off at a run with eight
berserks lumbering after, arrow-quivers
banging against their backs. He'd already
picked the stand of stunted cedars from
the cover of which he planned to make his
demonstration. As he ran, he sought to
run in his mind with Skullik and his mate,
and with Mara, trying to make the timing
right.

rather steep hill or large mound backed

against the glacier and turf-walled- —
sort of retreat for the country-dwellers in
times of peril. A short distance beyond it, Arrived at the cedars, he saw Manni-
a sandy beach fronted the harbor itself mark signaling that the Mingol assault
and on it three Mingol galleys had been had begun. "Now howl like wolves," he
drawn ashore, identified by the fantastic told his hard-breathing men, "and really
horse cages that were the above-deck scream, each of you enough for two. Then
portion of their prows. we'll pour arrows toward 'em, longest
Ranged round the mound of Cold range and fast as you can. Then, when I
Harbor at a fairly respectful distance give command, back on the glacier again!
were some fourscore Mingols, their as fast as we came down."
leaders seemingly in conference with When all this was done (and without
those of the twoscore who'd gone raiding much marking of consequences —there
ahead and but now returned. One of these was not time) and he had rejoined
latter was pointing back toward the Mannimark, followed by his panting
Deathlands and then up at the glacier, as band, he saw with delight a thin column
if describing the force that had pursued Of black smoke ascending from the
them. Beyond them the three Steppe- beached galley nearest the glaciers.
stallions free from their cages were Mingols began to run in that direction
cropping turf. A peaceful scene, yet even from the slopes of the beleaguered
as Fafhrd watched, keeping his band mound, abandoning their assault. Mid-
mostly hid (he hoped) by a fold in the ice way he saw the small figure of Mara
(he did not trust too far Mingol aversion running down the glacier to Cold H arbor,
to ice) a spear came arching out of the her red cloak standing out behind her. A
tranquil-seeming mound and (it was a woman with a spear had appeared on the
prodigious cast) struck down a Mingol. earth wall nearest the child, waving her
There were angry cries and a dozen on encouragingly. Then of a sudden
Mingols returned arrow fire. Fafhrd Mara appeared to take a fantastically
judged that the besiegers, now reinforced, long stride, part of her form was
would surely try soon a determined obscured, as if there were a blur in
assault. Without hesitation he gave or- Fafhrd's vision there, and then she
ders. — —
seemed to no, did! rise in the air,
"Skullik, here's action for you. Take higher and higher, as though clutched by
your best bowman, oil, and a firepot. an invisible eagle, or other sightless
Race ahead for your life to where the predatory flier. He kept his eyes on the
glacier is nearest their beached ships and red cloak, which suddenly grew brighter
drop fire arrows in them, or attempt to. as the invisible flier mounted from
Run! shadow into sunlight with his captive. He
"Mara, follow them as far as the heard a muttered exclamation of sympa-
mound and when you see the ships thy and wonder close beside him, spared a
smoke, but not before, run down and join sidewise glance, and knew that Skor also
your friends if the way is clear. Careful! had seen the prodigy.
 RIME ISLE

"Keep her man," he breathed.

in sight, "Mannimarkir Fafhrd called. "Give So she was making the men pay for
"Don't lose cloak for one
the red me two Skullik!— the tinder-
torches. yesternight's false (or at least, tactless)
moment. Mark where she goes through pouch." He unbuckled the belt holding accusations, and would cross the Death-
the trackless air." his longsword Graywand. He retained his lands in luxurious ease. That was more in
The gaze of the two men went upward, ax. his own style.
then west, then steadily east toward the "Men!" he addressed them. "I must be He was in an odd state of mind, almost
dark mountain. From time to time absent for a space. Command goes to feeling himself a spectator rather than a
Fafhrd looked down to assure himself Skor by this token." He buckled Gray- participant in great events. The incident
that there were no untoward develop- wand to that one's side. "Obey him of the stirring speech he had made last
ments requiring his attention of the faithfully.Keep yourselves whole. See night and didn't remember (and couldn't
situations at the ships and at Cold that I'm given no 'cause to rebuke you discover) a word of still rankled (or rather
Harbor. Each time he feared his eyes when I return." the oration that god Loki had delivered
would never catch sight of the flying And without more ado he made off through his lips while he was blacked
cloak again, but each time they did. Skor across the glacier toward Mount Hell- out). He felt like the sort of unimportant
seemed to be following instructions glow. servant, or errand boy, who's never
faithfully. The red patch grew smaller, allowed to know the contents of the
tinier. They almost lost it as it dipped into sealed messages he's given to deliver.
the shadow again. Finally Skor straight- In this role of observer and critic he
ened up. was struck by how grotesque was the
"Where did it go?" Fafhrd asked. weaponry of the high-stepping and
"To the mouth of the cave at the ebullient Rimelanders. There were the
snowline," Skor replied. "The girl was quarterstaves, of course, and heavy
drawn there through the air by what single-bladed spears, but also slim fishing
magic I know not. I lost it there." spears and great pitchforks and wickedly
Fafhrd nodded. "Magic of a most hooked and notched pikes, and long flails
"She was
special sort," he said rapidly. with curious heavy swiples and swingles
carried there, I by an
must believe, a-dangle from their ends. A couple even
invisible flier, ghoul-related, an old carried long narrow-bladed and sharp-
enemy of mine, Prince Faroomfar of lofty looking spades. He remarked on it to Cif
Stardock. Only I among us have the and she asked him how he armed his own
knowledge to deal with him, know who thief-band. Afreyt had gone on a little
are his helpers, who are his enemies." ahead. They were nearing Gallows Hill.
He felt, in a way, that he was seeing The Mouser forced himself to rise "Why, with slings," he told Cif.
Skor for the first time: a man an inch soon as he woke and to take a cold bath "They're as good as bows and a lot less
taller than himself and some five years before his single cup of hot gahveh (he trouble to carry. Like this one," and he
younger, but with receding hairline and a was in that sort of mood). He set his entire showed her the leather sling hanging from
rather scanty straggling russet beard. His crew to work, Mingols and thieves alike, his belt. "See that old gibbet ahead? Now
nose had been broken at some time. He completing Flotsam's repairs, warning mark."
looked a thoughtful villain. them that she must be ready to sail by the He selected a lead ball from his pouch,
Fafhrd said, "In the Cold Waste near morrow's morn at least, in line with Loki- centered it in the strap and, sighting
Illek-Ving I hired you. At No-ombrulsk I god's promise: "In three days the Mingols quickly but carefully, whirled it twice
named you my chief lieutenant and you come." He took considerable pleasure in round his head and loosed. The thunk as
swore with the rest to obey me for noting that several of them seemed to be itstruck square on was unexpectedly loud
Seahawk's voyage and return." He locked suffering from worse hangovers than his and resounding. Some Rimelanders ap-
eyes with theman. "Now it comes to the own. "Work them hard, Pshawri," he plauded.
for you must take command while I
test, commanded. "No mercy to slug-a-beds Afreyt came hurrying back to tell him
seek Mara. Continue to harry the and shirkers!" not to do that again — it might offend god
Mingols but avoid a full engagement. By then it was time to join with Cif in Odin. Can't do anything right this
Those of Cold Harbor are our friends, seeing off Afreyt's and Groniger's over- morning, the Mouser told himself sourly.
but do not join with them in their fort land expedition. He found the Rimeland- But the incident had given him a
unless no other course is open. Remem- ers offensively bright-eyed, noisy, and thought. He said to Cif, "Say, maybe I

ber we serve the lady Afreyt. Under- energetic, and the way that Groniger was demonstrating the sling in my speech
stood?" bustled about, marshaling them, was a last night when I whirled the cube of
Skor frowned, keeping his eyes locked caution. square-dealing around on Do its cord.
with Fafhrd's, then nodded once. Cif and Afreyt were clear-eyed and you recall? Sometimes I get drunk on my
"Good!" Fafhrd said, not sure at all smiling also in their brave russets and own words and don't remember too
that it was so, but knowing he was doing blues, but that was easier to take. He and well."
what he had to. The smoke from the Cif walked a ways with the overland She shook her head. "Perhaps you
burning ships was less— the Mingols marchers. He
noted with some amuse- were," she said. "Or perhaps you were
seemed to have saved her. Skullik and his ment and approval that Afreyt had four dramatizing the Great Maelstrom which
fellow came running back with their of Groniger's men carrying a curtained will swallow the Sun Mingols. Oh, that
bows, grinning. litter, though she did not occupy it as yet. wondrous speech!"
RIME ISLE

along, but— can you see him at all?" mings popped out just ahead of them and
"Not very distinctly in this sunlight," stood on their hind legs, inspecting them,
she admitted. "But I have done so, by before ducking behind a bush, and in
twilight. Afreyt says Fafhrd saw Odin stopping so as not to overrun them, Cif
most clearly in the dusk, evening before stumbled and he caught her and after a
last, It'sgiven only to Afreyt and the girls moment drew her to him, and she yielded
to see him clearly." for a moment before she drew away,
The strange slow pantomime was soon smiling at him troubledly.
concluded. Afreyt cut a few spiny "Gray Mouser," she said softly, "I am
branches of gorse and put them in the attracted to you, butI have told you how

litter ("So he'll feel at home," Cif you resemble the god Loki— and last
explained to the Mouser) and started to night when you swayed the Isle with your
draw the curtains, but, "He wants me great oratory that resemblance was even
inside with him," Gale announced in her more marked. I have also told you of my
shrill childish voice. Afreyt nodded, the reluctance to take the god home with me
little girl climbed in with a shrug of (making me hire Hilsa and Rill, two
resignation, the curtains were drawn at familiar devils, to take care of him). Now
last, and the general hush broke. I find, doubtless because of the resem-
Lord, what idiocy! the Mouser blance, a kindred hesitation with respect
thought. We two-footed fantasies will to you, so that perhaps it is best we
believe anything. And yet it occurred to remain captain and councilwoman until
him uneasily that he was a fine one to the defense of Rime Isle is accomplished
talk, who'd heard a god speak out of a fire
and I can sort you out from the god."

and had his own body usurped by one. The Mouser took a long breath and
Inconsiderate creatures, gods were. said slowly that he supposed that was
With a rush and a shout the gallows best, thinking meanwhile that gods surely
came down and its base up out of the interfered with one's private life, and that

earth, spraying dirt around, and a half he was mightily tempted to ask her
dozen stalwart Rimelanders lifted it onto whether she expected him to turn to
their shoulders and prepared to carry it Hilsa and Rill (devils or no) to be
so, marching single file after the litter. comforted, but doubting she would be
"Well, they could use it as a battering inclined to allow him a god's liberties to
ram, I suppose," the Mouser muttered. that degree (granted he desired such), no
Cif gave him a look. matter how great the resemblance be-
Final farewells were said then and last tween them.
messages for Fafhrd given and mutual In this impasse, he was rather relieved
Meanwhile they had come abreast of assurances of courage until victory and to see beyond Cifs shoulder that which
Gallows Hill and Afreyt had halted the death to the invader, and then the allowed him to say, "Speaking of she-
march. He strolled over with Cif to find expedition went marching off in great demons, who are these that are coming
out why and for farewells— this was swinging strides, rhythmically. The from Salthaven?"
about as far as they'd planned to come. Mouser, standing with Cif as he watched Cif turned at that, and there true
To his surprise he discovered that them go toward the Deathlands, got the enough were Rill and Hilsa hurrying
Afreyt had set the two men with spades impression they were humming under toward them through the heather, with
and several others to digging up the their breaths, "Mingols to their deaths Mother Grum plodding along behind,
gallows, to unrooting it entire, and also must go," and so on, and stepping to its dark figure to their colorful ones. And
had had its bearers set down the litter in tune, and he wondered if he'd begun to although it was bright day three hours
front of the little grove of gorse on the say those verses aloud, so that they'd and more, Rill carried alit torch. It was

north side of the hill, and part its curtains. picked it up from him. He shook his head. hard to see the flame in the sunlight, but
While he watched puzzledly, he saw the But then he and Cif turned back alone, they could mark by the way its shimmer
girls May and Gale emerge from the and he saw it was a bright day, pleasantly made the heather waver beyond. And as
grove, walking slowly and carefully and cool, with the breeze ruffling the heather the two harlots drew closer, it was evident
going through the motions of assisting and wildfiowers waving on their delicate that their faces were brimming with
someone — only there was no one there. stems, and his spirits began to rise. Cif excitement and a story to which was
tell,

Except for the men trying to rock the wore her russets in the shape of a short poured forth on their arrival and on the
gallows loose, everyone had grown quite gown, rather than her customary trou- Mouser asking drily: "Why are you trying
silent, watchfully attentive. sers, and her dark golden-glinting hair was to light up the day, Rill?"
In low undertones Cif told the Mouser loose,and her movements were unforced "The god spoke to us but now, most
the names and what was going on.
girls' and impulsive. She still had reserve, but it clearly from the Flame Den fire," she
"You mean
to say that's Odin god was not that of a councilwoman, and the began, "saying 'Darkfire, Darkfire, take
and they're able to see
they're helping Mouser remembered how thrilling last me to Darkfire. Follow the flame
— '"

M*
him?" he whispered back. "I remember night's kiss had been, before he'd decided Hilsa broke in, —go as it bends,' the
now, Afreyt said she was taking him it didn't mean anything. Two fat lem- god said cracklingly, 'turn as it wends, all

10
 —
RIME ISLE

in my name. Up from the depths of his skull came without warmth and bathed the moun-
Rill took up again, "So I lit a fresh the wearisome compulsive chant, "Min- tainside and the dark peak above with its
torch from the Flame Den blaze for him gols to their deaths must go," and he was wispy smoke blowing east. The rock was
to travel in, and we carefully marked the almost grateful to the malicious little tough as diamond with frequent
flame and followed as it leaned, and it has jingle for occupying mind troubled by
his —
handholds made for climbing— but he
led us to you!" the vagaries of gods and women. was weary and beginning to condemn
"And look," Hilsa broke in as Mother The air grew chilly and soon they were himself for having abandoned his men in
Grum came up, "now the flame would at the icefall and in front of it a dead peril (it amounted to that) to come on a

have us go to the mountain. It points scrubby tree and a mounded upthrust of wild romantical goose-chase. Wind blew
toward her!" And she waved with her dark purplish rock, almost black, and in from the west, crosswise to his climb.
other hand north toward the icefall and its midst a still blacker opening wide and This was what came of taking a girl on
the silent black scoriaceous peak beyond tall as a door. a dangerous expedition and listening to
with its smoke-plume blowing west. Cif said, "This was not here last year," —
women or one woman, rather. Afreyt
Cif and the M ouser dutifully looked at and Mother Grum growled, "The glacier, had been so sure of herself, so queenly-
the torch's ghostly flame, narrowing their receding, has uncovered it," and Rill commanding— that he'd gone along with
eyes. After a bit, "The flame does lean "The flame leans toward the cave!"
cried, her against his better judgment. Why, he
over," the Mouser said, "but I think that's and Cif said, "Go we down," and Hilsa was chasing after Mara now mostly for
just because it's burning unevenly. Some- quavered, "It's dark," and Mother Grum fear of what Afreyt would think of him if

thing in the grain of the wood or its oils rumbled, "Have no fear. Darksome-
is aught befell the girl. Oh, he knew all right
and resins—" but "No, indubitably it times best light, and down best way go how he'd justified himself this morning in
motions us toward Darkfire," Cif cried up." giving himself this job rather than
excitedly. "Lead on, Rill," and the The Mouser wasted no time on words, sending a couple of his men. He'd jumped
women all turned sharply north, making but broke three branches from the dead to the conclusion it was Prince Faroom-
for the glacier. tree (Loki-torch might not last forever) farwho had kidnapped Mara and he'd
"But we have hardly time for a
ladies, and shouldering them, followed swiftly had the hope (in view of what Afreyt and
trip up-mountain," the Mouser called after the women into the rock. Cif had told about being rescued from
after protestingly, "what with prepara- Khahkht's wizardry by flying mountain-
be made for the Isle's defense and
tions to princesses) that Princess Hirriwi, his

tomorrow's sailing against the Mingols."
"The god has commanded," Cif told
him over shoulder. "He knows best."
While Mother Grum said in her
growly voice, "I doubt not he intends us
to make a closer journey than mountain-
top. Roundabout is nearer than straight,
I ween."
And with that mystifying remark the
women went on, and the Mouser
shrugged and perforce followed
thinking what fools these women were to
be scurrying after a burning bush or
branch as if it were very god, even
flame did bend most puzzlingly. (And he
had heard thefirespeak, night before last.)
Well, at any rate, he wasn't really needed
for today's repairs on Flotsam; Pshawri
could boss the crew as well as he, or at
enough. Best keep an eye on Cif
least well
while thisodd fit was on her and see she
—
came to no harm or her three strangely
sorted god -servants.
Such a sweet, strong, sensible, ravish-
beloved of one glorious night long gone,
would come skimming along sightlessly
on her invisible fish-of-air to offer him
her aid against her hated brother.
That was another trouble with wom-
en: they were never there when you
wanted or really needed them. They
helped each other, all right, but they
expected men to do all sorts of impossible
feats of derring-do to prove themselves
after, worthy of the great gift of their love (and
what was that when you got down to it?
a fleeting clench-and-wriggle in the dark,
if the illuminated only by the mute, incompre-
hensible perfection of a dainty breast,
that left you bewildered and sad).
The way grew steeper, the light redder,
his muscles smarted. The way it was
going, darkness would catch him on the
rock-face, and then for two hours at least
the mountain would hide the rising
moon.
And was it solely on Afreyt's account
that he was seeking Mara? Wasn't it also

ing woman, Cif, when not godstruck. because she had the same name as his first
Lord, what troublesome, demanding and young sweetheart whom he'd abandoned
captious employers gods were, never a- with his unborn child when he'd left Cold
quiet. (It was safe to think such thoughts, Corner as a youth to go off with yet

he told himself, gods couldn't read your anotherwoman, whom he'd in turn
thoughts— everyone had that privacy— abandoned— or led unwittingly to her
though they could overhear your slightest Fafhrd doggedly climbed the last, death, really the same thing? Wasn't he
word spoken in undertone and doubt- — seemingly endless slope of icy stone below seeking to appease that earlier Mara by
less make deductions from your starts Mount Hellglow's snowline. Orange light rescuing this child one? That was yet

and grimaces.) from the sun near-setting beat on his back another trouble with women, or at least

11
 —
RIME ISLE

the women you loved or had loved once softly calling her name. She did not reply Well, there was no denying that the
they kept on making you feel guilty, even with word or sign though continuing to flame was bending forward most unnatu-
beyond their deaths. Whether you loved stare. There was a warm, faintly sulfurous rally when it should have been streaming
them or not, you were invisibly chained to breeze blowing out of the mountain and it back with their rapid —
advance and also
every woman who'd ever kindled you. ruffled her cloak. Fafhrd's steps quick- lasting longer than any torch should, a
And was even that the deepest truth ened and with a swift-growing anticipa- prodigy! — and so the Mouser had had to
about himself sending himself after the tion of unknown horror whirled the cloak go back to memorizing as well as he could
girl Mara?— he asked himself, forcing his aside to reveal a small grinning skull set their route through the rock which, chill

analysis into the next devious cranny, atop a narrow-shouldered wooden cross at first, would expect from the ice
as one
even as he forced his numbing hands to about four feet high. above, was now perceptibly warmer,
seek out the next holds on the still- Fafhrd moved backwards to the ledge, while the heating air carried a faint
steepening face in the dirty red light. breathing heavily. The sun had set and brimstone stench.
Didn't he really quicken at thought of the gray sky seemed wider and more But at all events, he told himself, he
her, just as god Odin did in his senile palely bright without its rays. The silence didn't have to like this sense of being the
lubricity? Wasn't he and no other chasing was deep. He looked along the ledge in tool and sport of mysterious forces vastly
after Faroomfar because he thought of both directions, fruitlessly. Then he more powerful than himself, forces that
the prince as a lecherous rival for this stared into the cave again and his jaw didn't even deign to tell him the words
delicate tidbit of girl flesh? tightened. He took flint and iron, opened they spoke through him (that business of
For that matter, wasn't it Afreyt's the tinder-pouch, and kindled a torch. the speech he'd given but not heard one
girlishness that attracted him, her slen- Then holding it high in his left hand and word of bothered him more and more),
derness despite her height, her small- his unbelted ax gently aswing in his right, and above all he didn't have to celebrate
promising breasts, her tales of childhood he walked forward into the cave and this bondage to the inscrutable, as the

make-believe maraudings with Cif, her toward the mountain's heart, past the women were doing, by mindlessly repeat-
violet-eyed romancing, her madcap eerie diminutive scarecrow, his foot ing words of death and doom.
bravado? — that had attracted him even in avoiding its stripped-away red cloak, Also he didn't like the feeling of being
far-off Lankhmar, chained him with along the strangely smooth-walled in bondage to women and absorbed more

figurative Rime Isle silver, and set him on passageway wide and tall enough for a and more into their affairs, such as he'd
the whole unsuitable course of becoming giant, or a winged man. felt ever since accepting Cif s commission

a responsible captain of men, he who had three months ago in Lankhmar, and
been all his days a lone wolf (with lone- The Mouser hardly knew how long which had put him in bondage, in turn, to
leopard comrade Mouser) —
and had but he'd been closely following the four Pshawri and Mikkidu and all his men,
now reverted to it, abandoning his men. godstruck females through the strangely and to his ambitions and self-esteem.
(Gods grant Skor keep his head and that tunnellike cave that was leading them Above all, he didn't like being in
some at least of his disciplines and deeper and deeper under the glacier bondage to the idea of himself being a
preachments of prudence had taken toward the heart of the volcanic moun- monstrous clever fellow who could walk
effect!) But oh, this lifelong servitude to tain Darkfire. Long enough, at any rate, widdershins round all the gods and
girls — whimsical, innocent, calculating, for him while he walked to have split and godlets, from whom everyone expected

icicle-eyed- and hearted, fleeting, tripping slivered with his knife the larger ends of godlike performance. Why couldn't he
little demons! White, slim-necked, sharp- the three dead branches he was carrying, admit to Cif at least that he'd not heard a
toothed, restlessly bobbing weasels with so they would kindle readily. And word of his supposedly great speech? And
the soulful eyes of lemurs! certainly long enough to become very if he could do that walk- widdershins bit,

His blindly reaching hand closed on weary of the Mingols' death-chant, or why didn't he?
emptiness and he realized that in his Mingol jingle, that was now not only
furious self-upbraiding he'd reached the resounding in his mind but being spoken
apex of the slope without knowing it. aloud by the four rapt women as if it were
With belated caution he lifted his head a marching, or rather scurrying song, just
until his eyes looked just over the edge. as Groniger's men had seemed to feel it.
The sun's last dark-red beams showed Of course in this case he didn't have to ask
him a shale-scattered ledge some ten feet himself where they'd got it, for they'd all

wide and then the mountain going up originally heard it with him night before
again precipitous and snowless. Oppo- Flame Den, when Loki god had
last in the

site him in that new face was a great recess seemed to speak from the fire, but that
or cavern-mouth as wide as the ledge and didn't make it any easier to endure, or one
twice that height. It was very dark inside whit less boresome.
that great door but he could make out the At first he'd tried to reason with Cif as
bright red of Mara's cloak, its hood she hurried along with the others like a
raised, and within the hood, shadowed by mad maenad, arguing the unwisdom of The cavernous tunnel they'd been
it, her small face, very pale cheeked, very venturing so recklessly into an uncharted following so long debouched into what
dark eyed— really, a smudge in darkness cavern, but she'd only pointed at Rill's seemed a far vaster space steaming with
—staring toward him. torch and said, "See how it strains ahead. vapors and then they were suddenly
He scrambled up, peering around The god commands us," and gone back to brought up short against a great wall that
suspiciously, then moved toward her, her chanting. seemed to extend indefinitely upward and

12
 RIME ISLE

to either sit Nor was that the full measure of the Afreyt hesitatingly reached her hand
The won en broke off their doom- Mouser's farsighted prudence (so far- to the girl's slender throat and inspected
song and Rill cried, "Whither now, sighted that he sometimes couldn't tell the loop of heavy braid with uneasy

Loki?" and Hilsa echoed her tremulously what was its aim), for in the moment of fascination. There, surely enough, was
and Mother Grum rumbled, "Tell us, greatest panic, when the stub of Loki- the cruel hangman's knot drawn rather

wall," and Cif intoned strongly, "Speak, torch had fallen from Rill's hand, he had close, and tucked into it a nosegay of

O god." thought to snatch it up from the rocky small mountain flowers, somewhat wilt-
And while the women were saying floor and thrust it, hardly more than a hot ed, gathered this morning on the lower
these things, the Mouser stole forward black cinder, deep into his pouch. It burnt slopes.

rapidly and laid his hand on the wall. It his fingers a little, he discovered after- "I made one for Gale," the girl said.

was so hot he almost snatched back his wards, but luckily it was not so hot that "She didn't want to wear it at first because
hand, but did not, and through his palm his pouch caught fire. I'd helped invent it. She was jealous."

and outspread fingers he felt a steady Afreyt shook her head reprovingly,
strong pulsation, a rhythm in the rock, though her mind wasn't on that.
exactly as if it were itself sounding the "Here," May continued, lifting her

women's song. hand which had been hanging close to her

And then as if in answer to the side under her cloak. "I've made one for

women's entreaty, the Loki torch, which you, a little bigger. See, it's got flowers

had burnt down to little more than a stub, too. Put back your hood. You wear it
flared up into a great seven-branched under your hair, of course."
flame, almost intolerably bright, so it was Afreyt sat on a lichened rock outside For a long moment Afreyt looked into
a wonder Rill could hold it, showing the the on the broad summit-pass of the
litter the girl's unblinking eyes. Then she drew

frighteningly vast extent of the rock face, Deathlands (near where Fafhrd had first back her hood, bent down her head, and
and even as it flared, the rock seemed to encountered the Mingols, though she helped lift her hair through. Using both
heave under the Mouser's hand mon- didn't know that) with her gray cloak hands, May drew the knot together at the
strously with each pulsation of its song huddled about her, resting. Now and base of Afreyt's throat. "There," she said,
and the floor to rock with it, and the great again a wind from the east, whose "that's the way you wear it, snug but not
rock face to bulge, and the heat became chilliness seemed that of the violet sky, tight."

monstrous too, and the brimstone stench ruffled the litter's closed curtains. Its While this was happening, Groniger
to multiply so they were all set a-gagging bearers had j oined the other men at one of had come up, carrying three bowls and a
and a-coughing even as their imagina- the small fires to the fore and rear, built small covered pail of chowder. When the
tions envisioned instant earthquake, rock with carried wood to heat chowder nooses had been explained to him, "A
rended, cave-brimming floods of red-hot during this evening pause in their march. capital conceit!" he said with a great grin,

lava exploding from the mountain's The gallows had been set down by his eyebrows lifting. "That'll show the
heart. Afreyt's direction and its base and beam- Mingols something, let them know what
It says much for the Mouser's pru- end wedged in rock, so that it rested like a they're in for. It's a grand chant the Little

dence that in that short period of panic fallen-over "L," its angle lifting above the Captain gave us, isn't it?"
and terrified wonder it occurred to him to litter like a crooked roof, or like a Afreyt nodded, looking sideways a
thrustone of his frayed branches into the rooftree one kingpost, and its
with moment at Groniger. "Yes," she said, "his
blinding flame. And it was well he did so, bearers had gone off for supper too. wonderful words."
for the great god-flame now died down as There was still enough sunset light in Groniger glanced back at her in

swiftly as it had flared up, leaving only the the west for her to wonder if that was similar fashion. "Yes, his wonderful
feeble illumination of the burning branch smoke she saw moving east above the words."
of ordinary dead wood afire in his hands narrow crater of Mount Hellglow, while May said, "I wish I'd heard him."
while Rill dropped the dead stub of her in the cold east there was sufficient night Groniger handed them the bowls and
burnt-out torch with a cry of pain, as if for her to see, she was almost sure, a faint swiftly poured the thick, steaming soup.
only now feeling how it had burned her, glow rising from that of Mount Darkfire. May said, "I'll take Gale hers."
and while Hilsa whimpered and all the The eastwind blew again and she hunched Groniger said gruffly to Afreyt, "Sup
women groped about dazedly. her shoulders and drew the hood of her it while it's hot. Then get some rest. We go
And as if command had now question- cloak more closely against her cheeks. on at moonrise, agreed?"and when
less passed to the Mouser with the torch, The curtains of the litter parted for a Afreyt nodded, strode off rather bump-
he now began to shepherd them back the moment and May slipped out and came tiously, cheerily rumble-humming the
way they had come, away from the and stood in front of Afreyt. chant to which they'd marched all day,

strangling fumes, through the now- "What's that you've got around your the Mouser's — or Loki's, rather.
bewilderingly shadowy passageways that neck?" she asked the girl. Afreyt narrowed her brows. Normally
only he had conned and that still a noose," the latter explained
"It's Groniger was such a sober man, dull-
resounded with the dreadful rock music eagerly, but with a certain solemnity. "I spirited she'd once thought, but now he

aping their own, a symphony of doom- braided it, Odin showed me how to make was almost like a buffoon. Was "mon-
song monstrously reverberated by solid the knot. We're all going to belong to the strously comical" too strong an expres-

—
stone away toward the blessed outer Order of the Noose, which is something sion? She shook her head slowly. All the
light and air and sky, and fields and Odin and 1 invented this afternoon while Rime-men were getting like that, loutish

blessed sea. Gale was taking a nap." and grotesque and somehow bigger.

13
RIME ISLE

Perhaps it was her weariness made her see said as evenly as she could, "Thank the her stiff joints and stamping her numbed
things askew and magnified, she told god, but tell him I will remain here ... on feet, and they marched off west across
all

herself. guard." the moon-silvered rock, shouldering their

May came back and they got out their "Very well," May said and the curtains grotesque weapons and the two larger
spoons and fell to. "Gale wanted to eat closed again. burdens. Some of them limped a bit (after
hers inside," the girl volunteered after a Afreyt clenched her hands under her all, they were sailors, their feet unused to
bit. "I think she and Odin are cooking up cloak. She hadn't admitted to anyone, marching) but they all went on briskly to
something." She shrugged and went back even Cif, that for some time now, Odin the new Odin-chant, hunching their
to her spooning. After another while: had been fading. She could hardly see backs against the east wind, which now
"I'm going to make nooses for Mara and even a wispy outline any more. She could blew strong and steadily.

Captain Fafhrd." Finally she scraped her still hear his voice, but it had begun to

bowl, set it aside, and said, "Cousin grow faint, lost in wind-moaning. The
Afreyt, do you think Groniger's a troll?" god had been very real at first on that
"What's that?" Afreyt asked. spring day when she and Cif had found
"A word Odin uses. He says Groni- him, and found that there were two gods,
ger's a troll." and worked through the confusion. He'd
Gale came excitedly out of the litter seemed so near death then, and she'd
with her empty bowl, but remembering to labored so hard to save him, and she'd Fafhrd had just kindled his second
draw the curtains behind her. been filled with such an adoration, as if he torch from the ember-end of the first and
"Odin and I have invented a marching were some ancient hero-saint, or her own his surroundings had grown warmer,
song for us!" she announced, stacking her dear, dead father. And then he had when the passageway he was
lofty

bowl in May's. "He says the other god's caressed her fumblingly and muttered in following debouched into a cavern so vast
song is all right, but he should have one of disappointment (it sounded), "You're that the light he bore seemed lost in it at
his own. Listen, I'll chant it for you. It's older than I thought," and drifted off to first and the sound of the cast-away

shorter and faster than the other." She sleep, and her adoration had been torch-stub hitting rock awakened distant
screwed up her face. "It's like a drum," contaminated by horror and rejection. faint echoes and he came to a stop,
she explained earnestly. Then, stamping And then she'd got the idea of bringing in peering up and around. Then he began to
with a foot: "March, march, over the the girls (Did that make her a monster? see multitudinous points of light distant
Deathlands. Go, go, over the Doom- Well, perhaps.) and after that she'd as stars, where flakes of mica in the fire-
lands. Doom! — kill the Mingols. managed very well, keeping it all at a born stone reflected his torch, and in the
Doom! — die the heroes. Doom! Doom! distance. middle distance an irregular pillar of
Glorious doom!" Her voice had grown And then there'd been the excitement mica-flecked rock and on its top a small
quite loud by the time she was done. of the j ourney to Lankhmar and the perils pale bundle that drew his eye. And then
"Glorious doom?" Afreyt repeated. of Khahkht's ice-magic and the Mingols from far above he heard the beat of great
"Yes. Come on, May, chant it with and the renewed excitement of the arrival wings, a pause, then another beat— as
me." of the Mouser and Fafhrd and the though a great vulture were circling in the
"I don't know that I want to." realization that Fafhrd did indeed resem- cavernous dark.
"Oh, come on. I'm wearing your ble a —
younger Odin was thai what had He called, "Mara!" toward the pillar
noose, aren't I? Odin says we should all made god Odin fade and grow whisper- and the echoes came back and amongst
chant it." knew it
voiced? She didn't know, but she them, shrill and faint, his own name
As the two girls repeated the chant in helped make everything torturesome and called and the echoes of that. Then he
their shrill voices with mounting enthu- confusing — and she couldn't have borne realized that the wing-beat had ceased
siasm, Groniger and another Rime-man to enter the litter tonight. (Yes, she was a and that one of the high mica-stars was
came up. monster.) getting rapidly brighter, as though it were
"That's good," he said, collecting the She felt a sharp pain in her neck and swiftly traveling straight down toward

bowls. "Glorious doom is good." realized that in her agitation she'd been him, and he heard a rush in the air as of a
"I like that one," the other man tugging at the pendant end of the noose great hawk stooping.
agreed. "Doom! — kill the Mingols!" he beneath her cloak. She loosened it and He jerked his whole body aside from
repeated appreciatively. forced herself to sit quietly. It was full the bright sword darting at him and
They went off chanting it in low dark now. There were faint flames simultaneously struck with his ax just
voices. flickering from Darkfire and Hellglow behind it. The
torch was torn from his
The night darkened. The wind blew. too. She heard snatches of talk from the grasp, what seemed like a leather sail
The girls grew quiet. campfires and bits of the new chant and struck him to his knees, and then there
May said, "It's cold. The god'll be laughter as the story of that went round. was a great wing-beat, very close, and
getting chilly. Gale, we'd better go inside. It was very cold, but she did not move. then another, and then the shrill bellow of
Will you be all right, cousin Afreyt?" The east grew silvery-pale, the milky a man in agony that despite its extremity
"I'll be all right." effulgence domed up, and at last the white held a note of outrage.
A while after the curtains closed moon edged into view. As he scrambled to his feet, he saw his

behind them, May stuck her head out. The camp stirred then and after a torch flaring wide on the rocky floor and
"The god invites you to come inside while the bearers came up and unwedged transfixingit the bright sword that had

with us," she called to Afreyt. Odin's gallows and up and the
lifted it struck from his grasp. Wing-beat and
it

Afreyt caught her breath. Then she litter too, and Afreyt arose, unkinking bellowing were going off from him now.

14
 — —
RIME ISLE

He set his boot on the torch handle, from their toes to their eyes. Fafhrd, at surveyed the busy harbor and his fleet of
preparatory to withdrawing the sword last thought, wondered why it should fishing boats turned warships. Truly, they
from it, but as he went to take hold of the move him so strangely that Mara were a weird sight, their decks which had
latter, his fingers encountered a scaly clutched his left hand, bent up beside his so recently been piled with fish now
hand, slenderer than his own, gripping it shoulder, in both of hers. bristling with pikes and various im-
tightly, and (his groping fingers ascer- promptu weapons such as he'd seen
tained) warmly wet at the wrist, where it Groniger's men shoulder yesterday.
had been chopped off —
both hand and Some of them had lashed huge ceremoni-
blood being alike invisible, so that al spears (bronze-pointed timbers, really)
although his fingers touched and felt, his to their bowsprits —for use as rams, he
eyes saw only the sword's hilt, the silver supposed, the Fates be kind to 'em! While
cross-guard, the pear-shaped silver pom- others had bent on red-and-black sails, to
mel, and the black-leather grip wrapped indicate bloody and baleful intentions, he
with braided silver wire. guessed — the soberest fisherman was a
He heard his name spoken falteringly potential pirate, that was sure. Three
close behind him and turning saw Mara were half wreathed in fishnets
standing there in her white smock looking protection against arrow fire? The two
woebegone and confused, as if she'd just largest craftwere commanded by Dwone
been lifted from the pillar's top and set and Zwaaken, his subadmirals, if that
down there, and as he spoke her name in could be credited. He shook his head.
answer, a voice came out of the air beside If only he had time to get his thoughts
Mara and a little above her, speaking in straight! But ever since he'd awakened,
the chilling and confounding tones of a events (and his own unpredictable im-
familiar and beloved voice turned hateful pulses) had been rushing, nay, stamped-
in nightmare. ing him. Yesterday, he'd managed to lead
The sightless mountain princess Hirri- Cif and the other three women safely out
wi said, "Woe to you, barbarian, for of the quaking and stinking cave-tunnels
having come north again without first (he glanced toward Darkfire— it was still

paying your respects at Stardock. Woe to venting into the red sky a thick column of
you for coming at another woman's call, black smoke, which the east wind blew
although we favor her cause. Woe for west) only to discover that they'd spent an
deserting your men to chase this girl-chit, unconscionable time underground and it
whom we would have (and have) saved was already evening and after seeing to
without you, Woe for meddling with Next day Salthaven was a-bustle so Rill's hand, badly burned by the Loki-
demons and gods. And woe upon woe for early —
and so wildly so fantastically torch, they'd had to hurry back to
lifting your hand to maim a prince of with preparations for the great sailing Salthaven for conferences with all and
Stardock, to whom we are joined, though that it was hard to tell where the sundry — hardly time to compare notes
he is our dearest enemy, by bonds inspirations of nightmare and worry- with Cif on the whole cavern experi-
stronger than love and hate. A head for a dream ended and those of (hopefully) ence
head and a hand for a hand, think on that. wide-eyed day began. Even the "foreign- And now he had to break off to help
Quintuple woe!" ers" were infected, as if they too had been Mikkidu instruct the six Rimeland
During this recital, Mara had moved hearing the Mingols-to-their-deaths replacements for the thieves they'd lost to
to Fafhrd, where he knelt upright, his face chant in their dreams, so that the Mouser Seahawk — how to man the sweeps and so
working as he stared at and hearkened to had been impelled against his better forth.
emptiness, and he had put his arm about judgment to man Fafhrd's Seahawk with And that was no sooner done (matter
her shoulders and together they stared at the most eager of them under Bomar their of a few low-voiced instructions to
the speaking gloom. "mayor" and the Ilthmart tavern-owner Mikkidu, chiefly) than here came Cif
Hirriwi continued, her voice less and make Pshawri their captain with half climbing aboard, followed by Rill, Hilsa,
ritually passionate, but every whit as the thieves to support his authority and and Mother Grum — all of them save for
cold. "Keyaira heals and comforts our two of the Mingols, Trenchi and Gavs, to the last in sailorly trousers and jackets
brother, go to join them. At dawn
and I help him con the ship. with knives at their belts. Rill's right arm
we will return you, journeying upon our "Remember you are boss," he told was in a sling.
fish of air, to your people, where you will Pshawri. "Make them like it or lump it "Here we are, yours to command,
know your weird. Until then, rest in the and keep to windward of me." captain," Cif said brightly.
warmth of Hellfire, which is not yet a Pshawri, his new-healed forehead "Dear . . . councilwoman," the Mouser
danger to you." wound still pink, nodded fiercely and answered, his heart sinking, "Flotsam
With that she broke off and there was went to take up his command. Above the can't sail into possible battle with women
the sound of her going away, and the salt cliff the eastern sky was ominously aboard, especially
— " He let a meaningful
torch flickered low, almost consumed, red with sunrise, while glooms of night look serve for " —
whores and witches."
and their great weariness took hold of still lingered in the west. The east wind "Then we'll man Sprite and follow you
Fafhrd and Mara and they lay down side blew strongly. after," she told him, not at all downcast.
by side and sleep was drawn up over them From Flotsam's stern the Mouser "Or rather range ahead to be the first to

15
 " " —

RIME ISLE

sight the Sunwise Mingols —you know But then the thoughts which he hadn't weren't looking. It didn't taste strong at
Sprite's a fast sailer. Yes, perhaps that's had time to straighten all day began to all,I swear it, but it must have had a

best, a women's fighting-ship for soldier- cark him again and above all else the clear tremendous delayed kick, for when you
esses." realization that there was something jumped on the table and started to talk, I
The Mouser submitted to the inevi- altogether foolhardy, in fact utterly blacked out— my word upon it!— and
table with what grace he could muster. ridiculous, about them all setting sail so when I came to you were saying some-
Rill and Hilsa beamed. Cif touched his confidently with only one hairbrained thing about Groniger and Afreyt leading
arm commiseratingly. plan of action, on nothing more than the out half the Rimelanders to reinforce
"I'm glad you agreed," she said. "I'd crackling word of a fire, the whisper of Captain Fafhrd and the rest of us sailing
already loaned Sprite to three other burning twigs, "In three days the Mingols out to entice the Sun Mingols into a great
women." But then her face grew serious come" — that and a compelling feeling in whirlpool, and everybody was cheering
as she lowered her voice to say, "There is a his bones that they were doing the right like mad — and so of course I cheered too,
matter that troubles me you should thing and nothing could harm them, and just as if I'd heard everything that they
know. We were going to bring god Loki he would peradventure find the Mingol had."
aboard in a firepot, as yesterday he fleet and that another wonderful inspira- "You can swear to the truth of that?"
traveled in Rill's torch
— tion would come to him at the last the Mouser asked in a terrible voice.
"Can't have aboard a ship going
fire minute Mikkidu nodded miserably.
into battle," the Mouser responded At that moment his eye lit on Mikkidu The Mouser came swiftly around the
automatically. "Besides, look how Rill sweeping with considerable style in the table and embraced him and kissed him
got burned." bowmost steerside position and he came on his quivering cheek. "There's a good
"
—but this morning, for the first time to a decision. lieutenant," he said most warmly, clap-
in over a year, we found the fire in the "Ourph, take the tiller and take her ping him on the back. "Now go, good
Flame Den unaccountably gone out," Cif out," he directed. "Call time to the Mikkidu, and invite the lady Cif attend
"We sifted the ashes. There was
finished. sweeps. me here. Then make yourself useful on
not a spark." "My dear, I must leave you for a brief deck in any way your shrewdness may
"Well," said the Mouser thoughtfully, space," he told Cif. Then taking the last suggest. Don't stand now in a daze. Get at
"perhaps yesterday at the great rock face Mingol with him, he went forward and it, man."
after he flamed so high the god temporar- said in a gruff voice to Mikkidu, "Come By the time Cif arrived (not long) he
ily shifted his dwelling to the mountain's with me to my cabin. A conference. Gib had decided on his approach to her.
fiery heart. See how she smokes!" And he will replace you here," and then hurried "Dear Cif," he said without preamble,
pointed toward Darkfire, where the black below with his now apprehensive-eyed coming to her, "I have a confession to
column going off westward was thicker. lieutenant past the wondering glances of make to you," and then he told her quite
"Yes, but we don't have him at hand the women. humbly but clearly and succinctly the
that way," Cif objected troubledly. Facing M
ikkidu across the table in the truth about his "wonderful words" that —
"Well, at any rate he's still on the low-ceilinged cabin {one good thing he simply hadn't heard one of them.
island," the Mouser told her, "and in a about having a short captain and still When he was done he added, "So you can
sense, I'm sure, on Flotsam too," he shorter crew, it occurred to him) and by see not even my vanity is involved
added, remembering (it made his fire- the sufficient light from the small port- whatever it was, it was Loki's speech, not
stung fingers smart anew) the black holes, he eyed his subordinate merciless- —
mine so do you now tell me the truth
torch-end hestill had in his pouch. That ly and said, "Lieutenant, I made a speech about it, sparing me nothing."
was another thing, he told himself, that to the Rime Islers in their council hall She looked at him with a wondering
wanted thinking about night before last that had them cheering smile and said, "Well, I was puzzled as to
But just then Dwone came sailing me at the end. You were there. What did I what you could have said to him to make
close by to report the Rime fleet ready for say?" Mikkidu so head-in-the-clouds happy
action and hardly to be held back, and the Mikkidu writhed. "Oh, captain," he and am not sure I understand that even
Mouser had perforce to get Flotsam protested, blushing, "how can you now. But, yes, my experience was, I now
underway, hoisting what sail she could expect
— confess, identical with his— and not even
carry for the beat against the wind, and "Now none of that stuff about it being the taking of an unknown drink to excuse
setting his thieves and their green replace- so wonderful you can't remember or — it. My mind went blank, time passed me
ments to sweeping while Ourph beat time, other weaseling out," the Mouser cut him by, and I heard not a word you said,
so that she'd be able to keep ahead of the short. "Pretend the ship's in a tempest except those last directions about
handier fishing craft. and her safety depends on you giving me a Afreyt's expedition and the whirlpool.
There were cheers from the shore and square answer. Gods, haven't I taught But everyone was cheering and so I

the other ships and for a short while the you yet that no man of mine ever got hurt pretended to have heard, not wanting to
Mouser was able to bask in self- from me by telling me the truth?" injureyour feelings or feel myself a fool.
satisfaction at Flotsam moving out so Mikkidu digested that with a great Oh, I was a sheep! Once I was minded to
bravely at the head of the fleet, and his gulp and then surrendered. "Oh captain," confess my lapse to Afreyt, and now I
crew so well disciplined, and (he could he said, "I did a terrible thing. That night wish I had, for she had a strange look on
see) Pshawri handling Seahawk nicely when I was following you from the docks her then— but I didn't. You think, as I do
enough, and Cif standing beside him to the council hall and you were with the now, that she also
?"
—
glowing-eyed, and himself a veritable two ladies, I bought a drink from a street The Mouser nodded decisively. "I
admiral, no less, by Mog! vendor and gulped it down while you think that not one soul of them heard a

16
 —

RIME ISLE

first charge, hurling oneself upon the

foeman's virgin spear, to be preferred to
death by self-administered poison in the
last charge?"
He hearkened to their closely-
reasoned answers and to the counterques-
tion: "Since death is so much to be
desired, surpassing the delights of love
and mushroom wine, how did our all-
noble and revered ancestors ever survive
to procreate us?" and at last observed, his
white-rimmed eyes gazing east yearning-
ly, "That is all theory. On Rime Isle we

will once more put these recondite

matters to the test of practice."
While high above all winds Khahkht
in his icy sphere ceaselessly studied the
map lining it, whereon he moved counters
for shipsand men, horses and women
aye, even gods — bending his bristly face
close, so that no unlawful piece might
escape his fierce scrutiny.

By early morning sunlight and against

the nipping wind, Afreyt hurried on alone
through heather dotted by stunted cedars
past the last silent hill farm, with its

word to remember of the main body of That selfsame east wind which blew sagging gray-green turf roofs, before
my— or, rather, Loki's talk, but later they west across the southern half of Rime Cold Harbor. She was footsore and
all pretended to have done so, just like so Isle, and against which Flotsam labored, weary (even Odin's noose around her
many sheep indeed — and I the black goat farther out at sea was hurrying on the neck seemed a heavy weight) for they'd
leadingthem on. So only Loki knows horse-ships of the Sunrise Mingols. The marched all night with only two short
what Loki said and we sail out upon an grim galleys, each with its bellying square rest-stops and midway they'd been
unknown course against the Mingols, sail, made a great drove of ships, and now buffeted by changing winds reaching
taking on trust."
all and again a screamed in its bow-
stallion tornadic strength as they'd passed
"What to do now?" she asked wonder- cage as they plunged ahead through the through the transition belt between the
ingly. waves, which cascaded spray through the southeastern, Salthaven half of Rime
Looking into her eyes with a tentative black, crazily-angled bars. All eyes Isle, which the east wind presently ruled,

smile and a slight shrug that was at once strained west-ahead, and it would have and the northwestern, Cold Harbor half,
acquiescent and comical, he said, "Why, been hard to say which eyes glared the where the equally strong west wind now
we go on, for it is your course and I am more madly, those of the fur-clad, held sway. Yet she forced herself to scan
committed to it." grinningly white-toothed men, or those of carefully ahead for friend or foe, for she
Flotsam gave a long lurch then, with a long-faced, grimacingly white-toothed had constituted herself vanguard for
wave striking along her side, and it beasts. Groniger and his grotesquely burdened
nudged Cif against him, and their arms On the poop of the flagship this frenzy trampers. A while ago in the twilight
went around each other, and their lips looked in a more philosophical direction, before dawn she'd gone from litter-side
—
met thrillingly but not for long, for he where Gonov discoursed with his witch up to the head of the column and pointed
must hurry on deck, and she too, to doctor and attendant sages propounding out to Groniger the need of having a
discover (or rather confirm) what had such questions as, "Is it sufficient to burn guard ahead now that they were nearing
befallen. a city to the ground, or must it also be their journey's end and should be wary of
Flotsam had progressed out of Salt- trampled to rubble?" and contemplating ambushes, but he had seemed uncon-
haven harbor and the salt cliffs lee to such answers as, "Most meritorious is to cerned and heedless, unable to grasp the
where the east wind smote them more pound it to sand, aye, to fine loam, danger, almost as if he (and all the other
urgently and the swells it engendered in without burning at all." Rime men, for that matter) were intent
Outer Sea, and the sunlight struck their While the strong westwind that blew only on marching on and on, glazed-eyed,
canvas and deck. The Mouser took the east across the northern half of the island growling doom-chant, like so
Gale's
tiller from sad-faced Ourph and that old (with a belt of squalls and fierce eddies many monstrous automatons, until they
one and Gib and Mikkidu set sail for the between the two winds) was hurrying on met the Mingols, or Fafhrd's force, or
first eastward tack. And one by one from west across trackless ocean the like failing those, would stride into the chilly
Seahawk and the weirdly accoutered fleet of the Widdershins Mingols, where western ocean with never a halt or waver,
fishing boats repeated their maneuver, Edumir had proposed this query to his as did the lemming hordes in their
following Flotsam out. philosophers: "Is death, by suicide in the climacteric. But neither had Groniger

17
RIME ISLE

voiced any objection to her spying on "I wonder at him leaving you all so guided by an invisible woman."
ahead — nor even concern for her safety. long to shift without him, merely for "It would be," he retorted obscurely,

Where was the man's one-time clearhead- that," Afreyt commented, frowning. and then they were buffeted by a great
edness and prudence? "Truth to I wondered at it myself,
tell, gust of air as Fafhrd and Mara sped past
Afreyt was not unversed in island yestermorning," Skor admitted. "But as close overhead and still flat out (both of

woodcraft and she now spotted Skor events came on us, I asked myself what them grinning excitedly, Afreyt was able
peering toward Cold Harbor from the the captain woulddo in each case, and did to note as she cringed down, at least

grove of dwarf cedars whence Fafhrd had that,and it's worked out— so far." He Fafhrd's lips were drawn back from his
launched yestermorning's brief arrow- hooked a middle finger over a fore one. teeth) and came to rest midway between

fusillade.She called Skor's name, he
whipped around nocking an arrow to his
bow, then came up swiftly when he saw
her familiar blues.
"Lady Afreyt, what do you here? You
There came a faint tramping and the
whispers of a hoarse chant and turning
they saw the front of the Rime column
coming downhill.
"Well, they look fearsome enough,"
her and Groniger at the head of the
column, which had slowed to gawk,
about a foot above the heather, which
was pressed down in a large oval patch, as
if Fafhrd and Mara were lying prone on

look weary," he greeted her succinctly. Skor said, after a moment. "Strange, an invisible mattress wide and thick
He looked weary himself and hollow- too," he added, as the litter and gallows enough for a king's bed.
eyed, his cheeks and forehead smudged hove into view. The girls in their red Then the air travelers had scrambled
with soot above his straggly russet beard, cloaks were walking beside the former. to their feet and jumped down after an

perhaps against the glare of glacial ice. "Yes, they are that," Afreyt said. unsteady step or two, and Skor and
She quickly told him about the "How are they armed?" he asked her. Afreyt were closing in on them from one
Rimeland reinforcements approaching "I mean, besides the pikes and spears and side and May and Gale from the other,

behind her. quarterstaves and such?" while the Rimelanders stared open-

His weariness seemed to lift from him She told him those were their only mouthed, and Mara was shrieking to the
as she spoke. "That's brave news," he said weapons, as far as she knew. other girls, "I was abducted by a very

when she had done. "We joined our lines "They'd not stand up to Mingols, nasty demon, but Fafhrd rescued me! He

(I'm now making the rounds of them) then, not if they had to cover any distance chopped off its hand!" And Fafhrd had
with those of the Cold Harbor defenders to attack," hejudged. "Still, if we showed thrown his arms around Afreyt (she
before sunset yesterday and have the 'em under the right conditions, and put a realized she'd invited it) and he was

Mingol penned on the

foreraiders few bowmen amongst 'em. ." . .
saying, "Afreyt, thank Kos you're here.

beach — and by bluff! The mere sight

all "The problem, I think, will be to keep What's that you've got around your
of the forces you describe, strategically them from charging," Afreyt told him. neck?" and next, without letting Afreyt

deployed, will cause 'em to take ship and "Or, at any rate, to get them to stop go, to Skor, "How are the men? What's
sail away, I think —
and we not lift a marching." your position?" While the staring Rime-
landers marched on slowly and almost
finger." "Oh, so it's that way," he said, raising
"Your pardon, lieutenant," she re- an eyebrow. painfully, like sleepers peering at another

joined, her own weariness lifting at his "Cousin Afreyt! Cousin Afreyt!" May wonder out of a nightmare which has
optimism, "but I have heard you and your and Gale were crying shrilly while they entrapped them.
fellows named berserkers — and
have waved at her. But then the girls were And then all others grew suddenly
always thought it was the way of such to pointing overhead and calling, "Look! silentand Fafhrd's arms dropped away
charge the enemy at the first chance, Look!" and next they were running from Afreyt as a voice that she had last
charge wolf-howling and bounding, downhill alongside the column, still heard in a cave on Darkfire called out like
mother-naked?" waving and calling and pointing at the an articulate silver trumpet, "Farewell,
"To tell the truth, that was once my sky. girl. Farewell, barbarian. Next time,
own understanding of it," he replied, Afreyt and Skor looked up and saw, at think of the courtesies due between
thoughtfully rubbing his broken nose least a hundred yards above them, the orders and of your limitations. My debt's
with the back of his hand, "but the figures of aman and a small girl (Mara by discharged, while yours has but begun."
captain's changed my mind for me. He's a her red cloak) stretched out flat on their And with that a wind blew out from
great one for sleights and deceits, the faces and clinging
to each other and to where Fafhrd and Mara had landed
captain Makes the foe imagine things,
is! something invisible that was swiftly (from under the invisible mattress, one
sets their own minds to work against 'em, swooping toward Cold Harbor. They must think), bending the heather and
never fights when there's an easier way came around in a great curve, getting blowing the girls' red coats out straight
and some of his wisdom has rubbed off on lower all the time, and headed straight for from them (Afreyt felt it and got a whiff
us." Skor and Afreyt. She saw it was Fafhrd of animal stench neither fish nor fowl nor
"Why are you wearing Fafhrd's and Mara, all right, and she realized that four-legger) and then it was as if some-
sword?" she asked, seeing it suddenly. she and Cif must have looked just so thing large and living were taking off into
"Oh, he went off yestermorning to when they were being rescued from the air and swiftly away, while a silvery
Hellglow after the girl, leaving me in Khahkht's blizzard by the invisible laughter receded.
command, and he's not yet returned," mountain princesses. She clutched Skor, Fafhrd threw up his hand in farewell,

Skor answered readily, though a crease of saying rapidly and somewhat breathless- then brought it down in a sweeping
concern appeared between his brows, and ly, "They're all right. They're hanging gesture that seemed to mean, "Let's say
he went on briefly to tell Afreyt about onto a fish-of-the-air, which is like a thick good-bye to all that!" While his expres-
Mara's strange abduction. flying carpet that's alive, but invisible. It's sion, which had grown bleakly troubled

18
during Hirriwi's speaking, became grimly
determined as he saw the Rime column
marching slowly into them. "Master
Groniger!" he said sharply and "Captain
Fafhrd?" that one replied thickly, as one
half-rousing from a dream, and "Halt
your men!" Fafhrd commanded, and
then turned to Skor, who made
telling his leader in somewhat more detail
matter told earlier to Afreyt, while the
column slowly ground to a halt, piling
around Groniger in a disorderly array.
Meanwhile Afreyt had knelt beside
Mara, assured herself that the girl wasn't
outwardly injured, and was listening
bemused as Mara proudly but deprecat-
ingly told the other girls about her
abduction and rescue. "He made a
scarecrow out of my cloak and the skull
of the last little girl he'd eaten alive, he
said, and he kept touching me, just like
Odin does, but Fafhrd cut off his hand
and Princess Hirriwi got my cloak back
this morning. It was neat riding through
the sky. I didn't get dizzy once."
Gale said, "Odin and I made up a
marching song. It's about killing Mingols.
Everyone's chanting it," and May said, "I
made nooses with flowers in them.
They're a mark of honor from Odin.
We're all wearing them. I made one for
you and a big one for Fafhrd. Say,
got to give Fafhrd his noose. It's
was wearing it, with a big battle coming."
When this had been explained to
Fafhrd (he forced himself to
patiently, for he'dwanted to know what
that ugly thingaround Afreyt's neck was)
and when Mara had asked him to bend
down his head, he looked up and saw the
curtained litter, set down meanwhile
beside the girls, and he recognized the
uprooted gallows beyond it, and he felt a
shivery revulsion and said angrily, "No, I
won't wear it. I won't mount his eight-
legged horse. Get those things off your
necks, all of you!"
But then he saw the hurt, distrustful
look in the girls' eyes as Mara protested,
"But it's to make you strong in battle. It's
an honor from Odin," and the look of
concern for the girls in Afreyt's eyes as she
gestured toward the litter, its curtains
fluttering in the wind (and he sensed the
grim holiness that seemed to emanate
from it), and he saw the look of
expectation in the eyes of Groniger and
the otherRimers, and he thought hard for
a moment and then he said, making his
voice eager, "I'll tell you what I'll
wear it around my wrist, to strengthen it,"
and he thrust his left hand through the
noose and after a moment May tightened
it.
"My left arm," he explained, lying
somewhat, "has always been markedly
weaker than my right in battle. This
noose will help strengthen it. I'll take
yours too," he said to Afreyt with a
report, meaningful look.
She loosened it from around her neck
with feelings of relief which partly
up changed to apprehension as she saw it
tightened around Fafhrd's wrist beside
the first noose.
"And yours, and yours, and yours," he
said to the three girls. "That way I'll be
wearing a noose for each of you. Come
on, you wouldn't want my left arm weak
in battle, would you?"
"There!" he said when it was done,
gripping the five pendant cords in his left
hand and whirling them. "We'll whip the
Mingols off Rime Isle, we will!"
The girls, who had seemed a little
unhappy about losing their nooses,
laughed delightedly, and the Rimers
raised an unexpected cheer.
Then they marched on, Skor scouting
ahead after remembering to give Fafhrd
back his sword, and Fafhrd trying to put
some order into the Rimers and keep
them quiet (although the wind helpfully
I've blew the drum-noise of their chant from
time he the beach), and the girls and Afreyt
dropping back with the litter, though not
as far as Fafhrd wished. The company The Gray Mouser fully realized that
listen picked up a couple of Fafhrd's men, who he was in one of the tightest spots he'd
reported the Mingols massing on the ever been in during the course of a
beach around their ships. And then they —
danger-dappled career with this differ-
mounted a slight rise where the lines ence, that this time the spot was shared by
extended south from the fortress-hump three hundred friendly folk (even dear,
of Cold Harbor, Fafhrd and his men thinking of Cif beside him), along with
holding back the now overeager Rimers, any number of enemies (the Sun-Sea-
and a mounting cry of woe came from the Mingol fleet, that was, in close pursuit).
beach beyond and they all beheld a He'd raised them (the Mingols) with the
wonderfully satisfying sight; the three Sea greatest of ease and was now luring them
Mingol galleys launching into the wind, so successfully to their destruction that
forward oars out and working frantically Flotsam was last, not first, of the Rime
while small figures gave a last heave to the Island fleet, which was spread out
sterns and scrambled aboard. disorderly before him, Seahawk nearest,
Then came an arresting cry from Cold and within arrow range of the pursuing
Harbor and they began to see out in the Mingols, who came foaming
in endless
watery west a host of sails coming up over shrieking whinnying numbers, their
the horizon: the Widder-Mingol fleet. galleys sailing faster with the wind than
And with the sight of it they became he. Moments ago one of the horse-ships
aware also of a faint distant rumbling, as had driven herself under with excess of
of the hoofbeat of innumerable war- sail, and foundered, and not a sister ship
horses charging across the steppes. But had paused to give her aid. Dead ahead
the Rimelanders recognized it as the voice some four leagues distant was the Rimic
of Hellfire, threatening eruption where it coast with the two crags and inviting bay
do, I'll smoked blackly to the north. While to the (and blackly smoking Darkfire beyond)
south churned high-domed clouds, beto- that marked the position of the Great
kening a change of wind and weather. Maelstrom. North, the clouds churned.
19
 RIME ISLE
promising change of weather. The prob- was even in Gavs's, Trenchi's, and Gib's as had happened to Sprite day before
lem, as always, was how to get the (the Mingols) . . . even in Mother Grum's, yesterday, but with a greater force
Mingols into the Maelstrom, while bright as black beads proportionate to her larger size. The
avoiding it himself (and his friends with In all eyes, that is, except the wrinkle- heavens reeled, the sea went black. He
him), but he had never appreciated the netted ones of old Ourph helping Gavs and Cif were brought up against the
problem quite so well as now. The hoped- with the tiller. They seemed to express a taffrail along with a clutter of thieves,
for solution was that the whirlpool would sad and patient resignation, as though whores, witches (well, one witch), and
turn on just after the Rimers and contemplating tranquilly from some Mingol sailors. He bid Cif cling to it for
Seahawk and he had sailed across it, and distance a great and universal woe. On an dearest life, then found his footing on the
so catch at least the van of the close- impulse the Mouser took him from his tilted deck, and raced past the rattling
crowding Mingol fleet. And the way they task and drew him to the lee rail. whipping mainsail (and past young
were all bunched now, that required Mikkidu embracing the mainmast with
perfect, indeed
For the space of perhaps two breaths
Godlike timing, but he'd eyes tight shut in ultimate terror or
worked his hardest at it and after all the
the old Mingol stared at him curiously,
perhaps in rapture) to where his own
then he slowly shook his bald dome,
gods were supposed to be on his side, vision was unimpeded.
weren't they? — at least two of them.
saying, "No, captain,
word you spoke (my
I heard every last
Flotsam, Seahawk, and the whole
The horse-galleys of the Mingols were eyes begin to fail me
a but my ears not) and they greatly
little, Rime fleet were circling at dizzying
so close that Mikkidu and his thieves had
their slings ready, loaded with leaden
saddened me (your words) for they velocity more than halfway down the
expressed the same philosophy as seizes sides of a whirlpool at least two leagues
ball, though under orders not to cast
unless the Mingols started arrow fire.
upon my steppe-folk at their climacterics wide, whose wide-spinning upper reaches
(and often otherwhen), the malign philos- held what looked like the entire Mingol
Across the waves a stallion screamed
from its cage. ophy that caused me to part company fleet,the galleys near the edge tiny as toys
with them in early years and make my life against the churning sky, while at the
Thought of the Maelstrom made the
Mouser look in his pouch for the golden among the heathen." maelstrom's still-distant center the

queller. He found it, all right, but "What do you mean?" the Mouser fanged rocks protruding through the
demanded. "A favor— be brief as possi- white welter there were like a field of
somehow the charred stub of the Loki-
ble." death.
torch had got wedged inside it. It really

was no more than a black cinder. No "Old man," he said, "you were at the Next below Flotsam in the vast wheel
wonder Rill had burned herself so badly, council hall the night before last when I of doom spun Dwone's fishing smack, so
he thought, glancing at her bandaged spoke to them
and they cheered me. 1
all close he could see faces. The Rimers
take it that, like the rest, you heard not
hand. (When Cif had stayed on deck, the clutching their weird weapons and each
had one word of what I said, or at best only a other looked
harlots on the same privilege
insisted monstrously happy, like
and it seemed to cheer the men. Mother few — the directives for Groniger's party drunken and lopsided giants bound for a
Grum was with them.) and our sailing today?" ball.Of course, he told himself, these
"Why, you spoke— most winningly were the monsters whose quickening
indeed (even I was tempted) of the — Loki had envisioned, these were the trolls
The Mouser unwedge the
started to glories of death and of what grand thing it or whatever. And that reminded him of
black god-brand, but then the odd was go down joyfully to destruction
to what, by Ourph's irrefutable testimony,
thought occurred to him that Loki, being carrying your enemies with you (and as Loki intended for them all and peradven-
a god (and in some sense this cinder was many as possible of your friends also), ture for Fafhrd and Afreyt also, and all
Loki), deserved a golden house, or how this was the law of life and its the universe of seas and stars.
carapace, so on a whim he wrapped the crowning beauty and grandeur, its Hesnatched the golden queller from
length of stout cord attached to it tightly supreme satisfaction. And as you told his pouch and seeing the black cinder at
round and round the weighty golden cube them all that they soon must die and how, its heart thought, "Good!— rid of two
and knotted it, so that the two objects they all cheered you as heartily as would evils at one stroke." Aye, but he must
queller and god-brand— were inextrica- have my own Mingols in their climacteric pitch it to the whirlpool's midst, and how
bly conjoined. and with the selfsame gleam in their eyes. to get it there, so far away? There was
Cif nudged him. Her gold-flecked I well know that gleam. And, as I say, it
some simple solution, he was sure, it was
green eyes were dancing, as if to say, greatly saddened me (to find you so on the tip of his unseen thoughts, but
"Isn't this exciting!" fervent a death-lover) but since you are there were really so many distractions at
He nodded a somewhat temperate my captain, I accepted it." the moment
agreement. Oh,
but
it was exciting, all right,

was also damnably uncertain—

The Mouser turned his head and Cif nudged him in the waist one —
it looked straight into the astonished eyes more distraction. As he might have
everything had to work out just so— why, of Cif, who had followed close behind expected, she had followed him close
he could only guess at the directions
still him and heard every word old Ourph had against his strictest bidding and now with
god Loki had given them in the speech he spoken, and looking into each other's wicked
a grin was pointing at ... of
had forgotten and none else had eyes they saw the same identical under- course, his sling!
heard standing. He centered the precious missile in the
He looked around the deck, surveying At that very instant the Mouser felt strap and motioning Cif to the mast to
faces. It was strange, but everyone's eyes Flotsam beneath his feet slammed to a give him room, tried out his footing on
seemed to flash with the same eager stop, spun sideways to her course, and the tilted deck, taking short dancing
juvenile excitement as
was in Cif s ... it sent off circling at prodigious speed just steps, and measuring out distance, speed,

20
 RIME ISLE
windage, and various imponderables smitten flat, what looked like the end of a a great roiling confusion covering several
with his eyes and brain. And as he did black rainbow (or a skinny and curving square leagues that gradually sorted itself

those things, whirling the queller-brand black waterspout impossibly tall, some out. The Rime fishing boats and smacks
about his head, dancing out as it were the said afterwards) that left a hole behind it (somewhat larger) with their handier rigs
prelude to what must be his life's longest in the dark clouds, through which (and Flotsam and Seahawk too) were
and supremest cast, there danced up from something maddening and powerful had able to tack southwest against the wind
his mind's darkest deeps words that must vanished forever from their minds, their and set slow courses for Salthaven. The
have been brewing there for days, words beings, and from all Nehwon. Mingol galleys with their square sails
that matched Loki's final four evil And then the Mouser and his crew and could only run before it (the heavy seas
couplets in every particular, even the the women with them were all fighting to preventing the use of oars) away from the
rhymes (almost), but that totally reversed save themselves and Flotsam in the midst sobering chaos of the dreadful isle whose
theirmeaning. And as the words came of an ocean that was all chop and in
cross black smoke pursued them and their
bobbing to the surface of his awareness he the teeth of a gale that had reversed dreary drenched stallions. Some of the
spoke them out, softly he thought, direction completely and now blew from horse-ships may have sunk, for Flotsam
though in a very clear voice — until he saw the west, carrying the thick black smoke fished two Mingols out of the waves, but
that Cif was listening to him with from Darkfire out toward them. Around these were unclear as to whether they had
unmistakeable delight at each turn of them other ships fought the same fight in been swept overboard or their ships lost,
phrase, and Mikkidu had his shut eyes
open and was hearing, and the monstrous
(Continued on P. 68)
Rimers on Dwone's smack had all their
sobering faces turned his way, and he
somehow had the conviction that in the
midst of that monstrous tumult of the
elements his words were nevertheless
being heard to the whirlpool's league-
distant rim —aye, and beyond that, he
knew not how far. And this is what he
spoke: "Mingols to their deaths must go?
Oh, not so, not so, not so! Mingols, draw
an easy breath. Leave to wanton after
death. Let there be an end to strife — even
Mingols relish life. Mingol madness cease
to burn. Gods to proper worlds return."
And with that he spun dancingly
across the deck, as though he were
hurling the discus, the queller-brand at
the end of his sling a gold-glinting circlet
above his head, and loosed. The queller-
brand sped up gleaming toward the
whirlpool's midst until it was too small
for sight.
And then . . . the vasty whirlpool was
struck flat. Black water foamed white.
Sea and sky churned as one. And through
that hell of the winds' howling and the
waves' crash there came a rumbling earth-
shaking thunder and the red flash of huge
distant flames as Darkfire erupted,
compounding pandemonium, adding the
strokes of earth and fire to those of water
and air, completing the uproar and riot of
the four elements. All ships were chips in
chaos, glimpsed dimly if at all, to which
men clung like ants. Squalls blew from
every compass-point, it seemed, warring
together. Foam covered decks, mounded
to mast tops.
But before that had transpired quite in

Flotsam's case, the Mouser and some

others too, gripping rail or rrtast, eyes
stinging with salt sea, mounting had seen,
for a few brief moments to the sky, from
the whirlpool's very midst as it was
TIN EAR

C^all them Stargates if you want to. no sense of humor whatsoever, despised Then I dialed 'er down to the next fre-
The term was firmly engraved in the anyone who did, loathed any music of quency on the "standard" list, in-
public's mind, by science-fiction writers satirical, parodying or punning nature, structed Abacus Al the AnaLogic to
with a weakness for grandiose jargon, and therefore was impossible to discuss convert to Cipher A before transmit-
fully fifty years before the first Spatial musk with. Or anything much. ting. "Walter?"
Anomaly was discovered and the War But you can listen to a lot of good "Here." Flat, mechanical voice
started. If you do call them Stargates, music if you have nothing else to do. AI's rendition of human speech, just
you probably call us Stargate Keepers, I was seventeen hours into Wagner's like what Walter was hearing from me.
or Keepers for short. Ring Des Niebelungen, thoroughly ex- "Simpleton machine."
But we call 'em 'Holes, for short, and hausted but with the end in sight, when "Yah."
we call ourselves Wipers. Walter's commlaser overrode my head- "Capture, not kill. Programmed to
It's all in how you look at it, of phones. "George." immobilize us, disarm us, blind us, and
course. If we ever got to enter one, in- "WhaV I yelled, but there was too prevent meaningful communication be-
stead of just watching them and mop- much cacophony. We both had to kill tween us. As soon as it dopes out Cipher
ping up what comes out, we might have our tapes. Damned if he didn't have "
A, it'll. . .

a different name for them or if not, at — Siegfried on himself, which annoyed me A million pounds of frying bacon
least a different name for ourselves. — I was certain, without asking, that he drowned me out. I dropped freak by the
". .and cheap ones, too," as the joke liked Wagner for the wrong reasons.
.
all same interval again and shifted to
goes. "Alert status," he said, yanking me Cipher B, allegedly a much tougher
But the Enemy's drones keep popping from music back to reality. cipher to break. They call it "the best
out at irregular intervals, robot-destroy- "Right." I slapped switches and nonperfect cipher possible."
er planetoids with simple but straight- reached out to touch my imitation rab- Walter was waiting on the new freak.
forward programs written somewhere bit's foot. So the 'Hole was puckering "It's essential," hebegan at once, "that
on the far side of hyperspace. So, in ad- up, eh?A noble death might lie seconds we determine whether this drone-plane-
dition to the heroes who get to go after away. With all possible speed I joined toid is a Mark I or a Mark II."
the source — and keep failing to Walter in training all the considerable "Damn right," I agreed. "If we can
return —
somebody has to mount guard firepower we possessed on the 'Hole. work out our relative positions we've at
over every known 'Hole, to sound the And the bastard popped out a couple least got options."
alarm when a drone comes through, and thousand miles to one side of the 'Hole And a roar of static threw Cipher B
hopefully to neutralize it (before it and bagged us both. Unheard of; still out the window.
neutralizes us). The War is still, after unexplained. Even Abacus Al, the com- Both types of Enemy planetoid have
twenty years, at the stage where intact puter you can count on, was caught flat- only the two tractor beams— but the re-
prizes are more valuable than confirmed footed. Tractor beam grabs me, clang!, lative positions of them are one of the
kills. Data outworth debris, and will for reels in fast, CLANG!, half a billion chief distinguishing features from the
decades to come. Rockies' worth of Terran hardware on outside. If this was a Mark I, we could
For the Enemy, apparently, as much alien flypaper, slump, body goes limp in both throw full power to our drives
as for us, or I wouldn't be here. The
shock -webbing, ping!, lights go out. and while they wouldn't be sufficient to
first Enemy drone I ever saw could cer-
"George," Walter was saying in my peel us loose, their energies should
tainlyhave killed us both, if it had headphones, "are you all right?" cross, like surgical paired-lasers, at the
wanted to. "I'll see," I replied, but by then some center of the planetoid, burning out its
It was well that Walter and I in-
sort of laserproof barrier must've been volitional hardware. If this were Mark
habited separate Pods. We didn't get interposed by the drone-planetoid which the Second, the same maneuver would
along at all. The only things we had in held us captive, for the laser went dead. have our drives cross in the heart of the
common were (a) an abiding hatred for I sighed and checked my Pod. It was on power-plant and distribute the compo-
the government which had drafted us in- its gyrostabilized tail, "upright." All nent atoms of all three of us across an
to this sillyass suicidal employ (" . . .
my video screens were dead, except for enormous spherical volume of space.
before we had a chance to volunteer like the one that showed me about twenty But how could we compute our posi-
gentlemen," we always added) and (b) a degrees of starry space straight "over- tions blind, on a sphere with no agreed-
deep enjoyment of music. head" —my location with reference to upon poles or meridians anyhow, and
But all Wipers share these two things. Walter was unknown. This was serious communicate them to each other's com-
One of the few compensations our if I intended to live, which I did. But puters without tripping the damned
cramped and claustrophobic Pods fea- before tried the radio inspected my planetoid's
I I squelch-program? The
and ex-
ture are their microtape libraries weapons control systems (dead in all cagey son of a bitch had cracked Cipher
cellent playback systems (you can't read directions except "up"), main drive —
B too easily apparently it was pro-
properly by starlight, and combat status but insufficient to pry me
(alive, loose), grammed to jam anything that it com-
permits no other kind). And so it was and my body and apparently un-
(alive puted to be "exchange of meaningful
possible for Walter and I to spend end- harmed). Then I heated up the radio on information" whether it could decipher
less hours within the same general standard emergency band. itor not. That suggested that Cipher C,
volume of space, listening to separate "Down one freak, Cipher A," I said the Perfect Cipher, might be the only
masterpieces over our headphones and crisply and quickly, getting it all out answer.
arguing only occasionally. Walter had before static jammed that frequency. The perfect cipher (really a code-

24
cipher) was devised way back in the
1900s, and has never been improved
upon. You have a computer generate an
enormous run of random numbers, in
duplicate. You give a copy of the print-
out to each communicator, and down
the column of random numbers they go,
each writing out the alphabet, one letter

to each number, over and over again.

For each successive letter they want to

encipher and send, they jump down to

the next alphabet-group in line, select
the random number adjacent to the de-
sired letter and transmit that number. A
savvy AnaLogic deduces pauses, acti-
vates voder: communication. The cipher
cannot be broken by anyone not in
possession of an identical list of random
numbers, for it produces utterly no pat-
tern. (We had a code, by the way, a true
code, in which prearranged four-letter
groups stood for various prearranged
phrases. But not a phrase on the list ap-
plied to our situation — I love the Army
—and using a series of exclusively four-
letter groups would have tipped off the
alien computer that a code was in use.)
But Cipher C had one flaw that I

could see, and so I hesitated before dial-

ing the frequency again. If we lost this
chance, we were effectively deaf and
dumb as well as blind. Oh God, I pray-
ed, give'Walter just this once, and for
no more than fifteen minutes, at least a
half a brain. I dialed the new freak.
". got to take starsights," he was
. .

saying. "It's the only way

"
to. . .

"SHUT UP!"
"Eh?"
"No sound. Listen. Heed. Okay?
Carefully. Yes, 'sights,' but do not
under any circumstances repeat any
phrase or word-group I use. Com-
prende?"
I breathed a silent prayer.
"Why shouldn't I repeat any phrase
or word-group you use?" Walter asked,
puzzlement plain even through voder. freak anyhow.
"GODDAMMIT," I roared, but I I scratched a telemetry contact and
was addressing only another roar of consulted Abacus AL "How," 1 pro-
static. Groups with identical numbers of grammed, "can I communicate mean-
characters, in repeated sequence, were ingful information without communica-
the only clue the Enemy computer had tingmeaningful information?"
needed. It was "meaningful communi- That's the kind of question that
cation," so it was jammed. makes most computers self-destruct,
One more standard band left on the like an audio amplifier with no output
list. If we had to hunt for each other on connected. But Al is built to return
offbeat frequencies, it could take for- whimsy with whimsy, and his sense of
ever to establish contact. On the other humor is as subtle as my own. "WRITE
hand, Cipher C was now useless, so A POEM," he replied, "OR SING A
there wasn't anything to do with the last SONG."
TIN EAR TIN EAR

I snorted. Okay, then. Back to the Beatles. From our position — in quote, human And so when the live Enemies came He giggled —
at least, from anyone myself. Our mutual need for catharsis

"No good," I punched. "Can't use "Tell Me What You See." space, unquote, the constellation known through the 'Hole, we had the drop on else I'd have called that sound a giggle. transformed modest stinker into the
his

words." Walter paused a long time, and at last as The Great Bear is foreshortened to a them, which is how man got his first ". . . sat there the the whole. . . grandest pun ever made, and we roared.
" Even Abacus Al blinked a few times.
"HUM," Al printed. gave up and sent the intro to Donald small grouping. I studied the starcharts alien corpses to study, which is why time. . .

MacLean's Van Gogh song —the line feverishly, trying to visualize the geo- we're (according to the government) He was definitely giggling now, and it "Walter," I cried, "I've got a feeling
that goes, "Starry, starry night ..." metry ("cosmometry?") I lacked en- — winning the War these days. But the must be racial instinct because he was the rest of this hitch is going to be
A nova went off in my skull. He was plainly stymied. ough data to have Al do it for me. If part of the whole episode that I re- doing it right. okay."
Hmmm. I'd have to think for both of Walter could see the Bear at all, it member best is when we were waiting "... the . . . the whole time And then alarms were going off and
us. seemed to me. . .
there dead in space —in ambush our — just..." we went smoothly into action as a unit,

I crosswired the microtape library in Inspiration came. I punched for a late remaining weaponry aimed at the 'Hole, He lost control and began laughing and the Enemy never had a chance. _^
Al's belly to the radio in his rump, and 21st-century drugging-song called, I sent the chorus of "Smack Dab In and Walter was saying dazedly, "The out loud.

had him activate the last standard fre- "Brother Have You Got Any Reds?" The Middle," the legendary Charles's most amazing thing is that the damned "Just taking notes," he whooped,

quency. It was live but silent: Walter There were few prominent red stars in version, and hoped Walter could sense thing just sat there listening to us plot its and I dissolved into shuddering laughter

had finally figured out his previous this galactic neighborhood— if any ap- the question mark. destruction, with no more sense of self-

stupidity. He waited for me to come up peared in Walter's "window" it might Again, his answer baffled me momen- preservation than the foresight of its

with inspiration this time. help Al figure our positions. tarily—another Beatles song. He loves programmers allowed. It just sat

I keyed the opening bars of an ancient His uptake was improving; the me? I thought wildly, and then I got it.
Beatles' song, "We Can Work It Out." answer was immediate. Ellington's im- "Yeah yeah yeah!"
In clear. And then killed it before the mortal: "I Ain't Got Nothin' But The My fingers tickled Abacus Al's keys,
melody repeated. Blues." a ruby light blinked agreement, and Al's
A long silence, while Walter slowly So much for that one. tactical assessment appeared on the dis-

worked it out in his thick head. Come I was stumped. I could think of no play.
on, dummy, I yelled in my head, give more leading questions to ask Walter MARK ONE, it read.

me something to work with\ with music. If he couldn't, for once, "Walter," I yelled in clear, "Main
And my headphones filled with the make his own mind start working in drive. Now!"
strains of the most poignant song from punny ways, we were both sunk. Any
Cabaret: "Maybe This Time." time now, real live Enemies might pop
Thank God! out of the 'Hole, and there was no way
I keyed Al's starchart displays and of telling what they were like, because
thought hard. The chunk of sky / saw no human had ever survived a meeting
was useless unless I could learn what with them at that time. Come on,
Walter was seeing over his own head Walter.
the two combined would give us a ballis- And he floored me. The piece he se-
couldn't see the 'Hole, and I
tic fix. I lected almost eluded me, so obscure was
had to assume he couldn't either, or it: an incredibly ancient children's jingle
he'd have surely mentioned it already. called, "The Bear Went Over The
Or would he? Anyone with half a Mountain."
brain would have. . . .

I keyed in the early 21st-century Re-

vivalist dirge,"Is There A Hole In Your

Bucket?" and hoped he wouldn't think
I was requesting a damage report.

He responded with the late 21st-

century anti-Revivalist ballad, "The
 '

WAITING AT THE SPEED

* OF LIGHT -g

SHORT STORY
Hurry up and wait —
a vision of a very dangerous future.

ROGER LOVIN
"The New OrleansPlex freight rail is "Put them on the shuffle strip, Lily."
numbered forty-seven, Citizen Brighton." "What'll we do with the on-mods?"
"Okay, Citizen Coordinator. Three "I'll move them." Sara is already

transships for rail forty-seven." punching data into the main bank. She
"Thank you, Wes." She watches his feels her stomach tighten. "Conjunc-
annoyance bring him back up. Will it be tion?"
"Conjunction, fifty seconds." enough this time, the next time? Will "Twenty-one seconds. Twenty, nine-
"Mark it. Stand by, all boards." she catch him if he falls? teen, eighteen . .
."

Sara's voice is calm and alert, for she is Outside the dome, past the green, past "That's a confirm on the hotbox,
on both NervUp and BeCalm: it's the the guns ... the freight rails. A dozen Coordinator."
only way you can handle the job. of them coming in and radiating out of "Break the 'liner. Put them on the
She sits at a console, in soft green the dome, mostly from the east and dump strip."
ligjit. Below, fanned around her, are north. Two south. One west. West into "Live cattle, Ma'am."
six more consoles, six more figures the brush and tumbleweeds and agonies "Dump them."
hunched and poised. But relaxed, yes. of geology long past. West into the wild ,
"Twelve, eleven, ten, nine . .
."

The room a bubble, a blister, an lands, the hidden lands, the lands of the "Mark, all boards."
on a larger bubble-
emerald-lit wart Tribes. And eventually, Christ and the "Board one, clear."
'
huge, silver, tumescent; the DallasPlex Apache willing, west into AngelesPlex "Clear on board two.
Ecodome. Four million souls living in to feed the six millions, to fuel their Sara feels the float of chemical hyper-
the dome. It reaches half a kilo into the machines, to arm their guns, yes. tension as conjunction narrows down
clanging brass sky, half a kilo into the "Readout, all boards." on her. She detaches, mind and nerve
blasted dirt, the bones of dinosaurs, the "Two meat wagons on rail twelve. endings coming free of the body, grow-
lost dreams of dim life long ago, long Maybe got a hotbox on the middle ing into the electrical synapses of the
ago. Thirty kilos around, the dome, and module." computer; eyes becoming an extension
ringed with green, green, green. And "Fifty mods on the shuffle strip east- of cathode ray tubes staring greenly
beyond the green: guns. bound. Nothing shakin' here, boss- back at her, the pips on them moving at
"Status, board five." Sara calls her person." incredible velocities.
junior back from the tic which is begin- "Break on rail thirteen. Two mods "Board six, clear."
ning to oscillate his frame. jamming, coming through LouisPlex." "Conjunction, one second. Stand on
"Uh, sixty mods on nine south. Two Sara hits a switch. "When down?" it!"
goin' on, fifteen comin' off, three trans- "Thirty-three seconds, Coordina- Through the tinted window that walls
ships for the O'Plex rail." tor." one side of the control room, you can

29
WATTING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
see the rails. Steel arrows so straight the mouth beginning to show the three years Please.
eyes ache. Elevated seven meters off the on the console. It's me, yes. It's me and "Madam Coordinator?"
desert floor, humped by sonic breakers. I think I'll scream. "Yes?"
Without volition, Sara's eyes go to But she doesn't. She beats her way "Please report to Western Sector Arm-
rail thirteen. through the crowds on residential five, ing Station, immediately."
And it comes, the freightliner. Two keeping to the walls, and clings to her "The Arming Station? What's hap-
thousand kilos per hour, half a million door like a drowning sailor. She can't pened?"
tons packed into sixty modules, all find the key and resorts to the buzzer. "Report immediately."
screaming in electric heat toward the "Hello?" Sara shifts in the accel chair, trying to

Pecos, toward AngelesPlex, toward the "It's me, Pie-Pie. Open up." find a position where neither her pistol
dome . . . There is a five-year-old giggle through nor her powerpak chafes her hip bones.
And four more just like it, on four the speaker. "Me who?" Goddamnit to hell. Goddamn the

other rails, at the same instant. Hail "Your mother, Cheryl. Come on, Tribers. Goddamn the WatchBureau
Mary: please, not on my shift. honey." slug who let a 'liner get hijacked five
The entirety of DallasPlex feels it. "What's the password?" hundred Texas blackness.
kilos into the
! '

From the waste processing tunnels to "Open the damned door And goddamn the RailBureau ordi-
the Class One apartments up under the The door opens to reveal Chuck, her nance that put a Coordinator in the mi-
city's roof. Four trains slamming into husband. He has a ladle in one hand and litia. Hadn't she done her service at

the freight-yard switching terminal, flour on his cheek. His look is accusa- nineteen? Hadn't she fought the Second
moving so very, very fast. And if the tory, and he strides off without a word. Corporate War up in Canada? Wasn't
computer doesn't drop a stitch, and if Sara bundles her child. "I'm sorry, she entitled to a little goddamn peace
the Citizen Coordinator doesn't have a Pie-Pie. I'm really sorry." without having to face the filthy, mur-
headache, and if her crew hasn't been too Cheryl refuses to be comforted and dering Corporate dropouts in the ugly
deeply into the pill bottles, and if for runs into her room, slamming the door. night?
that two and a quarter seconds which Sara goes to the kitchen as if dazed and "Stand by for acceleration."
count, everything goes exactly right . . . the table. Her breath comes hard.
sits at Sara wills herself to relax. I'll stay on
She watches Chuck stirring something the mod. They won't need me.
on the stove. "I thought we were going Beside her, a young man fingers the

All four trains flash out the other side out tonight?" butt of his pistol, whistling tunelessly
of the dome and are gone in actinic stut- "I decided to cook." He is sullen. through his teeth. "Get me an Apache,"
ters of light. Modules went on. Modules "You didn't have to yell at the kid, you he croons. "GetmeaTriber."
came off. Modules went from train to know." "Acceleration!"
train. And two smashed into the mil- "Yes, I know. I'm sorry." The module jerks, sways and lurches
lion-liter water tanks designed to stop Please listen. Please let me just cry forward, the hum of its motors rising to
them and turned their mooing contents and roll up and not think. Please. a whine as voltage pumps in. Sara is
into jelly. But DallasPlex stands. Four Chuck sets the table and brings a pressed into the seat as the mod's speed
million souls breathe again. stew. "Cheryl ate." He spoons her bowl doubles, doubles again, then cubes.
"Sara?" full. "You wouldn't believe the day I There are no ports on the mod: it's mili-
She blinks. "Sam. Hi." had today." tary and armored. But Sara knows the
The man rubs her shoulders and gen- Please, my love. Not now. Please. scene. The stubby capsule is running up
tles her out of the control chair. "I got "First the goddamn ironbrain in sec- the accel rail in a long sweep, leaning as
the board, kiddo. Go home." tor three blew out and started pouring Power boosts into the
the rail curves.
She smiles her thanks and stretches, heat all over a med lab, then the tech mod every hundred meters until the
watching carefully as her relief takes who went in to fix it fried himself on a combined voltage is a fist in the engines.
command. How tense is he? Is that a live 220 and I had to go get him. A kilo and an eighth from the loading
tremble? Can he handle it? Abruptly, Then . .
." platform, the accel strip joins the mail
she is nauseated. The hell with it. Sara stands before the mirror, look- rail. By the time the module gets there it

She small-talks her crew as they leave. ing at her naked body. Chuck's snores will be moving at a thousand kilos per

Ho, ho, ho. See you tomorrow. How's bounce off the bathroom walls in hour. The powerpak grinds into her left

the kid? Where are you going for your lumps. Is this all there is, she asks? Lie hip.
vacation? Why don't you all go to hell? down, grunt, shower? What happened The moon makes a black and silver
Why don't we just let the damn trains to Chuck the lover? Or is it what hap- nightmare of the landscape. Gargoyles
do it sometime, huh? Why Sara . . . pened to Sara? It's not the body. One crouch on boulders. Giants stand in the
takes hold as she steps into the stink of child, lots of exercise, good diet. She's sage, thinly disguised as saguaro cactus.
general atmosphere. How long have still trim, her breasts still firm, the fat On the rail, a 'liner lies like a broken-
they been promising to sweeten up the on the thighs fought to a standstill. backed snake, half its length tumbled to

dome? She takes an elevator down to What happened? Her hand toys with the stony ground. It has taken down
residential, knowing she can't handle her husband's razor . . . several sonic breakers in its fall.

the mob and shove of the escalators. In At 2:35 the telephone rings. Sara is The armored module crawls out of
the dulled glint of the dropper's alumi- awake instantly, even through the fog of the east, searchlights probing nervously.
num wall she sees a woman gray-haired leftover BeCalm. If it rings in the mid- Gun turrets fore and aft swivel like skit-

at twenty-seven, the eyes too tight, the dle of the night, it's for her. No, no, no. tish mares . . .

30
 WAITING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
"Okay, first squad out! Perimeters at in the cold of the coming dawn, shiver- control but a sudden wash of warmth
fifteen and thirty meters. Go!" The ing through their sweat. and pleasure through her body. Is she
commander is efficient, masculine, and At five-thirty, they findmodule it. A dying? She is on her stomach, awkward-
frightened. He turns to Sara. "Keep coupler had broken, and dropped, ly, in the dirt. She levers herself around

your people here until I give the signal." struck the rail. The following mod had — —
ohgod, ohgod and looks down. One
"They're not my people. He's in pole-vaulted up the loose coupler and leg is . surely it belongs to someone
. .

charge." hit a breaker. And the railtrain had be- else? Something else? She looks away
"Okay, whoever. Y'all just stay put, come junk. System malfunction. No peripherally, surveying her person as
right?" Triber interference. though from a fearful distance. The
The examination squad obediently "Bring in the perimeters! Get aboard, wash of pleasure is explained: her
stays put. The young man fingers his we're goin' in." bowels have surrendered and continue
pistol and whistles. Sara wonders what Dawn is full and already heating. to do so. Not like this, pleaseplease. Not
it is like to be shot with an arrow. It Sara waits at the ladder, her arms filled without dignity. Still at a distance from
might be over quickly. They say the with the wrecked 'liner's onboard re- her own wreckage, she hears herself
Apache poison their arrows. Quickly, corder. The military commander stands begin screaming again.
and peacefully. Chuck would see to at the foot of the ladder, still watchful. Why not? No more
console. No more
Cheryl. There are three soldiers, Sara, and him- crowded EcoDome. No more
stinking,
"Okay, out." self still on the sand when the alarm Chuck. No more equality with a ven-
sounds. "Down!" geance.
All eyes follow the gun turrets. On a There is a small explosion nearby.
rise a quarter kilo distant are two Sara clears, scans. Overhead, the mili-
Sara takes her turn at the ladder, figures. tary module hangs burning greasily.
shocked by the sweetness of the night The young man is in the mod's hatch, Will it fall? On me? Scattered around
air. Is this what it was like before his pistol braced. "Apache bastards!" are charred bits of meat, some with
domes? Is this the pollution we crawled "No!" Four people yell at once; all smouldering uniform parts glued redly
under aluminum to escape? The Green- too late. The young man fires, and in to them. Is she alone? Is she alone? Isn't
Techs don't tell us how nice the air is the laser's whipcrack of coherent light, there anyone left?
out here. one of the figures on the rise puffs a There is a period of jerkiness. The sun
"Get on the 'liner, dammit! Get your burnt steam and collapses. flits a degree of arc, then another. Five
report together and let's get out of Almost simultaneously, the other seconds unconscious? Five minutes? Do
here." figure raises something to its shoulder. the blackouts get longer or shorter as
The young man has his pistol out. The military commander takes Sara's you die/die/die/ . . .

"Where are th' Tribers? Just let a shoulders and flings her toward a boul- In a hostile situation, command de-
'Pache show hisself. I'll blow him clean der a few paces away. She stumbles into volves by rank on surviving combatants
to Nevada." it knees-first and tumbles over. — tedum, tedum, something, something
A woman ahead speaks. "Are you There is a slight motion on the rise — Combatant in charge will act in ac-
ready for war with the Tribes, son? Do and a flash of something dark coming. cord with the military code of justice
you want to be the one who breaks The young man has time to fire once and the best interests of the Corporate
treaty?" more before the arrow takes him in the States of America. Am in charge? Am
I

"We didn't break young man

it," the throat. He staggers back into the ar- I a combatant? Am waiting, waiting?
I

says hotly, pointing toward the wrecked mored module, knocking the radio op- Will the Cheerios Kid save the maiden,
'liner. erator off his seat. He spasms convul- or will the Tribers arrive and find that
"We don't know that the Tribes did sively, his trigger finger pressing the burnt body up there and come down on
this." laser pistol's firing mechanism again us like a plague, knowing that they've
proof enough for me. I'm ready
"It's and again. The High-Tech woman is got the food, and the patience, and the
for war." He looks around in the dim- sliced in half. The forward end of the numbers, and the boldness, and the
ness, wearing his macho like a torch. module bursts into flame. Then the pain, ohsweetjesus, thepam!
"Any of you think a bunch of hippies young man falls and fires a last time. For a moment she is free of the pierc-
and Mansonites with bows can take the Upward, directly into the aft gun tur- ing complaints of her ruined flesh as she
Corporate States of America?" ret .. . transcends into nausea and vomits down
"Not with bows, sonny," the older Painpainpain. Sara reaches convul- the front of her uniform. No fucking
woman says. "But they could probably sively for the readout board, her fingers dignity anywhere. She can stop it, she
take us if they wanted to." scrabbling for shunt switches which knows. The war. All she has to do is

"Bull! What are you, some High keep eluding her. On the 'scopes, the wait, be alive, keep breathing until
Tech executive with all the answers?" pips come together and explode into either the Tribers or the army get here.
"Yes." whirling red light and high-pitched Sworn live testimony, it says in the
"Oh. Sorry, Ma'am." shriekings. No, not the shunt switches; treaty. Big mistake, overanxious boy-
"Just get in there and find out what pebbles. Gritted sand, not the console. soldiermilitia, notevenaprofessional.
caused this wreck." But the shrieking is real, and it is her- He's paid, we've paid, no war. Every-
Sara and the examination crew pour self. And the pain is real, and it is her- thing back to normal. Back to the con-
through and over the wreck, looking, self. sole, back to Chuck, back to the Dome,
looking. The military personnel crouch She silences in mid-shriek, not from yes.

31
WAITING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

fulfillment? What if it's him that's

waiting when the others arrive? It's too
fast, it's too fast!

From Harper &) Row The figure is still, poised, almost as

though filled with helium. At this dis-
tance, Sara can see no more than a

NEW BOOKS hooded cloak billowing, baggy pants

tucked in kneeboots. But she knows she
is seen, and studied, and her fingers

tighten on her pistol.

The Triber bends and rummages
among the dead warrior's remains, then
stands holding a long, bulky object with
a sling. Cautiously, silently, the Triber
startsdown the slope.
SffANS go
Maybe he won't kill me. Maybe
live with him, be his woman or slave.
I can

Breathe real air, herd goats and laugh in

the sun. Maybe . . . She catches herself
MASTER CALIBAN! NEBULA AWARD brushing her hair back, trying to sit up
Phyllis Gotlieb displays all her STORIES ELEVEN straighter, and laughs. Crusted with dirt
dazzling skill in this gripping Edited by Ursula K. LeGuin. The and blood, voiding at all orifices: how
tale ofhumans at war with SFWA choices this year for best can a one-legged woman herd anything?
power-crazed machines. $8.95 short story, novelette, novella All she can do is wait . . .

and novel in progress, plus four In hostile situations . . .

fine stories selected by LeGuin; who survives

SWORD OF THE DEMON $8.95
If it's the Triber . . .

The Triber is closer, passing under the

Richard A. Lupoff has created a
sensuous, erotic, haunting
rail. He lifts the slinged device.

fantasy-odyssey, based on
STARHIKER Sara eases the pistol from its holster.

ancient Japanese lore. $7.95 By Jack Dann. An endearing No more Dome. No more Chuck. No
minstrel wanders among the more pressures.
moon colonies in search of The Triber halts, face lost in the
NEW CONSTELLATIONS truth, freedom, and the love of hood, and raises a quick hand. And,
Edited by Thomas M. Disch and someone like himself. $7.95 No more art. No more books. No
Charles Naylor. 18 top SF more theater. And,
authors explore our society's Sara raises the pistol and fires.
myths in provocative,
STOLEN FACES . . .

The Triber staggers forward, fingers

refreshing stories based on By Michael Bishop. A chilling
clutching spasmodically at the sling of
ancient legends, fairy tales, and horror story about the mysteri-
ous planet Tezcatl, where the the goatskin waterbag, and falls, nearly
the Bible. $8.95
people, ravaged by a leprosy- at Sara's feet. Long blond hair spills

like disease, perform bizarre from beneath the hood. Already-glazing

sacrificial rites. $7.95 blue eyes look around frantically, as if
trying to find something small and pre-
cious recently misplaced. The cloak falls
-f^HarperePRow open. Lemon-sized pubescent breasts,
At bookstores or direct from the publisher
the nipples ringed, shudder once and are
still.

Thirteen, Sara's mind computes?

Eleven? She notes details with great in-
A soft,
muffled whump. The armored of the rocks and clutches her pistol.
terest while her fingers claw futilely at
module shifts, slides, teeters. Beacons A figure stirs, rises, walks haltingly
her own breasts. Worn boots. Ohgodin-
of charcoal-colored smoke rise in the toward the blackened lump of the dead
heaven she looks like Cheryl. Curious
still morning air. Burning plastic drips Triber.
little silver buckle at the waist. Cheryl
down around Sara. Is it going to fall? The other one, Sara's mind says rea-
will look just like that in six or seven
Deus ex machina with a pie in the face? sonably. Of course. Apache? Hassay-
years, if only they wait. If only I wait. If
Is it over, the waiting? Sara lifts her ampa? Who was he originally? Some
only it waits/ waits/waits/
arms, though whether in welcome or son of YorkPlex chasing his ideals into
Overhead, the module shifts slightly,
warding she cannot tell, and watches the the wastelands, running from an identi-
patiently.
ton weights of oblivion burning their ty tattoo and a life pledged to the Cor-
way to imbalance over her head. poration? A loser from the sewers of
On the rise, a very small movement. now-dead PhiliPlex, hearing the whis-
Sara's concentration centers. Her hand pered switchblade nightmares of the
moves in a gesture older than the gods Mansonites and following them into red

32

tit
by Robert Silverberg
A WORLD OUT OF TIME, by Larry
& Winston, 242
Niven. Holt, Rinehart,
pp., $7.95.
This is the first of Larry Niven's nov-
els, other than his collaborations with
Jerry Pournelle, to appear as a hard-
cover original edition. First hardcover
publication is ordinarily a major event
in a writer's life, and— considering
Niven's popularity with readers, his
crowded shelf of Hugos and his excel-
lent sales record in paperback one —
might expect that his hardcover debut
would bring us a book that is an event
in itself. How surprising, then, to get
thisrambling, loose-jointed novel that
seems to have assembled itself out of the
handiest parts in the heap while its
author's attention was elsewhere.
The plot, a doughy conflict-free as-
semblage of happenings, centers around
one Jerome Branch Corbell, (Why the
pun on James Branch Cabell, who was
not at all man? A good
like Niven's
writer never makes unintentional or
purposeless references of this kind.)
who has died of cancer, goes into cryo-
genic storage, awakens several hundred
years hence in someone else's body, and
isalmost at once sent forth on a galactic
survey mission that takes him through a
black hole and back to Earth of the re-
mote future. (A writer with a sense of
structure builds his novels around one
extreme premise, not three.) Corbell's
sojourn in the world of the near future
is described perfunctorily; Niven does
not give us the awakened sleeper's ex-
perience of alienation nearly as well as it
was done in Fred Pohl's (otherwise
quite dissimilar) novel The Age of the
Pussyfoot, but no matter, because we
are soon whisked away, sent off on a
listless cruise to the galactic core, and
hauled back quickly to a tour of the
remote future that lacks specificity, vi-
sion, or inventiveness. And after a
lengthy chase for a species of immortali-
ty, Corbell vanishes in a whiff of per-
fume, unchanged by the epic events of
—
thebook and making no changes in us.
So the story is far beneath what we
have come to expect from Niven. The
writing, alas, is standard machine-made
stuff, full of foolish magazine-level dia-
log on the order of, "What the bleep do
you think you're doing," and slack,
soggy exposition such as, "The chair
would assume a fantastic variety of pos-
and it gave indecently good mas-
itions,
sages." Corbell often thinks of himself
in the third person italic "No. Jaybee
Corbell is alive and well, if a trifle con-
fused. " Do you think like that? This
the stuff of magazine fiction, not of life.
And —
readers eat it up conditioning, I
guess. The quality of Niven's percep-
tions is similarly thin. Corbell
"soft mounds a pair of falsies."
like
Why not like a pair of breasts? Too
often Niven accepts the first answer to
any literary question.
—
And most astounding of all at the — Japanese scroll. But perseverance brings
climax of the book Niven pulls the
mighty planet Uranus, third most mas-
sive planet in the solar system, with-
in two million miles of Earth. Niven,
always ritually listed along with Hal
Clement and Poul Anderson as one of
the last hard-science writers, says not a
word about the tidal disruption that
would crumple our world like an omelet
in a cement-mixer. I don't believe it. I
don't believe anything about this book
except that Larry Niven wrote it and
Holt, Rinehart & Winston are pub-
lishing it with great fanfare, and I wish I
didn't have to believe any of that.
CENTER SECTION
z
o
SWORD OF THE DEMON, by
Richard A. Lupoff. Harper & Row, 171
O
LU
pp., $7.95. 00
cc
Behind the lurid title
and austerely beautiful
lurks a strange
fable that cuts
across genre lines to offer rewards to a
wide range of readers. Lupoff, a writer
LU
H
LU
o
so original and self-willed that he has
thus far failed to build much of a fol-
—
lowing because each of his books is a
unique and unclassifiable entity may —
at last cohere an audience for his work
with this remarkable distillation of Jap-
anese myth, rich in ghostly combats,
scenes of rare visual beauty, and a deep
and intense verbal poetry. Imagine some
strange amalgam of Lafcadio Hearn,
E. R. Eddison, and Fritz Leiber, and
you might get some notion of the flavor
of Sword of the Demon; but it's unfair
to Lupoff, actually, to attribute much
derivative nature to this book.
Devotees of sword-and-sorcery fic-
tion who pick the book up on account of
its promisingly gory title and Lupoff's
reputation as a biographer of Edgar
Rice Burroughs are going to have prob-
lems with the opening few chapters.
They constitute a difficult and forbid-
is
ding prologue, abstract and remote in
tone, which distances the reader delib-
erately from the action, leaving him
adrift in a timeless and placeless land
finds where all events are mysterious and
causes seem divorced from effects. We
are not participants in the early action
of the novel, only observers, staring at
grotesque tableaux on some bizarre
rewards: the mists clear, the characters
take on identities, the classic arche-
typical elements of high fantasy appear.
Though Lupoff maintains his cool and
marvelously well-controlled tone
throughout, and there is a total absence
of mighty-thewed heroes and rampantly
engorged adjectivity, there is enough
swordplay, sorcery, conflict, passion,
and imagery here to satisfy the most
demanding devotee of Robert E.
Howard or L. Sprague de Camp.
The simple plot needs little analysis.
A woman named Kishimo finds herself
in the midst of a struggle between demi-
gods for power in the land of Tsunu; she
is given tasks, embarks on a quest, falls
in with potent companions, and is en-
meshed in a series of mystic adventures
leading ultimately to apotheosis. Along
the way Lupoff's inventiveness is un-
flagging: a gorgeous (and gorgeously
funny) battle with an eight-headed ser-
pent that will wring cheers from the
most impassive of readers, a samurai
duel of wondrous ferocity, some mag-
nificent monsters, mysterious hidden
33
CENTER SECTION
z
g kingdoms —a cornucopia of delights, most immediate delight is Ellison's disk.
described in a precise and elegant way. Harlan is an accomplished stage per-
LU Lupoff taps some deep well of mytho- former, a splendid comic and mimic, a
CO
poetic energy here. His knowledge of man of extraordinary energy and
OC
LU Japanese myth seems extensive, his warmth, and his is easily the most pro-
H manipulation of symbol is too skillful to fessional reading. He does his Hugo-
Z be the product of mere calculation, and winning classic, " 'Repent, Harlequin!'
111
his guiding presence on this eerie jour- said the Ticktockman," with irresistible
O ney is compelling and confident. This is verve and contagious pleasure at his
adult fantasy at its highest level. own virtuosity. On the other side Ellison
presents a much less well known story,
the somber fantasy "Shatterday," with
GONNA ROLL THE BONES, Fritz equal skill. The record is a delicious
Leiber. souvenir of the Elhsonian platform
HARLAN ELLISON READS —
technique and the stories are worth
HARLAN ELLISON. repeated attention, besides.
THEODORE STURGEON READS, Fritz Leiber comes from a family of
Alternate World Recordings, Inc., professional actors, and is himself a
$6.95 each. man of such stature and presence that
one expects his reading technique to
Here are three of the first recordings combine the best of Orson Welles and
in an ambitious new spoken-arts project Richard Burton. And so there is some
that will eventually include virtually all letdown; for, although the famous
of today's major science-fiction and Leiber voice is as resonant as ever, the
fantasy writers reading their own intonations are bland, the climaxes are
works. We will never know how H.P. subdued, the hoped-for bardic power is
Lovecraft would have read "The Out- not there. I think anyone would sound
sider" or what John W. Campbell's subdued after though, and
Ellison,
own dramatic reading of "Who Goes Leiber's readings, while not the displays
There" would be like; but here we have of verbal music that they might be, are
Leiber, Sturgeon, and Ellison down on authoritative and gripping. Most of the
vinyl, and other records of Le Guin, record is occupied by his robust fantasy,
Bloch, Bradbury, Aldiss, Russ, Delany, "Gonna Roll the Bones," which took a
and many more are in the works. Hugo when it appeared in Dangerous
Of these three, the one offering the Visions in 1967; a short Fafhrd and
It's an axiom of advertising that you
don't spend money on unknown movies
in order to make them known. You
spend as much as possible on big movies
instead, in order to make them bigger.
As I write this, King Kong has just
opened after a six-month advertising
campaign which has been the biggest in
history. In a reversal of the normal pro-
cess, all of the spin-offs which normally
follow a movie— dolls, games, tee shir-
ts, etc.— have appeared before the
movie opened. There have been articles
in leading magazines and newspapers,
books, interviews, publicity stunts. And
justabout everything else has been done
in order to keep the movie in the
public's eye. Theaters have had to guar-
antee $150,000 net up front in order to
show the picture. It seems to be working
so far. In its first seventeen days, King
Kong netted 15 million dollars— second
WAITIKG-
Gray Mouser piece, "In the Witch's
Tent," fills out the second side.
Theodore Sturgeon, like Leiber, is a
man of great presence and personal
magnetism. His reading, too, falls short
of real acting skill, but no matter:
Hollywood is full of actors, but we have
only one Theodore Sturgeon, and his
warm, quiet, captivating readings give
us the man as well as the fiction. His
record is a catchall: "Bianca's Hands,"
a very early fantasy, "The Hurkle is a
Happy Beast," that jolly funny-critter
story that helped to establish The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
and a short, altogether Sturgeonesque
extractfrom his as yet unpublished nov-
el,Godbody.
These are important documents for
anyone interested in the process of
creating science fiction. By revealing the
author's own sense of emphasis they lay
bare structural secrets of three distin-
guished writers; and they provide some
measure of permanence for voices that
should not be lost. The records are
available in specialty science-fiction
bookshops, in some record stores, and
by direct order from the producer (Al-
ternate World Recordings, Inc., 148
East 74th St., New York, NY 10021).
There is a fee of 75C for the first record,
251 thereafter, on such direct orders.
by
Charles
Brown — N.
only to Jaws, the top picture to date.
Even this might not be enough. The
movie cost a reported twenty-four
million dollars to make, which may or
may not be an inflated studio figure
(studios tend to underestimate small
movies and overestimate major ones for
publicity value). The break even point
on a picture is a net of approximately
IVi times the cost— sixty million dollars
in this case. Kong will have to be one of
the ten top films of all time just to break
even! For comparison, 2001, the most
successful science fiction film of all
time, netted nineteen million dollars in
the United States. The U.S. figure is
about half the total world figure. As for
the movie itself, reviews have not been
generally favorable. The special effects
have been universally praised, but plot,
(Continued on P. 70)

by Ginjer Buchanan
After, "Where do you get your
ideas?", Isuppose the question most
often addressed to all authors is some
variation upon, "How did your writing
career begin?" A few years ago, two
science fiction writers, Brian Aldiss and
Harry Harrison, addressed that ques-
tion to a group of their peers. The re-
sponses were gathered together in a
book titled Hell's Cartographers which
was originally published in Britain and
came out here in 1976, from Harper &
Row.
In the book, Alfred Bester, Damon
Knight, Fred Pohl, Bob Silverberg, and
Mr. Aldiss and Mr. Harrison them-
selves discuss their involvement in the
world of science fiction. It is fascinating
material, full of interesting and valuable
information, not only about the person-
al histories of the people involved but
also about the history and development
of the SF field in general. This informa-
tion can be examined from many view-
points. In terms of the history of the
field, for instance, Algis Budrys, in a
published review, focussed on how each
man's account of his career demon-
strates important role played by
the
John W. Campbell in the formation of
modern science fiction. This is obvi-
ously true. Another thread that runs
clearlythrough the book is the fact that
every one of them was 'hooked' as an
SF reader by his teens, if not before.
Thus they were familiar with the con-
ventions of the genre' before attempting
their own contributions.
But what particularly struck
that four of the six writers represented
were obviously active SF fans before
they became professionals, and that, in
truth, during their early careers the roles
of writer and fan often overlapped
greatly.
Two
of them, Knight and Pohl, as
contemporaries belonged to the same
fan group in the '30s, a club called the
Futurians, which also numbered among
its members Cyril Kornbluth, Donald
Wollheim, Doc Lowndes, Jim Blish,
Judith Merrill and Virginia Kidd. Al-
though Knight says that as an intel-
lectual stance the Futurians looked
down on fannish activities, their habitu-
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al practices, such as naming their
apartments (e.g. The Futurian For-
tress), creating their own private reli-
gion (dedicated to the Ghod Ghu), put-
ting out their own magazines, designing
a Futurian crest, etc., can hardly be re-
garded as anything but unquestionably
fannish.
Some twenty years later, when Harry
Harrison broke into the field, many of
these same people, along with just about
any major author of the time that you'd
care to name, were members of another
group called the Hydra Club. It was,
ostensibly, a professional organization
but Harrison, who was at one point its
president, indicates that a lot of its pro
members were ex-fans who clung to
their fannish ways. He describes him-
self, for instance, as "Harry, the fan
. wallowing in a fannish dream of
. .
me was glory." Bob Silverberg too, at this time,
was beginning to steadily sell profes-
sionally while continuing to edit his fan-
zine Spaceship, copies of which are now
something of a collector's item. He also
spent time hanging around with that
other teenage fan-prodigy— Harlan
Ellison.
After I finished Hell's Cartographers,
I realized that I'd known all of this
information before, mainly from fan
history books, such as All Our Yester-
days and A Wealth of Fable by Harry
Warner, Jr. and The Eighth Stage of
Fandom by Bob Bloch. And from gen-
eral knowledge. "Everybody knows"
for example that Silverberg, Terry Carr,
Ted White, Larry Shaw and Richard
Lupof f were all members of a New York
City fan club which took the name
Fanoclasts (as a portmanteau of fan and
iconoclast), a club which still exists
although the founding members are
scattered far and wide. And "everybody
knows" that Wilson Tucker, the writer,
and Bob Tucker, the fan par excellence,
are one and the same. It is this Bob
Tucker, by the way, who has carried on
through the years a friendly feud with
the above-mentioned Bob Bloch (author
of Psycho and other light classics) which
is one of the honored traditions of fan-
dom.
(Continued on P. 70)
© 1977 Will Eisner
 on preliminary layouts), spot illustrator
(one who . . . well, never mind) and
general swamper. I was paid as much as

was offered by unemployment insur-

ance in those days.
The art studio, Hal-Ben Associates,
did "piece work" for a larger firm
named American Visuals. American
Visuals was Will Eisner. Among other
things, he produced booklets on any
subject under the sun. For a few years
I worked for Will Eisner, indirectly,
by illustrating The Farmers' Income-
Tax booklet, the Toy Safety booklet
and countless others having to do with
boating, building, buying, fixing, etc.
And in the course of those years, I
worked for and learned from Will
Eisner. But I never met him. Any
communication was through the studio
owners or brisk, informative memos
from Mr. Eisner such as, "Pay atten-
tion to the dummy, dummy!"
Will Eisner is hailed as a comic-strip
pioneer, a visual innovator, and a
genius in his field. But few have ever
given him his due for the thing at
which he excels.
Will Eisner was and remains a story-
teller.Each line he draws, each action
he delineates is not for style, flash or
to impress you with his superb draft-
smanship. Rather it is to tell a story,
expose an idea, communicate a
thought or a story line. And he does it
as no one before or since has been
able to do. When I worked for him, if
my drawings did not communicate I
heard about it. Emphatically. But I
never met the man.
A few weeks ago in the offices of
COSMOS after more than twenty years,
I met Will Eisner for the first time. Will

was illustrating a Tennis and a Golf

calendar to be distributed by Baronet
Spirit (who publishes what you're reading
now). Curiously enough, he remem-
bered all those little booklets so many

Was years ago and the dummy who illus-

trated them. We hit it off like old
friends and through a fortuitous set of
circumstances (and Dave Hartwell's in-

Willing spired idea),

man who had
my work
swallowed 1

long affected my life and

and asked him to do some-
my awe of this

thing for COSMOS. He

agreed to do it
(a rare treat, I feel) and in the manner of
the true professional he is (young artists
In the middle fifties when I came to New dence and the ability to pay a few bills, take note), showed up more than a week
York, the Korean Conflict was pretty buy cans of chili beans and tamales and before the deadline with what you see as
much finished. I had done my part by seek shelter from the soot. our centerfold, THE SPIRIT reflecting
seeing to it that the state of Virginia was 1 went out and looked for a job. In on his various encounters with science
safe from North Koreans in quilted those days the idea wasn't as revolu- fiction . . . among them reference to
jackets. tionary as it seems today. my favorite character, Awesome Belles.
In New York, as with any place else, After much nonsense which I choose So here it is, ready for framing (mind
itwas necessary to earn a living so that to forget, I was hired by a small com- the staples), THE SPIRIT of Science
one might greet whatever dawn would mercial art studio as a "comp renderer" Fiction. I think you'll enjoy it.
come with a certain degree of confi- (one who does comprehensive drawings Thanks, Will.
JG
38
 I suppose that within the context of the
science fiction genre, it would not be in-
appropriate to talk about the "launch-
ing" (may Harlan forgive me) of
COSMOS. After all, there is a certain
c lexicon that is generally accredited to
the language of the genre. So be it,
COSMOS has been "launched," put to
bed, delivered to the printer, published,
finished . . . Not quite!
Certainly, the first issue of COSMOS,
its editorials, its stories, its illustrations
are now a matter of printed record and
we hope of fond memory. We attempted
to lavish the magazine with quality and
diversity of talent, both in writing and
illustration. We think we succeeded, we
hope we have.
Included in that first issue were such
gifted craftsmen as Fritz Leiber, Larry
Niven, Michael Bishop and Frederik
Pohl, whose imaginative stories were
further enriched and brought to life by
the graphic presentations of artists like
George Schelling, Vincent DiFate, Freff
and Rick Sternbach. Presented in a
format immeasurably enhanced by the
use of color reproduction, and designed
to appeal to both the casual reader of
science fiction as well as the rabid fan,
COSMOS is the product of a small,
devoted staff that cares, really cares.
Cares about COSMOS, cares about the
multitude of professional, creative peo-
ple whose talents adorn its pages, and
most especially cares about the COS-
MOS reader.
In truth, the launching of a new maga-
zine is akin to childbirth. Both are
frought with deep-seated anxiety, grave
anticipation, acute and lonely pain, a
sense of rising excitement and the first
shimmering light of parental pride.
When the newborn magazine first rears
its head on publication day, the success
of the birth is not so readily apparent as
with human offspring. The magazine
may look the way it was intended, but
only after it endures the crucible of its
readership, can we finally determine
whether it is stillborn or whether it will
go on through childhood, adolescence
and eventual maturity.
When all is said and done, the maga-
zine's survival depends on its ability to
satisfy its intended audience sufficiently
to whet its appetite for future issues.
This is the real test, perhaps the only test
of a magazine's vitality and longevity,
and only time and the steadfast main-
tenance of an editorial posture that we
believe in, will bring that satisfaction
and will eventually decide the maga-
zine's fate.
To this end and to this credo, we have
tried to be true. We believe the first
issue of COSMOS achieved that objec-
tive, and now issue number two con-
tinues on the course charted by its pre-
decessor. Once again, crammed full of
stories by some of the most creative and
talented proponents of the genre, filled
with innovative illustration in both
black and white and color, and fea-
turing the special "magazine within a
magazine" for devoted fans, this issue is
dedicated to all of you who are en-
raptured with the wonderful, magical,
mystical world of science fiction and
fantasy. For those of you who enjoyed
COSMOS' first issue and for those of
you who have discovered COSMOS for
the first time, we hope this issue will do
likewise.
Norman Goldfind
 CENTER SECTION
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ID
Dear Mr. Hartwell, ment Award nominees, or by inviting Dear David: H
suggestions from fan editors.
"Hope springs eternai," Bartletl's As for big names, you certainly have Congratulations on a most promising LU
Famous Quotations once said, truth- them. was most impressed by Lynn
I first issue of COSMOS. You seem to U
fully if ungrammatically. COSMOS is Margulis. I've been following her work have touched all the bases of the more
an evident proof of this truism, appear- in The Co-Evolution Quarterly, her traditional science fiction magazines
ing as it does in the wake of numerous "Gaia Hypothesis" and her study of the solid science fiction of Michael Bish-
recent failures. In only the last few years data from the Mars probes. Her article, op, a good sword and sorcery serial by
we've seen // disappear, Galaxy totter, an interesting one, filled in gaps in the one of the two or three best writers in
Amazing and Fantastic doing an act The rather sketchy background I've received that genre, Fritz Leiber, some lighter
Incredible Shrinking Man would have from Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell short stories by Benford and Niven, and
been proud of, and Vertex, Odyssey and (where Margulis is bright, Thomas is a couple of interesting pieces by un-
Science Fiction Monthly come and go. positively lyrical, a man drunk on love knowns, as well as an unusually interest-
So what makes you think you've got for those foreign bacteria in his body ing science article.
what it takes (super distribution, great that have become his dear friends, the I'm particularly enthusiastic about
eye appeal, big names, good fiction, and mitochondria). the full magazine size, the interior color,
DAMN GOOD LUCK)? But art, fan articles, and science arti- the layout, and the features of the Cen-
You don't appear to have very good cles do not a prozine make. (Unless ter Section, particularly Bob Silverberg
distribution, at least in York. I've New you're Algol.) Your fiction is (I hope) as book been saying for years
critic. I've
only seen copies in Soho Books and the the point of your magazine. Well, I was that there was room in magazine pub-
Science Fiction Shop. Odyssey had not impressed. "The concatenation of lishing at large for at least one full-
equally bad distribution here in the tiny bells" in Michael Bishop's story led sized, interior-color, truly first-class sci-
City, and I suspect that this was one of to the revelation that the narrator was a ence fiction magazine aimed at and
the factors that led to demise. its total prosthesis and to my throwing packaged for a wider readership than
As for eye appeal, I hadn't once
if COSMOS to the table for a few mo- the old standbys. Well, COSMOS
been shown a copy of this issue before ments. I am sure that sometime I'll be should give that theory a first-class test-
seeing it for sale in Soho Books, I'd able to pick the story up again, stop gig- ing, more so than the late lamented
have passed the magazine by. At a little gling about "The Six Million Dollar VERTEX did. If it's not a break-out
distance the colors of the amorphous Man" and read, but not yet. Not yet. success, then neither of us know what
mass turn to mud, with nothing distin- And Frederik Pohl? "Rem the Re- we're talking about.
guishable except the name, COSMOS. memberer" is a dread and dreadful little One tiny cavil, though. I'd be careful
Without a moment's study, nothing in lecture. Pohl is an engaged conscious- about too much fan-oriented material,
the cover stands out, not the names of ness, true; he has a message of impor- if I were you (which of course I'm not).

the writers nor any details of the organ- tance, true; I agree with him completely Ginjer's first piece is good, explaining
ic-looking building. I certainly hope about the danger we are in. But this the phenomenon briefly to those readers
there are a lot of studious casual or ded- story is all message and a yard wide, and who have never heard of it, but I think it
icated readers of SF walking around the lecture starts in the second column. would be good to bear in mind that if
somewhere. If not, you in trouble, baas. Couldn't he have included a little plot, COSMOS has the success it deserves,
Maybe you should have had that Paul or characterization or even a bit more maybe 80% of its readership will never
Lehr painting on the cover, Even though description? As it stands, I say it's have heard of science fiction fandom,
it, too, is a mass of color, it is neither spinach and I say the hell with it. and at least half will not be interested.
muddy nor indistinct. It is, in fact, a I brushing off my hands, say-
feel like Best of tuck, and keep on truckin'.
lovely painting. And since Lehr's work, ing "So much for COSMOS," and go-
if not his name, is widely associated ing out to play in the street. But, Mr. Norman Spinrad
with SF, you'd probably sell more Hartwell, I have faith in your good taste
copies. (Printing it on that nice slick and ingenuity. I expect you to exercise Dear David Hartwell,
paper is probably costing you plenty, both of them, retaining what is good
but please keep on, you can.)
if about COSMOS, finding better and bet- Resounding congratulations on COS-
By the way, since have the magazine ter fiction, and connecting with that au-
1
MOS! The positive things to say about
open to that section, I'll go on a mo- dience you believe you have waiting out the magazine pile up and overflow what
ment about the fan section. (I'm a fan, there. Your success can only help and The
can comfortably go into a letter.
so don't take this too seriously.) I like improve the field. stories are crisp, inventive, and felt
the idea very much. You've got some You have your assignment. Now get every one. The magazine shows that
good people and am especial-
in there, out there and DO IT. And if you fail,
care and claritas were at work on every
I

lylooking forward to the fan art you in- we will gladly acknowledge having page. Color interior illustration has al-
tend to print, and to longer pieces by known you.
ways been a dream of mine for an SF
Ginjer "Bear" Buchanan, who has But we'll claim we told you not to.
endeavor as long as I can remember.
shown such flair for anecdotal writing And here is the dream, made manifest in
in fanzines. May I also suggest occa- Yours with fervour, Schelling and Freff.
sional reprints from fanzines, by the To give you a letter with nothing but
many good writers therein? You might JERRY KAUFMAN praise wouldn't reflect the care you-
narrow your choices by running materi- and-staff have obviously put into the
al by Hugo or Fanzine Activity Achieve-

(Continued on P. 72)
Thomas E Monteleone
 CAMERA OBSCURA
beating new prophets at their game. His spoke.
desire had been as fierce as a desert Looking at her, he remembered. She
wind, his energy like the sun, and he had had been one of his first models, and his
burned himself a place among the past only lover. She had been the final inter-
masters: Stieglitz, Weston, Adams, locking piece in the creative puzzle;
Cartier-Bresson, and now —Lieberman.' after Elise, Lieberman had begun his
From the beginning, his work had rise. Of all the women he had since
spoken eloquently of a medium without photographed, he had wanted none of
the machine. His prints were more than them, no matter how fervently they had
mere two-dimensional phantoms. His forced themselves upon him. Once im-
visions, his images, screamed a chal- mersed within his art and his love, Lie-
lenge to the New Arts, humbling them berman's passion flourished somewhere
with multireversals, impossible colors, beyond, or perhaps on a parallel path
compositions delicate yet outrageous, with, the needs of the flesh. Elise knew
and technique as intelligent as it was this, admired it. Both of them were hap-
avant. There was no aspect of the art py with it.

which Lieberman had indulged and then He was neither suprised nor disap-
found not wanting. He had broken all pointed when she asked: "When do we
the rules by establishing new ones; his get back to work?"
work sang his message to the critics with "We already have," he said, smiling.
all the subtlety of a Beethoven sym-

phony. He spent the drive through Washing-

Their labels annoyed him: Classicist, ton studying the familiar landmarks,
Recidivist, Neo-Romantic. They wished calling back remembered images, com-
to confine him by defining him, to im- paring them to new machine-constructs.
I-iike a flower blooming, the explo- pale him husk of a butterfly
like the dry His mind was on these things when they
sion unfolded as Lieberman focused beneath a pin. But Lieberman would not arrived at their townhouse in fashion-
through the lens. be captured so easily. able Georgetown, and he barely per-
He rotated the barrel, fingers moving As he became familiar with the new ceived her mention of the surprise.
automatically, quickly, to imprison a sight organs, doubts shimmered like "Surprise? For what?" he said as he
crystal-sharp image. Then a second,' specters only half-perceived. Something palmed the lock and entered the foyer.
more violent eruption eclipsed the first. seemed to be lingering just beyond the "For you, silly. You know 'wel- —
The air became a hammer, shattering periphery of Lieberman's new vision. come home' and all that." She laughed
him. Pieces of hot metal ripping, slash- Something different. Something and guided him down the hall. "It's in
ing at him. Lieberman felt the camera changed. the den Go on Look
. .
. '

torn from his hands, white heat gouging But when he searched it out, he found Lieberman walked slowly down the
at his eyes. nothing but his fear. corridor which was dark save a solitary
Pain. He learned to ignore this as he gained sconce at its midpoint. A humming
And darkness. mastery over the machine parts, as the within his head spoke of the changed il-
Even his thoughts, graying into black. scars healed and his strength returned. lumination and the automatic adjust-
His last was of the shutter, and if there The time had finally come when he al- ment to it.

had been time to depress it. lowed Elise to see him. He hoped she And so he ignored them, even as he
had not minded the exclusion, since accepted their money and their praise.
His shivered body was taken to the their relationship had always been an While the light-sculptors and holog-
Biotechnical Division of the National honest one. He hoped she would know raphists struggled through commercial
Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Mary- that there was part of him —
call it vani- hack-work, Lieberman created what
land, where they peeled back his flayed ty, fear, or whatever you wish that — and where he chose. His corporation,
skin, aluminized the fractured bones, could not let her see him disfigured or in Image Design Unlimited, became pre-
implanted skin-regenerative cultures, pain. ferred stock on the Exchange, as much
sealed the ruptured organs, closed the It was a sun-bright morning when she for its status appeal among the affluent
terrible wounds. Everything but the came to him. The door opening quickly as its financial stability. Lieberman had
eyes. and she suddenly appeared: an auburn become that rarest of allcreatures: an
Lifeless knots of nerve and jelly, their splash of hair framing an oval face, eyes artist, recognized within his own life-
pathways were dark within his skull, of polished serpentine, Celtic nose over time.
leaving him blind and dancing with slightlypouting Hps. She smiled as she But now he lay in darkness, reliving
thoughts of death. For truly Lieberman touched him with pale, almost translu- his Promethean past, shuddering at the
was dead without his eyes — themost cent hands, delicately veined like Car- thought of his dark future. He had al-
vital tools of his art. It was not like him rara marble. He kissed her, held her ways hated sleep, and so it was doubly
to suffer so; he was not the* fragile, sen- close. They talked and he was comfor- ironic that he now live in the half-world
sitive martyr type. In an age of laser- table —
and serene save the interrupting of the sleeper. To awake from dreamless
imaging, holography, and light-sculp- moments when the servos hummed, oblivion, to feel his eyelids flutter,
ture, Lieberman had clung to old ways, when his gaze danced about her as she spring open, greet nothingness, was a

42
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chilling thing. Deja vu struck him like a accident at the Solar Furnace Exposi- trembling lids.
solitary musical note; as if he had tion. Blinking his eyes, he felt moisture "Here," he said, stepping back to
breathed the darkness in retreating at their corners; they had retained his pick up a focusing cloth — a large black
dreams. lachrymal ducts. The eyes washed and rectangle of opaque fabric. "Let me
lubricated although they required nei- look at you." The cloth was a relic from

In time, the doctors brought him ther. another age, but it was necessary to ap-
hope. He would receive new eyes. Pros- preciate the crystalline perfection of the
thetic optics were not yet commonplace, A Tiffany lamp bathed the den in soft Deardorf.
but working models were in operation, yellows, orange, magenta, complement- Elise sat in a Regency chair by the
with new designs and modifications ing the warm tones of the persian rug balcony window-doors. Sunlight seeped
emerging from the labs steadily. Lie- and the barn-wood walls. On his desk through, became entangled in her hair
berman was scheduled to receive one of sat a large package in white paper, like the corona of an eclipse. Her lime-
the latest prototypes, and this was a dressed in a green satin bow. "What is green body-shift clung approvingly to
great comfort to him. But he did not it?" he asked, playing the ritual game of her.-

think much about the new eyes, or the picking it up, hefting it, before tearing Across the room, Lieberman posi-
day when he would see again. He had away the poorly wrapped paper (Elise tioned the camera and threw the black
discovered an unknown side of his na- was never very good at such things). cloth over his head. Beneath the shroud,
ture while blind: an inclination to self- Underneath lay a freight cube, bearing darkness clutched at him as the eyes
pity, a pleasure in feeling sorry for him- the stamps of overseas customs inspec- hummed their adjustments. He tensed,
self. It was from this feeling that he kept tion. Lieberman pulled at the sealing for a moment, against the sudden
Elise from seeing him. By denying him- tab, and excelsior flooded out and into blackness. Then, fingers groping for the
self her presence and her love was he his hands. He opened the package slow- catch on the rear panel, he swung it

more fully able to suffer. ly now, respecting the exquisite Euro- down to reveal the image on the ground
Days passed, however, and the new pean care with which the object had glass. He blinked his eyes to see
eyes were brought to him. been packed, until he could lift the gift
Despite the local anesthetics, Lieber- from its wrappings. —a
view from a great height. Look-
man felt the doctors probing, calibrat- "My God, it's beautiful," he said, ing down upon a murky sea burned by a
ing, anchoring the things to his hollow staring at the camera he now held in his blue-white sun, where rolling mist
sockets; he heard their monotonic hands. "Where'dyou ever find it?" boiled off into hot, still air. The sky was
voices coach and comment upon the op- Elise answered him, but he did not re- a metallic gray, and —
eration. What he received was the result —
cord the answer so intensely did he — stumbling back, Lieberman threw
of years of careful design and testing: examine the prize. It was a masterpiece off the cloth which seemed to be cling-
two monolithic microprocessors, graft- of craft and design, form and function. ing to him like some live thing, choking
ed to the optic nerves by Soviet myo- More than thirty centimeters on a side, him. His eyes refocused on the warmly
electric synapses, which accepted in- hand-rubbed rosewood body, black fab- lit room, quietly posed Elise.
formation through laser -encoded lenses. ric bellows on delicately oiled tracks. "What's the matter?" she said,
As a cosmetic concession, he received Across the top, he read the manufac- reading his confused expression. She
fully-orbiting coverings that glistened turer'sname: DEARDORF. His fingers rushed to him. "Frederick, what's
like natural eyes. Tiny sensors and touched the black metal which encircled wrong? Are you all right?"
servo-motorsmoved them, once he had the camera's great lens a gently convex — He waved his hand. "Yes, yes. It's
"learned" how to control them. Each dome of hand-ground glass. In white okay. It's nothing. Just got dizzy for a
time he shifted his gaze or the iris letters, rimming the lens, were the words minute there. I'm all right now. Go on,
changed diameter, Lieberman heard the SCHEIDER-KREUTZNACH, maker of now. Please, sit down."
resonant hum of the servos within his the most perfect optics ever produced. A Frowning, Elise obeyed him.
skull. more perfect camera had never been de- Lieberman tented himself in the
At last, when the adjustments were at signed, and there were but a handful left shroud, forcing his eyes to the ground
an end, the final tunings made, the cir- throughout the world. Lieberman held glass where
cuits tested and the switches thrown, did it carefully with both hands, walked —
something dark, indistinct, moved
Lieberman see. His brain whited-out as across the room, and selected a large across the surface of the water, sending
he fought to interpret the rush of infor- sturdy tripod. out a wake of endless Vs. The alien sun
mation. Slowly the light coalesced, "I'd been looking for it a long time," flared above the edge of shoreline trees,
quieted, assumed familiar configura- she said as he fitted the pod to the but there was no strong illumination.
tions: substance, depth of field, shad- camera's brass bottom-mount. "Long Everything bathed in shadow-light: a
ow. There were three people, dressed in before the . . . the accident. It was just coldness, suggesting dampness, decay.
white, standing over his bed a woman — luck that it came when it did." He panned with the camera, across the
—
and two men all smiling with self- he said, stand-
"It's really beautiful," sea to a sheer-walled cliff. Something
satisfaction. He responded to their ing up, taking her hand and drawing her dark fluttered past the lens, and he
questions, asked his own, cooperated close. He kissed her once. "Like you. flinched. Some flying thing. It's after-
with their tests. Yes, everything seemed Thank you very much." image flickered in his mind. Almost
right. Clarity, resolution, even color She kissed him with her eyes closed, familiar, oddly terrifying, as it lingered
was as it should be, as he had recalled it but he kept his own open, studying the on the edge of memory. Twisting the
in the dark dreamtimes, and before the close-up detail of her long lashes and lens, he attempted more resolution, the

43
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metal growing slippery in his hand — it. Withdrawing the film, he inserted Biochemcorp wants the proofs from
"Frederick?" Elise touched his another, swiveled the camera thirty the—"
shoulder. degrees, exposed the film. Elise watched "They'll have to wait." He cut her
He backed out of the cloth, stood up, him take three more exposures, before off abruptly, consumed as he was with
wiping the perspiration from his fore- he gathered them up and departed for his own thoughts, not aware that he was
head, stared at her blankly. the developing lab in the cellar. hurting her.
"What's the matter with you?" Her Lieberman was baffled when the And they did wait Weeks were .

voice was keen-edged; she sensed a ter- prints did not reveal the world of the wasted as Lieberman carried the Dear-
ror within him. lens. He tried more shots, moving the dorf about the city, peering into the
Lieberman rubbed his false eyes, out camera about the room, to the balcony, other world from every possible vantage
of habit, more than need. "I don't different rooms. More exposures but point. He became familiar with it, but
know. I don't know." Moving back the same results. There was no way to could do little else. It was his private vi-
from the camera, he pointed to it. prove to her what he saw. Twice, he had sion, and could share it with no au-
"Look in there. Tell me what you see." seen a shape moving across the oily dience.
Elise slipped beneath the focusing —
sea an ill-defined thing that raised the In the evenings he sat alone in the den
cloth, remained there as she spoke. hackles on the back of his neck. If only watching the camera which sat on long
"What am 1 supposed to see? The chair. he could pin it down, photograph it. legs like a great one-eyed insect. The ser-
The window ..." Experimenting through the long vos hummed inside his head with each
"What about the water? Don't you hours of evening, he inspected his other glance, reminding him each time that
see the water?" cameras, all the antique collection perhaps it was he that was the bridge
"WaterV She dropped the cloth, pieces. But there was nothing odd with- between the worlds. Or perhaps a
looked at him. "Frederick
— in them. Only the Deardorf peered into gular combination of the lens and his
sin-

He pushed her out of the way, peered madness, as if it were the only window prosthetics. Thoughts of it obsessed
through the ground glass where the im- into nightmare: where great green him, so fascinated was he by that place
age danced, saw the ripplings of the oceans of Jurassiclike forests lay shim- where reptiles carried the twin-edged
dark sea. "Elise look at it! I'm not mering. Corridors cut through giant blade of intelligence, where man re-
crazy! Look!" ferns and ginkgoes paths worn smooth — mained a wide-eyed tarsier-thing. His
But she saw nothing. by light-years of reptilian traffic. Tall time and his creative energies were
Gently she explained to him, listened towers of carved milk-glass rose above sapped by the mystery, and part of him
to him. She was afraid for him, but not the swampy lowlands, their shapes sug- wanted to give it up, to return to his past
o/him. Lieberman turned her off, not gesting the interlocking complexity of life. How much easier it would be to
hearing her words as soon as it was clear Oriental puzzle-boxes. Things moving attribute the other place to imagination,
that only he could see it. Looking again past the lens, so close as to be a blur or to consign it to that world where all men
he saw subliminal movements across the so distant as to be only a speck. But indulge their private fantasies. But as he
water. Almost hypnotic, its effect upon within the green shadows he saw them: lay in the darkness, when the house was
him, until he forced himself away from hunched, long-legged things with burn- silent save the breathing-sleep of Elise
it, to join Elise on the couch. ing eyes and saw-tooth mouths. Small beside him, the visions through the lens
Lieberman lit a cigarette, his sweaty grasping forelimbs carrying what could would haunt him, call to him like
hands staining the paper. "Oh God, this only be tools or weapons. Out of night- Sirens, would not leave him even in his
is crazy! What's happening to me?" mare, these saurian things appeared, dreams.
She could taste the desperation in his working the gem-cut cities and primitive The days melted into weeks, becom-
words, the fear. "What do you see?" screaming forests. ing a meaningless smear of time. Elise
She whispered the words. managed the affairs of Image Design,
"You'd believe me, wouldn't you?" "It must be the camera," he said while he attempted new routes to a solu-
She nodded, because she could not over breakfast with EHse. Sunlight tion. He consulted libraries, wading
speak. streamed through bottleglass windows. through works of physics, optics, elec-
He inhaled, exhaled slowly, closed his Bacon crackled in a wrought-iron pan. tronics. Nowhere was there a key.
eyes. Slowly, he described what he had "There's something about the Dear- Nothing.
seen. ."
dorf . .
When he attempted his old work, he
Elise looked at the camera. "I don't "And you," she said. "Maybe you. and There was no
understand . . . I'm sorry, but — Your . . . eyes."
felt cut adrift lifeless.

longer magic in his work; the trade-

He was not listening. Suddenly he "I've thought of that too. But howV marks of his art faded into pale phan-
rose and left the room She
in silence. "Maybe we should call NIH?" she toms of earlier genius. The cameras had
was afraid to follow him, but felt she asked as she poured more coffee. become cold, alien things to him; his
must. While she wrestled with her in- "No, not yet. I don't want them pry- hands groped about them unsteadily,
decision, he returned with an armful of ing. No proof yet. If there was only unsurely. Color and imagination were
8 x 10 sheet film already sealed in some way to get a picture of that place. lost within him, even in his industrial
lightproof holders. He walked past her, Elise, you should see it! What prints I work, where now he produced only
covered himself with the cloth, adjusted could make!" studied cliches, crude pastiches of earli-
the lens, then slipped the film into its "You're way behind in your work, er triumphs. His critics and his clients
place before the ground glass. He Frederick. The commissions by the Ca- sensed the difference in him, although
cocked the shutter release, then pressed nadian Embassy are already paid for. they could not articulate any particular

44
 ' " "

CAMERA OBSCURA
problem. newsfax from the bedstand. "Did you ing at him.
But they felt just the same. Something see McCauley's column? 'The Lost Art "You stole my soul, " it said to him.
was wrong with Frederick Lieberman. of Lieberman' he calls it. Shit! How the "No!" he dropped the ripped self-
And he knew it himself, which made hell did those cretins find out about portrait, backed against the bookcases.
it worse. Itwas an agonizing thing for this!" Another print, a multi-image of a
an artist to feel that he could no longer "Frederick, you've got to forget all child's face locked within a cut dia-
one respect, though, Lieber-
create. In this. Start new things again. I can't keep mond, moved and spoke: "It's cold
man's pain was more localized, more things going forever. Image needs you. / here. Where you left me.
defined than with others. In most, they need you." Below it, a print of Elise. She stood
wake up one morning and find that the "Don't you understand what it's like naked in knee-deep water while infra-
spark is gone, the Muse has moved on to to see something, to know that it's red highlighted beads of moisture upon
touch another, leaving them alone with there, and not be able to touch it. her perfect skin. She leaned forward,
their thoughts. At least Lieberman knew There's a whole world of new material. out of the picture, called out to him:
where the beast lay: in the corner of the A world, Elise! And I can't make it "The light, Frederick. The light is dy-
den on three legs, one eye mocking him. real." and something
ing, is killing me."
. . .

Finally, he gave himself to Elise and "They said you can come home Now the entire gallery was dissolving,
she absorbed his pain and his words, now." moving, changing into grotesque paro-
trying to understand him, to love him. " You re not listening tome."
' dies of themselves. Their voices, mur-
She convinced him to return to NIH so "I can listen better at home." muring, rose up like the crash of surf on
that the doctors might help him. They "All right. Tell them I'm ready." a midnight beach. Their words a roaring
had discussed it into the quiet darkness sussuration, cicada cries which he could
of many nights, until, exhausted, Lie- But he was not ready. not understand. But he could feel the
berman gave in. Elise brought him home and he re- mocking tones of hate, inflections of
She drove him to the Bethesda com- treated to the false womb of his office disgust.
plex where they questioned him, tested and den. The walls surrounded him in a Staggering, he reached his desk and
him, monitored his body responses, tasteful blend of bookcases and panel- his hand fell upon a marble paper-
telemetered his cyborg parts. Then they ing where his finest prints were hung in weight. It was a platinum medallion
questioned him again, disassembled chrome frames and nonglare glass. from the New York School of Visual
him, reassembled, retested, and then all Rows of reference works stared at him; Arts. The weight in his hand gave him a
over again. His pain, whereas it had on- the names on the spines glowed irides- sense of power, strength; he hurled it

ly been psychological before, became —

physical as well. Old wounds were re-
opened and the demons entombed there
were loosed again.
When it was over, completely over,
she came to see him in his white room.
"Frederick, I love you," she began,
ready to slip quietly into the
had prepared on the
city.
"Love isn't enough now," he said,
looking away from her, focusing on a
nondescript spot on the nondescript far
wall. His skull hummed to itself.
"Don't say that," she said.
"Didn't they tell you what they
think? The 'doctors',
She shook her head, forcing herself to
look at the man who had once been
so confident, arrogant in his creating.
"No, I haven't talked to anybody. I
came right up here."
"They don't believe me, Elise.
They've taken the Deardorf apart and
put back together. Did the same with
it
me. Built mock-ups of my eyes, hooked
them to the camera. Nothing. There's
nothing there."
"When they called, they said you can
come home now . '
cently Feininger, Haas, Porter, Cosin- across the room, striking a portrait of
das, Avedon. On the opposite wall Elise. Glass shattered into diamond
stood smoked Plexiglas cabinets, their fragments, and the gallery screamed.
shelves holding cameras of past ages. Amid their wailing, he attacked them,
Lieberman looked at them, their lenses ripping their matted images from the
staring like the eyes of caged, cyclopean them across the room. A
wall, sending
beasts. The closed door was covered by chrome-edged frame struck the Plexi-
speech she a giant self-portrait: curly black hair, it open, pushing
glas cabinet, splintering
drive up from the backlit to effect an aura of brilliance, a shelf of old cameras into a heap. One
high forehead, bright eyes that were also of them, a bellows Graflex, fell to the
dark obsidian wells, a wry smile twisted floor, and Lieberman picked it up, fired
slightly to the left of the thin face. it through the bottleglass panes of the
Lieberman stepped back from the sneer- balcony doors. Then he embraced the
ing image as its eyes followed him. He cabinet, uprooting it, heaving it over in
looked away from it, then back again. a thunderous crash.
Again the obscene hum of the servos. Through the wreckage, he noticed
I mean." He rubbed his temples, squeezed shut movement. The door had opened and
his eyes, to banish the sound. The print Elise stood framed by its sill. Her
watched, smiled broadly as the lips agate-eyes aflame. Shock and disbelief.
parted and formed silent laughter. "Frederick! Oh God! Stop it!"
Lieberman looked at it, ran to the "It's over, Elise. All over! They
door and ripped the matted portrait won't hurt me anymore. They can't
—
down from its architectural-pin moor- "Frederick, what happened to you?
ings, splitting it down the middle with I've got to get help . .
." turned to
rough motions. The paper groaned as he leave, and he leaped across the room,
destroyed it, but Lieberman was not ap- grabbing her thin wrist.
peased. Turning, he was captured by the "No! You can't leave. You pushed
chrome-frame prints. Near the upper me into this. You and that goddamned
left corner was his first "Best of Show" camera! You can't leave now."

— a wide-angle close-up of an American "Let go of me! I didn't do anything

"Home? What for? There's nothing Indian. Shot with UV film and printed to hurt you. Please!"
left for me there." He picked up a on Kolorlith, the creased face was star- Lieberman looked into her eyes and

45
 " —

CAMERA OBSCURA
he adjusted for the extreme close-up, empty sockets, and pieces of wire and He heard them coming closer as she
humming. The sound reminded him. machine cascaded down his cheeks. The spoke, and slowly he lifted his head
She was right; she was not to blame. He December night was freezing fast, and a from his concealing hands, letting the
rubbed at his temples, feeling for the cold, cruel wind whipped through his lamplight touch his empty sockets,
servos implanted there, just beyond the eyeless skull, underlining the darkness stained by tears. He heard Elise scream,
thin wall of bone. He stood, wavering, there. Lieberman considered the dis- heard the sound melt into a whimpering
thinking, only vaguely aware that she tance between him and the street below. cry. Heheard his neighbor choke, and
had broken free of him and was running It would be so simple to end it now, to mutter a quick ohmigodl He heard EHse
down the stairs to the street level. But just lean forward, to change the balance saying his name over and over.
that did not matter now; he was con- point by a few centimeters and feel the Mr. Dillon stepped back towards the
cerned with what he had become, what cool rush of night before impact, before door, said something about an am-
they had made of him. the end. bulance, and was gone.
He walked away from the broken Seconds ticked off inside his head as "I'm sorry," said Lieberman, after a
pieces of his life, turned to face the he courted death, but he wavered, now silence returned to the room. "I'm sorry
Deardorf in the corner. The lens faced that his fury was spent, knowing that he it was like this."
him like the barrel of a weapon, and he could not kill himself. "Why, Frederick? Why?"
thought of the world seen through its Blindly, wrapped in a darkness that "Could you love a blind man, Elise?"
glass. The place of steaming mist and was somehow more comforting than He dropped his head, suddenly aware of
reptilian shapes — symbols of man's terrifying, he staggered back from the how horrible he must look to her.
underside, his evil — stalking where man railing, felt his way past broken panes, "What do you mean?" Her voice was
should have been. Why had he seen it and into the room. Lieberman felt an shot through with pain.
so? If it was not real, then what did it odd calm descend upon him. He knew it "Could you love me if ... if I stay
mean? Was it, in its own perverse way, now: when he had lost his real eyes, he like this?"
art? had lost his true artistic vision, and the "I do love you," she spoke the words
The answers lie within, he thought, replacement eyes would never restore strongly and he felt something spark
wiping sweat from his face. They lie that lost personal vision of the world. It within his chest. "But why like this?"
twisted and trapped among the micro- mattered little now whether the other He reached out in the blackness for
between his brain and the metal
circuits place had been real or imagined. her hand, and found it grasping quickly
eyes. To know was to untangle that Perhaps it was, as the doctors had im- for his own. He drew her close, smelling
mass of flesh and steel. plied, a construct of a traumatized un- her hair upon his cheek. "Understand-
Pushing through the broken balcony conscious. ing comes slowly, Elise. I'll explain it
doors, he stood upon a small platform, Lieberman found a chair, amid the all, but not right now. I've just learned
felt the filigree of the railing bite into his room's rubble, groped his way into it. it myself."
thighs, his groin. Moonlight scampered He collapsed, shoulders slumping for- And she held him close upon her
across the river's surface; high-rise ward, forehead in his hands. He knew breast, struggling to know this new

lights from the Virginia side punctured that the unconscious was the crucible aspect of his inner self. He would one
the sky, washing out the stars. Servos where his creations had been forged day tell her that there was no artistic
hummed as he stared out into the night. a wellspring of desire and fear. It was machine but man. And for a man like
Lightly he touched hands to his cheeks, probably true, then, that his other- Frederick Lieberman, there were no re-
felt their clammy coldness. His fingers mind, that secret mind-place, had placeable parts.
slipped upward until he reached the syn- known from the beginning what he only Someday he would tell her this, and
thetic hemispheres — alien and cold. He now accepted. she would understand.
ripped them out to reveal the machinery He had been given back a functional But not tonight.
in dark sockets. view of the world, and found that it was
Oddly, there was no pain. The nerve not enough. That message had been
endings had been cauterized long ago, locked within that German piece of
his anguish extinguished. Lieberman glass, Lieberman
although knew that
forced his fingertips between the orbit the camera had only been a catalyst, a
and the lenses, digging his hails into the focal point for his unspoken fears. It
brittle alloy shells, touching the tiny was true, just as he had often read, that
harnesses of wire filaments. He pulled the Fates are sometimes cruel to those
delicately at first, like a surgeon, dis- who seek their Muse. But there would be
lodging the hooks and metal anchors in no more machine-eyes. If he could not
the remaining strips of tiny muscle see as an artist, he chose not to see at all.

fiber. Then more violently. Strobo- The night wind whispered through the
scope pulses of purple, orange, brilliant room and he sat, passing silent time, un-
yellow flickered at the threshold of his til he heard footsteps on the stairs. "In
brain, wiping out the sparkling Poto- there," he heard Elise's voice.
mac. Metal fell away from flesh, cir- Footsteps crossing the threshold,
cuits shorted out, myoelectrics crackled, muffled by the carpeting. "Fred-
sizzled. Pain probed beyond his fingers. erick are you all right? I brought
A spasm jerked his hands away from
. . .

Mr. Dillon, from next door. He

—
46
MONAD GESTALT
 —

Tek nor any of his four men

from the first moment
acquired him and his four men,
obvious that Tek was interested in the
girl. I could not really complain about
that. Marie, who was the only other
adult female in our party of four adults
and one child, obviously belonged to
me. While the girl made an obvious
point of belonging to nobody, unless
you counted her as belonging to Sun-
day; and the crazy leopard really cared
for nobody but me, no matter how the
girl lavished her silent attentions on
him.
It was therefore a tricky situation.
The was adult only in the sexual
girl
sense; although now that she was begin-
ning to talk a little it was obvious she
was some years older than the thirteen
or fourteen I had taken her for when
Sunday and I had first found her, all
skin and bones and dirt, refusing to
answer or be touched, by the side of the
road some months ago. But I was still
willing to bet she was less than ten years
older than Wendy, Marie's daughter;
and Tek's attentions to her were not
that neither
dragged her off into the bushes as we
in which we pushed across country.
it was This was easy enough to do, since we
were still keeping a sharp eye on all five
of these latest companions of ours. I
had finally allowed Tek to carry a rifle,
but on condition he stayed away from
the other men; and Marie had one of her
gang of trained dogs on watch-and-
guard duty on all five of them at all
times.
Fourteen days after our group had
come to its full size, we were riding in a
sort of motorcade, all of us including
the dogs. Our vehicles consisted of a
couple of brand-new motor homes for
sleeping and living quarters, preceded
by a couple of jeep carryalls and fol-
lowed by a pickup truck, all three
smaller vehicles with four-wheel drive,
carrying the armed members of the par-
ty while we were on the move. With
wheels under us, outflanking the mov-
ing mistwalls became not only easier,
but more certain. We were very careful,
indeed, to outflank them. It was one
thing to go through the stationary mist-
walls as had begun to do now, with Bill
I

—
welcome from my standpoint, at least.
It hurt me, therefore— though, of
course, I did not show it that she
seemed to put up with him well enough.
to help me— and through the lines of
time-change they announced. It was an-
— other thing to be caught with the land-
scape around us changed — either for-

She was easily as responsive to him as ward or back without

in time knowing
she was to me; and Sunday and I had which, or how many years of change
been the only living things in the world whether we wanted to be or not. The
for her during those first few months of crazy cat, Sunday— as well as the girl
dodging mistwalls and surviving on the —
and myself were living evidence of
raft of the lizard people, adrift on some what the moving lines of time-change
future version of the prehistoric Great could do to your mind if not your —
Nebraska Sea. had not literally
If I body.
saved her life during those months, I Even with the stationary mistwalls,
had at least kept her alive and cared for we did not go into them as blindly as I
her. I did not really expect gratitude, I had gone into earlier ones. We would
told myself, butsome distinction made make all the tests on them that Bill
on her part between Tek and myself could think of, first. Among his designs

would have been appreciated. were rod or rope devices to be thrown

Of course, having thought that, I or pushed through the mistwall and
kicked myself mentally. I had not been dragged back, to give us an idea of the
four years old before I learned that love ground situation and atmosphere be-
is an illusion between human beings, yond. The third time we used them,
even the highly-touted love between what we learned kept us from walking
rnother and child. When my own off a cliff on the far side of the mistwall
mother finally abandoned my sister and before we would have had a chance to
myself, I was already quite prepared to open our eyes. But, in the end, in almost
see the last of her. I ought to have been every instance, we still had to go
the last person in the world to expect the through personally.
girl to be moved by anything but her We found a number of different sit-
normal individual, selfish interests. uations, from raw desert to empty city,
So I put out of my mind any worry on the far sides of these walls; and we
about the girl and Tek, only recruiting profited from what we found. The plan
Bill Gault to join me in watching to see Bill and Ihad evolved was based on our
 a

MONAD GESTALT
theory that our best chance to get on top third wall we encountered together, I resist.

of the time-storm was to keep looking had heard something odd behind me We were locked in place; and perhaps
for the most advanced future segment and looked to see Sunday coming we might have stood there until we
we could find. Hopefully, the more ad- through the mistwall behind us, tossing dropped, if it had been left to our own
vanced an area we could hit, the more his head, his eyes closed, and mewling wills alone to save us.
likely we were to find the equipment or like a lost kitten. He broke out and But we were rescued. Shatteringly and
the people to help us deal with the time- came to me — still with his eyes closed, suddenly, echoing and re-echoing off to

storm. If we were going to be able to do and evidently depending on nose alone infinity among the white towers and

something about it, that was where we —and it had taken me fifteen minutes to ways before us, came the loud scrape of
were most likely to find the means. If we soothe him back to quietness. However, claws on a hard surface; and a broad,
were to be forced to live with it per- — going back through the mistwall later, warm, hard, leopard-head butted me in
haps we could find the techniques and he had been much less upset; and two the ribs, knocking me off my frozen

patterns we needed in something beyond days later he was accompanying us with balance to fall with a deafening clatter
our present time slot. the indifference of a veteran. Of course, to the pavement as my gun and my
As I had discovered earlier, however, as soon as he started coming through equipment went spilling all around me.
the time changes seemed to be weighted the mistwalls after us, the girl did too. With that, the spell was smashed. It
toward the past, rather than toward the But it was possible to order her not to; had only been that first, perfect silence
future. We found three futuristic-look- Sunday could not be kept back. that operated so powerfully on our emo-

ing segments behind mistwalls; but they So, in this case, as had become his tions and that, once destroyed, could

were either apparently stripped of any- habit, Sunday followed Bill and me up never be recreated. It was an awesome,
thing or anyone useful, or else their very to the mistwall and waited while we had echoing place, that city— like some vast,
futureness was in doubt. It was two made our measurements and tests. magnificent tomb. But it was just a
weeks and two days before we found a These showed it to be little different place, once its first grip on us had been

segment that was undeniably part of a from the many other walls we had loosed. I picked myself up.

city belonging to a time yet to come — tested. But when we finally went "Let's have a look around," I said to
far future time, we thought at first. through this time, we found a differ- Bill.

Though of course, there was no way we ence. He nodded. He was not, as I was, a
might tell how much time would have We came out in a —what? A court- razor addict; and over the two weeks or
take your more sinceI had met him, he had been
been necessary to make changes. yard, a square, a plaza . . .

This particular segment was behind pick. It was an oval of pure white sur- letting his beard go with only occasional
the second mistwall we had encountered face and behind, all about it, rose a city scrapings. Now, a faint soft fuzz dark-

that day. The first had showed us noth- of equal whiteness. Not the whiteness of ened his lower face. Back beyond the
ing but unrelieved forest, stretched out new concrete, but the whiteness of vein- young features, this
mistwall, with his

over descending hills to a horizon that less, milk-colored marble. And there had looked more ridiculous than any-
was lost in haze, but which must have was no sound about it.Not even the thing else; but here against the pure
been many miles off. Such a landscape of birds or insects.
cries No sound at all. whiteness all around us and under a
might be part of a future segment, but it "... We were the first" wrote cloudless, windless sky, the beard, his

was not travelable by our wheeled ve- Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Rime Of outdoor clothing, his rifle and instru-
hicles and it promised nothing. We pul- The A ncient Mariner — ments, all combined to give him a
led back through the mistwall — was it "Who ever burst, savage, intruder's look. And if he

then about ten in the morning — paused "Into that silent sea ..." looked so, just from being unshaved, I
for an early lunch, and went on. If you know that bit of poetry, if you could only guess how I might appear,
About 2:30 p.m., we saw a second love poetry the way I do, you will be here in this unnaturally perfect place.
stationary mistwall and moved up to it. able to feel something like the sensa- We went forward, across the level
We were traveling along a gravel road at tions that hit Bill and me when we floor of the plaza, or whatever, on
the time through what seemed like an emerged from the mistwall into that which we had entered. At its far side
area of small farms.The mistwall sliced city. Those lines give it to you. It was were paths leading on into the city; and
across a cornfield and obliterated the with us and that city beyond our time, as we stepped on one, it began to move,

corner of what had once been a tall, as it had been with that sea and Coler- carrying us along with it. Sunday went
white, and severely narrow farmhouse idge's Mariner. It was a city of silence, straight up in the air, cat-fashion, the

—an American Gothic among farm- silence such as neither of us had ever moment he felt it stir under his feet, and
houses. heard; and such as we had never sus- hopped back off it. But when he saw it
We left our motorcade in the road pected could exist —until that moment. carrying me away from him, he leaped

and Bill and I walked up the farm road We were trapped by that silence, held by back on and came forward to press hard
into the farmyard, carrying most of the it, suddenly motionless and fixed, for —
against me as we rode it was the way

instruments. The rest straggled along fear of intruding one tiny noise into that he had pressed against me on the
behind us, but stayed back, as I had re- vast, encompassing and majestic void of lizards' raft during the storm before he,

peatedly warned them to, a good twenty soundlessness, like flower petals sud- the girl and I had had to swim for shore.

yards from where we were working. denly encased in plastic. It held us both,
I said the rest stayed back — I should frozen; and the fear of being the first to The walkway carried us in among the
have said all the rest but Sunday. After break it was like a sudden hypnotic buildings and we were completely sur-
Bill and I had penetrated through the clutch on our minds, too great for us to rounded by milky whiteness. I had

49
MONAD GESTALT
thought atfirst that the buildings had killing another living thing has some no answer.
Still

no windows; but apparently they had emotional overtones to it, there were a "Marc," said Bill, in a strained, thin
only of a different sort than anything I great many more dangerous possibilities voice. "Let's start backing up, slowly.
had ever imagined. Seeing the windows involved for us if it was
and our alive, If it lets us go, we can back right into the
was apparently all a matter of angle. hostile response was not successful. So mistwall, and maybe it won't follow
One moment it seemed I would be look- we simply stood and looked it over, and us
—
—
ing at a blank wall the next I would it looked us over. He broke off because some sounds
have a glimpse of some shadowed or It looked —
it's hard to say how it were finally beginning to come from the
oddly angled interior. It was exactly the looked in that first minute. Something creature. Sounds that were something
same sort of glimpse as that you get of like a Saint Bernard-sized, very short- like a cross between the internal rumb-
the mercury line in a fever thermometer, limbed, very heavy-headed, bulldog and the creaking of
lings of indigestion
when you rotate the thermometer to just shape, with a clump of three tails or ten- machinery that had not been used in a
the proper position. But there was no taclesabout two feet in length sprouting long time.
indication of life, anywhere. from each shoulder. The whole body "Due ..." said the creature, in a
Around us, over us, the city was life- was covered with rectangular bony deep-tone, grating voice. "Yanglish."
less. This was more than a fact of visual plates about a couple of inches at their It fell silent. We waited for more
observation. We could feel the lack of widest, which flexed at their jointures sounds, but none came.
'
anything living in all the structures with the plates surrounding them, so as "Start backing if you want, I '

around us, like an empty ache in the to allow the body beneath them to answered Bill, still keeping my gaze,
mind. It was not a painful or an ugly move. Smaller plates even covered most however, on the creature. "I'm going to
feeling, but it was an unpleasant feeling of the massive head. The two eyes were stay and see if I can't find out some-
just for the reason that it was not a brown and large. thing about this."
natural one. That much massive con- "Don't shoot!" I said to Bill, without "I . . .
" said the creature, loudly,
struction, empty, ready and waiting, taking my eyes off the creature. before Bill could answer me. There was
was an anomaly that ground against the I don't know what movement of his, a pause while we waited for more.
human spirit. The animal spirit as well, if any, triggered off that reaction in me. "I am ..." it said, after a second.
for that matter; because Sunday con- At the moment, I only know two things. Another pause. Then it continued, in
tinued to press against me for reas- I had been searching for an x-factor, a jerks, almost as if it was holding a
surance as we went. We stepped off the Game Warden, a missing piece to the conversation with itself except that the
walkway at last — it stopped at once as puzzle of the time-storm from the very pauses between bits of conversation be-
we did —
so and looked around at a solid beginning, and the old reliable search- came shorter and shorter until they ap-
mass of white walls, all without visible reflex in the back of my mind was prac- proached ordinary sentence-length hu-
windows or doors. tically shouting at me now that this man speech.
"Nothing here," said Bill Gault, after —
might be it. And second, but no less "Iam " said the creature again.
. . .

awhile. "Let's go back now." —

important the whole improbable being "... Porniarsk."
"
"No, wait," I said. "Listen!" For the radiated an impression of nonenmity. "Porniarsk. I am ... an of ...
first time my ears had caught a sound. It That impressive armor, that ferocious "I am Porniarsk Prime Three ... of
was the noise of a faint, dull-toned but head, somehow added up not so much . . . an . . .

regular clanking. The sort of thing you to something threatening, as to some- "Iam Porniarsk Prime Three, an . . .

might hear from a large toy tractor, if it thing rather clumsy and comic even — avatar of Porniarsk ..."
. . .

had been constucted with its movable lovable, like the bulldog it faintly re- "... Expert in Temporals General.
parts out of plastic, rather than metal. sembled. I am the third avatar of Por-
. . . . . .

And this sound growing louder, was Still, I would have had trouble con- niarsk . . . who is an . . . expert on the
coming steadily toward us. vincing Bill of any of that alone — but Temporal Question."
I had the machine pistol up and aimed luckily, just at that moment I got cor- "It's a robot of some sort," said Bill,
without thinking, and Bill had his gun roborative testimony from a completely staring at Porniarsk's avatar.
also pointed, when the source of the unexpected source, Sunday. Up until "No," it said. "I am Porniarsk.
noise came around the corner of the now the leopard had not moved; but Avatar, secondarily only. I am liv-

same building where we had blown the now, suddenly, he strolled past me, ing . . . alive. As you are."
opening in the wall. It came toward us, rightup the creature, and proceeded to "Do we call you Porniarsk?" I asked.
apparently either not understanding, or strop himself in a friendly manner up There was a pause, then a new sort of
understanding but ignoring, the menace one side of it and down the other. He creaking, unused machinery noise; and
of our guns. I stared at it, unbelievingly, then sniffed it over a few times, and the heavy head was nodding up and
because I had a hard time making up my gravely returned to me. That did it. Bill down, so slowly, awkwardly and delib-
mind whether it was creature or lowered his gun. erately that the creature called Por-
machine. "Hello," I said to the creature. The niarsk looked even more comic than be-
By the time I had reluctantly conclud- word sounded almost ridiculous in the fore. It broke off its head-movements
ed it was a creature, it was less than a context of our confrontation, here in abruptly at the top of a nod.
dozen feet from us and it stopped. A this silent, strange place. The creature "Yes," it said. "Porniarsk Prime
machine I might have risked pumping a said nothing. Three is ... a full name. Call me Por-
few slugs into. A creature was another "I'm Marc Despard," I said. "This is niarsk. Also, he. I am . . . male."
matter entirely. Aside from the fact that Bill Gault." "We'll do that," I said. "Porniarsk,

50
I'm sorry about damaging your city He made no visible move that my eyes
here. We didn't think there was anyone could catch but, suddenly, all the walls
still around." about us seemed to suck themselves in
"It is not ... it isn't my city," said and produce circular doorways.
Porniarsk. "I mean, it's neither mine as "If you would like to look, do so,"
avatar, nor is it something that belongs Porniarsk said. He folded his short legs
to me as Porniarsk. come from ..." I inward under him and went down like a
He had been going great guns, but all large coffee table with its four supports
at once he was blocked again. We chopped away by four axmen at once.
waited, while he struggled with his ver- "I will wait. Use-time is subjective."
bal problem. So, accompanied by Sunday, we
"I come from many . . . stellar dis- searched through a couple of the now-
tances away," he said, finally. "Also open buildings. But it was as I had half-
from a large temporal . . . time . . . dis- suspected. Porniarsk had not been ly-
tance. But I should say also that, in an- ing. The buildings were nothing but a
other measure, I am . . . from close to lot of empty rooms in immaculate —
here." condition, without a trace of dust or
"Close to this world?" Bill asked. damage — but empty. Echo-empty.
"Not ..." Porniarsk broke off in In the end we went back and collected
order to work at the process of shaking Porniarsk. He clattered to his feet as we
his head, this time, "to this world, gen- came up and fell in step with us when I
erally. Just to . . . here, this place, and told him we were headed back through
a few other places on your Earth." the mistwall to the rest of our people.
"Is this place — this city or whatever it However, I stopped when we came to
is ..." asked Bill, "from the same the nearer edge of the wall.
time as the time you come from?" "I'd like you to wait here, Por-
"No," said Porniarsk. "No two niarsk," I told him, "while Bill and I go
times can be alike — no more than two through first. Give us a chance to tell
grains of sand be identical." the rest of our people about you and
"We aren't stupid, you know," said tone down the surprise when you show
Bill. For the first time I'd known him, up. Is that all right with you?"
there was an edge in his voice. "If you "All right," said Porniarsk, clunking
can tellus that much, you can do a bet- down into lying position again. "Call
ter job of explaining things than you're when you want me to come after you."
doing." "We will," I said.
"Not stupid . . . ignorant," said I led Bill and Sunday back through
Porniarsk, improving his speech as he the mist. When we opened our eyes on
went. "Later, perhaps? I am from far the other side, it was to find a deserted,

off, spatially; from far off, temporally; if cozy-looking, farmyard. The cook-
but from close, distance-wise. When tenthad been set up in the yard and
you broke the wall here, this city sig- Marie had both charcoal grills going.
nalled. I had been for a long period of They all looked up at the sight of Bill
my own time on the watch for some and me, with Sunday, emerging from
such happening at any one of the many the mistwall.
spots I could monitor, and when the city "Gather around," I said. "We've
signalled, came." I brought back someone for you all to
"Why is the city so important?" I meet. Brace yourselves he's not hu- —
asked. man. Bill, do you want to call him?"
"It isn't," said Porniarsk, swinging "Porniarsk! " shouted Bill, turning to
his heavy head me. "You are
to look at the mistwall.
important— I believe. I'll go with you Marie and the rest also turned toward
now unless you reject me; and at last the mistwall, with a swiftness that
perhaps we can be of use to ourselves cheered me up, somewhat. I had meant
and to the universe." what I had said to Porniarsk about pre-
I looked at looked at me.
Bill. Bill paring them for the shock of meeting
"Just a minute," said. "I want to I him. Now the thought in my mind was
look this place over. It's from out of our that a little shock might have a salutary

future, if my guess is right. There may effect on them. We were not an army of
be a lot of things here we can use." world -conquerers, after all. Half a
"Nothing," said Porniarsk. "It is dozen determined adults with decent
only a museum — with all its exhibits rifles could wipe us out or make slaves
taken away long since." of us at a moment's notice, if we took
no precautions. realized he had not yet reached our basic
Porniarsk came clanking through the levels of understanding.
mistwall into view and stopped before "More simply put," he said, "all
us. time and space are affected. The uni-
"I am Porniarsk Prime Three," he verse has been fragmented from one
announced, in exactly the same tones in order into a wild pattern of smaller
which he had introduced himself to Bill orders, each with its own direction and
and me. "The third avatar of Por- rate of creation or decay. We can't cure

niarsk, an expert in Temporal science. I that situation, but we can work against

hope to work together with you so that it. We must work against it, otherwise
we all may benefit the universe." the process will continue and the frag-
"Yes," said Bill, dryly. "Only, of mentation will increase, tending toward
course we've a little more interest in smaller and smaller orders until each
helping ourselves first." individual particle becomes a universe
Porniarsk swiveled his heavy head to to itself."
look at Bill. "How can we work against it?" I

"It is the same thing," Porniarsk asked.

said. "I can show you a place where work
"Is it?" said Bill. can be done," he said.
Porniarsk creaked off a nod. It was, somehow, the answer I had

"What you've observed as a local been expecting all along. And that is the

phenomena," he said,
microechos of the larger disturbance,
which began roughly half a billion years
ago, according to your original time
pattern."
"are essentially last thing I remember hearing him say-
ing then, because at that point my mind
seemed to explode with what it had just
discovered— go into overdrive with the
possibilities developing from that— on a

"Oh?" said Bill. He was trying to be scale that made any past mental work I
indifferent, but I could catch the ring of had ever done seem like kindergarten-
interest in his voice that he was trying to level playtime, by comparison. At last,

hide. "Well, just as long as it can be my hungry rat's teeth had found some-
fixed." thing they could tear into.
"It cannot be fixed," said Porniarsk. Bill told me later that after a while I

"The knowledge is not available to fix came to and gave everybody, including
it." Porniarsk, orders to pack up and move
"It isn't?" I said. "Then what's all on; and I kept the avatar and all of us
this about helping the universe?" moving steadily for the better part of

"The whole problem is beyond my the next three weeks. Just moving, not
time pattern and any other time pattern stopping to investigate what was beyond
I know," said Porniarsk. "Yet, our re- the mistwall, or in any of the buildings
sponsibility remains. Though we cannot or communities we passed. Pushing
solve, we can attack the problem, each forward as if I were on a trek to some
of us like the ants of which you know, far distant land of great promise.

trying to level a mountain such as you Moments of that trek, I dimly re-
are familiar with. With each microecho, member. But only moments. I was too
each infinitesimal node attacked, we full of the end result of all the specula-
approach a solution, even if it is not for tions I had been making about the time-

us to reach it." storm—now paying off all at once. I did

"Wait a minute—" began Tek. have flashes of awareness of what I was
"Hold it!" 1 said, hastily. "Let me doing, and of what was going on around
get to the bottom of this, first. Por- me. But it was all background, unim-
niarsk, just how whole pro-
far does the portant scenery for the real place I was
blem extend — this problem of which our in and the real thing I was doing, which
troubles here are a microecho?" was The Dream.
"I thought," said Porniarsk, "I had In The Dream I was the equivalent of

made clear the answer to that question. a spider. Isay "the equivalent of," be-
The temporal maladjustments are symp- cause I was still myself; I was just oper-
toms of the destruction of an entropic ating like a spider. If that doesn't make
balance which has become omnipresent. sense, I'm sorry, but it's the best I can

The chaos in temporal patterns is uni- do by way of explanation. As descrip-

versal." tion, it hardly makes sense to me either;

of us said anything. Porniarsk

None but I've never found another way to de-
stood waiting for a moment and then scribe what that particular brain-hurri-
 MONAD GESTALT
cane was like. casional tree, but small stands of brush the morning. The ones going will be
In The Dream, then, I was spiderlike; and marshy ponds. Here and there a me, and three others, all with rifles
Bill,
and I was clambering furiously and end- farmer's fence straggled across the and shotguns both, in one of the jeeps.
lessly about a confusion of strands that landscape and the two-lane blacktop Anybody particularly want to be in on
stretched from one end of infinity to the road we had been following, since its the expedition, or shall I pick out the
other. The strands had a pattern, sudden appearance out of nowhere ten ones to go?"
though it would have taken someone in- miles before, ran at an angle into the "I'll go," said Tek.
finite in size to stand back enough to mistwall and disappeared. The day had "No," 1 said. "I want you to stay
perceive it as a whole. Still, in a way I been cool. Our campfires felt good. here."
can't describe, was aware of that pat-
I Autumn would be along before long, 1 looked around the firelit circle of
I

tern. My work was with it; and that thought, and with that began to turn faces, but there were no other volun-
work filled me with such a wild, terrible over ideas for the winter; whether to teers.
and singing joy that it was only a hair- find secure shelter in this climate or "All right, then," I said. "It'll be
line away from being an agony. The joy head south. Richie, Alan, and Waite. Starting with
of working with the pattern, of handling I made an attempt to get Porniarsk to the best shot and working down the
it, sent me scrambling inconceivable dis- tell me what lay on the other side of the list."
tances at unimaginable speeds across the mistwall; but he was not helpful. An ideal expeditionary group would
strands that filled the universe, with "But that's it?" I said. "The place have been myself, Tek, and a couple of
every ounce of strength, every braincell, you talked about?" the men, none of whom meant a great
engaged in what I was doing, every "Yes," he answered. deal to me — except myself, and I was
nerve stretched to the breaking-point. It "You could at least tell us if we're li- too much of an egotist to think that I
was a berserk explosion of energy that able to fall off a cliff before we come couldn't survive whatever mystery lay in
did not care if it destroyed its source out of the wall, or step into a few hun- front of me. Sunday, the girl, Bill, even
that was myself, as long as things were dred feet of deep water," I growled at to Marie and little
a certain extent
done to the pattern that needed doing; him. Wendy, were people cared about to
I

and somehow this was all associated "You won't encounter any cliffs, one degree or another and would just as
with my memories of my first deter- lakes, or rivers before you have a chance soon have kept safely in the rear area.
mination to put my brand on the world to see them," Porniarsk said. "As far as But Bill could not be left behind, in
about me; so the energy sprang from the terrain goes, it's not that dissimilar justice. The quest to understand the
deep sources within me. from the land around us here." time-storm was as much his as mine.
Actually, what I was experiencing was "Then why not tell us about it?" Sunday could not be kept out, in prac-
beyond ordinary description. The pat- "The gestalt impression will be of tice. Meanwhile Tek, who outside of
tern was nameless. My work with it was importance to you later." myself was the one person fit to take
outside definition. But at the same That was all I could get out of him. charge of those left behind if enemies of
time, I knew inside me that it was the After dinner, I called a meeting. Por- some kind suddenly appeared over the
most important work that ever had been niarsk attended. I told the others that horizon behind us, could by no stretch
and ever would be. It carried an ad- Porniarsk believed that beyond this of common sense be taken. Ever since
renalinlike drunkenness that was far be- particular mistwall there was an area Marie, Wendy, and I had run into him
yond any familiar self -intoxication. different from any we'd run into so far. and hisgroup, I had been half-expecting
People talk, or use to talk, about drug We might find equipment there that that any day, we might bump into an-
highs. This high was not a matter of would let us do something about the other such armed and predatory gang.
chemistry, but of physics. Every mole- time-storm and the moving mistwalls. "All right!" I said. "If everybody's
cule of my body was charged and set vi- Bill and I in particular were interested in going to go, we'll have to use the pick-
brating in resonance with the pattern the chance of doing so, as they all knew. '
up. Let's get it cleared out!
and the work I was doing upon it. For one thing, if we could somehow The pickup was our main transport.
Meanwhile, I continued with some stop the mistwalls from moving, we In the back, it had all our camping
detached part of my consciousness to could feel safe setting down someplace equipment, food, fuel, and other sup-
lead and direct my small band of pil- permanently. Perhaps we could start re- plies. We had unloaded part of what it
grims; effectively enough, at least, so building a civilization. contained to set up camp the night
that they did not depose me as a mad- It was quite a little speech. When I before; but if it was to be used as a bat-
man and set up some new leader in my was done, they all looked at me, looked tle wagon, the rest of the box had to be
place. Not but what as I found out — at Porniarsk who had neither moved cleared. We moved back and went to
later— they did not all notice a differ- nor spoken, and then looked back at me work.
ence in me, and individually react to or again. None of them said anything. But Twenty minutes later, we once more
use that difference to their own pur- looking back at them, I got the clear approached the mistwall; this time in
poses. When I returned wholly to my- impression that there were as many dif- the pickup, in low gear. The girl, who
self, we had halted, facing a stationary ferent reactions to what I had just said had insisted on joining us, Bill and I
mistwall dead ahead; and two hours as there were heads there to contain the were in the front seat with the windows
laterwe set up evening camp a couple of reactions. rolled up, and me as driver. In the open
hundred yards from it. "All right, then," said, after a rea-
I
box behind were Alan and Waite and
The countryside here was open pas- sonable wait to give anyone else a Richie, holding a disgruntled Sunday on
tureland, rolling hills with only an oc- chance to speak. "We'll be going in, in a leash. I'd shut the leopard out of the

53

MONAD GESTALT
cab by main force and snapped his leash
around his neck when he tried to join
the three of us in the cab. As I pushed
the nose of the pickup slowly into the
first dust of the mistwall, there was a
heavy thud on the roof of the cab.
stopped, rolled down the window and
stuck head out to glimpse Sunday
my
now lying on the cab top. 1 rolled the
window back up and went on.
The mist surrounded us. The dust
hissed on the metal of the pickup's
body, as the motor of the truck grum-
bled in low gear. We were surrounded
by an undeviating whiteness in which it
was impossible to tell if we were mov-
ing. Then the whiteness lightened, thin-
ned, and suddenly we rolled out into
stopped the truck.
sunlight again. I
We were in a rocky, hilly section
country. The thin, clear air that
everything stand out with sudden
sharpness signaled that we were at a
higher altitude, and the sparseness of
vegetation — no trees and only an occa-
sional green, spiny bush— suggested
high, desert country, like the alt'tplano
of inland Mexico. The landscape was
mainly rock, from hard dirt and gravel
to boulders of all sizes. Rough, but not
too rough for the jeeps to get through
and, if a clear route could be found be-
tween the boulders, probably even the
pickup could be nursed along.
The ground before us was fairly clear
and level, but boulder strewn slopes rose
sharply to right and left of us. Directly
ahead, the level space dipped down into
a cup-shaped depression holding what
appeared to be a small village.
buildings in the village were
dome-shaped, with floorless, front-
porch extensions, consisting simply of
projecting roofs upheld at each end by
supporting poles. Under those roofs,
out in the open, there seemed to be a few
machines or equipment — mechanical
constructs of some kind. No human
ings were visible. Beyond the village
ground rose sharply into a small moun-
tain —
it was too steep to be called a hill
—wearing a belt of trees halfway up its
several hundred feet of height. On one
side of the mountain the bare peak
sloped at an angle the jeeps could pos-
sibly manage. But the other slopes were
all boulder-strewn and climbable only
by someone on foot.
On top, crowning the peak, was a
large, solid, circular building, looking
as if it had been poured out of fresh
white concrete ten seconds before
54
"
peared on the scene. That was as much his face as white as the building on the
as I had a chance to notice, because then peak. His right hand was trapped be-
everything started to happen. hind Alan; but he kept trying to bring
A
number of objects hit loudly on the his left hand up to his chest and Alan
body and cab of the truck, one shatter- kept holding it away.
I ing the window next to Bill. At the same My head cleared. I remembered now
time, there was a yowl of rage from that the barrage that had come at us had
Sunday and I caught sight fleetingly of contained not only thrown rocks but a
the leopard leaping off the roof of the few leaf-shaped, hiltless knives. One of
cab to the right, with his leash trailing in the knives was now sticking in Waite's
the air behind him. Suddenly the rocks chest low on the left side. It was in per-
around us were speckled by the visages haps a third the length of its blade; and
of dark-furred, apelike creatures. evidently it had slid in horizontally be-
The guns of the men in the box were tween two ribs.
firing. The girl, who had been seated be- Waite coughed and little pink froth
tween and myself, scrambled over
Bill came out the corners of his mouth.
Bill crying out Sunday's name, opened "He wants to get the knife out," said
the door of the pickup on that side, and Alan pleadingly to me. "Should we just
disappeared. Bill exited after her, and I pull it out, do you think?"
heard the machine pistol yammering. I I looked down at Waite. It did not
of
made jerked open the door on my side, rolled matter, clearly, whether we took the
out on to the hard-pebbled earth, and knife out or not. The blade had gone in-
began firing from a prone position at to his lungs and now they were filling up
any furry head I could see. with blood. Waite looked back up at me
There was a timeless moment of noise with panic in his eyes. He was the quiet
a —
and confusion and then without warn- one of Tek's four men, and possibly the
ing it was over. There were no longer youngest. I had never been sure if he
any creatures visible to shoot at, except was really like the others, or whether he
for perhaps four or five who lay still, or had simply gotten swept up and tried to
barely stirring, on the ground. fired a be like them.
I
few more rounds out of reflex, and then There was nothing I or anyone else in
quit. The other guns fell silent. our group could do for him. I stood
I got to my feet. Sunday stalked back looking down at him, feeling my help-
into my line of vision, his tail high in something in my own chest
lessness, like
self -congratulation. He headed for one being raggedly cut. This was one of the
of the two furry figures that still moved. people 1 had been thinking meant little
I opened my mouth to call him back; or nothing to me and would be easily
but before he could have reached the expendable. I had not stopped to realize
creature, a rifle in the box behind me how close a group like ours could come
The began to sound again and both the mov- to be, living together like a family, mov-
odd; ing bodies went motionless. ing together, facing a possibly danger-
"Quit that!" I shouted, spinning ous world together. Maybe he would die
around. "I want one alive
— more quickly without the knife blade in
I broke off, suddenly realizing I was him, and removing it would be the
talking to a man who wasn't listening. kindest thing we could do for him.
Richie, his round face contorted, was "If he wants it out, he might as well
kneeling behind the metal side of the have it out," I said.
be- pickup box, firing steadily at the dark- Alan let go of Waite's arm. The arm
the furred shapes; and he kept at it until his came up and its hand grasped the handle
rifle was empty. of the knife, but could not pull it out.
I climbed into the box and took the Alan half-reached for the knife himself,
hesitated, and
gun away from him as he tried to reload hesitated, tried again,
it. looked appealingly at me.
"Simmer down!" said. I reached down and took hold of the
1
He looked at me glassy-eyed, but sat handle. The blade stuck at first, then
without moving. There wasn't a mark slidout easily. Waite yelled— or rather,
on him. he tried to yell, but it was a sound that
But the other two were hit. Alan had ended in a sort of gargle. He pulled
one side of his face streaming blood away a little from Alan, and leaned over
from what seemed to be a scalp wound. forward, face tilted down intently
He was holding up Waite, who was toward the bed of the box, as if he was
we ap- breathing in an ugly, rattling way with going to be sick. But he was not. He
 —

MONAD GESTALT
merely hung there sagging against the ing to be here?" She was talking non- up toward wound, wanting to
the head
grip of Alan's arms, his gaze calm and sense. She had evidently been hurt or touch it, but afraid of what it might
intent on the metal flooring; and then, wounded in the leg, but that could hard- feel.
as we watched, he began to die. ly be serious. "That's what I want to know," I
was like watching him dwindle
It "Tek and I are going away by our- said.
away from us. His face relaxed and re- selves. It's already decided," she said. I climbed into the cab and bent over

laxed and the focus in his eyes became "We were just waiting to make sure you him, gingerly parting the hair over the
more and more general, until all at once got through this last mistwall, all right. bloody scalp. It was such a mess I

there was no focus at all and he was You can keep Sunday. He only couldn't see anything.
gets in
dead. Alan let him down quickly but the way all the time, anyway." "Feel anything?" I asked, probing
softly on the bed of the box. She turned, grabbed hold of the with my fingertips.
I turned and climbed out of the box "No
boulder against which she had been . . . no . . . yes\" he yelped.
back onto the ground. I saw Bill stand- leaning, and pulled herself up on one I pulled my hands away.
ing on this side of the truck now, and leg. "How bad did that feel?" I asked
Sunday nosing curiously at one of the "Help me back to the pickup," she him. He looked embarrassed.
bodies. Suddenly, it struck me. said. "Not too bad — I .guess," he said.
"Girl!" Ishouted at Bill. "The girl! My head
was whirling with that crazy "But I felt it, where you touched it."
Where is she?" announcement of hers. I stared down at "All right," I told him. "Hang on,
"I don't know," said Bill. her bandaged leg. because I'm going to have to touch it
I ran around the front of the truck "What happened to you?" I said, some more."
and the bouldered slope on the side I'd automatically. I probed around with my fingers,
seen her disappear. "I got hit by a rock, that's all. It wishing I'd had the sense to bring band-
"Girl!" I kept shouting. "Girl\" scraped the skin off and bled a little, so ages and water with us. He said nothing
I couldn't find her. I found one of the Iwrapped it up; but it's only a bruise." to indicate that I was giving him any
dead ape-creatures, but I couldn't find "Try putting your weight on it." important amount of pain; and all my
her. I started threading back and forth Something automatic in me was doing fingers could find was a swelling and a
among the rocks as I worked up the the talking. "Maybe it's broken." relatively small cut.
slope; and then, suddenly, I almost fell "It's not broken. I already tried." "It's really not bad at all," he said,
over her. She was in a little open space, She took hold of my arm with both her sheepishly when I'd finished. "I think I
up with her back against a
half-sitting hands. "It just hurts to walk on it. Help just got hit by a rock, come to think of
boulder and a torn-off strip of her shirt me." it."
tiedaround one leg above the knee. I put an arm around her and she "All right," I said. My own hands
For a moment I thought she was al- hopped back down the slope on one leg were a mess now. I wiped them as best I
ready dead, like Waite— and 1 couldn't by my side until we reached the cab of could on the levis I was wearing.
take it. It was like being cut in half. the pickup, and I helped her up onto the "Looks like a bump and a scratch, only.
Then she turned her head to look at me seat.I was operating on reflex. I could It just put out a lot of blood. If you're
and I saw she was alive. not believe what she had said; particu- up to it, I want you to stay."
"Oh, my God!" I said. now when I had just realized
larly just "I can stay," he said.
I knelt down beside her and wrapped how important she was to me. It was the "All right, then. Richie!"
her up in my arms, telling myself I way I had found myself feeling about Richie looked at me slowly as if I was
would never let go of her again. Never. Waite, multiplied something like a mil- someone calling him from a distance.
But she was as stiff and unresponsive in lion times. But there were things de- "Richie! I want you to drive the pick-
my grasp as a wild animal caught in a manding decisions from me. up back through the mistwall. You're to
trap. She did not move; but she did not Richie and Alan were still in the back take the girl and Waite back, then pick
relax either; and finally this brought me of the truck with the body of Waite. I up some bandages, some antibiotics and
more or less back to my senses. I didn't looked at them. Somebody had to take a jerry can of drinking water, and bring
want to let her go, but I stopped holding the pickup back through the mistwall it back to us. Understand me?"
her quite so tightly. with the girl and Waite. Richie was the "Yeah ..." said Richie, thickly.
"Are you all right?" I said. "Why unhurt one, but his eyes still did not "Come on,then," I said.
you answer me?"
didn't look right. climbed out of the box of the pickup
I

"My name's Ellen," she said. "How badly are you hurt?" I asked and he came after me. I saw him into the
"Is that all!" I hugged her again. Alan. cab and behind the wheel.
"All right! You'll be Ellen from now "Hurt?" he said. "I didn't get hurt." "He'll take you back to the camp," I
on. I won't ever call you anything else!" "You could fool me," said I dryly. told the girl, and closed the door on the
"It doesn't matter what you call me," He didn't seem to get it. "Your head! driver's side before she could answer
she said. "I'm not going to be here, How bad's the damage to your head?" assuming, that is, that she had intended
anyway." "My head?" to answer. The pickup's motor, which
She was still stiff and cold. I let go of He put up a hand and brought it had been idling all this time, growled in-
her and sat back on my knees so that I down covered with blood. His face to gear. Richieswung it about and drove
could see her face; and it was as unyield- whitened. out of sight into the mistwall, headed
ing as the rest of her. "What is it?" he said. "How bad back.
"What do you mean, you aren't go- . . .
" His bloody hand was fluttering I looked around. Bill was standing

55
 ' —

MONAD GESTALT
about twenty yards ahead of me. Beside spot to another. face was calm, but I could hear the
him was Porniarsk, who must have fol- They were within easy rifle shot of excitement under the level note he tried
lowed us through the mistwall at some where we stood, and the three of us have to speak in.
time when I wasn't looking. They been plainly visible to them, but they "Let's take a look, Marc."
seemed to be talking together, looking paid us no attention whatsoever. "All right," I said. "As soon as the
down into the village, the machine pistol "What the hell?" I said. "Is that the pickup comes back, we'll go get a jeep
hanging by carelessly from
its strap same tribe that hit us just now?" and try that long slope on the right of
Bill's right was incautious of
arm. It "Yes," said Bill. the peak."
him to be so relaxed, I thought. We had I looked at him and waited for him to The only vehicle-possible route to the
driven off one attack, but there was no go on, but he nodded at Porniarsk in- peak led down through the main street
way of knowing we might not have stead. of the village. When Alan got back with
another at any minute. "Ask him," he said. a jeep, we left him there, and Porniarsk,
I went toward them. As I did, I had to Porniarsk creaked his head around to Bill andI drove down the slope and in

detour around the body of one of the at- look sideways and up at me. between the buildings. We had perhaps
tackers, who had apparently been trying "They're experimental animals," twenty feet to spare on either side of us
to rush the pickup. It lay face-down, the Porniarsk said, "from a time less than a as we went through the village for the
apelike features hidden and it reminded hundred years ahead of that you were in central street— if you could call it that

me of Waite, somehow. For a moment I originally, when the time-storm reached — was twice the width of the other lanes
wondered if there were others among its you." between buildings. The furry faces we
fellows that were feeling the impact of "You knew about them?" The passed did not bother to look at us, with
this one's death, as I had felt that of made my throat tight.
thought of Waite a single exception. A slightly grizzled,
Waite. My mind — it was not quite under "You knew about them waiting to kill large, and obviously male individual
control right then —my mind skittered us and you didn't warn us?" none of them wore anything but a sort
off to think of the girl again. Of Ellen "I knew only they were experimental of Sam Browne belt, to which were clip-
— must remember
I to think of her as animals," said Porniarsk. "Apparently ped the sheaths that held their knives
Ellen from now on. part of their conditioning is to attack. and some things which looked like small
It was so strange. She was small and But if the attack fails, they go back to hand-tools— sat in front of one building
skinny and cantankerous. How could I other activities." and stared from under thick tufts of
love her like this?Where did it come "It could be ... " said Bill slowly hair where his brows should be, his long
from, what I was feeling? Somehow, and thoughtfully, "it could be their at- fingers playing with the knife he held on
when I wasn't paying any attention, she tack reflex was established to be used his knees.But he made no threatening
had grown inside me and now she took against animals, instead of the people of moves, with the knife or anything else.
up all the available space there. Another the time that set them up here; and they "Look at that old man," said Bill,
thought came by, blown on the wander- just didn't recognize us as belonging to pointing with the muzzle of his machine
ing breeze of my not-quite-in-control the people level, as they'd been trained pistol at the watcher.
mind. What about Marie? I couldn't to recognize it." "I see him," I said. "What do you
just kick her out. But maybe there was "It's possible," said Porniarsk, "and want me to do about him?"
no need for worry. All Marie had ever then, if they attacked and failed, they "Nothing, I'd suggest," said Porni-
seemed to want was the protection in- might be conditioned to stop attacking, arsk. My question had not really called
herent in our partnership. It might be as a fail-safe reflex." for an answer, but perhaps he had not
she would be completely satisfied with "That's damned cool of the both of understood that. "That one's the Alpha
the name of consort alone. After all, you," I said, my throat free again. Prime of the male community. The
there were no laws now, no reason that I "Waite's dead and you're holding a name 'Old Man' fits him very well. As
. '

couldn't apparently have two wives in- parlor discussion on the reasons Alpha Prime, his reflexes or condi-
stead of one. No one but us three need Bill looked at me, concerned. tioning dictates a somewhat different
know Marie was a wife in name only "All right, all right," I said. "Forget pattern of action for him alone. But I

... of course, the girl would have to I said that. I'm still a little shook up don't think he or the others will act
agree . . . from all this. So, they're experimental inimically again, unless you deliberately
I stopped thinking, having reached animals down there, are they?" trigger some antagonistic reaction."
Bill and Porniarsk. They were still look- "Yes," said Porniarsk, "experimen- "What are they all doing?" Bill

ing down at the village. I looked down, tal animals, created by genetic engineer- asked.
too;and to my surprise saw it populated ing to test certain patterns of behavior. looked in the direction he was star-
I

and busy. Black, furry, apelike figures Up on the height behind their
there ing. There were a number of porches
were visible all through its streets and community is the laboratory building along the left side of the street, each
moving in and out of the dome-shaped from which they were observed and with one or two of the experimentals
houses. Most, in fact, seemed to be busy studied. The equipment in that structure under them. I picked out one who was
with whatever objects they had under that was designed for working with this operating what was clearly a spinning
the porchlike roofs before the entrances problem is equipment that, with some wheel. Another was cutting up a large
of their buildings. But a fair number changes and improvements, may be able sheet of the leathery material their

were visible simply sitting in the dust, to aid in controlling the effects of the harnesses were made out of, plainly en-
singly or in pairs, doing nothing; and a time storm, locally." gaged in constructing Sam Browne
small group were in transit from one Bill was staring straight at me. His belts. But the rest were working with

56
 ' ' —

MONAD GESTALT
machines I did not recognize and either niarsk. "You forget the matter of scale. hundred and eighty degrees of the room
getting no visible results, or results that If the time-storm is like a wave front on at once.
made no sense to me. One in particular a beach, we and our worlds are less than "It is," said Porniarsk, "something
was typing away energetically at a sort individual atoms in the grain of sand you might think of as a computer, in
of double keyboard, with no noticeable that make up that beach. What we ex- your terms. It's a multiple facility for
effect, except for a small red tab that the perience as appear
local effects as the use of observers who'd wish to draw
machine spat out at odd intervals into a phenomena having very little resem- conclusions from their observations of
wire basket. The worker paid no atten- blance to the true picture of the wave the inhabitants in the village."
tion to the tabs he was accumulating, front as a whole. I only mention this be- "Computer?" Bill's voice was louder
seeming to be completely wound up in cause it's now become important for and sharper. "That's all?"
the typing process itself. Marc to be able to imagine something of "Its working principle isn't that of
"They're self-supporting, after a the forces at work, here." the computers you're familiar with,"
fashion," said Porniarsk. "Some of The front wheels of the jeep jolted said Porniarsk. "This uses the same
what they do provides them with what and shuddered over some small rocks. principle that's found in constructs
they need to live. Other specific activ- We were moving beyond the end of the from the further future, those I've refer-
ities are merely for study purposes village street and up over open ground red to as devices-of-assistance. You'll
for the studies of the people who put again. I gave my attention back to my have to trust me to put this construct in-
them here." driving. to that future mode so it'll be useful in
"Where are those people?" I asked. The drive up even the easy side of the the way we need."
"Can we get in touch with them?" peak was rough enough, but the jeep "How'll we use it?" Bill asked.
"No." Porniarsk swiveled his neck to was equal to it. With enough foresight, "You won't use it," said Porniarsk.
look at me from the seat beside me, it was possible to pick a route among the "Marc will use it."
once more. "They are not here." really heavy boulders that would other- They both turned their heads toward
"Where did they go?" wise have barred our way. A little more me.
"They no longer exist," said Porni- than halfway up, we hit a relatively level "And you'll teach me how?" I said to
arsk. "No more than all the people you area of hard earth surrounding the basin Porniarsk.
knew before your first experience with of a natural spring coming out of the "No. You'll have to teach yourself,"
the time-storm. You and Bill and the cliff; and we stopped to rest and taste Porniarsk answered. "If you can't, then
rest of you here, including these experi- the water, which was cold enough to set there's nothing anyone can do."
mental creatures, are the ones who have our teeth on edge. I had not been con- "If he can't, I'll try," said Bill tight-
gone places." scious of being thirsty, except for a ly.
I took my attention off the street for a fleeting moment when I told Richie to "I don't think the device will work
second to look at him. bring back a jerry can of water with the for you if it fails for Marc," said Por-
'What do you mean?
'
'

other things. He had, and I had forgot- niarsk to him. "Tell me, do you feel
"I mean you and those with you are ten to get a drink then. Now I felt a anything at this moment? Anything un-
people the time-storm has moved, rather thirst like that of someone lost in the usual at all?"
than eliminated," Porniarsk answered. desert for two days. I drank icy water "Feel?" Bill stared at him.
"I'm, sorry, that can't be explained until my jaws ached; paused, drank, "You don't feel anything, then," said
properly to you yet by someone like me, paused, and drank again. Porniarsk. "I was right. Marc should be
not until you understand more fully After a bit we went the rest of the way much more attuned. Marc, what do you
what has been involved and is involved up to the top of the peak, where the feel?"
in the temporal displacements. Remem- building was. Seen up close, it turned "Feel? Me?" I said, echoing Bill. But
ber, I told you that this disturbance out to be a structure maybe sixty feet in I already knew what he was talking
began roughly half a billion years in diameter, with only one entrance and no about.
your past?" windows. Like a blockhouse at a firing I had thought at first I must be feeling
I remembered. But it had only been a
range, only larger. a hangover from the fight with the in-
figure to me at the time. Who can imag- The entrance had a door, which slid habitants of the village Then I'd .

ine a time-span of a half a billon years? aside aswe came within a stride of it. thought the feeling was my curiosity
"Yes," I said. We had a glimpse of darkness beyond, about what was inside this building, un-
"It also began several million years in then lighting awoke within and we step- saw what was Now,
til I there. standing
your future," said Porniarsk. "Perhaps ped into a brightly illuminated, circular on the platform in the center of the
it might help you to think, provision-
interior, with a raised platform in the structure, 1 knew it was something else
ally, of the time-storm as a wavefront center and open cubicles all around the — something like a massive excitement
intersecting the linear time you know— exterior wall, each cubicle with a pad- from everywhere, that was surrounding
the time you imagine stretching from ded chair, its back toward the center of me, pressing in on me.
past to future— at an angle, so that your the room and cushions facing a sort
its "I feel geared-up," I said.
past, present and future are all affected of console fixed to the wall. "More than just geared-up, I think,"
'
at once by the same action .

"What it?" asked Bill almost in a

is Porniarsk said. "It was a guess I made
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" whisper. He was standing with Porni- only on the basis of Marc's heading for
demanded Bill. arsk and me on the raised platform but, this area; but I was right. Porniarsk
"Unfortunately, the image I just gave unlike us, turning continually on his hoped only that a small oasis of stability
you isn't really a true one," said Por- heel as if he wanted to get a view of all might be established on the surface of

57
MONAD GESTALT
this world, in this immediate locality. you might find, after the device is ready staying, only so that he and she could
With anyone else, such as you, Bill, and you can look back over all you've hold down two of the consoles, as Por-
we could do. But with Marc
that'd be all done, that you unconsciously directed niarsk had said all of the adults in our
maybe we can try something more. each step along the way, toward this party would need to do, when I made
There's a chance he has an aptitude for place and this moment, from the begin- my do something about the
effort to

using a device-of-assistance." ning." time-storm. After that, they would go;

"Can't you come up with a better I shook my head. There was no use and nothing I could say would stop her.
name than that?" said Bill. His
for it trying to explain to him, I thought, how The reasons why she had turned to
voice was tight— tight enough to shake I had never been able to let a problem Tek as she had, I could not read in her.
just a little. alone. But I did not argue the point any Her personal feelings were beyond the
"What would you suggest?" asked further. reach of my perception. Something shut
Porniarsk. was too intensely wrapped up in
I me out. Porniarsk told me, when I final-
I turned and walked away from them, what I could feel growing about me ly asked him, that the reason I could not
out of the building through the door the assistance of the device. It was only know how she felt was because my own
that opened before me and shut after partly mechanical. Porniarsk would not emotions were involved with her. Had I

me. walked into the solitude of the

I or could not explain its workings to me, been able to force myself to see, I would
thin, clear air and the high sunlight. although I could watch him as he work- have seen not what was, but what I
There was something working in me; ed with the small colored cubes that wanted to see. I would have perceived
and for the moment it had driven every- made up the inner parts of seven of the falsely; and since the perception and

thing else, even Ellen, out of my mind. consoles. The cubes were about a quar- understanding I was gaining with the
It was like a burning, but beneficent, ter the size of children's blocks and help of the device were part of a true re-
fever, like a great hunger about to be seemed to be made of some hard, trans- flection of the universe, the device could
satisfied, like the feeling of standing on lucent material. They clung together give only accurate information, con-
the threshold of a cavern filled with naturally in the arrangement in which sequently, it gave nothing where only in-

treasure beyond counting. they occurred behind the face of the accuracy was possible.
It was all this, and still it was inde- console; and Porniarsk's work, appar-
scribable. I did not yet have it, but I ently, was to rearrange their order and So, 1 was split down the middle; and
them to cling together again. Appar- the division between the triumph and
could almost touch it and taste it; and I get
knew that it was only a matter of time ently, the rearrangement was different the despair inme grew sharper with the
now until my grasp closed on it. Know- with each console, and Porniarsk had to activation of each new console. After
was everything. could wait, any number of combinations before the fourth one, the avatar warned me
ing that, I try
could work. could do anything he found it. It looked like a random
that therewas a limit to the step-up I
now. I I

— for the keys of my kingdom were at procedure, but evidently was not; and could endure from the device.

when asked about that, Porniarsk "If you feel you're being pushed too
hand. I

Then began a bittersweet time for me, relaxed his no-information rule enough hard," he said, "tell me quickly. Too
the several weeks that Porniarsk worked to tell me that what he was doing was much stimulus and you could destroy
yourself before you've had a chance to
on the equipment in what we were now checking arrangements of the cubes in
calling the "roundhouse." It was sweet accordance with "sets" he already car- use the device properly."

because day by day I felt the device-of- ried in his memory center, to find pat- "It's all right," I know what
said. "I

assistance coming to life under the terns thatwould resonate with the mo- you're talking about." And I did. I
of those three tentacle-fingers nad that was me. It was not the cubes could feel myself being stretched daily,
touch
Porniarsk had growing out of his that were the working parts, evidently, closer and closer toward a snapping
shoulders. The avatar had been right but the patterns. point. But that point was still not
reached; and 1 wanted to go to the limit,
about me. The original Porniarsk had
not suspected there would be anyone on
Whatever he was doing, and however no matter what would happen after-

it was effective, when he got a collection wards.

our Earth who could use the device
without being physically connected to it.
of cubes to hang together in a different It was the pain of Ellen's imminent
But evidently I was a freak. I had al- order, I felt the effect immediately. It leaving that drove me more than any-

ready had some kind of mental connec- was as if another psychic generator had thing else. With the device beginning to

tion with this place, if only subcon- come on-line in my mind. With each work, I was partly out of the ordinary
sciously, during the days of The Dream addition of power, or strength, or what- world already. I did not have to test my-
ever you want to call it, I saw more self by sticking burning splinters in my
in which had pushed us all in this
I

direction, and to this location. I said as clearlyand more deeply into all things flesh to know that the physical side of

much to Porniarsk, one day. around me. me was much dwindled in importance,

"No," he shook his head. "Before Including the people. And from this lately. It forget that I had a
was easy to
that, I'd think. You must have felt its came the bitter to join with the sweet of body. But the awareness of my imma-
existence, here, and been searching for my life. For, as step by step my percep- terial self was correspondingly ampli-
your came to perceive that fied, to several times its normal sensi-
it from the time you woke to find
tions increased, I

world changed." Ellenwas indeed intending to leave with tivity; and it was in this immaterial area

"I was looking," I said. "But I didn't Tek, as soon asmy work with the device that I was feeling the loss of Ellen more

have any idea what for." had been achieved. She was staying for keenly than the amputation of an arm
"Perhaps," said Poraniarsk. "But the moment and had talked Tek into and a leg together.

58
 MONAD GESTALT

There was no relief from that feeling all of them in three dimensions, as it what he wanted to say, but 1 had still
of loss except to concentrate on the were, where I before had never seen felt he could have explained himself in

expansion of my awareness. So, psychi- more than a single facet of their true more hard-edged technical or scientific

cally,I pushed out and out, running shape. Now, seen this way, all of them terms.
from what I could not bear to face and — — all things, including me — were inter- But then, later, he had also used the
then, without warning, came rescue connected. word monad" and remembering
'*
; ,

from an unexpected direction. So I found my way back. With the that, I now began to comprehend one
It was late afternoon, the sunlight thought of interconnection, I was once important fact. The forces of the time-
slanting in at a low angle through the more in The Dream, back in the spider storm and the device he was building so
door to the roundhouse, which we had web spanning the universe. Only now I could come to grips with them,
propped open while Porniarsk worked there were patterns to its strands. I read belonged not so much to a physical, or
on the last console. Bill and I were the those patterns clearly, and they brought even a psychological, but to a philo-
only other ones there. We had opened me an inner peace for the first time. Be- sophical universe. I was far from under-
the door to let a little of the natural cause at last I saw what I could do, and standing why this should be. In fact,

breeze and outer sun-warmth into the how to do it, to still the storm locally. with regard to the whole business, I was
perfectly controlled climate of the in- Not just in this little section of the Earth still like a child in kindergarten, learn-

terior; and my case this had brought

in around me, but all around our planet ing about traffic lights without really
the thought of my outside concerns with and moon and out into space for a dis- comprehending the social and legal
it, so that for a moment my mind had tance beyond us, into the general tem- machinery behind the fact of their exist-
wandered again to thinking of Ellen. poral holocaust. I saw clearly that I ence. But with the aid of the device, I

I came back to awareness of the would need more strength than I pres- had finally begun, at least, to get into
roundhouse, to see Bill and Porniarsk sently had; and the pattern I read the proper arena of perception.
both looking at me. Porniarsk had just showed that success would carry a price. Briefly and clumsily, in the area in
said something. I could hear the echo of A death-price. The uncaring laws of the which I would have to deal with the
on my ear, but without
it still its mean- philosophical universe in this situation time-storm, the only monads — that is,

ing had vanished. could balance gain against loss in only the only basic, indestructible, building
"What?" I asked. one unique equation. And that equation blocks or operators —were individual

"It's ready," said Porniarsk. "How involved a cost of life. minds. Each monad was capable of re-

do you feel — able to take this seventh But I was not afraid of death, I told flecting or expressing the whole universe
assistance? You'llremember what I told myself, if the results could be achieved. from its individual point of view. In

you about the past increases not being After all, in a sense I had been living on fact, each monad had always potentially
limited? They each enlarge again with borrowed time since that first heart at- expressed — it; but the ability to do so
each new adaptation you make to the tack. I turned away from the patterns I had always been a potential function,
device. If you're near your limit of was studying and looked deeper into the unless the individual monad-mind had
tolerance now, the effect of this last in- structure of the web itself, reaching for possessed something like a device-of-
crease could be many times greater than understanding of the laws by which it assistance to implement or execute
what you're presently feeling, and you operated. changes in what it expressed.
might find yourself crippled in this Gradually, that understanding came. Of course, expressing a change in the
vital, nonphysical area before you've Porniarsk had used the word "gestalt" universe and causing that change to take
had time to pull yourself back from it." in referring to that which he hoped I place was not quite as simple as wishing
"I know, I know," I said. "Go would perceive if I came to the situation and making it so. For one thing, all
ahead." here with a free and unprejudiced mind; monads involved in a particular expres-

"I then," said Porniarsk. He

will, and the word had jarred on me at the sion of some part of the universe at a

reached with one of his shoulder ten- time.The avatar, we had all assumed, particular moment were also involved

tacles to the console half behind him, came from a race more advanced than with each other, and had to be in
and touched a colored square. ours —whether itwas advanced in time agreement about any change they wish-
For a second there was nothing. Then or otherwise. I had taken it for granted ed to expressed. For another, the change
things began to expand, dramatically. I that any twentieth-century human terms had to originate in the point of view of a

mean that literally. It was as if the sides would be inadequate to explain what- monad capable of reflecting all the phy-

of my head were rushing out and out, ever Porniarsk dealt with, and that he sical —not just the philosophical — uni-
enclosing everything about me the . . . would avoid them for fear of creating verse, as plastic and controllable.
roundhouse, the peak, the village, the misunderstandings.
whole area between the mistwalls that Besides, "gestalt" came close to hav- The time-storm itself was a phenom-
now enclosed me, all the other areas ing been one of the cant words of twen- enon of the physical universe. In the
touching that area, the continent, the tieth-century psychology; the sort of limited terms to which Porniarsk was
planet . . . there was no end. In addi- word had been used and misused by
that restricted by our language, he hacf ex-

tion, not only was encompassing these

I people knew, who wanted to sound
I plained to me that it was the result of
things, but all of them were also grow- knowledgeable about a highly special- entropic anarchy. The expanding uni-
ing and expanding. Not physically, but ized subject they would never take the verse had continued its expansion until a
with meaning — acquiring many and time to study properly and understand. point of intolerable strain on the net-
many times their original aspects, prop- Granted the avatar -was probably using work of forces that made up the space-
erties, and values. So that I understood the human word nearest in meaning to time fabric had been reached and

59
MONAD GESTALT
passed. Then, a breakdown had occur- changing and surprising her at any mo- him to it with Sunday's chain. Then give
red. In effect, the space-time bubble had ment. For her, the universe as she now him a day or two to get used to the feel
begun to disintegrate. Some of the sees it is more like a god or devil than a of assistance and to his being in connec-
had been moving outward,
galaxies that mechanism of natural laws something — tion with my mind. Once he feels the
away from each other and the universal she's got no hope of understanding or advantages these things give him, my
center, producing a state of diminishing controlling." bet is he'll get over being scared and be-
entropy, began in spot fashion to fall "All right," I said. "I'll settle for the come interested."
back, contracting the universe, creating fact she's at least partially a monad." "If you use force to bring him up
isolated states of increasing entropy. "There's no such thing," said Porni- here," said Porniarsk, "you'll
The between opposed en-
conflict arsk. "A monad either is, or is not. In undoubtedly trigger off the antagonisms
tropic had spawned the time-
states any case, even if she was a partial of his fellow experimentals."
storm. As Porniarsk had said, the storm monad, a partial monad is incapable of "I think I can do it without," I said.
as a whole was too massive for control helping you." "I've got an idea."
by action of the monads belonging to "What about when it's combined With that, I left the two of them and
our original time or even to his. But a monad?"
with another partial went back down to our camp, which
delaying action could be fought. The "What other partial monad?" Bill was set up at the foot of the peak. I un-
forces set loose by the entropic conflict asked. chained Sunday and went looking for
could be balanced against each other "The Old Man, down at the village." Marie. Sunday could only be trusted to
here and there, so slowing down the "This is even worse than your idea of around the camp when I was there.
stick
general anarchies enough to buy some using Wendy," said Porniarsk. For the He had shown no particularly strong
breathing time, until the minds of those first time since we'd met him, the tone hunting instincts before in all the time I

concerned with the struggle could de- of his voice came close to betraying irri- had known him; but for some reason
velop more powerful forces to put in tation with one of us. "The experimen- the experimentals seemed to fascinate
play across the connection between the tals down below us are artificially him. Since the first day of our camp at
philosophical and physical universes. created animals. The very concept of the foot of the hill, when I had caught
I was a single monad (though, of 'universe' is beyond them. They're only him stalking one of the village inhabi-
course, reinforced with the other seven bundles of reflexes, conditioned and tants who was out hunting among the
at their altered consoles), and not a par- trained." rocks, we had kept him chained up when
ticularly capable one, basically. But I "All but one of them," I said. "Por- I was up on the peak. It was possible he
was also something of a freak, a lucky niarsk, don't forget there's a lot of might not have hurt the experimental,
freak in that my freakiness apparently things I can see now with the help of the but the sight I had had of him, creeping
fitted the necessity of the moment. That seven sets you've already produced, softly along, belly almost dragging the
was why I was private-
could think, as I even if they don't have monads in con- ground and tail a-twitch, was too vivid
ly doing now, of creating an enclave in nection with them yet. One of those to forget.
the time-storm that would include the things that the Old Man may have At any now
is rate, I let him loose, and
whole Earth and its natural satellite, in- been bred in a test tube — or whatever he butted his head against me and
stead of merely an enclave containing they all came from — but he's got some rubbed himself against my legs all the
just the few square miles surrounding kind of concept of 'universe', even if it's time I was looking for Marie.
found I

us, which had been Porniarsk's hope. limited to his village and a mile or so of her, with Wendy, down at the creek by
"I'll need one more console the rock around it. When we first came the foot of the peak, doing some wash-
adapted," 1 said to Porniarsk. "Don't in here, and passed the initial test of ing.
worry, now. I can handle it." their attack, all the rest of them im- It was not the time to mention that I
"But there's no one to sit at it," said mediately took us for granted. Not the wanted Wendy at one of the consoles.
Bill. Old Man. By design or chance, he's got The little girl had come to trust me; and
"That's correct," said Porniarsk, pa- something individual to measure new —I don't care how male and solitary
tiently. "There are only seven other things against, plus whatever it takes to you are — if a small child decides to take
adults in your party. I haven't any ef- make new decisions on the basis of that to you, you have to carry your own in-
fectiveness as a monad. Neither has the measurement. And you can't deny he's stinctssomewhere outside the normal
little girl." adult." spectrum not to feel some sort of emo-
"She hasn't?" I looked hard at the No one said anything for a moment. tional response. Anything unexpected
avatar. "I don't think," said Bill, at last, or new tended to frighten Wendy; and
"Not ... in effect," he said, with a "that Marie's going to like the idea of any concern or doubt about it by her
rare second of hesitation. "A monad is Wendy being hooked up to something mother made the fright certain. The
required to have more than just a living like the Old Man." idea would have to be presented to
intelligence and a personality. It has to "Wendy won't be. They'll both just Wendy gently, and with Marie's co-
have the capability of reflecting the uni- be hooked in with all the rest of us. operation. 1 spoke to Marie now in-
verse. Wendy hasn't matured enough to Anyway, I'll explain it to Marie." stead about the other matter I had in
do that. If you could ask her about it, "How'll you get the Old Man to co- mind.
and she could answer you, she'd say operate?" "Have you got any of that brandy
something to the effect that to her the "He doesn't have to cooperate," I left?" I asked.
universe isn't a defined entity. It's said. "I'll bring him up here, connect She put down in a roaster pan some
amorphous, unpredictable, capable of him to one of the consoles and chain jeans of Wendy's she was wringing out,

60
 '

MONAD GESTALT
and shook her hands to get the excess to a human's. But there was no way of was about to give up, I caught a tiny
water off. She had her own slacks rolled being sure. AllI could do was try. glint of light on something moving.
up above her knees and her legs and feet The Old Man was not out in the open It was the bottle, being upended in the
bare so that she could wade into the when I first walked into the village, but general area of the Old Man's head. I
creek. The work had pinkened her face before I was half a dozen steps down the gave an inward, silent whoop of joy.
and tousled her hair. She looked, not main street, he had emerged from his Unless he had decided to use the brandy
exactly younger, but more relaxed and dwelling to hunker down in front of his for a shampoo, or unless he turned out
happier than usual; and for a second I doorway and stare at me steadily as I to have a body that reacted to alcohol as
felt sad that I had not been able to love approached. detoured along the way
I if it was so much branch water, I had
her after all, instead of Ellen. to pick up a couple of handleless cups or him.
"What's the occasion?" she asked. small bowls that one of the local work- I waited until the moon came up, then
"No occasion," I said. "I'm hoping men was turning out on his machine. I'd got the pickup and drove by moonlight
to bait the Old Man in the village down thought earlier of bringing a couple of down through the main street of the vil-
there, so I can get him up to the round- containers from our camp, then decided lage to the Old Man's building. I took
house. We want to try him with the con- the Old Man would be more likely to an unlit flashlight and went in the build-
'
soles You do have some brandy left?
.
trust utensils that were familiar to him. ing entrance. Inside, I turned the flash-
"Yes," she said. "How much do you I came up to within ten feet of him, sat lighton, and found the Old Man. He
want?" down cross-legged on the hard-packed, was curled up in the corner of the single
"One full bottle ought to be plenty," stony dirt of the street, and got my bot- room that was the building's interior,
I said. "Is there that much?" tle from the inner jacket pocket in which on a sort of thick rug. He reeked of
"I've got several full bottles," she I had been carrying it. brandy, and he was dead to the world.
said. "Do you want it right away, or can I put both cups down, poured a little He was also no lightweight. I had not
I finish up here, first?" brandy into both of them, picked up thought it to look at him, for all the ex-
"I'd like to get down to the village be- one, sipped from it and started staring perimentals looked small and skinny by
fore dark." back at him. human standards; but apparently they
"I'll be done in five minutes." It was not the most lively cocktail were nothing but bone and muscle. Still,
"Fine, then," I said and sat down on hour on record. I pretended to drink, Imanaged to carry him out to the pick-
a boulder to wait. Ittook her closer to pouring as little as possible into my cup up and get him inside the cab. Then I
fifteen than five minutes, as it turned each time, and putting somewhat more drove back out of the village, to the
out, but there was at least an hour
still into the other cup, which slowly began camp.
or so of sunset left. We went back to the to fill. The Old Man kept staring at me; At the camp, I took him out of the
camper, she got me an unopened bottle apparently, he was capable of keeping it pickup, unchained Sunday and put him
of brandy, and I walked down to the vil- up without blinking as long as the day- in the pickup, put the chain and collar
lage with it. light lasted. Eventually, even the small on the Old Man and lifted him, still

The whole thing was a gamble. I had amounts of liquor with which I was wet- snoozing, into one of the of the jeeps.
no idea what kind of body chemistry the ting my tongue began to make them- By this time, I was surrounded by peo-
experimentals had. From what Por- selves felt. I found myself talking. I told plewanting to know what I was doing.
niarsk had said, they had evidently been the Old Man what fine stuff it was I was "I want to try him out on the equip-
developed by future humans from ape drinking, and I invitedhim to help him- ment up at the roundhouse." I said.
stock; chimpanzees at a guess. The self. I speculated on the interesting dis- "He drank almost a full bottle of bran-
larger part of their diet seemed to be coveries he would make if he only dy and he ought to sleep until morning,
some sort of artificially prepared eat- joined me and became friendly. all this noise he may just wake
but with
able in a cube form, that came from in He continued to stare. up.Now, will you let me get him put
side one of the dome-shaped buildings. Eventually, the other cup was as full away up there? Then I'll come down
But since the building was small, and as it could safely be and the sun was and tell you all about it."
the supply of the cubes seemed to be in- almost down. There was nothing more I "We already haddinner," said Wendy.
exhaustible, I had guessed that there could do. I left the cups and the bottle "Hush," said Marie to her, "Marc'U
was some kind of underground ware- with the top off, and got to my feet. have his when he gets back.
dinner
house to which the building was merely "Pleasant dreams," I said to him, You're coming right back down?"
an entrance. However, in additon to the and Back once more in the rocks a
left. "In twenty minutes at the outside," I

cubes, the experimentals were at least
partly carnivorous. They went out
the rocks around the village in the day-
time to hunt small rodentlike animals
with their throwing knives, and these
they either ate raw on the spot or
back into their buildings at the village,
evidently to be eaten, at leisure, inside
there.
All these things seemed to add up to
the strong possibility they had digestive
systems and metabolisms pretty similar
safe distance from the village, I got out said.
into my field glasses and peered down in the I turned on the lights of the jeep and
direction of his building. It was almost growled up the hillside in low gear. The
dark, and one thing the experimentals partitions between the consoles had
did not have was artificial lighting. supports that were anchored in the con-
carried They all disappeared into their buildings crete floor of the roundhouse; and I
at dusk and only reappeared with the chained the sleeping Old Man to one of
dawn, But by straining my vision now, I these. As an afterthought, I took from
was able to make out a dim figure still in the jeep the canteen of drinking water
front of the Old Man's building. I we always kept with each of the vehi-
squinted through the binoculars, my cles,and left it beside him. If he got
eyes beginning to water; and, just as I drunk like a human, he was likely to

61
MONAD GESTALT
have a hangover like a human. But then another thought came to perch things might have been different. I was
Then I growled my way back down on my mind like a black crow. a little ashamed of myself; and let my-
again to the camp, to turn Sunday I was aware I had never been what the self out of the camper as softly as I

loose, answer questions, and have my world used to call a kind or moral man, could.
dinner. a "good" man, as my grandfather Outside, the morning air was dry and
To everybody except Porniarsk and would have said. I had always let myself cold. I shivered, even under the leather
Bill, who already knew what I had in do pretty much what I wanted, within jacket I was wearing, and fired up the
mind, I explained my capture of the Old practical limits; and I had never been Coleman stove to make a pot of coffee.
Man with a half truth, saying I wanted particularly caring, or concerned for All the time I was making it, I could feel

to see if he could be useful as a partial other people. But ethical laws are a part the Old Man's presence in the back of
monad when we tried to use the equip- of any philosophical universe; they have my mind. He was connected to the con-
ment in the roundhouse, the day after to be. And was it entirely in agreement sole, which meant he was in connection

tomorrow. It was not until later that with those laws, now, my carrying these with me. I could feel that he was awake
evening, in the privacy of the camper, eight other people — nine, if you counted now and suffering from the hangover I
after Wendy was asleep, that I talked to the Old Man as being in the people cate- had anticipated. The discomfort was
Marie about using the little girl at one of —
gory into a joust with something as —
making him savage I could tell that,
the consoles. Surprisingly, Marie monstrous as the time-storm, only be- too. But underneath the savagery he was
thought it was a very good idea. She cause of my own hunger to know and beginning to wonder a little at what his
said Wendy had no one to play with but do? mind could now sense of me, and
the dogs, and she had been wanting bad- Granted, I could not see any way in through me, of the larger universe.
ly to get in on what the adults were do- which they could be hurt. The only one I I made my coffee, drank it, and drove

ing. was putting on the line, as far as I knew, one of the jeeps to the roundhouse. In-
I slept that night, but I did not rest. was myself. But there are always under- side, around where the Old Man had

As soon as I closed my eyes I was off standings beyond understandings. Per- been, it was a mess. He had been sick —
among the strands of the spiderweb, rid- haps there was some vital bit of infor- should have thought of the possibility
ing the shifting forces of the time- mation I did not have. of that. In addition, he had urinated
storm about our world. I scuttled about, On the other hand, perhaps that was copiously.
studying them. I already knew what I not really what was bothering me. I I cleaned up, cautiously. Now that he
would have to do. Every so often, for a looked a little deeper into myself and was awake, I had enough respect for
transitory moment, the forces in this found the real fishhook in my con- those apelike arms of his not to let him
area I had chosen came close to a situa- science; the unanswered question of get a grip on me. But he let me work in
tion of internal balance. If, at just the whether, even if I knew there was real until was right next to him, without
I

right moment, I could throw all the danger to the others, I would let that be making any move in my direction. He
force controlled by the eight other mo- reason enough to stop me. Perhaps I was still staring at me all the time, but
nads and myself against the tangle of would go ahead anyway, prepared to now there was a speculative gleam in his
conflicting forces that was the storm, sacrifice them to my own desires, my brown eyes. He had now realized who it
hopefully I could nudge this tiny corner own will. was his mind was connected to. I could
of the storm into a state of dynamic bal- This question was harder to put out feel him in my head, exploring the con-

ance. of my mind than the time-storm prob- nection and the situation. I had guessed
Why
do I say "hopefully"? I knew I lem, but in the end, I managed. I lay, right. Now, he was interested. But his
—
could do it if only Wendy and the Old open-eyed and without moving, until mind was still alien to me, much more
Man under the assistance of the device the dawn whitened the shade drawn alien than Porniarsk's.
would give me amplification enough to over the window on the side of the I took a chance, disconnected him

act as an eighth was not

monad. For it camper across from the bunk on which I from the console, unhooked his chain
power I needed, but understanding. As lay with Marie. from the stanchion, and led him outside
clearly as I could see the forces now, I I got up and dressed quietly. Marie to ensure that any further eliminations
needed to see them many times more slept on, but Wendy opened her eyes he was moved to would take place
clearly, in much finer detail. Close in, and looked at me. somewhere else than in the roundhouse.
focused down to the local area which "Go back to sleep," I told her. She I found a boulder too heavy for him to

was all that Porniarsk had envisioned closed her eyes again, without argu- move and with a tower half that was
me bringing into balance, my vision was ment. (Probably only humoring me, I narrower than the top, so that the loop
sharp enough. But on wider focus, when thought.) of chain I locked around it could not be
I looked further out into the time- pulled off over the top. 1 rechained him
storm, the fine detail was lost. One Dressed, I glanced at Marie, half- to this.The boulder was on the far side
more monad and I could bring those tempted to wake her and say a few of the roundhouse so that he could nei-
distant, fuzzy forces into clarity. words to her. But there was no good ther see his village or be seen from it,
was merely a matter of waiting un-
It reason for that, I realized, unless I only assuming that his fellows down there

til morning, I told myself, finally, and wanted to leave her with some enigmatic had distance vision good enough to pick

made myself put the whole problem out but portentous statement she could re- him out. Then I left him with some
of my head. At my bidding, it went; member afterwards and worry over, bread, an opened can of corned beef
which was something such a problem wondering if she could have done some- and a refilled canteen of water, and
would never have done, a week before. thing more for me in some way, and went down to my own breakfast. He let

62
 .

MONAD GESTALT
me go without a sound, but his eyes fol- Though, in fact, she was busy at the to touch the pattern of blocks inside. It

lowed me with their speculative look as moment, doing something in the motor was so simple as to seem unbelievable,
long as I was in sight. All the way down home with Marie— and she probably except for the fact that the strap had a
the mountain, I could feel his mind try- would not have come anyway, if I'd mild, built-in warmth to it. It was a
ing to explore mine. called. semiliving thing, Porniarsk had told me.
Once back at the camp, I got out the I finally got Sunday in and the door All the connections in the roundhouse
binoculars and looked over the village. closed. Immediately he found himself were made with such semiliving objects.
Its homes
inhabitants were out of their trapped; he began to thrash around and They operated like psychic channels. If
and about their daily activities. None of call to me. I closed my ears to the you imagine the tube through which a
them seemed to be missing the Old Man sounds he was making and got my party blood transfusion is being given as being
or showing any curiosity about the lack into the jeeps and headed up the side of alive and capable of making its own
of his presence. That much was all right, the peak. I was already at work with the connection with the blood systems of
then. I went back, put the binoculars back of my head, monitoring the pres- the two people involved in the trans-
away and ate breakfast. All the others ent interplay of the forces in the storm, fusion, you have an analogous picture.
were up and also breakfasting; but there as far as I could pick them out. A real The straps were vaguely comforting
was a tension, a taut feeling, in the very picture of the pattern out as far as the to wear, like a security blanket. I

air of the camp. Moon's orbit would have to wait until noticed Wendy brighten up for the first

I did not feel like talking to anyone; the others were all at their consoles and time since seeing the Old Man, when
and the rest seemed to understand this. connected with me. I was
thought I hers was wrapped around her throat by
They left me alone while I was eating- gaining some advantage from them Bill. There was one waiting for me at the
all but Sunday, who clearly sensed that already, which was a very good sign. monitoring station in the middle of the
something unusual was up. He did not Either I had been building psychic mus- room; but I wanted to try seeing what
rub against me in his usual fashion, but cle since the last two consoles had been kind of connection I could have with the
prowled around and around me, his tail finished, or the Old Man was proving to other monads without it, before I strap-
twitching as if his nerves were on fire. be even more useful than I had hoped. ped myself in.
He made such an ominous demonstra- Actually, in one way he had already ex- Bill and Porniarsk strapped in the
tion that 1 was alarmed for Bill when at ceeded expectations, because I was still others, then Bill strapped himself in and
last he started to come toward me. as strongly linked to him as I has been Porniarsk went to the monitoring sta-

But Sunday drew back just enough to when he had been connected to the con- tion. He reached with one tentacle for
let him get close, although he circled the sole and chained inside the roundhouse. the colored square on the console there
two of us, eyeing Bill steadily and mak- Wendy, who had been chattering that activated all connections. His ten-
ing little occasional singing noises in his away, merry and bright in the back of tacle flicked down to touch the square
throat. the jeep 1 was driving, fell into dubious and the connection already established
"I don't want to bother you," Bill silence as we pulled up on to the level between myself and the Old Man sud-
His voice was hardly more than a
said. spot where the roundhouse stood and denly came alive with our mutual under-
murmur, too low for any of the others she saw the Old Man staring at us. But standing of what would happen when
to overhear. he only gave her and the others a single activation took place.
"It's all right," I said. "What is it?" surveying glance and then came back to The Old Man howled.
"I just wanted you to know," he said, concentrate on me as I got out of the His vocal capabilities were tremen-
"you can count on me." jeep and came back toward him. dous. All of us in the roundhouse were
"Well," I "thanks."
said, He knew where I was going to take half-deafened by the sound which rang
"No, I really mean count on me," he him. He came along almost eagerly our ears, and broad-
like a fire siren in
insisted. when I unlocked the chain and led him outward from the propped-
cast itself
"I hear you," I said. "Thanks. But to the roundhouse door. It slid aside open door. In that same second, Porni-
all you'll have to do today is sit at that automatically as we got within arm's arsk's tentacle touched the surface of
console and me use you."
let
length of it, and he went over the the square and the connections were ac-
He looked back at me for a second in threshold ahead of me with a bound, tivated. Full contact with all the other
a way that was almost as keyed-up and headed toward his console. I took him monads there erupted around me, and
strange as Sunday's present behavior. to it and chained him on a short length full perception of the time-storm forces
"Right," he said and went off. of the chain so that he could not reach out of Moon-orbit distance smashed
I had no time to puzzle over him. around the partition to whoever would down on me like a massive wall of
There was Sunday to get into the cab of be at the console next to him water. The Old Man's howl was cut off
the pickup and the doors safely closed Bill followed me in and blocked the in mid- utterance. I found my body run-

on him; and the leopard was just not door open to the outer air as we had got- ning for the roundhouse door.
agreeable to going morning. In in, this ten in the habit of doing. The others fol- For with contact had come full under-
the end I had to haul him in as a dead lowed him. They began to take their standing of what the Alpha Prime had
weight, swearing at him, with one fist places under Porniarsk's direction and done, and what he had been trying to
closed on the scruff off his neck and my let themselves be connected to their con- do. I burst out of the roundhouse and
other arm around his wedge-shaped cat- sole. The dark material clung to itself looked down the steep, bouldered face
chest below his forelegs. I didn't dare when one end of it was loosely wrapped of the peak that fell toward the village.
have any of the others help me in the around the throat. The further end of it The lower edge of it was alive with

mood the leopard was in even the girl. — reached through the face of the console black, climbing bodies.

63
 How the Old Man had contacted and silent. There was not even a chest- mind could not stay with it, because I the configuration that had been and cal- presenting the greatest danger of the smallest —
so far —
manifestation, it was

them, I did not know. His connection movement of breathing to be seen in any had already seen enough of the present culate how the later patterns would be at storm if it was not fought and opposed. an area such as the one we and the ex-
with me and the console had made it of them, for they were caught in a time- moment's pattern to locate the upcom- any other moment in the future. The continuing disintegration would perimentals were inhabiting now, with

possible, that was obvious, but he had less moment — the moment which we
in ing pressure point I searched for. That any such pattern— past, present, or
In continue to produce smaller and smaller the conflicting forces existing where the

used channels of identity with his own had contacted the storm and I had pressure point would be coming into future —
the time-storm forces of any temporal anomalies until at last any sin- mistwalls marked their presence. Tem-
people that were not part of my own, paused to examine the pattern of its existence in no more time than it would given area had to have the potential of gle atomic particle would be existing at a porally, the mistwalls were areas of
forces. Even Porniarsk was frozen into take the villagers to climb to the round- developing into a further state of dynam- different temporal moment than its tremendous activity. Physically, as we
human machinery. The most I could
understand was that he had not actually immobility with his tentacle-tip touch- house, possibly even in less time. I had ic balance. The potential alone, how- neighbor. But in this case it offered an had discovered, they were no more than
only that long to study all the force lines ever, was not good enough. To begin advantage, in that the disintegration bands of lightly disturbed air and sus-
called them, in a true sense. He had only ing his activation square on the monitor
The square glowed now, involved and make sure that my one with, the forces had to be very close to process produced smaller temporal pended dust, stretching up from the sur-
been able to provoke an uneasiness in console. itself

them that had sent most of them out with a soft, pink light. chance to produce a state of balance was balance, within a very small tolerance anomalies within larger ones, like min- face of the Earth until they came into

hunting among the lower rocks in the I was still unconnected and mobile. taken exactly on the mark. indeed, otherwise, the relatively feeble iature hurricanes in the calms that were conflict with other forces of their same

direction of the peak. But the Old Man's people would be here It was not the pattern of forces in the strength of my gestalt would not be able the eyes of larger ones; and so, by "hurricane."
But now they had heard him. Lost in twenty minutes; and all our weapons time-storm itself I studied; but the image topush them into balance. choosing the right moment to act, it was In my philosophical image of the ap-
this pattern in the philosophical uni- first, the imbalances to be cor-
But possible to balance the forces of a small, parent walls that were time-storm force-
somewhere in the gestalt of the monad were down at the camp. of
I watched my body turn and run for verse during that fractional, timeless rected must be understood in detail. contained anomaly, without having to lines, I saw them in cross-section so that
group of which he and I were a part
moment when had first tapped the Balance was an ideal state; and the deal with the continuing imbalanced they seemed like a web of true lines fill-
Porniarsk had been right in his use of the nearest jeep, leap into it, start it, I

turn it, and get it going down the slope of our monad-gestalt. That chances of it occurring naturally were as forces of a larger disturbance containing ing a three-dimensional space, the in-
that word, for the group, myself and abilities full

toward camp. I had the advantage of a image was like a three-dimensional pic- small as the total time-storm itself was it. terstices between lines being the chunks
this place were all integrated into a
—
whole, now the Old Man's mind was vehicle, but the distance was twice as ture taken by a camera with a shutter large. The only reason it was barely pos- Of course, the word "hurricane" did of four-dimensional space they en-

triumphant. He knew that he had called much, down to camp, than it was up the speed beyond imagination. Already, of sible to achieve it artificially lay in a not really convey the correct image of a closed. Seen close up, the lines looked

in time, that his people had heard and
were coming.
I whirled around and stared back into
slope the experimentals were climbing, course, the configuration of the forces characteristic of the time-storm itself; temporal anomaly. In its largest mani- less like threads than like rods of light-
and twice as far back up again. The jeep in the storm had developed through a the storm's tendency to break up pro- festation, such an anomaly represented ning frozen in the act of striking. What-
bounced and slid down the shallower whole series of changes into totally dif- gressively into smaller and smaller pat- the enormous forces released in inter- ever this appearance represented of their

the roundhouse through the open door,
though I already knew what I would see.
Inside, all the figures were motionless
slope on this side of the peak, skidding
and slewing around the larger boulders
in the way. My body drove it; but my
ferent patterns, and they were continu- terns,and for these to break up in turn, galactic space along the face of contact real properties in the physical universe,
ing to change. But with the gestalt and and so on. This was the same character- between an expanding galaxy and a con- was clear that they moved and
the fact
me that Porniarsk had mentioned as tracting one. Here pn Earth, in its were moved by the other force-lines
could study istic
the device to back up, I

64 65
MONAD GESTALT
with which they interacted, so that they was in it, was something there was no nothing but death for him where he was
developed continually from one pattern time to puzzle about now. With its ex- headed; but even if he had known that,
to another in constant rearrangement tendable stock collapsed, the weapon it would not have stopped him. There

under the push of the current imbal- was light and small enough to be carried was nothing I could do for him now. I

ance. under a heavy piece of outer clothing by could not even take time out to think of
I already knew in what general direc- either man or woman— and most of us him. There were eight people and a
tion the patterns in the area I was con- going up to the roundhouse this morn- world to think of.
cerned with were developing. But now I ing had worn either a jacket or a bulky I ripped the jeep around and headed
projected these developments, studying sweater. I got out of the motor home in up the slope. The best I could do. The
the parade of succeeding configurations a hurry, not even bothering to lock it me would make it
longer distance before
for specific details, looking for one that behind me. I made the driver's seat of I could get back to the
a tossup whether
would give me a possibility of forcing a the jeep in one jump, gunned the still- roundhouse before the experimentals
balanced pattern into existence before running motor and headed back up the arrived.
the experimentals arrived at the round- slope of the peak. I had the upcoming patterns of the

house. I could not do this until I had re- I was perhaps a hundred and fifty time-storm in my head now. I could see
turned with weapons and driven off the yards from the camp when the dead si- the one I wanted developing. It was not

black figures now climbing the peak, for lence thathad existed there, registered on an absolutely sure thing, so far, but it
the good reason that the pattern showed me. Sunday had been back there all the was as close to a sure thing as I could
me the development of affairs here, as time I was getting the guns, locked up in wish for in limited time such as we had
well as the larger picture. I alone, even the cab of the pickup. But I had not now. It would form within seconds after
with guns, would not be able to drive heard a sound from him, in spite of the I made the top of the peak and the
off those who were coming. There were fact he must have heard the jeep arrive, roundhouse.
more than a hundred of them; and this and seen, heard, and possibly even There was nothing more I could do
time they would not give up as easily as smelled me. He should have been put- now, but drive. In the roundhouse the
they had before. They had been condi- ting up as much racket as he could in an others were still immobile— even the
tioned to ignore the roundhouse. Now, effort to make me come and let him out. Old Man— caught up in the gestalt. I
somehow, the Old Man had managed to But there had been no noise at all. gave most of my attention to the ground
break that conditioning. The only thing I drove another twenty yards or so, ahead.
that would stop them would be fright at before I gave in to the suddenly empty, It was the best driving I had ever
some great natural event. A volcanic sick feeling inside me. Then, I wrenched done. I was tearing hell out the jeep, but

eruption, an earthquake — or the mete- the jeep around and roared back down if it lasted to the top of the peak that
orological reaction when the mistwall to the camp, to the pickup. was all I asked of it. 1 did not loose any

through which we had entered went out I did not need to get out of the jeep to time, but what gained — the best
I I

of existence, and the atmosphere of the look at it. I did not even need to get could gain —was only seconds. When I

area on its far side suddenly mixed with close. From twenty feet away, I could did reach the level top and the round-
the atmosphere on this. see the windshield of the pickup lying on house, at last, the experimentals were
must get down, get weapons, get
I the hood of the vehicle like a giant's lost not yet there.
back up, and hold them off long enough spectacle lens. Somehow, Sunday had I skidded the jeep to a stop beside the
to use the gestalt successfully to produce managed to pop it completely out of its door of the roundhouse and tossed one
balance in the pattern. My mind gallop- frame. And he was gone. rifle, one shotgun, and most of the am-

ed past the developing patterns, check- I knew where he was gone. I got the munition inside. Then I pulled the block
ing, checking, checking; and as it went, field glasses and looked off up the steep that was holding the door open and all —
the jeep under me was skidding and slope leading directly to the round- this time the storm pattern I was waiting
plunging down the slope to our camp. house, where the tiny black figures of for was coming up in my mind stepped —
I slid in between our tents at last in a the experimentals could now be seen back, and the door closed automatical-
cloud of dust and stopped. I jumped out more than halfway up. below Down ly. The experimentals did not have
of the jeep, unlocked the door of the them I saw nothing for a moment and — doors to buildings. Perhaps they did not
motor home, and plunged inside. then there was a flash of movement. It know what a door was and would think,
Warm from the hot, still atmosphere was Sunday, headed to join me on top seeing this one closed, that there was no
within, the guns were where we always where he must have believed me to be, entrance into the roundhouse. If they
kept them, in the broom closet with the not travelling by the roundabout, easy did by accident trigger the door to open-
ammunition on a shelf above. I grabbed slope I had come down in the jeep, but ing, those inside would have the other
two shotguns and the two heaviest directlyup the mountainside on a con- two guns which one way or the other
rifles, with ammo. But when I reached verging route with those from the village they would be awake and ready to use,
for the machine pistol, it was not there. below. for in a moment I would either win or
I spent perhaps a couple of frantic He would keep coming. If the exper- lose and the gestalt would be set free
minutes, looking for it in improbable imentals did not get in his way, he again.
places about the motor home, before I would simply pass them up. But if they I watched the door close and turned
finally admitted to myself that it was tried to stop him, he would kill as long just in time to see the first round, ape-

gone. Who could have managed to get as he could until he was killed himself. like head come over the edge of the cliff-
into the vehicle,which Marie and I kept But he would keep coming. edge, some forty yards away. I snatched
locked religiously except when one of us The idiotic, loving beast! There was up the rifle andhad it halfway to my

66
 MONAD GESTALT
shoulder when I realized I would never and distant, very distant, landscape. I Ellen was walking away from Tek and
fire it. There was no time now. The looked down and saw the four black the jeep, now.
moment and the pattern I waited for bodies on the ground, strung out almost "Come back," Tek said to her.
were rushing down upon me. I had no in a line. They none of them moved; and She did not answer. She walked past
more mind to spare for killing. Still when I looked closer I saw clearly how me and into the roundhouse through the
standing with the rifle half raised, I badly they had been torn by teeth and door that was once more propped open.
went back into the pattern; meanwhile, claws. I looked further down, yet, at the In the relative shadow of the artificially
as if through the wrong end of a tele- weight on my thigh, and saw Sunday. lit interior she seemed to vanish.
scope, I was seeing the black figure He lay with his head stretched for- Tek's face twisted and went savage.
come all the way up into view and ad- ward, to rest on my leg, and one of the "Don't try anything," said Bill's
vance, and other black figures appear leaf-shaped knives was stuck, half- voice, tightly.
one by one behind him, until there were buried in the big muscle behind his left I looked to the other side of me and
four of them coming steadily toward shoulder. Behind him there was perhaps saw him there. He was pale-faced, but
me, not poising the knives they held to fifteen feet of bloody trail where he had steady, holding one of the shotguns.
throw, but holding them purposely by half crawled, half dragged himself to The range was a little long for accuracy
the hilt, as if they wanted to make sure me. His jaws were partly open, the teeth with a shotgun but Bill held it purpose-
of finishing me off. and gums red-stained with blood that fully.
It was the final moment. I saw the was not his own. His eyes were closed, "Get out if you want," he told Tek.
pattern 1 had waited for ready to be the lids did not stir, nor his jaws move. "But don't try anything."
born. I felt the strength of my monad All his body lay still.
Tek seemed to sag all over. His
gestalt; and at last I knew certainly that "Sunday?" said. But he was. not
I shoulders drooped, the rifle barrel sag-
what I was about to try would work. there to hear me. ged downward. All the savageness
The four experimentals were more than There was nothing could do. pick-
I I leaked out of him, leaving him looking
halfway to me; and now I could under- ed up his torn head somehow in my defenseless.
stand clearly how the indications I had arms and held it to me. There was just "All right," he said, in an empty
read had been correct. I would be able nothing I could do. I closed my own voice.
to do what I had wanted; and with the eyes and sat there holding him for, I He started to turn away toward the
windstorm that would follow the disap- think, quite a while. Finally there were jeep. Bill sighed and let the shotgun
pearance of the mistwalls, the experi- sounds around me. opened my
I eyes drop butt downward to the earth so that
mentals would panic and retreat. But again and looked up to see that the he held it, almost leaning on the barrel
the cost of all this would be my life. I others, releasednow that the gestalt was of it wearily. Tek turned back, sudden-
had expected it to be so. ended, had come out of the roundhouse ly, the rifle barrel coming up to point at
I stood waiting for the experimentals, and were standing around looking at the me.
the pattern rushing down upon me. In new world. Marie was standing over me. Bill snatched up the shotgun, too
the last seconds a different head poked Tek and Ellen were off by themselves slowly. But in the same second there was
itself over the edge of the cliff, and a some thirty yards from the roundhouse. the yammer of the machine pistol from
different body came leaping toward me. He had turned the jeep around and evi- inside the roundhouse and Ellen walked
It was Sunday, too late. dently pulled off a short distance in a
it out again holding the weapon and firing
The pattern I awaited exploded into start back down the side of the peak. as she advanced. Tek, flung backward
existence. I thrust, with the whole ges-
But for some reason he had stopped by the impact of the slugs, bounced off
talt behind me. The fabric of the time- again and was now getting back out of the side of the jeep and slid to the
storm about me staggered, trembled the driver's seat, holding one of the ground, the rifle tumbling from his
and fell together —locked into a balance rifles,probably the one I had thrown in- hands.
of forces. And awareness of all things to the roundhouse, tucked loosely in the Ellen walked a good dozen steps be-
vanished from me, like the light of a crook of his right elbow, barrel down. yond me. But then she slowed and stop-
blownout lamp. Ellen was already out of the jeep and ped. Tek was plainly dead. She dropped
The world came back to me, little by standing facing him a few steps off. the machine pistol as if her hands had
little. I was conscious of a warm wind "You go," she was saying to him. "I forgotten they held it; and she turned to
blowing across me. I could feel it on my can't now. He doesn't even have Sun- come backto me.
face and hands, I could feel it tugging at day, now." Marie had been standing unmoving,
my clothes. It was stiff, but no hurri- I remembered how much Sunday had
me all this time. But when Ellen
close to
cane. I opened my eyes and saw stream- meant to her in those first days after I was only a step or two away, Marie
ers of cloud torn to bits scudding across had found her. And how he had put up moved back and away out of my line of
the canvas of a blue sky, moving visibly with her more than I ever would have
vision. Ellen knelt besideme and put her
as I watched. I felt the hard and pebbled expected. But she had always been fond arms around both me and the silent
ground under my body and head; and a of him. And I— I had taken him for head I was still holding.
pressure, like a weight, on the upper granted. Because he was mad. Crazy, "It'll be all right," she said. "It's all
part of my right thigh. crazy, insane cat. But what difference going to be all right. You wait and see."
I sat up. I was alive —
and unhurt. Be- does it make why the love's there, as
fore me, out beyond the cliff-edge long as it is? Only I'd never known how
where the experimentals had appeared, much of my own heart I'd given back to
there was no more mistwall; only sky him until this day and hour.

67
RIME ISLE
and far too miserable to seem like foes. men, though lacking their aura of parting gristle and tendons and all
Ourph, smiling serenely, later brought monstrousness) and Fafhrd's berserks, to tenderer stuff, while that hand was
them hot chowder, while the west wind swell their sheer numbers and also to keep resistlessly dragged upward. And then the
cleared the sky. (Regarding the winds, at from
the Salthaven Islers at their posts, curtains of thelitter all shot up vertically

the moment of decision the west wind had which they had a dreamy, automa-
still and the gallows stood up on its beam end
spilled south, blowing out all along the tonlike tendency to go marching off. and vibrated and something black and
east coast ofRime Isle, and the east wind Midmost on the broad ramparts of Cold gleaming shot up to the sky, holing the
had spilled north, driving away from the Harbor, widely flanked by Groniger and clouds, and Fafhrd's black severed hand
whole west coast of the island, while the another pike-waver, rested Odin's litter and all the nooses went with it.

belt of between had rotated

storm with the gallows propped over it as in the Then the curtains fell back and the
clockwise somewhat, causing wild, veer- Deathlands, while around it were sta- gallows crashed from the wall and Fafhrd
ing whirlwinds in the Deathlands.) tioned Fafhrd, Afreyt, and the three girls, stared stupidly at the blood pouring from
the last waving their red cloaks on long the stump that ended his left arm.
At the same instant as the Mouser rakes like flags. (Anything for effect, Mastering her horror, Afreyt clamped
slung the queller-brand, Fafhrd was Fafhrd had said, and the girls were eager her fingers on the spouting arteries and
standing on the seaward turf-wall of Cold to play their part in the demonstration.) bid May, who was nearest at hand, take
Harbor, confronting the Widder-Mingol Afreyt had a borrowed spear while knife and slash up the skirt of her white
it neared the beach, and brandish-
fleet as Fafhrd alternately shook his sword and smock for bandages, which the girl did,
ing his sword. This was no mere barbari- the cords of thefive nooses drawn around and with them folded in wads and also
an gesture of defiance, but part of a his left hand —
shook them at the massed used as ties, Afreyt bound up Fafhrd's
carefully thought-out demonstration Mingol ships nearing the harbor. Groni- great wound in its own blood and
done in the hope of awing the Sea- ger and the other Islers were shouting staunched the flow of that while he
Mingols, even though Fafhrd admitted Gale's (or Odin's) doom-chant: "Doom! watched blank-faced. When it was done,
(to himself only) that the hope was a Kill the Mingols!Doom! Die the heroes." he muttered, '"A head for a head and a
forlorn one. Earlier, when the three And then (just as, on the other side of hand for a hand,' she said," and Afreyt
M ingol advance-raiders had departed the Rime Isle, the Mouser hurled his queller- retorted sharply, "Better a hand than a
beach, they had made no move to join brand, as has been said) the whirlwinds head —or five."
with or await their fleet, although they betokening the reversal of gales moved
surely must have sighted its sails, but had across them northward, whipping the red In cramping sphere Khahkht of the
Its

instead rowed steadily away south as long
as eye followed. This had made Fafhrd
wonder whether they had not taken some
fright on the isle which they had not
wanted to face again, even with the
backing of their main force. In this
connection he had particularly remem-
bered the cries of woe and dread that had
come from the Mingols as Groniger's
Rime Islers had topped the rise and hove
flags, and the heavens were darkened and Black Ice smote the sharply curving walls
there came the thunder of Hellfire in Its fury and tried to scratch Rime Isle
erupting in sympathy with Darkfire and off the map and ground together the
the sea was troubled and soon pocked to pieces representing Fafhrd and the
the north by the ejecta of Hellglow, great Mouser and the rest between Its opposed
rocks that fell into the waves like the horny black palms and scrabbled franti-
shouted "Doom! Doom!" of the chant in cally for the pieces standing for the two
a great cannonading. And the Widder- intrusive gods— but those two pieces were
Mingol fleet was retreating out to sea gone. While in far Stardock, maimed
under the urging of the wind that now Prince Faroomfar slept more easily,

into their view. Afreyt had confided to blew off the shore— away, away from that knowing himself avenged.
him how during the long march overland dreadful burning coast that appeared to
those same countrymen of hers had come be guarded by a wall of giants taller than A two months after the events
full

to seem monstrous to her and somehow trees and by all the powers of the four before-narrated Afreyt had a modest fish-
bigger, and he had had to admit that they elements. And Hellfire's smoke stretched dinner in her low-eaved, violet-tinted
made the same strange impression on out above them like a pall. house on the north edge of Salthaven, to
him. And if they seemed bigger (and But before that had all transpired (in which were invited Groniger, Skor,
monstrous) to him and her, how much fact, at the same instant as, a hundred Pshawri, Rill, old Ourph, and of course
bigger might they not appear to Mingols? leagues east, a black rainbow or water- Cif, the Gray Mouser, and Fafhrd the —
And so they had taken thought spout shot up to the sky from the largest number her table would accom-
together, Fafhrd and Afreyt, and had whirlpool's center) Odin's litter began to modate without undue crowding. The
made suggestions and given commands rock and toss on the ramparts, and the occasion was the Mouser's sailing on the
(supplemented by bullyings and blan- heavy gallows to twitch and strain morrow in Seahawk with Skor, the
dishments as needed) and as a result upward like a straw or like a compass Mingols, Mikkidu, and three others of his
Groniger's relief-force was posted at needle responding to an unknown up- original crew on a trading venture to No-
intervals of twenty paces in a long line —
ward magnetism and Afreyt screamed ombrulsk with goods selected (purchased
that began far up on the glacier and as she saw Fafhrd's left hand turn black and otherwise accumulated) chiefly by
continued along the ramparts of Cold before her eyes. And Fafhrd bellowed Cif and himself. He and Fafhrd were
Harbor and along the rise and stretched with sudden agony as he felt the nooses sorely in need of money to pay for
off for almost a league south of the May had braided (and decorated with dockage on their vessels, crew wages, and
settlement, each Isler brandishing his flowers) tighten relentlessly about his many another expense, while the two
pike or other weapon. While betwixt and wrist as so many steel wires, contracting ladies were no better off, owing yet-to-be-
between them all along were stationed the deeper and deeper between arm bones finally-determined sums to the council—
defenders of Cold Harbor (their country- and wrist bones, cutting skin and flesh, of which, however, they were still

68
 RIME ISLE

members, as yet. Fafhrd had to travel no matter how solid-seeming.") She and "I doubt you'd find it, dove you never
distance at all to get to the feast, for he Afreyt had sold Sprite to Rill and Hilsa so deep," Fafhrd averred softly, his gaze
was guesting with Afreyt while he for a tidy sum; the two professionals' on the leather stall covering his still
convalesced from his maiming —just as adventure on Flotsam, amazingly, had bandaged stump. "1 think Loki-cinder
the Mouser was staying at Cif s place on given them a taste for the sea-life and they vanished out of Nehwon-world entire,
no particular excuse at all. There had were now making a living as fisherwom- and many another curious thing with it
been raised eyebrows at these arrange- en, though not above turning a trick at the queller (after it had done its work)

ments from the rather straight-laced their old trade in off hours. Hilsa was out that had become his home (Gods love

Islers, which the four principals had night-fishing this very evening with gold) and Odin-ghost and some of his
handled by firmly overlooking them. Mother Grum. Even the foe had fallen on appurtenances."
During the course of the dinner, which hard times. Two of the three foreraiding Rill, beside him, touched the stall with
consisted of oyster chowder, salmon Sea-Mingol galleys that had rowed off her burnt hand which had been almost as
baked with Island leeks and herbs, corn south had put into Salthaven three weeks long as his stump in healing. It had

cakes made of costly Lankhmar grain, later in great distress, having been created a certain sympathy between
and light wine of Ilthmar, conversation battered about by storms and then them.
had ranged around the recent volcanic becalmed, after having fled off ill- "You'll wear a hook on it?" she asked.
eruptions and attendant and merely provisioned. The crew of one had been He nodded. "Or a socket for various
coincidental events, and their conse- reduced to eating their sacred bow- tools, utensils, and instruments. There
quences, particularly the general shortage stallion, while that of the other had so far are possibilities."
of money. Salthaven had suffered some lost their fanatic pride along with their Old Ourph said, sipping his steaming
damage from the earthquake and more madness that they had sold theirs to gahveh, "It was strange how closely the

from the resultant fire. The council hall "Mayor" Bomar, who wanted to be the two gods were linked, so that when one
had survived but the Salt Herring tavern first Rime Isle man (or "foreigner") to departed, the other went."
had been burned to the ground with its own a horse, but succeeded only in "When Cif and I first found them, we
Flame Den. ("Loki was a conspicuously breaking his neck on his first attempt to thought they were one," Afreyt told him.
destructive god," the Mouser observed, ride (Pshawri commented, "He was
it. "We saved their lives," Cif asserted.
"especially where his metier, fire, was absit —
omen a somewhat overweening "We were very good hosts, on the whole,
involved." "It was an unsavory haunt," man. He tried to take away from me to both of them." She caught Rill's eye,

Groniger opined.) In Cold Harbor, three command of Seahawk") who smiled.

turf roofs had collapsed, unoccupied of Groniger claimed that Rime Isle, "When you save a suicide, you take
course because everyone had been taking meaning the council chiefly, was as badly upon yourself responsibilities," Afreyt
part in the defensive demonstration at the off as anyone.The bluff harbor master, said, her eyes drifting toward Fafhrd's
time. The Salthaven Islers had begun seemingly more hardheaded and skepti- stump. "If on his next attempt, he takes
their homeward journey next day, the cal than ever for his one experience of others with him, it's your doing."
litter being used to carry Fafhrd. "So enchantment and the supernatural, made "You're gloomy tonight, Lady
some mortal got some use of it besides the a point of taking a very hard line with Afreyt," the Mouser suggested, "and
girls," Afreyt remarked. "It was a Afreyt and Cif and a very dim view of the reason too curiously. When you set out in
haunted-seeming conveyance," Fafhrd latter's irregular disbursements from the that mood there's no end to the places you
allowed, "but I was feverish." Rime . treasury in the isle's defense. can go, eh, Fafhrd? We set out to be
But it was the short store of cash, and (Actually he was their best friend on the captains, and seem in process of becom-
the contrivances adopted to increase that, council, but he had his crustiness to ing merchants. What next? Bankers? or —
which they chiefly talked about. Skor had maintain.) "And then there's the Gold pirates?"

found work for himself and the other Cube of Square-Dealing," he reminded "As much as you like of either," Cif
berserks for a while helping the Islers her "gone forever!" She
accusingly, toldhim meaningly, "as long as you
harvest drift-timber from the Beach of smiled. Afreyt served them hot gahveh, remember the council holds Pshawri and
Bleached Bones, but there had not been an innovation in Rimeland, for they'd your men here, hostage for you."
the anticipated glut of Mingol wrecks. decided to make an early evening of it "As mine will be for me, when 1 seek
Fafhrd talked of manning Flotsam with what with tomorrow's sailing. that timber," Fafhrd said. "The pines at
some of his men and bringing back from "I wouldn't be too sure of that," Skor Ool Plerns are very green and tall."
Ool Plerns a cargo of natural wood. said. "Working around the Beach of

{"When you're entirely recovered, yes," Bleached Bones you get the feeling that
Afreyt said.) The Mouser's men had gone everything washes ashore there, eventual-
to work as fisherman bossed by Pshawri, ly."

and had been able to feed both crews and "Or we could dive for it," Pshawri
sometimes have a small surplus left to proposed.
sell. Strangely, or perhaps not so, the "What? — and get Loki-cinder back
monster catches made during the great with it?" Mouser asked, chuckling. He
the
run had all spoiled, despite their salting- looked toward Groniger. "Then you'd

6
down, and gone stinking bad, worse than still be a cloudy-headed god's-man, you

dead jellyfish, and had had to be burned. old atheist!"

(Cif said, "I told you Khahkht magicked "That's as may be," the Isler retorted.
that run —
and so they were phantom fish "Afreyt said I was a troll-giant for a

in some sense, tainted by his touch, no space, too. But here I am."
69

I MEDIA SCENE
(Continued from P. 34)
dialogue, and music have
criticism. In general, I preferred the
earlier version. The monster
make is obviously a sympathetic charac-
ter from the beginning instead of earn-
ing the viewer's sympathy as he did in
the earlier one. The dialogue is wooden,
but the special effects are spectacular.
The sheer cost of the monster makes it
imperative that a sequel be made as
quickly as possible. I hope
than this one. The official behind-the-
scenes book of the movie, The Creation
of Dino De Laurentiis' King Kong by
Bruce Bahrenburg (Pocket Books
$1.75), has some interesting photos and
background on the construction of
Kong. The rest of the book reads too
much like studio handouts. The reissue
of the original novelization, King Kong
by Delos W. Lovelace (Ace $ 1 .95), is for
nostalgia buffs only.
There has been no new information
on the Star Trek movie in quite a while
and, although 1 may be proven wrong
by the time this column appears, I have
doubts it will ever be made. There have
been mumblings, but no official word,
from the studio about script problems,
problems with signing the original stars,
and other casting problems. To satisfy
the many Star Trek fans, the movie has
to keep pretty close to the original in
characterization, psychology, and for-
mat. On the other hand, the actors,
techniques, etc. are ten years out of date
and may not satisfy a wider, more
sophisticated movie audience. Trans-
lating a forty-eight-minute
70
to feature length has always proved The Academy of Science Fiction,
difficult. It might be easier to make a Fantasy,and Horror Films has an-
new Star Trek TV series than a suc- nounced its awards for 1976 movies.
cessful movie.
book on
The ultimate
the original series, Star Trek
reference The winners were: Logan's Run Best
Science Fiction Film, The Holes Best
—
—
Concordance, edited by Bjo Trimble Fantasy Film, and Burnt Offerings
(Ballantine $6.95), has finally appeared — Best Horror Film. There was also a
in a regular trade edition. It has com- special award for King Kong. The Best
plete information on the regular three Actor award was a tie between David
all received seasons plus the cartoon series. If you're Bowie for The Man Who Fell To Earth
a Star Trek fan, don't miss it. and Gregory Peck for The Omen. The
in the re- Two other semi-fantasy TV series of Best Actress award was won by Blythe
the past which had strong followings Danner for Futureworld. The Best Sup-
and became cult classics like Star Trek porting Actor award was given to Jay
may soon be back on the air. The New Robinson for Train Ride To Hollywood
Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee of and Best Supporting Actress was Bette
the original series andJoanna Lumley in Davis in Burnt Offerings.
the role made famous by Diana Rigg, Personally, I found The Man Who
opened on British TV this past October. Fell To Earth more interesting and co-
it's better ABC, which showed the original eighty- hesive than Logan's Run, despite the
three episodes in the early sixties, is said massive cuts apparently made in the
to be interested in showing the new film.
The new series, produced
series as well. Pieces of Star Wars have been pre-
by an independent European company, viewed in San Francisco and have been
is now filming its second set of thirteen very well received. The movie should
episodes. open in June 1977.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is being
revived by MGM for NBC. The two-
hour pilot, written by Richard Mai-
baum, will probably star Robert
Vaughn and David McCallum, the ori-
ginal U.N.C.L.E. agents, in slightly dif-
ferent roles. (Continued from P. 35)
Logan 's Run
is scheduled to become a
TV William F. Nolan, co-author
series.
of the original book, is doing the pilot
and follow-up script for MGM. The So it has gone since at least the 1930s,
show will appear on CBS. a situation which 1 believe is unique and
Gene Roddenberry is producing a which was forcefully brought to my
two-hour TV horror movie for NBC attention by Hell's Cartographers. That
called Spectre, from his own original is,the cross-fertilization which exists be-
screenplay. tween fandom and pro-dom in the sci-
field. The fans of yesterday
ence fiction
became the pros of today who in turn
encourage the fans of today to become
the pros of tomorrow. Ted White edits
two magazines. Terry Carr, Bob Silver-
TV format berg and Damon Knight each edit an
original anthology series, and have all
been receptive to the work of fans
turned fledgling pros. Furthermore, by
their very existence, these writers and
the otherswho have "come up from the
ranks" stand as examples.
It is true that in the last fifteen or so
years there have been relatively fewer
instances of fans successfully making
the transition but it does still happen.
Witness the Haldemans: Joe and Jay,
the sons of a fannish mother, who were
active in Washington, D.C. area fan-
dom. Both married women they had
met in fandom and both embarked upon
writing careers. Jay, who writes as Jack
C. Haldeman III, is steadily building a
fine reputation as a solid, skillful short
story writer. Last year Joe won the
 AN ELECTRIFYING NOVEL OF
CASTAWAYS ADRIFT IN OUTER
SPACE!
THE UFESHIP
By Nebula Award Winners
Harry Harrison Trapped in the confines of their fragile
and Gordon R. Dickson lifeship.atiny band of aliens and humans
81044/$1.50 face the awesome challenge of survival
after the mysterious explosion of their
giant spaceship.

"Before you have turned very many

pages, you are riding on a wave of sus-
pense which carries you through the
entire book!'— Roger Zelazny

Now In Paperback From -MOCKET BOOKS

Nebula and Hugo awards for his novel at small Midwest and Southern conven-
The Forever War. F. M. Busby, from tions; George R.R. Martin relates
Washington (the state), is a fan of many strongly to a fan group based more-or-
years standing who only recently began and Larry Niven is just
less in Illinois;
writing professionally, to significant ac- one of the members of the L.A. Science THE IUWlE
claim. And Tom Reamy, who was the Fiction Society. The wives of the last
1976 winner of the John W. Campbell
Award for best new writer, was editing
three
now
named gentlemen, by the way, are
or in the past have been very active
/
Trumpet, an award winning fanzine, fans.
over ten years ago. It is the recognition of these wild
To reiterate, think this process is a
I possibilities that is a part of what makes
healthy one and one that is completely fandom so interesting and exciting to
individual to the science fiction genre. me. Hell's Cartographers freshened my
In no other field that I know of is there awareness of this. (Aldiss indicates that
such free communication among those the volume may be just the first of a
who are readers, those who are writers, series. I hope this proves to be true.) It
and those who are editors. And in no led me to reread All Our Yesterdays, A
other field are these roles so fluid. A fan Wealth of Fable and The Eighth Stage
can, if he is sufficiently talented, be- of Fandom. I would recommend them
come a writer or editor with relative to anyone interested in discovering the
ease. Conversely an editor or writer, —
way we were and are.
who has gotten into the field as a job A Wealth of Fable, Harry Warner,
assignment, for instance, can easily be- Fanhistorica Press, Joe Siclari, P.O.
come fan. This is, I think, what has Hell's Cartographers, ed. Brian Aldiss Box 1343, Radio City Station, New
been happening more frequently of late. & Harry Harrison, Harper & Row; York, NY 10019, $8.00 plus $.75 post-
(It probably has something to do with 1975, $7.95. age and handling.
not wanting to have to explain con-
stantly what you do for a living.) Thus, All Our Yesterdays, Harry Warner, Ad- The Eighth Stage of Fandom, Robert
Gardner Dozois has ties with some of vent: Publishers, P.O. Box 9228, Chi- Bloch, Advent: Publishers, P.O. Box
Philadelphia fandom; Andy Offutt is cago, IL 60690; 1969, cloth: $7.50, 9228, Chicago, IL 60690, 1962, out of
most comfortable among his fan friends paper: $2.95. print.

71
(Continued from P. 40) course, the centerspread painting by I always find it difficult to say any-

Paul Lehr —
a magnificent example of thing original and worthwhile about
his striking style. I hope that the full- stories, but you have managed to get
object. I'd like to see the science articles color centerspread will be a standard good stories from some of my favorite
(which I think are imperative for a real- feature of the magazine. Although it is authors so I will try to find something to

ly fine SF magazine) pitched at a slightly not stated anywhere, I assume that the say. I am surprised that Fritz Leiber gets

higher level, in two directions: greater
lucidity, and general interest of topic.
And there is so much in Raylyn Moore's
I admire, it's a shame to see it mar-
Strix
red by prose like, "Because Caulie was
making her journey out of season, she
found the oxroad better than a
little
river of thick, early spring mud . ."
Why not, "Caulie was making her jour-
ney out of season. The road was a river
of early spring mud." I used to teach a
remedial reading class, and the omission
of such excess verbiage is the difference
between enjoyment and despair among
new, eager, and sensitive readers.
At any rate, in the fifteen years I have
been making my living in science fic-
tion, I can't think of an SF venture I've
watched begin that has left me with
more excitement. We're all on pins and
needles for what comes next.
Best wishes,
Samuel R. Delany
To The Editor:
Lehr piece isan original since I don't such a modest mention on the cover.
recognize it and if it had been on a book The publication of a new Fahfrd and
cover I'm sure I would remember it. The Gray Mouser novel should merit a
Speaking of interesting layout ideas, I banner headline of approximately the
like the ideaof grouping all the editori- same size as the magazine title. Michael
als and columns in the center of the Bishop is one of the very best new
magazine. Since I don't always read all writers that I have noticed in the last few
.
the fiction in a magazine but usually years and "The House of Compassion-
read all the features it is convenient as ate Sharers" should be a contender for
well .... This next point is more of a all the awards. The title is a bit re-
personal peeve than anything else but strained for him however. It does not
since you came almost all the way to my even come close to that of his novel for
idea of perfection, I think I will mention oddity (i.e. And Strange At Ecbatan
it. I have always disliked flipping back The Trees). I have to confess that I
and forth in a magazine in order to fin- haven't read all the rest of the stories yet
ish reading a story or an article and in but I did enjoy the Niven short shots
I was gratified to note that on-
this issue and I am looking forward to the Ben-
ly the firststory had a note reading, ford. I see more of Benford than I used
"Continued on ." As said, almost
. . I to but I would like to see even more he —
perfect.Keep up the good work. is very good. Fred Pohl is almost in a
I have read a number of editorials by class by himself. After all of the great
Ted White in Amazing and Fantastic in things that he has done in the last thirty
the last few years on the subject of years or so it is inspiring to see him get-
newsstand distribution. Since I got this ting better and better with almost every
copy at an SF bookstore and have not new story he writes. Old SF writers
seen on the stands anywhere in New
it don't fade away, their talents go nova.
York, was wondering if you are having
I

the same type of problems that he talks Well that's about all I have to say
Since this is your first issue I would about. If so, you have my sympathies about your first issue. I am looking for-
like tomake a few general comments on and I wish you good luck in finding a ward to the next one.
the magazine as a whole before saying distributor. It's hard to be successful
anything about the individual stories. and sell enough copies to stay in busi- John Douglas
First,I am pleased to see that you are ness if nobody knows about you be-
publishing in a larger format than the cause you are invisible.
current standard for the SF field. Since
Vertex and Odyssey preceded you in this
not a ground-breaking move but it
it is

is good to see that newer magazines do

not feel compelled to imitate what is al-
ready available but are willing to at-
tempt something radically different.
The extra space available, combined
with the type of binding that allows the
magazine to open flat and the occasion-
al use of glossier stock, allows the use of
color-printed interior illustrations which
are a welcome change from the standard
small black-and-whites seen in the di-
gests .These features also provide
. .

an opportunity to experiment with inter-

esting layouts with large drawings or
more than one small drawing on a two
page spread. The crowning glory is, of

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