A MAZE OF DEATH by Philip K. Dick First Vintage Books Edition, June 1994 Copyright 1970 by Philip K. Dick All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York, in 1970. ISBN 0-679-75298-6 To my two daughters, Laura and Isa AUTHOR'S FOREWORD The theology in this novel is not an analog of any known religion. It stems from an attempt made by William Sarill and myself to develop an abstract, logical system of religious thought, based on the arbitrary postulate that God exists. I should say, too, that the late Bishop James A. Pike, in discussions with me, brought forth a wealth of theological material for my inspection, none of which I was previously acquainted with. In the novel, Maggie Walsh's experiences after death are based on an L.S.D. experience of my own. In exact detail. The approach in this novel is highly subjective; by that I mean that at any given time, reality is seen--not directly-- but indirectly, i.e., through the mind of one of the characters. This viewpoint mind differs from section to section, although most of the events are seen through Seth Morley's psyche. All material concerning Wotan and the death of the gods is based on Richard Wagner's version of _Der Ring des Nibelungen_, rather than on the original body of myths. Answers to questions put to the tench were derived from the _I Ching_, the Chinese _Book of Changes_. "Tekel upharsin" is Aramaic for, "He has weighed and now they divide." Aramaic was the tongue that Christ spoke. There should be more like him. CONTENTS 1 In which Ben Tallchief wins a pet rabbit in a raffle. 2 Seth Morley finds out that his landlord has repaired that which symbolizes all Morley believes in. 3 A group of friends gather together, and Sue Smart recovers her faculties. 4 Mary Morley discovers that she is pregnant, with unforeseen results. 5 The chaos of Dr. Babble's fiscal life becomes too much for him. 6 For the first time Ignatz Thugg is up against a force beyond his capacity. 7 Out of his many investments Seth Morley realizes only a disappointing gain-- measured in pennies. 8 Glen Belsnor ignores the warnings of his parents and embarks on a bold sea adventure. 9 We find Tony Dunkelwelt worrying over one of mankind's most ancient problems. 10 Wade Frazer learns that those whose advice he most trusted have turned against him. 11 The rabbit which Ben Tallchief won develops the mange. 12 Roberta Rockingham's spinster aunt pays her a visit. 13 In an unfamiliar train station Betty Jo Berm loses a precious piece of luggage. 14 Ned Russell goes broke. 15 Embittered, Tony Dunkelwelt leaves school and returns to the town in which he was born. 16 After the doctor examines her X-rays, Maggie Walsh knows that her condition is incurable. A MAZE OF DEATH 1 His job, as always, bored him. So he had during the previous week gone to the ship's transmitter and attached conduits to the permanent electrodes extending from his pineal gland. The conduits had carried his prayer to the transmitter, and from there the prayer had gone into the nearest relay network; his prayer, during these days, had bounced throughout the galaxy, winding up--he hoped--at one of the godworlds. His prayer had been simple. "This damn inventory-control job bores me," he had prayed. "Routine work--this ship is too large and in addition it's overstaffed. I'm a useless standby module. Could you help me find something more creative and stimulating?" He had addressed the prayer, as a matter of course, to the Intercessor. Had it failed he would have presently readdressed the prayer, this time to the Mentufacturer. But the prayer had not failed. "Mr. Tallchief," his supervisor said, entering Ben's work cubicle. "You're being transferred. How about that?" "I'll transmit a thankyou prayer," Ben said, and felt good inside. It always felt good when one's prayers were listened to and answered. "When do I transfer? Soon?" He had never concealed his dissatisfaction from his supervisor; there was now even less reason to do so. "Ben Tallchief," his supervisor said. "The praying mantis." "Don't you pray?" Ben asked, amazed. "Only when there's no other alternative. I'm in favor of a person solving his problems on his own, without outside help. Anyhow, your transfer is valid." His supervisor dropped a document on the desk before Ben. "A small colony on a planet named Delmak-O. I don't know anything about it, but I suppose you'll find it all out when you get there." He eyed Ben thoughtfully. "You're entitled to use one of the ship's nosers. For a payment of three silver dollars." "Done," Ben said, and stood up, clutching the document. He ascended by express elevator to the ship's transmitter, which he found hard at work transacting official ship business. "Will you be having any empty periods later today?" he asked the chief radio operator. "I have another prayer, but I don't want to tie up your equipment if you'll be needing it." "Busy all day," the chief radio operator said. "Look, Mac--we put one prayer through for you last week; isn't that enough?" Anyhow I tried, Ben Tallchief mused as he left the transmitter with its hardworking crew and returned to his own quarters. If the matter ever comes up, he thought, I can say I did my best. But, as usual, the channels were tied up by nonpersonal communications. He felt his anticipation grow; a creative job at last, and just when he needed it most. Another few weeks here, he said to himself, and I would have been pizzling away at the bottle again as in lamented former times. And of course that's why they granted it, he realized. They knew I was nearing a break. I'd probably have wound up in the ship's brig, along with--how many were there in the brig now?--well, however many there were in There. Ten, maybe. Not much for a ship this size. And with such stringent rules. From the top drawer of his dresser he got out an unopened fifth of Peter Dawson scotch, broke the seal, unscrewed the lid. Little libation, he told himself as he poured scotch into a Dixie cup. And celebration. The gods appreciate ceremony. He drank the scotch, then refilled the small paper cup. To further enlarge the ceremony he got down--a bit reluctantly--his copy of The Book: A. J. Specktowsky's _How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You_, a cheap copy with soft covers, but the only copy he had ever owned; hence he had a sentimental attitude toward it. Opening at random (a highly approved method) he read over a few familiar paragraphs of the great twenty-first century Communist theologian's apologia pro vita sua. "God is not supernatural. His existence was the first and most natural mode of being to form itself." True, Ben Tallchief said to himself. As later theological investigation had proved. Specktowsky had been a prophet as well as a logician; all that he had predicted had turned up sooner or later. There remained, of course, a good deal to know . . . for example, the cause of the Mentufacturer's coming into being (unless one was satisfied to believe, with Specktowsky, that beings of that order were self-creating, and existing outside of time, hence outside of causality). But in the main it was all there on the many-times-printed pages. "With each greater circle the power, good and knowledge on the part of God weakened, so that at the periphery of the greatest circle his good was weak, his knowledge was weak-- too weak for him to observe the Form Destroyer, which was called into being by God's acts of form creation. The origin of the Form Destroyer is unclear; it is, for instance, not possible to declare whether (one) he was a separate entity from God from the start, uncreated by God but also selfcreating, as is God, or (two) whether the Form Destroyer is an aspect of God, there being nothing--" He ceased reading, sat sipping scotch and rubbing his forehead semi-wearily. He was forty-two years old and had read The Book many times. His life, although long, had not added up to much, at least until now. He had held a variety of jobs, doing a modicum of service to his employers, but never ever really excelling. Maybe I can begin to excel, he said to himself. On this new assignment. Maybe this is my big chance. Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his selfimage. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed. For example, he shaved now with an electric razor, unwilling to gaze at himself in his bathroom mirror. Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted _this_, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went. He sighed. Of all his many meager jobs he had enjoyed one alone, and he still meditated about it now and then. In 2105 he had operated the background music system aboard a huge colonizing ship on its way to one of the Deneb worlds. In the tape vault he had found all of the Beethoven symphonies mixed haphazardly in with string versions of _Carmen_ and of Delibes and he had played the _Fifth_, his favorite, a thousand times throughout the speaker complex that crept everywhere within the ship, reaching each cubicle and work area. Oddly enough no one had complained and he had kept on, finally shifting his loyalty to the _Seventh_ and at last, in a fit of excitement during the final months of the ship's voyage, to the _Ninth_--from which his loyalty never waned. Maybe what I really need is sleep, he said to himself. A sort of twilight of living, with only the background sound of Beethoven audible. All the rest a blur. No, he decided; I want to _be!_ I want to act and accomplish something. And every year it becomes more necessary. Every year, too, it slips further and further away. The thing about the Mentufacturer, he reflected, is that he can renew everything. He can abort the decay process by replacing the decaying object with a new one, one whose form is perfect. And then that decays. The Form Destroyer gets hold of it-- and presently the Mentufacturer replaces that. As with a succession of old bees wearing out their wings, dying and being replaced at last by new bees. But I can't do that. I decay and the Form Destroyer has me. And it will get only worse. God, he thought, help me. But not by replacing me. That would be fine from a cosmological standpoint, but ceasing to exist is not what I'm after; and perhaps you understood this when you answered my prayer. The scotch had made him sleepy; to his chagrin he found himself nodding. To bring himself back to full wakefulness: that was necessary. Leaping up as he strode to his portable phonograph, took a visrecord at random, and placed it on the turntable. At once the far wall of the room lit up, and bright shapes intermingled with one another, a mixture of motion and of life, but unnaturally flat. He reflexively adjusted the depth-circuit; the figures began to become three dimensional. He turned up the sound as well. ". . . Legolas is right. We may not shoot an old man so, at unawares and unchallenged, whatever fear or doubt be on us. Watch and wait!" The bracing words of the old epic restored his perspective; he returned to his desk, reseated himself and got out the document which his supervisor had given him. Frowning, he studied the coded information, trying to decipher it. In numbers, punch-holes and letters it spelled out his new life, his world to come. ". . .You speak as one that knows Fangorn well. Is that so?" The visrecord played on, but he no longer heard it; he had begun to get the gist of the encoded messsage. "What have you to say that you did not say at our last meeting?" a sharp and powerful voice said. He glanced up and found himself confronted by the gray-clad figure of Gandalf. It was as if Gandalf were speaking to him, to Ben Tallchief. Calling him to account. "Or, perhaps, you have things to unsay?" Gandalf said. Ben rose, went over to the phonograph and shut it off. I do not feel able at this time to answer you, Gandalf, he said to himself. There are things to be done, real things; I can't indulge myself in a mysterious, unreal conversation with a mythological character who probably never existed. The old values, for me, are suddenly gone; I have to work out what these damn punch-holes, letters and numbers mean. He was beginning to get the drift of it. Carefully, he replaced the lid on the bottle of scotch, twisting is tight. He would go in a noser, alone; at the colony he would join roughly a dozen others, recruited from a variety of sources. Range 5 of skills: a class C operation, on a K-4 pay scale. Maximum time: two years of operation. Full pension and medical benefits, starting as soon as he arrived. An override for any instructions he had already received, hence he could go at once. He did not have to terminate his work here before leaving. And I have the three silver dollars for the noser, he said to himself. So that is that; nothing else to worry about. Except--. He could not discover what his job would consist of. The letters, numbers and punch-holes failed to say, or perhaps it was more correct to say that he could not get them to divulge this one piece of information--a piece he would much have wanted. But still it looked good. I like it, he said to himself. I want it. Gandalf, he thought, I have nothing to unsay; prayers are not often answered and I will take this. Aloud he said, "Gandaif, you no longer exist except in men's minds, and what I have here comes from the One, True and Living Deity, who is completely real. What more can I hope for?" The silence of the room confronted him; he did not see Gadalf now because he had shut the record off. "Maybe someday," he continued. "I will unsay this. But not yet; not now. You understand?" He waited, experiencing the silence, knowing that he could begin it or end it by a mere touch of the phonograph's switch. 2 Seth Morley neatly divided the Gruyère cheese lying before him with a plastic-handled knife and said, "I'm leaving." He cut himself a giant wedge of cheese, lifted it to his lips via the knife. "Late tomorrow night. Tekel Upharsin Kibbutz has seen the last of me." He grinned, but Fred Gossim, the settlement's chief engineer, failed to return the message of triumph; instead Gossim frowned even more strongly. His disapproving presence pervaded the office. Mary Morley said quietly, "My husband applied for this transfer eight years ago. We never intended to stay here. You knew that." "And we're going with them," Michael Niemand stammered in excitement. "That's what you get for bringing a top-flight marine biologist here and then setting him to work hauling blocks of stone from the goddam quarry. We're sick of it." He nudged his undersized wife, Clair. "Isn't that right?" "Since there is no body of water on this planet," Gossim said gratingly, "we could hardly put a marine biologist to use in his stated profession." "But you advertised, eight years ago, for a marine biologist," Mary Morley pointed out. This made Gossim scowl even more profoundly. "The mistake was yours." "But," Gossim said, "this is your home. All of you--" He gestured at the group of kibbutz officials crowded around the entrance of the office. "We all built this." "And the cheese," Seth Morley said, "is terrible, here. Those quakkip, those goat-like suborganisms that smell like the Form Destroyer's last year's underwear--I want very much to have seen the last of them and it. The quakkip and the cheese both." He cut himself a second slice of the expensive, imported Gruyère cheese. To Niemand he said, "You can't come with us. Our instructions are to make the flight by noser. Point A. A noser holds only two people; in this case my wife and me. Point B. You and your wife are two more people, ergo you won't fit. Ergo you can't come." "We'll take our own noser," Niemand said. "You have no instructions and/or permission to transfer to Delmak-O," Seth Morley said from within his mouthful of cheese. "You don't want us," Niemand said. "Nobody wants you," Gossim grumbled. "As far as I'm concerned without you we would do better. It's the Morleys that I don't want to see go down the drain." Eying him, Seth Morley said tartly, "And this assignment is, a priori, 'down the drain.' "It's some kind of experimental work," Gossim said, "As far as I can discern. On a small scale. Thirteen, fourteen people. It would be for you turning the clock back to the early days of Tekel Upharsin. You want to build up from that all over again? Look how long it's taken for us to get up to a hundred efficient, well-intentioned members. You mention the Form Destroyer. Aren't you by your actions decaying back the form of Tekel Upharsin?" "And my own form too," Morley said, half to himself. He felt grim, now; Gossim had gotten to him. Gossin had always been good with words, amazing in an engineer. It had been Gossim's silver-tongued words which had kept them all at their tasks throughout the years. But those words, to a good extent, had become vapid as far as the Morleys were concerned. The words did not work as they once had. And yet a glimmer of their past glory remained. He could just not quite shake off the bulky, dark-eyed engineer. But we're leaving, Morley thought. As in Goethe's _Faust_, "In the beginning was the deed." The deed and not the word, as Goethe, anticipating the twentieth century existentialists, had pointed out. "You'll want to come back," Gossim opined. "Hmm," Seth Morley said. "And you know what I'll say to that?" Gossim said loudly. "If I get a request from you--both of you Morleys--to come back here to Tekel Upharsin Kibbutz, I'll say, 'We don't have any need of a marine biologist; we don't even have an ocean. And we're not going to build so much as a puddle so that you can have a legitimate reason for working here.' " "I never asked for a puddle," Morley said. "But you'd like one." "I'd like _any_ kind of body of water," Morley said. "That's the whole point; that's why we're leaving and that's why we won't be coming back." "You're sure Delmak-O has a body of water?" Gossim inquired. "I assume--" Morley began, but Gossim cut him off. "That," Gossim said, "is what you assumed about Tekel Upharsin. That's how your trouble began." "I assumed," Morley said, "that if you advertised for a marine biologist--" He sighed, feeling weary. There was no point trying to influence Gossim; the engineer--and chief officer of the kibbutz--had a closed mind. "Just let me eat my cheese," Morley said, and tried an additional slice. But he had grown tired of the taste; he had eaten too much. "The hell with it," he said, tossing his knife down. He felt irritable and he did not like Gossim; he felt no desire to continue the conversation. What mattered was the fact that no matter how he felt, Gossim could not revoke the transfer. It carried an override, and that was the long and the short of it . . . to quote William S. Gilbert. "I hate your bloody guts," Gossim said. Morley said, "I hate yours, too." "A Mexican standoff," Niemand said. "You see, Mr. Gossim, you can't make us stay; all you can do is yell." Making an obscene gesture toward Morley and Niemand Gossim strode off, parting the group gathered there, and disappeared somewhere on the far side. The office was quiet, now. Seth Morley immediately began to feel better. "Arguments wear you out," his wife said. "Yes," he agreed. "And Gossim wears me out. I'm tired just from this one interchange, forgetting the eight full years of it which preceded today. I'm going to go select a noser." He rose, made his way from the office and into the midday sun. A noser is a strange craft, he said to himself as he stood at the edge of the parking field surveying the lines of inert vessels. First of all, they were incredibly cheap; he could gain possession of one of these for less than four silver dollars. Secondly, they could go but never return; nosers were strictly one-way ships. The reason, of course, was simple: a noser was too small to carry fuel for a return trip. All the noser could do was kick off from a larger ship or a planetary surface, head for its destination, and quietly expire there. But-- they did their job. Sentient races, human and otherwise, flocked throughout the galaxy aboard the little pod-like ships. Goodbye, Tekel Upharsin, Morley said to himself, and made a brief, silent salute to the rows of orange bushes growing beyond the noser parking lot. Which one should we take? he asked himself. They all looked alike: rusty, discarded. Like the contents of a used car lot back on Terra. I'll choose the first one with a name on it beginning with M, he decided, and began reading the individual names. The _Morbid Chicken_. Well, that was it. Not very transcendental, but fitting; people, including Mary, were always telling him that he had a morbid streak. What I have, he said to himself, is a mordant wit. People confuse the two terms because they sound similar. Looking at his wristwatch he saw that he had time to make a trip to the packaging department of the citrus products factory. So he made off in that direction. "Ten pint jars of class AA marmalade," he said to the shipping clerk. It was either get them now or not at all. "Are you sure you're entitled to ten more pints?" The clerk eyed him dubiously, having had dealings with him before. "You can check on my marmalade standing with Joe Perser," Morley said. "Go ahead, pick up the phone and give him a call." "I'm too busy," the clerk said. He counted out ten pint jars of the kibbutz's main product and passed them to Morley in a bag, rather than in a cardboard carton. "No carton?" Morley said. "Scram," the clerk said. Morley got one of the jars out, making sure that they were indeed class AA. They were. "Marmalade from Tekel Upharsin Kibbutz!" the label declared. "Made from genuine Seville oranges (group 3-B mutational subdivision). Take a pot of sunny Spain into your kitchen or cooking cubicle!" "Fine," Morley said. "And thanks." He lugged the bulky paper bag from the building and out once more into the bright sun of midday. Back again at the noser parking area he began getting the pints of marmalade stored away in the _Morbid Chicken_. The one good thing this kibbutz produces, he said to himself as he placed the jars one by one within the magnetic grip-field of the storage compartment. I am afraid this is one thing I'll miss. He called Mary on his neck radio. "I've picked out a noser," he informed her. "Come on down to the parking area and I'll show it to you." "Are you sure it's a good one?" "You know you can take my mechanical ability for granted," Morley said testily. "I've examined the rocket engine, wiring, controls, every life-protect system, everything, completely." He pushed the last jar of marmalade away in the storage area and shut the door firmly. She arrived a few minutes later, slender and tanned in her khaki shirt, shorts and sandals. "Well," she said, surveying the _Morbid Chicken_, "it looks rundown to me. But if you say it's okay it is, I guess." "I've already begun loading," Morley said. "With what?" Opening the door of the storage compartment he showed her the ten jars of marmalade. After a long pause Mary said, "Christ." "What's the matter?" "You haven't been checking the wiring and the engine. You've been out scrounging up all the goddam marmalade you could talk them out of." She slammed the storage area door shut with venomous ire. "Sometimes I think you're insane. Our lives depend on this goddam noser working. Suppose the oxygen system fails or the heat circuit fails or there're microscopic leaks in the hull. Or--" "Get your brother to look at it," he interrupted. "Since you have so much more trust in him than you do in me." "He's busy. You know that." "Or he'd be here," Morley said, "picking out which noser for us to take. Rather than me." His wife eyed him intently, her spare body drawn up in a vigorous posture of defiance. Then, all at once, she sagged in what appeared to be half-amused resignation. "The strange thing is," she said, "that you have such good luck-- I mean in relation to your talents. This probably is the best noser here. But not because you can tell the difference but because of your mutant-like luck." "It's not luck. It's judgment." "No," Mary said, shaking her head. "That's the last thing it is. You have no judgment--not in the usual sense, anyhow. But what the hell. We'll take this noser and hope your luck is holding as well as usual. But how can you live like this, Seth?" She gazed up plaintively into his face. "It's not fair to me." "I've kept us going so far." "You've kept us here at this--kibbutz," Mary said. "For eight years." "But now I've gotten us off." "To something worse, probably. What do we know about this new assignment? Nothing, except what Gossim knows-- and he knows because he makes it his business to read over everyone else's communications. He read your original prayer. . . I didn't want to tell you because I knew it would make you so--" "That bastard." He felt red, huge fury well up inside him, spiked with impotence. "It's a moral violation to read another person's prayers." "He's in charge. He feels everything is his business. Anyhow we'll be getting away from that. Thank God. Come on; cool off. You can't do anything about it; he read it years ago." "Did he say whether he thought it was a good prayer?" Mary Morley said, "Fred Gossim would never say if it was. I think it was. Evidently it was, because you got the transfer." "I think so. Because God doesn't grant too many prayers by Jews due to that covenant back in the pre-Intercessor days when the power of the Form Destroyer was so strong, and our relationship to him--to God, I mean--was so fouled up." "I can see you back in those days," Mary said. "Kvetching bitterly about everything the Mentufacturer did and said." Morley said, "I would have been a great poet. Like David." "You would have held a little job, like you do now." With that she strode off, leaving him standing in the doorway of the noser, one hand on his row of stored-away marmalade jars. His sense of impotence rose within him, choking his windpipe. "Stay here!" he yelled after her. "I'll leave without you!" She continued on under the hot sun, not looking back and not answering. For the remainder of the day Seth Morley busied himself loading their possessions into the _Morbid Chicken_. Mary did not show herself. He realized, toward dinnertime, that he was doing it all. Where is she? he asked himself. It's not fair. Depression hit him, as it generally did toward mealtime. I wonder if it's all worth it, he said to himself. Going from one no-good job to another. I'm a loser. Mary is right about me; look at the job I did selecting a noser. Look at the job I'm doing loading this damn stuff in here. He gazed about the interior of the noser, conscious of the ungainly piles of clothing, books, records, kitchen appliances, typewriter, medical supplies, pictures, wear-forever couch covers, chess set, reference tapes, communications gear and junk, junk, junk. What have we in fact accumulated in eight years of work here? he asked himself. Nothing of any worth. And in addition, he could not get it all into the noser. Much would have to be thrown away or left for someone else to use. Better to destroy it, he thought gloomily. The idea of someone else gaining use of his possessions had to be sternly rejected. I'll burn every last bit of it, he told himself. Including all the nebbish clothes that Mary's collected in her jaybird manner. Selecting whatever's bright and gaudy. I'll pile her stuff outside, he decided, and then get all of mine aboard. It's her own fault: she should be here to help. I'm under no mandate to load her kipple. As he stood there with an armload of clothes gripped tightly he saw, in the gloom of twilight, a figure approaching him. Who is it? he wondered, and peered to see. It was not Mary. A man, he saw, or rather something like a man. A figure in a loose robe, with long hair falling down his dark, full shoulders. Seth Morley felt fear. The Walker-on-Earth, he realized. Come to stop me. Shaking, he began to set down the armload of clothes. Within him his conscience bit furiously; he felt now the complete weight of all the baddoings he had done. Months, years--he had not seen the Walker-on-Earth for a long time, and the weight was intolerable. The accumulation which always left its mark within. Which never departed until the Intercessor removed it. The figure halted before him. "Mr. Morley," it said. "Yes," he said, and felt his scalp bleeding perspiration. His face dripped with it and he tried to wipe it away with the back of his hand. "I'm tired," he said. "I've been working for hours to get this noser loaded. It's a big job." The Walker-on-Earth said, "Your noser, the _Morbid Chicken_, will not get you and your little family to DelmakO. I therefore must interfere, my dear friend. Do you understand?" "Sure," he said, panting with guilt. "Select another." "Yes," he said, nodding frantically. "Yes, I will. And thank you; thanks a lot. The fact of the matter is you saved our lives." He peered at the dim face of the Walker-on-Earth, trying to see if its expression reproached him. But he could not tell; the remaining sunlight had begun to diffuse into an almost nocturnal haze. "I am sorry," the Walker-on-Earth said, "that you had to labor so long for nothing." "Well, as I say--" "I will help you with the reloading," the Walker-on-Earth said. It reached its arms out, bending; it picked up a pile of boxes and began to move among the parked, silent nosers. "I recommend this," it said presently, halting by one and reaching to open its door. "It is not much to look at, but mechanically it's perfect." "Hey," Morley said, following with a swiftly snatched-up load. "I mean, thanks. Looks aren't important anyhow; it's what's on the inside that counts. For people as well as nosers." He laughed, but the sound emerged as a jarring screech; he cut it off instantly, and the sweat gathered around his neck turned cold with his great fear. "There is no reason to be afraid of me," the Walker said. "Intellectually I know that," Morley said. Together, they labored for a time in silence, carrying box after box from the _Morbid Chicken_ to the better noser. Continually Morley tried to think of something to say, but he could not. His mind, because of his fright, had become dim; the fires of his quick intellect, in which he had so much faith, had almost flickered off. "Have you ever thought of getting psychiatric help?" the Walker asked him at last. "No," he said. "Let's pause a moment and rest. So we can talk a little." Morley said, "No." "Why not?" "I don't want to know anything; I don't want to hear anything." He heard his voice bleat out in its weakness, steeped in its paucity of knowledge. The bleat of foolishness, of the greatest amount of insanity of which he was capable. He knew this, heard it and recognized it, and still he clung to it; he continued on. "I know I'm not perfect," he said. "But I can't change. I'm satisfied." "Your failure to examine the _Morbid Chicken_." "Mary made a good point; usually my luck is good." "She would have died, too." "Tell her that." Don't tell me, he thought. Please, don't tell me any more. I don't want to know! The Walker regarded him for a moment. "Is there anything," it said at last, "that you want to say to me?" "I'm grateful, damn grateful. For your appearance." "Many times during the past years you've thought to yourself what you would say to me if you met me again. Many things passed through your mind." "I--forget," he said, huskily. "May I bless you?" "Sure," he said, his voice still husky. And almost inaudible. "But why? What have I done?" "I am proud of you, that's all." "But why?" He did not understand; the censure which he had been waiting for had not arrived. The Walker said, "Once years ago you had a tomcat whom you loved. He was greedy and mendacious and yet you loved him. One day he died from bone fragments lodged in his stomach, the result of filching the remains of a dead Martian root-buzzard from a garbage pail. You were sad, but you still loved him. His essence, his appetite--all that made him up had driven him to his death. You would have paid a great deal to have him alive again, but you would have wanted him as he was, greedy and pushy, himself as you loved him, unchanged. Do you understand?" "I prayed then," Morley said. "But no help came. The Mentufacturer could have rolled time back and restored him." "Do you want him back now?" "Yes," Morley said raspingly. "Will you get psychiatric help?" ''No. "I bless you," the Walker-on-Earth said, and made a motion with his right hand: a slow and dignified gesture of blessing. Seth Morley bowed his head, pressed his right hand against his eyes . . . and found that black tears had lodged in the hollows of his face. Even now, he marveled. That awful old cat; I should have forgotten him years ago. I guess you never really forget such things, he thought. It's all in there, in the mind, buried until something like this comes up. "Thank you," he said, when the blessing ended. "You will see him again," the Walker said. "When you sit with us in Paradise." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Exactly as he was?" "Yes." "Will he remember me?" "He remembers you now. He waits. He will never stop waiting." "Thanks," Morley said. "I feel a lot better." The Walker-on-Earth departed. Entering the cafeteria of the kibbutz, Seth Morley sought out his wife. He found her eating curried lamb shoulder at a table in the shadows of the edge of the room. She barely nodded as he seated himself facing her. "You missed dinner," she said presently. "That's not like you." Morley said, "I saw him." "Who?" She eyed him keenly. "The Walker-on-Earth. He came to tell me that the noser I picked out would have killed us. We never would have made it." "I knew that," Mary said. "I knew that--_thing_ would never have gotten us there." Morley said, "My cat is still alive." "You don't have a cat." He grabbed her arm, halting her motions with the fork. "He says we'll be all right; we'll get to Delmak-O and I can begin the new job." "Did you ask him what the new job is all about?" "I didn't think to ask him that, no." "You fool." She pried his hand loose and resumed eating. "Tell me what the Walker looked like." "You've never seen it?" "You _know_ I've never seen it!" "Beautiful and gentle. He held out his hand and blessed me." "So it manifested itself to you as a man. Interesting. If it had been as a woman you wouldn't have listened to--" "I pity you," Morley said. "It's never intervened to save you. Maybe it doesn't consider you worth saving." Mary, savagely, threw down her fork; she glowered at him with animal ferocity. Neither of them spoke for a time. "I'm going to Delmak-O alone," Morley said at last. "You think so? You really think so? I'm going with you; I want to keep my eyes on you at all times. Without me--" "Okay," he said scathingly. "You can come along. What the hell do I care? Anyhow if you stayed here you'd be having an affair with Gossim, ruining his life--" He ceased speaking, panting for breath. In silence, Mary continued eating her lamb. 3 "You are one thousand miles above the surface of DelmakO," the headphone clamped against Ben Tallchief's ear declared. "Switch to automatic pilot, please." "I can land her myself," Ben Tallchief said into his mike. He gazed at the world below him, wondering at its colors. Clouds, he decided. A natural atmosphere. Well, that answers one of my many questions. He felt relaxed and confident. And then he thought of his next question: Is this a god-world? And that issue sobered him. He landed without difficulty. . . stretched, yawned, belched, unfastened his seat belt, stood up, awkwardly walked to the hatch, opened the hatch, then went back to the control room to shut off the still active rocket engine. While he was at it he shut off the air supply, too. That seemed to be all. He clambered down the iron steps and bounced his way clumsily onto the surface of the planet. Next to the field a row of flat-roofed buildings: the tiny colony's interwoven installations. Several persons were moving toward his noser, evidently to greet him. He waved, enjoying the feel of the plastic leather steering gloves--that and the very great augmentation of his somatic self which his bulky suit provided. "Hi!" a female voice called. "Hi," Ben Tallchief said, regarding the girl. She wore a dark smock, with matching pants, a general issue outfit that matched the plainness of her round, clean, freckled face. "Is this a god-world?" he asked, walking leisurely toward her. "It is not a god-world," the girl said, "but there are some strange things out there." She gestured toward the horizon vaguely; smiling at him in a friendly manner she held out her hand. "I'm Betty Jø Berm. Linguist. You're either Mr. Tallchief or Mr. Morley; everyone else is here already." "Tallchief," he said. "I'll introduce you to everyone. This elderly gentleman is Bert Kosler, our custodian." "Glad to meet you, Mr. Kosler." Handshake. "I'm glad to meet you, too," the old man said. "This is Maggie Walsh, our theologian." "Glad to meet you, Miss Walsh." Handshake. Pretty girl. "Glad to meet you, too, Mr. Tallchief." "Ignatz Thugg, thermoplastics." "Hi, there." Overly masculine handshake. He did not like Mr. Thugg. "Dr. Milton Babble, the colony's M.D." "Nice to know you, Dr. Babble." Handshake. Babble, short and wide, wore a colorful short-sleeved shirt. His face had on it a corrupt expression which was hard to penetrate. "Tony Dunkelwelt, our photographer and soil-sample expert." "Nice to meet you." Handshake. "This gentleman here is Wade Frazer, our psychologist." A long, phony handshake with Frazer's wet, unclean fingers. "Glen Belsnor, our electronics and computer man." "Glad to meet you," Handshake. Dry, horny, competent hand. A tall, elderly woman approached, supporting herself with a cane. She had a noble face, pale in its quality but very fine. "Mr. Tallchief," she said, extending a slight, limp hand to Ben Tallchief. "I am Roberta Rockingham, the sociologist. It's nice to meet you. We've all been wondering and wondering about you." Ben said, "Are you _the_ Roberta Rockingham?" He felt himself glow with the pleasure of meeting her. Somehow he had assumed that the great old lady had died years ago. It confused him to find himself being introduced to her now. "And this," Betty J0 Berm said, "is our clerk-typist, Susie Dumb." "Glad to know you, Miss--" He paused. "Smart," the girl said. Full-breasted and wonderfully shaped. "Suzanne Smart. They think it's funny to call me Susie Dumb." She extended her hand and they shook. Betty Jo Berm said, "Do you want to look around, or just what?" Ben said, "I'd like to know the purpose of the colony. They didn't tell me." "Mr. Tallchief," the great old sociologist said, "they didn't tell us either." She chuckled. "We've asked everyone in turn as he arrives and no one knows. Mr. Morley, the last man to arrive--he won't know either, and then there will we be?" To Ben, the electronics maintenance man said, "There's no problem. They put up a slave satellite; it's orbiting five times a day and at night you can see it go past. When the last person arrives--that'll be Morley--we're instructed to remote activate the audio tape transport aboard the satellite, and from the tape we'll get our instructions and an explanation of what we're doing and why we're here and all the rest of that crap; everything we want to know except 'How do you make the refrig colder so the beer doesn't get warm?' Yeah, maybe they'll tell us that, too." A general conversation among the group of them was building up. Ben found himself drifting into it without really understanding it. "At Betelgeuse 4 we had cucumbers, and we didn't grow them from moonbeams, the way you hear." "I've never seen him." "Well, he exists. You'll see him someday." "We've got a linguist so evidently there're sentient organisms here, but so far our expeditions have been informal, not scientific. That'll change when--" "Nothing changes. Despite Specktowsky's theory of God entering history and starting time into motion again." "If you want to talk about that; talk to Miss Walsh. Theological matters don't interest me." "You can say that again. Mr. Tallchief, are you part Indian?" "Well, I'm about one-eighth Indian. You mean the name?" "These buildings are built lousy. They're already ready to fall down. We can't get it warm when we need warm; we can't cool it when we need cool. You know what I think? I think this place was built to last only a very short time. Whatever the hell we're here for we won't be long; or rather, if we're here long we'll have to construct new installations, right down to the electrical wiring." "Some bug squeaks in the night. It'll keep you awake for the first day or so. By 'day' of course I mean twenty-four-hour period. I don't mean 'daylight' because it's not in the daytime that it squeaks, it's at night. Every goddamn night. You'll see." "Listen, Tallchief, don't call Susie 'dumb.' If there's one thing she's not it's dumb." "Pretty, too." "And do you notice how her--" "I noticed, but I don't think we should discuss it." "What line of work did you say you're in, Mr. Tallchief? Pardon?" "You'll have to speak up, she's a little deaf." "What I said was--" "You're frightening her. Don't stand so close to her." "Can I get a cup of coffee?" "Ask Maggie Walsh. She'll fix one for you." "If I can get the damn pot to shut off when it's hot; it's been just boiling the coffee over and over." "I don't see why our coffee pot won't work. They perfected them back in the twentieth century. What's left to know that we don't know already?" "Think of it as being like Newton's color theory. Everything about color that could be known was known by 1800. And then Land came along with his two-light-source and intensity theory, and what had seemed a closed field was busted all over." "You mean there may be things about self-regulating coffee pots that we don't know? That we just think we know?" "Something like that." And so on. He listened distantly, answered when he was spoken to and then, all at once, fatigued, he wandered off, away from the group, toward a cluster of leathery green trees: they looked to Ben as if they constituted the primal source for the covering of psychiatrists' couches. The air smelled bad--faintly bad--as if a waste-processing plant were chugging away in the vicinity. But in a couple of days I'll be used to it, he informed himself. There is something strange about these people, he said to himself. What is it? They seem so . . . he hunted for the word. Overly bright. Yes, that was it. Prodigies of some sort, and all of them ready to talk. And then he thought, I think they're very nervous. That must be it; like me, they're here without knowing why. But--that didn't fully explain it. He gave up, then, and turned his attention outward, to embrace the pompous green-leather trees, the hazy sky overhead, the small nettle-like plants growing at his feet. This is a dull place, he thought. He felt swift disappointment. Not much better than the ship; the magic had already left. But Betty Jo Berm had spoken of unusual life forms beyond the perimeter of the colony. So possibly he couldn't justifiably extrapolate on the basis of this little area. He would have to go deeper, farther and farther away from the colony. Which, he realized, is what they've all been doing. Because after all, what else is there to do? At least until we receive our instructions from the satellite. I hope Morley gets here soon, he said to himself. So we can get started. A bug crawled up onto his right shoe, paused there, and then extended a miniature television camera. The lens of the camera swung so that it pointed directly at his face. "Hi," he said to the bug. Retracting its camera, the bug crawled off, evidently satisfied. I wonder who or what it's probing for? he wondered. He raised his foot, fooling momentarily with the idea of crushing the bug, and then decided not to. Instead he walked over to Betty Jo Berm and said, "Were the monitoring bugs here when you arrived?" "They began to show up after the buildings were erected. I think they're probably harmless." "But you can't be sure." "There isn't anything we can do about them anyhow. At first we killed them, but whoever made them just sent more out." "You better trace them back to their source and see what's involved." "Not 'you,' Mr. Tallchief. 'We.' You're as much a part of this operation as anyone here. And you know just as much-- and just as little--as we do. After we get our instructions we may find that the planners of this operation want us to-- or do not want us to--investigate the indigenous life forms here. We'll see. But meanwhile, what about coffee?" "You've been here how long?" Ben asked her as they sat at a plastic micro-bar sipping coffee from faintly-gray plastic cups. "Wade Frazer, our psychologist, arrived first. That was roughly two months ago. The rest of us have been arriving in dribs and drabs. I hope Morley comes soon. We're dying to hear what this is all about." "You're sure Wade Frazer doesn't know?" "Pardon?" Betty Jo Berm blinked at him. "He was the first one here. Waiting for the rest of you. I mean of us. Maybe this is a psychological experiment they've set up, and Frazer is running it. Without telling anyone. "What we're afraid of," Betty J0 Berm said, "is not that. We have one vast fear, and that is this: there is no purpose to us being here, and we'll never be able to leave. Everyone came here by noser: that was mandatory. Well, a noser can land but it can't take off. Without outside help we'd never be able to leave here. Maybe this is a prison--we've thought of that. Maybe we've all done something, or anyhow someone _thinks_ we've done something." She eyed him alertly with her gray, calm eyes. "Have you done anything, Mr. Tallchief?" she asked. "Well, you know how it is." "I mean, you're not a criminal or anything." "Not that I know of." "You look ordinary." "Thanks." "I mean, you don't look like a criminal." She rose, walked across the cramped room to a cupboard. "How about some Seagram's VO?" she asked. "Fine," he said, pleased at the idea. As they sat drinking coffee laced with Seagram's VO Canadian whiskey (imported) Dr. Milton Babble strolled in, perceived them, and seated himself at the bar. "This is a second-rate planet," he said to Ben without preamble. His dingy, shovel-like face twisted in distaste. "It just plain is second rate. Thanks." He accepted his cup of coffee from Betty Jo, sipped, still showed distaste. "What's in this?" he demanded. He then saw the bottle of Seagram's VO. "Hell, that ruins coffee," he said angrily. He set his cup down again, his expression of distaste greater than ever. "I think it helps," Betty Jo Berm said. Dr. Babble said, "You know, it's a funny thing, all of us here together. Now see, Tallchief, I've been here a month and I have yet to find someone I can talk to, really talk to. Every person here is completely involved with himself and doesn't give a damn about the others. Excluding you, of course, B.J." Betty Jo said, "I'm not offended. It's true. I don't care about you, Babble, or any of the rest. I just want to be left alone." She turned toward Ben. "We have an initial curiosity when someone lands . . . as we had about you. But afterward, after we see the person and listen to him a little--" She lifted her cigarette from the ashtray and inhaled its smoke silently. "No offense meant, Mr. Tallchief, as Babble just now said. We'll get you pretty soon and you'll be the same; I predict it. You'll talk with us for a while and then you'll withdraw into--" She hesitated, groping the air with her right hand as if physically searching for a word. As if a word were a three dimensional object which she could seize manually. "Take Beisnor. All he thinks about is the refrigeration unit. He has a phobia that it'll stop working, which you would gather from his panic would mean the end of us. He thinks the refrigeration unit is keeping us from--" She gestured with her cigarette. "Boiling away." "But he's harmless," Dr. Babble said. "Oh, we're all harmless," Betty Jo Berm said. To Ben she said, "Do you know what I do, Mr. Tallchief? I take pills. I'll show you." She opened her purse and brought out a pharmacy bottle. "Look at these," she said as she handed the bottle to Ben. "The blue ones are stelazine, which I use as an anti-emetic. You understand: I use it for that, but that isn't its basic purpose. Basically stelazine is a tranquilizer, in doses of less than twenty milligrams a day. In greater doses it's an anti-hallucinogenic agent. But I don't take it for that either. Now, the problem with stelazine is that it's a vasodilator. I sometimes have trouble standing up after I've taken some. Hypostasis, I think it's called." Babble grunted, "So she also takes a vasoconstrictor." "That's this little white tablet," Betty Jo said, showing him the part of the bottle in which the white tablets dwelt. "It's methamphetamine. Now, this green capsule is--" "One day," Babble said, "your pills are going to hatch, and some strange birds are going to emerge." "What an odd thing to say," Betty Jo said. "I meant they look like colored birds' eggs." "Yes, I realize that. But it's still a strange thing to say." Removing the lid from the bottle she poured out a variety of pills into the palm of her hand. "This red cap--that's of course pentabarbital, for sleeping. And then this yellow one, it's norpramin, which counterbalances the C.N.S. depressive effect of the mellaril. Now, this square orange tab, it's new. It has five layers on it which time-release on the so-called 'trickle principle.' A very effective C.N.S. stimulant. Then a--" "She takes a central nervous system depressor," Babble broke in, "and also a C.N.S. stimulant." Ben said, "Wouldn't they cancel each other out?" "One might say so, yes," Babble said. "But they don't," Betty Jo said. "I mean subjectively I can feel the difference. I know they're helping me." "She reads the literature on them all," Babble said. "She brought a copy of the _P.D.R._ with her--_Physicians' Desk Reference_--with lists of side effects, contraindications, dosage, when indicated and so forth. She knows as much about her pills as I do. In fact, as much as the manufacturers know. If you show her a pill, any pill, she can tell you what it is, what it does, what--" He belched, drew himself up higher in his chair, laughed, and then said, "I remember a pill that had as side effects--if you took an overdose--convulsions, coma and then death. And in the literature, right after it told about the convulsions, coma and death, it said, _May Be Habit Forming_. Which always struck me as an anticlimax." Again he laughed, and then pried at his nose with one hairy, dark finger. "It's a strange world," he murmured. "Very strange." Ben had a little more of the Seagram's VO. It had begun to fill him with a familiar warm glow. He felt himself beginning to ignore Dr. Babble and Betty Jo. He sank into the privacy of his own mind, his own being, and it was a good feeling. Tony Dunkelwelt, photographer and soil-sample specialist, put his head in the door and called, "There's another noser landing. It must be Morley." The screen door banged shut as Dunkelwelt scuttled off. Half-rising to her feet, Betty Jo said, "We'd better go. So at last, we're finally all here." Dr. Babble rose, too. "Come on, Babble," she said, and started toward the door. "And you, Mr. Eighth-Part-Indian-Tallchief." Ben drank down the rest of his coffee and Seagram's VO and got up, dizzily. A moment later and he was following them out the door and into the light of day. 4 Shutting off the retrojets Seth Morley shuddered, then unfastened his seat belt. Pointing, he instructed Mary to do the same. "I know," Mary said, "what to do. You don't have to treat me like a child." "You're sore at me," Morley said, "even though I navigated us here perfectly. The whole way." "You were on automatic pilot and you followed the beam," she said archly. "But you're right, I should be grateful." Her tone of voice did not sound grateful, however. But he did not care. He had other things on his mind. He manually unbolted the hatch. Green sunlight streamed in and he saw, shielding his eyes, a barren landscape of meager trees and even more meager brush. Off to the left a gaggle of unimpressive buildings jutted irregularly. The colony. People were approaching the noser, a gang of them. Some of them waved and he waved back. "Hello," he said, stepping down the iron pins and dropping to the ground. Turning, he began to help Mary out, but she shook him loose and descended without assistance. "Hi," a plain, brownish girl called as she approached. "We're glad to see you--you're the last!" "I'm Seth Morley," he said. "And this is Mary, my wife." "We know," the plain, brownish girl said, nodding. "Glad to meet you, I'll introduce you to everyone." She indicated a muscular youth nearby. "Ignatz Thugg." "Glad to meet you." Morley shook hands with him. 'I'm Seth Morley and this is my wife Mary." "I'm Betty Jo Berm," the plain, brownish girl said. "And this gentleman--" She directed his attention toward an elderly man with stooped, fatigue posture. "Bert Kosler, our custodian." "Glad to meet you, Mr. Kosler." Vigorous handshake. "I'm glad to meet you, too, Mr. Morley. And Mrs. Morley. I hope you will enjoy it here." "Our photographer and soil-sample expert, Tony Dunkelwelt." Miss Berm pointed out a long-snouted teenager who glared sullenly and did not extend his hand. "Hello," Seth Morley said to him. "Lo." The boy glowered down at his own feet. "Maggie Walsh, our specialist in theology." "Glad to meet you, Miss Walsh." Vigorous handshake. What a really nice-looking woman, Morley thought to himself. And here came another attractive woman, this one wearing a sweater stretched tight over her peek-n-squeeze bra. "What's your field?" he asked her as they shook hands. "Clerical work and typing. My name is Suzanne." "What's your last name?" "Smart." "That's a nice name." "I don't think so. They call me Susie Dumb, which isn't really all that funny." "I don't think it's funny at all," Seth Morley said. His wife nudged him violently in the ribs and, being welltrained, he at once cut his conversation with Miss Smart short and turned to greet a skinny, rat-eyed individual who held out a wedge-shaped hand which appeared to have sharpened, tapered edges. He felt an involuntary refusal arise within him. This was not a hand he wanted to shake, and not a person he wanted to know. "Wade Frazer," the rat-eyed individual said. "I'm acting as the settlement's psychologist. By the way--I've done an introductory T.A.T. test on everyone as they've arrived. I'd like to do one on both of you, possibly later today." "Sure," Seth Morley said, without conviction. "This gentleman," Miss Berm said, "is our doctor, Milton G. Babble of Alpha 5. Say hello to Dr. Babble, Mr. Morley." "Glad to meet you, doctor." Morley shook hands. "You're a bit overweight, Mr. Morley," Dr. Babble said. "Hmm," Morley said. An elderly woman, extremely tall and straight, came out of the group, moving with the aid of a cane. "Mr. Morley," she said, and extended a light, limp hand to Seth Morley. "I am Roberta Rockingham, the sociologist. It's a pleasure to meet you, and I do hope you had a pleasurable voyage here with not too much trouble." "We did fine." Morley accepted her little hand and delicately shook it. She must be 110 years old, by the look of her, he said to himself. How can she function still? How did she get here? He could not picture her piloting a noser across interplanetary space. "What is the purpose of this colony?" Mary asked. "We'll find out in a couple of hours," Miss Berm said. "As soon as Glen--Glen Belsnor, our electronics and computer expert--is able to raise the slave satellite orbiting this planet." "You mean you don't know?" Seth Morley said. "They never told you?" "No, Mr. Morley," Mrs. Rockingham said in her deep, elderly voice. "But we'll know now, and we've waited so long. It'll be such a delight to know why all of us are here. Don't you think so, Mr. Morley? I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful for all of us to know our purpose?" "Yes," he said. "So you do agree with me, Mr. Morley. Oh, I think that's so nice that we can all agree." To Seth Morley she said in a low, meaningful voice, "That's the difficulty, I'm afraid, Mr. Morley. We have no common purpose. Interpersonal activity has been at a low ebb but of course it will pick up, now that we can--" She bent her head to cough briefly into a diminutive handkerchief. "Well, it really is so nice," she finished at last. "I don't agree," Frazer said. "My preliminary testing indicates that by and large this is an inherently ego-oriented group. As a whole, Morley, they show what appears to be an innate tendency to avoid responsibility. It's hard for me to see why some of them were chosen." A grimy, tough-looking individual in work clothes said, "I notice you don't say 'us.' You say 'they.' "Us, they." The psychologist gestured convulsively. "You show obsessive traits. That's another overall unusual statistic for this group: you're all hyper-obsessive." "I don't think so," the grimy individual said in a level but firm voice. "I think what it is is that you're nuts. Giving those tests all the time has warped your mind. That started all of them talking. Anarchy had broken out. Going up to Miss Berm, Seth Morley said, "Who's in charge of this colony? You?" He had to repeat it twice before she heard. "No one has been designated," she answered loudly, over the noise of the group quarrel. "That's one of our problems. That's one of the things we want to--" Her voice trailed off in the general din. "At Betelgeuse 4 we had cucumbers, and we didn't grow them from moonbeams, the way you hear. For one thing, Betelgeuse 4 has no moon, so that should answer that." "I've never seen him. And I hope I never will." "You'll see him someday." "The fact that we have a linguist on our staff suggests that there're sentient organisms here, but so far we don't know anything because our expeditions have been informal, sort of like picnics, not in any way scientific. Of course, that'll change when--" "Nothing changes. Despite Specktowsky's theory of God entering history and starting time into motion again." "No, you've got that wrong. The whole struggle before the Intercessor came took place in time, a very long time. It's just that everything has happened so fast since then, and it's so relatively easy, now in the Specktowsky Period, to directly contact one of the Manifestations. That's why in a sense our time is different from even the first two thousand years since the Intercessor first appeared." "If you want to talk about that, talk to Maggie Walsh. Theological matters don't interest me." "You can say that again. Mr. Morley, have you ever had contact with any of the Manifestations?" "Yes, as a matter of fact I have. Just the other day--I guess it was Wednesday by Tekel Upharsin time--the Walker-on-Earth approached me to inform me that I had been given a faulty noser, the result of the using of which would have cost my wife and I our lives." "So it saved you. Well, you must be very pleased to know that it would intercede for you that way. It must be a wonderful feeling." "These buildings are built lousy. They're already ready to fall down. We can't get it warm when we need warm; we can't cool it when we need cool. You know what I think? I think this place was built to last only a very short time. Whatever the hell we're here for we won't be long; or rather, if we're here long we'll have to construct new installations, right down to the BX cable." "Some insect or plant squeaks in the night. It'll keep you awake for the first day or so, Mr. and Mrs. Morley. Yes, I'm trying to speak to you, but it's so hard with all the noise. By 'day' of course I mean the twentyfour-hour period. I don't mean 'daytime' because it's not in the daytime that it squeaks. You'll see." "Hey Morley, don't get like the others and start calling Susie 'dumb.' If there's one thing she's not it's dumb." "Pretty, too." "And do you notice how her--" "I noticed, but--my wife, you see. She takes a dim view so perhaps we'd better drop the subject." "Okay, if you say so. What field are you in, Mr. Morley?" "I'm a qualified marine biologist." "Pardon? Oh, were you speaking to me, Mr. Morley? I can't quite make it out. If you could say it again." "Yeah, you'll have to speak up. She's a little deaf." "What I said was--" "You're frightening her. Don't stand so close to her." "Can I get a cup of coffee or a glass of milk anywhere?" "Ask Maggie Walsh, she'll fix one for you. Or B.J. Berm." "Oh Christ, if I can just get the damn pot to shut off when it's hot. It's been just boiling the coffee over and over again." "I don't see why our communal coffee pot won't work, they perfected them back in the early part of the twentieth century. What's left to know that we don't know?" "Think of it as being like Newton's Color Theory. Everything about color that could be known was known by 1800." "Yes, you always bring that up. You're obsessive about it." "And then Land came along with his two-light-source and intensity theory, and what had seemed a closed field was busted into pieces." "You mean there may be things about homeostatic coffee pots that we don't know? That we just think we know?" "Something along that order." And so on. Seth Morley groaned. He moved away from the group, toward a tumble of great water-smoothed rocks. A body of water had been here at some time, anyhow. Although perhaps by now it was entirely gone. The grimy, lanky individual in work clothes broke away from the group and followed after him. "Glen Beisnor," he said, extending his hand. "Seth Morley." "We're a friggin' mob, Morley. It's been like this since I got here, right after Frazer came." Belsnor spat into nearby weeds. "You know what Frazer tried to do? Since he was the first one here he tried to set himself up as the group-leader; he even told us--told me, for example--that he 'Understood his instructions to mean that he would be in charge.' We almost believed him. It sort of made sense. He was the first one to arrive and he started giving those friggin' tests to everybody and then making loud comments about our 'statistical abnormalities,' as the creep puts it." "A competent psychologist, a reliable one, would never make a public statement of his findings." A man not yet introduced to Seth Morley came walking up, hand extended. He appeared to be in his early forties, with a slightly large jaw, ridged brows, and shiny black hair. "I'm Ben Tallchief," he informed Morley. "I arrived just before you did." He seemed to Seth Morley to be a little unsteady; as if, Morley reflected, he's had a drink or three. He put out his hand and they shook. I like this man, he thought to himself. Even if he has had a couple. He has a different aura from the others. But, he thought, maybe they were all right before they got here, and something here made them change. If that is so, he thought, it will change us, too; Tallchief, Mary and I. Eventually. The thought did not please him. "Seth Morley, here," he said. "Marine biologist, formerly attached to the staff of Tekel Upharsin Kibbutz. And your field is--" Tallchief said, "I am a qualified naturalist, class B. Aboard ship there was little to do, and it was a ten year flight. So I prayed, via the ship's transmitter, and the relay picked it up and carried it to the Intercessor. Or perhaps it was the Mentufacturer. But I think the former, because there was no rollback of time." "It's interesting to hear that you're here because of a prayer," Seth Morley said. "In my case I was visited by the Walker-on-Earth at the time in which I was busy finding an adequate noser for the trip here. I picked one out, but it wasn't adequate; the Walker said it would never have gotten Mary and myself here." He felt hungry. "Can we get a meal pried loose from this outfit?" he asked Tallchief. "We haven't eaten today; I've been busy piloting the noser for the last twenty-six hours. I only picked up the beam at the end." Glen Belsnor said, "Maggie Walsh will be glad to slap together what passes as a meal around here. Something along the lines of frozen peas, frozen ersatz veal steak, and coffee from the goddamn unhomeostatic friggin' coffee machine, which never worked even at the start. Will that do?" "It will have to," Morley said, feeling gloom. "The magic departs fast," Ben Tallchief said. "Pardon?" "The magic of this place." Tallchief made a sweeping gesture which took in the rocks, the gnarly green trees, the wobble of low hut-like buildings which made up the colony's sole installations. "As you can see." "Don't sell it completely short," Belsnor spoke up. "These aren't the only structures on this planet." "You mean there's a native civilization here?" Morley asked, interested. "I mean there're things out there that we don't understand. There is a building. I've caught a glimpse of it, one time on a prowl, and I was going back but I couldn't find it again. A big gray building--really big--with turrets, windows, I would guess about eight floors high. I'm not the only one who's seen it," he added defensively, "Berm saw it; Walsh saw it; Frazer says he saw it, but he's probably horse-crudding us. He just doesn't want to look like he's left out." Morley said. "Was the building inhabited?" "I couldn't tell. We couldn't see that much from where we were; none of us really got that close. It was very--" He gestured. "Forbidding." "I'd like to see it," Tallchief said. "Nobody's leaving the compound today," Belsnor said. "Because now we can contact the satellite and get our instructions. And that comes first; that what really matters." He spat into the weeds once more, deliberately and thoughtfully. And with accurate aim. Dr. Milton Babble examined his wristwatch and thought, It's four-thirty and I'm tired. Low blood sugar, he decided. It's always a sign of that when you get tired in the late afternoon. I should try to get some glucose into myself before it becomes serious. The brain, he thought, simply can't function without adequate blood sugar. Maybe, he thought, I'm becoming diabetic. That could be; I have the right genetic history. "What's the matter, Babble?" Maggie Walsh said, seated beside him in the austere briefing hall of their meager settlement. "Sick again?" She winked at him, which at once made him furious. "What's it now? Are you wasting away, like Camille, from T.B.?" "Hypoglycemia," he said, studying his hand as it rested on the arm of his chair. "Plus a certain amount of extrapyramidal neuromuscular activity. Motor restlessness of the dystonic type. Very uncomfortable." He hated the sensation: his thumb twitching in the familiar pellet-rolling motion, his tongue curling up within his mouth, dryness in his throat-- dear God, he thought, is there no end of this? Anyhow the herpes simplex keratitis which had afflicted him during the previous week had abated. He was glad of that (thank God). "Your body is to you like what a house is for a woman," Maggie Walsh said. "You keep experiencing it as if it were an environment, rather than--" "The somatic environment is one of the realest environments in which we live," Babble said testily. "It's our first environment, as infants, and then as we decline into old age, and the Form Destroyer corrodes our vitality and shape, we once against discover that it little matters what goes on in the so-called outside world when our somatic essence is in jeopardy." "Is this why you became a doctor?" "It's more complex than a simple cause-and-effect relationship. That supposes a duality. My choice of vocations--" "Pipe down over there," Glen Belsnor yapped, pausing in his fiddlings. Before him rested the settlement's transmitter, and he had been trying for several hours to get it functioning. "If you want to talk clear out." Several other people in the hail added noisy agreement. "Babble," Ignatz Thugg said from the seat in which he sprawled, "you're well-named." He barked a canine-like laugh. "You, too," Tony Dunkelwelt said to Thugg. "Pipe down!" Glen Beisnor yelled, his face red and steaming as he poked the innards of the transmitter: "Or by God we'll never get our poop-sheet from the friggin' satellite. If you don't shut up I'm going to come over there and take you apart instead of taking this mass of metallic guts apart. And I'd enjoy it." Babble rose, turned and left the hall. In the cold, long sunlight of late afternoon he stood smoking his pipe (being careful not to start up any pyloric activity) and contemplated their situation. Our lives, he thought, are in the hands of little men like Belsnor; here, they rule. The kingdom of the one-eyed, he thought acidly, in which the blind are king. What a life. Why did I come here? he asked himself. No answer immediately came, only a wail of confusion from within him: drifting shapes that complained and cried out like indignant patients in a charity ward. The shrill shapes plucked at him, drawing him back into the world of former times, into the restlessness of his last years on Orionus 17, back to the days with Margo, the last of his office nurses with whom he had conducted a long, inelegant affair, a misadventure which had ended up in a heap of tangled tragicomedy--both for him and for her. In the end she had left him . . . or had she? Actually, he reflected, everyone leaves everyone when something as messy and jury-rigged as that terminates. I was lucky, he thought, to get out of it how and when I did. She could have made a lot more trouble. As it was, she had seriously jeopardized his physical health, just by protein depletion alone. That's right, he thought. It's time for my wheat germ oil, my vitamin E. Must go to my quarters. And, while I'm there, I'll take a few glucose tablets to counterbalance my hypoglycemia. Assuming I don't pass out on the way. And if I did, who would care? What in fact would they do? I'm essential to their survival, whether they recognize it or not. I'm vital to them, but are they vital to me? Yes, in the sense that Glen Belsnor is; vital because they can do, or allegedly can do, skilled tasks necessary for the maintenance of this stupid little incestuous small town that we're running here. This pseudofamily that doesn't work as a family in any respect. Thanks to the meddlers from outside. I'm going to have to tell Tallchief and--what's his name? Morley. Tell Tallchief and Morley and Morley's wife--who is not bad-looking at all--about the meddlers from outside, about the building which I have seen . . . seen close enough to read the writing above the entrance. Which no one else has. Insofar as I know. He started down the gravel path toward his quarters. As he came up onto the plastic porch of the living quarters he saw four people in a gathering together: Susie Smart, Maggie Walsh, Tallchief and Mr. Morley. Morley was talking, his tubshaped middle protruding like a huge inguinal hernia. I wonder what he lives on, Babble said to himself. Potatoes, broiled steak, with ketchup on everything, and beer. You can always tell a beer drinker. They have the perforated facial skin, perforated where the hair grows, and the bags under their eyes. They look, as he looks, as if they have an edema puffing them out. And renal damage as well. And of course the ruddy skin. A self-indulgent man, he thought, like Morley, doesn't in any way understand--can't understand--that he's pouring poisons into his body. Minute embolisms . . . damage to critical areas of the brain. And yet they keep on, these oral types. Regression to a pre-reality testing stage. Maybe it's a misplaced biological survival mechanism: for the good of the species they weed themselves out. Leaving the women to more competent, and more advanced, male types. He walked up to the four of them, stood with his hands in his pockets, listening. Morley was relating the minutiae of a theological experience which he evidently had had. Or pretended to have had. ". . . 'my dear friend,' he called me. Obviously I mattered to him. He helped me with the reloading . . . it took a long time and we talked. His voice was low but I could understand him perfectly. He never used any excess words and he could express himself perfectly; there was no mystery about it, like you sometimes hear. Anyhow, we loaded and talked. And he wanted to bless me. Why? Because--he said--I was exactly the kind of person who mattered to him. He was completely matter-of-fact about it; he simply stated it. 'You are the kind of person whom I think matters,' he said, or words to that effect. 'I'm proud of you,' he said. 'Your great love of animals, your compassion toward lower life forms, pervades your entire mentality. Compassion is the basis of the person who has risen from the confines of the Curse. A personality type like yours is exactly what we are looking for.' " Morley paused, then. "Go on," Maggie Walsh said, in a fascinated voice. "And then he said a strange thing," Morley said. "He said, 'As I have saved you, saved your life, by my own compassion, I know that your own great capacity for compassion will enable you to save lives, both physically and spiritually, of others.' Presumably he meant here at Delmak-O." "But he didn't say," Susie Smart said "He didn't have to," Morley said. "I knew what he meant; I understood everything he said. In fact I could communicate a lot more clearly with him than with most of the people I've known. I don't mean any of you--hell, I don't really know you, yet--but you see what I mean. There weren't any transcendental symbolic passages, no metaphysical nonsense like they used to talk about before Specktowsky wrote The Book. Specktowsky was right; I can verify it on the basis of my own experiences with him. With the Walker." "Then you've seen it before," Maggie Walsh said. "Several times." Dr. Milton Babble opened his mouth and said, "I've seen it seven times. And I encountered the Mentufacturer once. So if you add it together I've had eight experiences with the One True Deity." The four of them gazed at him with various expressions. Susie Smart looked skeptical: Maggie Walsh showed absolute disbelief; both Tallchief and Morley seemed relatively interested. "And twice," Babble said, "with the Intercessor. So it's ten experiences in all. Throughout my whole life, of course." "From what you heard from Mr. Morley about his experience," Tallchief said, "did it sound similar to your own?" Babble kicked at a pebble on the porch; it bounced away, struck the nearby wall, fell silent, then. "Fairly much so. By and large. Yes, I think we can in some part accept what Morley says. And yet--" He hesitated meaningfully. "I'm afraid I'm skeptical. Was it truly the Walker, Mr. Morley? Could it not have been a passing itinerant laborer who wanted you to think he was the Walker? Had you thought of that? Oh, I'm not denying that the Walker appears again and again among us; my own experiences testify to that." "I know he was," Morley said, looking angry, "because of what he said about my cat." "Ah, your cat." Babble smiled both within and without; he felt deep and hearty amusement transverse his circulatory system. "So this is where the business about your 'great compassion for lower life forms' comes from." Looking nettled and even more angrily outraged Morley said, "How would a passing tramp know about my cat? Anyhow, there aren't any passing tramps at Tekel Upharsin. Everybody works; that's what a kibbutz is." He looked, now, hurt and unhappy. The voice of Glen Belsnor dinned in the darkened distance behind them. "Come on in! I've made contact with the goddam satellite! I'm about to have it run its audio tapes!" Babble, as he started walking, said, "I didn't think he could do it." How good he felt, although he did not know exactly why. Something to do with Morley and his awe-inspiring account of meeting the Walker. Which now did not seem awe-inspiring after all. Once it had been scrupulously investigated, and by a person with adult, critical judgment. The five of them entered the briefing hall and seated themselves among the others. From the speakers of Belsnor's radio equipment sharp static punctuated with random voice-noises sounded. The din hurt Babble's ears, but he said nothing. He displayed the formal attention which the technician had demanded. "What we're picking up right now is a scatter track," Belsnor informed them over the racket. "The tape hasn't started to run yet; it won't do that until I give the satellite the right signal." "Start the tape," Wade Frazer said. "Yeah, Glen, start the tape." Voices from here and there in the chamber. "Okay," Belsnor said. He reached out, touched control knobs on the panel before him. Lights winked on and off as servo-assist mechanisms switched into activity aboard the satellite. From the speakers a voice said, "Greetings to the DelmakO colony from General Treaton of Interplan West." "That's it," Belsnor said. "That's the tape." "Shut up, Belsnor. We're listening." "It can be run back any number of times," Beisnor said. "You have now completed your recruiting," General Treaton of Interplan West said. "This completion was anticipated by us at Interplan R.A.V. to occur not later than the fourteenth of September, Terran statute time. First, I would like to explain why the Delmak-O colony was created, by whom and for what purpose. It is basically--" All at once the voice stopped. "Wheeeeee," the speakers blared. "Ughhhhhh. Akkkkkkkkk." Belsnor stared at the receiving gear with mute dismay. "Ubbbbb," the speakers said; static burst in, receded as Belsnor twisted dials, and then--silence. After a pause Ignatz Thugg guffawed. "What is it, Glen?" Tony Dunkelwelt said. Beisnor said thickly, "There are only two tape-heads used in transmitters such as are aboard the satellite. An erase head, mounted first on the transport, then a replay-record head. What has happened is that the replay-record head has switched from replay to record. So it is erasing the tape an inch ahead automatically. There's no way I can switch it off; it's on record and that's where it'll probably stay. Until the whole tape is erased." "But if it erases," Wade Frazer said, "then it'll be gone forever. No matter what you do." "That's right," Glen Belsnor said. "It's erasing and then recording nothing. I can't get it out of the record mode. Look." He snapped several switches open and shut. "Nothing. The head is jammed. So much for that." He slammed a major relay into place, cursed, sat back, removed his glasses and wiped his forehead. "Christ," he said. "Well, so it goes." The speakers twittered briefly with cross talk, then fell silent again. No one in the room spoke. There was nothing to say. 5 "What we can do," Glen Belsnor said, "is to transmit to the relay network, transmit so it'll be carried back to Terra, and inform General Treaton at Interplan West of what's happened, that our briefing of his instructions has failed to take place. Under the circumstances they'll undoubtedly be willing--and able--to fire off a communications rocket in our direction. Containing a second tape which we can run through the transport here." He pointed to the tape deck mounted within the radio gear. "How long will that take?" Susie Smart asked. "I haven't ever tried to raise the relay network from here." Glen Belsnor said, "I don't know; we'll have to see. Maybe we can do it right away. But at the most it shouldn't take more than two or three days. The only problem would be--" He rubbed his bristly chin. "There may be a security factor. Treaton may not want this request run through the relay network, where anyone with a class one receiver can pick it up. His reaction then would be to ignore our request." "If they do that," Babble spoke up, "we ought to pack up and leave here. Immediately." "Leave how?" Ignatz Thugg said, grinning. Nosers, Seth Morley thought. We have no vehicles here except inert and fuel-zero nosers, and even if we could round up the fuel--say by syphoning from every fuel tank to fill up one--they don't have tracking gear by which we could pilot a course. They would have to use Delmak-O as one of two coordinates, and Delmak-O is not on Interplan West charts--hence no tracking value. He thought, Is this why they insisted on our coming in nosers? They're experimenting with us, he thought wildly. That's what this is: an experiment. Maybe there never were any instructions on the satellite's tape. Maybe it all was planned. "Make a sample try at picking up the relay people," Tallchief said. "Maybe you can get them right now." "Why not?" Belsnor said. He adjusted dials, clamped an earphone to the side of his head, opened circuits, closed others down. In absolute silence the others waited and watched. As if, Morley thought, our lives depend on this. And--perhaps they do. "Anything?" Betty Jo Berm asked at last. Belsnor said, "Nothing. I'll switch it on video." The small screen jumped into life. Mere lines, visual static. "This is the frequency on which the relay operates. We should pick them up." "But we're not," Babble said. "No. We're not." Belsnor continued to spin dials. "It's not like the old days," he said, "when you could tinker with a variable condenser until you got your signal. This is complex." All at once he shut off the central power supply; the screen blanked out and, from the speakers, the snatches of static ceased. "What's the matter?" Mary Morley asked. "We're not on the air," Belsnor said. "What?" Startled exclamations from virtually all of them. "We're not transmitting. I can't pull them and if we're not on the air they sure as hell aren't going to pull us." He leaned back, convulsed with disgust. "It's a plot, a friggin' plot." "You mean that literally?" Wade Frazer demanded. "You mean this is intentional?" "I didn't assemble our transmitter," Glenn Belsnor said. "I didn't hook up our receiving equipment. For the last month, since I've been here, in fact, I've been making sample tests; I've picked up several transmissions from operators in this star system, and I was able to transmit back. Everything seemed to be working normally. And then this." He stared down, his face working. "Oh," he said abruptly. He nodded. "Yes, I understand what happened." "Is it bad?" Ben Tallchief asked. Belsnor said, "When the satellite received my signal to activate the audio tape construct and complying transmitter, the satellite sent a signal back. A signal to this gear." He indicated the receiver and transmitter rising up before him. "The signal shut down everything. It overrode my instructions. We ain't receiving and we ain't transmitting, no matter what I tell this junk to do. It's off the air, and it'll probably take another signal from the satellite to get it functioning again." He shook his head. "What can you do but admire it?" he said. "We transmit our initial instruction to the satellite; in response it sends one back. It's like chess: move and respond. I started the whole thing going. Like a rat in a cage, trying to find the lever that drops food. Rather than the one that transmits an electric shock." His voice was bitter, and laden with defeat. "Dismantle the transmitter and receiver," Seth Morley said. "Override the override by removing it." "It probably--hell, undoubtedly--has a destruct component in it. It's either already destroyed vital elements or it will when I try to search for it. I have no spare parts; if it's destroyed a circuit here and there I can't do anything toward fixing it." "The automatic pilot beam," Morley said. "That I followed to get here. You can send out the message on it." "Automatic pilot beams work for the first eighty or ninety thousand miles and then peter out. Isn't that where you picked up yours?" "More or less," he admitted. "We're totally isolated," Beslnor said. "And it was done in a matter of minutes." "What we must do," Maggie Walsh said, "is to prepare a joint prayer. We can probably get through on pineal gland emanation, if we make it short." "I can help on preparing it, if that's the criterion," Betty Jo Berm said. "Since I'm a trained linguist." "As a last resort," Belsnor said. "Not as a last resort," Maggie Walsh said. "As an effective, proven method of getting help. Mr. Tallchief, for example, got here because of a prayer." "But it passed along the relay," Belsnor said. "We have no way to reach the relay." "You have no faith in prayer?" Wade Frazer asked, nastily. Belsnor said, "I have no faith in prayer that's not electronically augmented. Even Specktowsky admitted that; if a prayer is to be effective it must be electronically transmitted through the network of god-worlds so that all Manifestations are reached." "I suggest," Morley said, "that we transmit our joint prayer as far as we can through the automatic pilot beam. If we can project it eighty or ninety thousand miles out it should be easier for the Deity to pick it up . . . since gravity works in inverse proportion to the power of the prayer, meaning that if you can get the prayer away from a planetary body--and ninety thousand miles is reasonably away--then there is a good mathematical chance of the various Manifestations receiving it, and Specktowsky mentions this; I forget where. At the end, I think, in one of his addenda." Wade Frazer said. "It's against Terran law to doubt the power of prayer. A violation of the civil code of all Interplan West stages and holdings." "And you'd report it," Ignatz Thugg said. "Nobody's doubting the efficacy of prayer," Ben Tallchief said, eyeing Frazer with overt hostility. "We're merely disagreeing on the most effective way of handling it." He got to his feet. "I need a drink," he said. "Goodbye." He left the room, tottering a little as he went. "A good idea," Susie Smart said to Seth Morley. "I think I'll go along, too." She rose, smiling at him in an automatic way, a smile devoid of feeling. "This is really terrible, isn't it? I can't believe that General Treaton could have authorized this deliberately; it must be a mistake. An electronic breakdown that they don't know about. Don't you agree?" "General Treaton, from all I've heard," Morley said, "is a thoroughly reputable man." Actually, he had never heard of General Treaton before, but it seemed to him a good thing to say, in order to try to cheer her up. They all needed cheering up, and if it helped to believe that General Treaton was definitely reputable then so be it; he was all for it. Faith in secular matters, as well as in theological matters, was a necessity. Without it one could not go on living. To Maggie Walsh, Dr. Babble said, "Which aspect of the Deity should we pray to?" "If you want time rolled back, say to the moment before any of us accepted this assignment," Maggie said, "then it would be to the Mentufacturer. If we want the Deity to stand in for us, collectively to replace us in this situation, then it would be the Intercessor. If we individually want help in finding our way out--" "All three," Bert Kosler said in a shaking voice. "Let the Deity decide which part of himself he wishes to use." "He may not want to use any," Susie Smart said tartly. "We better decide on our own. Isn't that part of the art of praying?" "Yes," Maggie Walsh said. "Somebody write this down," Wade Frazer said. "We should start by saying, 'Thank you for all the help you have given us in the past. We hesitate to bother you again, what with all you have to do all the time, but our situation is as follows.' " He paused, reflecting. "What is our situation?" he asked Belsnor. "Do we just want the transmitter fixed?" "More than that," Babble said. "We want to get entirely out of here, and never have to see Delmak-O again." "If the transmitter's working," Belsnor said, "we can do that ourselves." He gnawed on a knuckle of his right hand. "I think we ought to settle for getting replacement parts for the transmitter and do the rest on our own. The less asked for in a prayer the better. Doesn't The Book say that?" He turned toward Maggie Walsh. "On page 158," Maggie said, "Specktowsky says, 'The soul of brevity--the short time we are alive--is wit. And as regards the art of prayer, wit runs inversely proportional to length.' Belsnor said, "Let's simply say, 'Walker-on-Earth, help us find spare transmitter parts.' "The thing to do," Maggie Walsh said, "is to ask Mr. Tallchief to word the prayer, inasmuch as he was so successful in his recent previous prayer. Evidently he knows how to phrase properly." "Get Tallchief," Babble said. "He's probably moving his possessions from his noser to his living quarters. Somebody go find him." "I'll go," Seth Morley said. He rose, made his way out of the briefing chamber and into the evening darkness. "That was a very good idea, Maggie," he heard Babble saying, and other voices joined his. A chorus of agreement went up from those gathered in the briefing room. He continued on, feeling his way cautiously; it would be so easy to get lost in this still unfamiliar colony site. Maybe I should have let one of the others go, he said to himself. A light shone in the window of a building ahead. Maybe he's in there, Seth Morley said to himself, and made his way toward the light. Ben Tallchief finished his drink, yawned, picked at a place on his throat, yawned once again and clumsily rose to his feet. Time to start moving, he said to himself. I hope, he thought, I can find my noser in the dark. He stepped outdoors, found the gravel path with his feet, began moving in the direction which he supposed the nosers to be. Why no guide lights around here? he asked himself, and then realized that the other colonists had been too preoccupied to turn the lights on. The breakdown of the transmitter had ensnared the attention of every one of them, and justly so. Why aren't I in there? he asked himself. Functioning as part of the group. But the group didn't function as a group anyhow; it was always a finite number of self-oriented individuals squalling with one another. With such a bunch he felt as if he had no roots, no common source. He felt nomadic and in need of exercise; right now something called to him: it had called him from the briefing room and back to his living quarters, and now it sent him trudging through the dark, searching for his noser. A vague area of darkness moved ahead of him, and, against the less-dark sky, a figure appeared. "Tallchief?" "Yes," he said. "Who is it?" He peered. "Morley. They sent me to find you. They want you to compose the prayer, since you had such good luck a couple of days ago." "No more prayers for me," Tallchief said, and clamped his teeth in bitterness. "Look where that last prayer got me-- stuck here with all of you. No offense, I just mean--" He gestured. "It was a cruel and inhuman act to grant that prayer, considering the situation here. And it must have known it." "I can understand your feeling," Morley said. "Why don't you do it? You just recently met the Walker; it would be smarter to use you." "I'm no good at prayers. I didn't summon the Walker; it was his idea to come to me." "How about a drink?" Tallchief said. "And then maybe you could give me a hand with my stuff, moving it to my quarters and like that." "I have to move my own stuff." "That's an outstanding cooperative attitude." "If you had helped me--" Tallchief said, "I'll see you later." He continued on, groping and flailing in the darkness, until all at once he stumbled against a clanking hull. A noser. He had found the right area; now to pick out his own ship. He looked back. Morley had gone; he was alone. Why couldn't the guy have helped me? he asked himself. I'm going to need another person for most of the cartons. Let's see, he pondered. If I can turn on the landing lights of the noser I'll be able to see. He located the locking wheel of the hatch, spun it, tugged the hatch open. Automatically the safety lights came on; now he could see. Maybe I'll just move in my clothes, bathroom articles and my copy of The Book, he decided. I'll read The Book until I get ready to go to sleep. I'm tired; piloting the noser here took everything out of me. That and the transmitter failing. Utter defeat. Why did I ask him to help me? he wondered. I don't know him, he hardly knows me. Getting my stuff moved is my own problem. He has problems of his own. He picked up a carton of books, began to lug it away from the parked noser in the general direction--he hoped--of his living quarters. I've got to get a flashlight, he decided as he waddled along. And hell, I forgot to turn on the landing lights. This is all going wrong, he realized. I might as well go back and join the others. Or I could move this one carton and then have another drink, and possibly by that time most of them would have come out of the briefing room and could help me. Grunting and perspiring, he made his way up the gravel path toward the dark and inert structure which provided them with their living quarters. No lights on. Everyone was still involved in pasting together an adequate prayer. Thinking about that he had to laugh. They'll probably haggle about it all night, he decided, and laughed again, this time with angry disgust. He found his own living quarters, by virtue of the fact that the door hung open. Entering, he dropped the carton of books to the floor, sighed, stood up, turned on all the lights . . . standing there he surveyed the small room with its dresser and bed. The bed did not please him; it looked small and hard. "Christ," he said, and seated himself on it. Lifting several books from the carton he rummaged about until he came onto the bottle of Peter Dawson scotch; he unscrewed the lid and drank somberly from the bottle itself. Through the open door he gazed out at the nocturnal sky; he saw the stars haze over with atmospheric disturbances, then clear for a moment. It is certainly hard, he thought, to make out stars through the refractions of a planetary atmosphere. A great gray shape merged with the doorway, blotting out the stars. It held a tube and it pointed the tube at him. He saw a telescopic sight on it and a trigger mechanism. Who was it? What was it? He strained to see, and then he heard a faint pop. The gray shape receded and once more stars appeared. But now they had changed. He saw two stars collapse against one another and a nova form; it flared up and then, as he watched, it began to die out. He saw it turn from a furiously blazing ring into a dim core of dead iron and then he saw it cool into darkness. More stars cooled with it; he saw the force of entropy, the method of the Destroyer of Forms, retract the stars into dull reddish coals and then into dust-like silence. A shroud of thermal energy hung uniformly over the world, over this strange and little world for which he had no love or use. It's dying, he realized. The universe. The thermal haze spread on and on until it became only a disturbance, nothing more; the sky glowed weakly with it and then flickered. Even the uniform thermal disbursement was expiring. How strange and goddam awful, he thought. He got to his feet, moved a step toward the door. And there, on his feet, he died. They found him an hour later. Seth Morley stood with his wife at the far end of the knot of people jammed into the small room and said to himself, _To keep him from helping with the prayer_. "The same force that shut down the transmitter," Ignatz Thugg said. "They knew; they knew if he phrased the prayer it would go through. Even without the relay." He looked gray and frightened. All of them did, Seth Morley noticed. Their faces, in the light of the room, had a leaden, stone-like cast. Like, he thought, thousand-year-old idols. Time, he thought, is shutting down around us. It is as if the future is gone, for all of us. Not just for Tallchief. "Babble, can you do an autopsy?" Betty Jo Berm asked. "To a certain extent." Dr. Babble had seated himself beside Tallchief 's body and was touching him here and there. "No visible blood. No sign of an injury. His death could be natural, you all realize; it might be that he had a cardiac condition. Or, for example, he might have been killed by a heat gun at close range . . . but then, if that's the case, I'll find the burn marks." He unfastened Tallchief's collar, reached down to explore the chest area. "Or one of us might have done it," he said. "Don't rule that out." "They did it," Maggie Walsh said. "Possibly," Babble said. "I'll do what I can." He nodded to Thugg and Wade Frazer and Glen Belsnor. "Help me carry him into the clinic; I'll start the autopsy now." "None of us even knew him," Mary said. "I think I probably saw him last," Seth Morley said. "He wanted to bring his things from his noser here to his living area. I told him I'd help him later on, when I had time. He seemed to be in a bad mood; I tried to tell him we needed him to compose a prayer but he didn't seem interested. He just wanted to move his things." He felt acutely guilty. Maybe if I had helped him he'd still be alive, he said to himself. Maybe Babble's right; maybe it was a heart attack, brought on by moving heavy cartons. He kicked at the box of books, wondering if this box had done it--this box and his own refusal to help. Even when I was asked I wouldn't give it, he realized. "You didn't see any indication of a suicidal attitude at work, did you?" Dr. Babble asked. ''No." "Very strange," Babble said. He shook his head wearily. "Okay, let's get him to the infirmary." 6 The four men carried Tallchief's body across the dark, nocturnal compound. Cold wind licked at them and they shivered; they drew together against the hostile presence of Delmak-O--the hostile presence which had killed Ben Tallchief. Babble switched on lights here and there. At last they had Tallchief up on the high, metal-topped table. "I think we should retire to our individual living quarters and stay there until Dr. Babble has finished his autopsy," Susie Smart said, shivering. Wade Frazer spoke up. "Better if we stay together, at least until Dr. Babble's report is in. And I also think that under these unexpected circumstances, this terrible event in our lives, that we must immediately elect a leader, a strong one who can keep us together as a group, when in fact right now we are not, but should be--must be. Doesn't everyone agree?" After a pause Glen Belsnor said, "Yeah." "We can vote," Betty Jo Berm said. "In a democratic way. But I think we must be careful." She struggled to express herself. "We mustn't give a leader too much power. And we should be able to recall him when and if at any time we're not satisfied with him; then we can vote him out as our leader and elect someone else. But while he is leader we should obey him--we don't want him to be too weak, either. If he's too weak we'll just be like we are now: a mere collection of individuals who can't function together, even in the face of death." "Then let's get back to the briefing room," Tony Dunkelwelt said, "rather than to our personal quarters. So we can start casting votes. I mean, it or they could kill us before we have a leader; we don't want to wait." In a group they made their way somberly from Dr. Babble's infirmary to the briefing room. The transmitter and receiver were still on; each person, entering, heard the dull, low hum. "So big," Maggie Walsh said, gazing at the transmitter. "And so useless." "Do you think we should arm ourselves?" Bert Kosler said, plucking at Morley's sleeve. "If there's someone after us to kill all of us--" "Let's wait for Babble's autopsy report," Seth Morley said. Seating himself, Wade Frazer said in a business-like way, "We'll vote by a show of hands. Everybody sit down and be quiet and I'll read off our names and keep the tally. Is that satisfactory to everyone?" There was a sardonic undertone to his voice, and Seth Morley did not like it. Ignatz Thugg said, "You won't get it, Frazer. No matter how badly you want it. Nobody in this room is going to let somebody like you tell them what to do." He dropped into a chair, crossed his legs, and got a tobacco cigarette from his jacket pocket. As Wade Frazer read off the names and took the tally, several others made their own notations. They don't trust Frazer to make an accurate account, Seth Morley realized. He did not blame them. "The greatest number of votes for one person," Frazer said, when all the names had been read, "goes to Glen Belsnor." He dropped his tally sheet with a blatant sneer. . . as if, Morley thought, the psychologist is saying Go ahead and doom yourselves. It's your lives, if you want to toss them away. But it seemed to him that Belsnor was a good choice; on his own very limited knowledge he had himself voted for the electronics maintenance man. He was satisfied, even if Frazer was not. And by their relieved stir he guessed that most of the others were, too. "While we're waiting for Dr. Babble's report," Maggie Walsh said, "perhaps we should join in a group prayer for Mr. Tallchief 's psyche to be taken immediately into immortality." "Read from Specktowsky's Book," Betty Jo Berm said. She dipped into her pocket and brought out her own copy, which she passed to Maggie Walsh. "Read the part on page 70 about the Intercessor. Isn't it the Intercessor that we want to reach?" From memory, Maggie Walsh intoned the words which all of them knew. " 'By His appearance in history and creation, the Intercessor offered Himself as a sacrifice by which the Curse could be partially nullified. Satisfied as to the redemption of His creation by this manifestation of Himself, this signal of His great--but partial--victory, the Deity "died" and then remanifested Himself to indicate that He had overcome the Curse and hence death, and, having done this, moved up through the concentric circles back to God Himself.' And I will add another part which is pertinent. "The next--and last--period is the Day of Audit, in which the heavens will roll back like a scroll and each living thing-- and hence all creatures, both sentient man and man-like nonterrestrial organisms--will be reconciled with the original Deity, from whose unity of being everything has come (with the possible exception of the Form Destroyer).' "She paused a moment and then said, "Repeat what I say after me, all of you, either aloud or in your thoughts." They lifted their faces and gazed straight upward, in the accepted fashion. So that the Deity could hear them more readily. "We did not know Mr. Tallchief too well." They all said, "We did not know Mr. Tallchief too well." "But he seemed to be a fine man." They all said, "But he seemed to be a fine man." Maggie hesitated, reflected, then said, "Remove him from time and thereby make him immortal." "Remove him from time and thereby make him immortal." "Restore his form to that which he possessed before the Form Destroyer went to work on him." They all said, "Restore his form to that--" They broke off. Dr. Milton Babble had come into the briefing room, looking ruffled. "We must finish the prayer," Maggie said. "You can finish it some other time," Dr. Babble said. "I've been able to determine the cause of death." He consulted several sheets of paper which he had brought along. "Cause of death: vast inflammation of the bronchial passages, due to an unnatural amount of histamine in the blood, resulting in a stricture of the trachea; exact cause of death was suffocation as reaction to a heterogenic allergen. He must have been stung by an insect or brushed against a plant while he was unloading his noser. An insect or plant containing a substance to which he was violently allergic. Remember how sick Susie Smart was her first week here, from brushing against one of the nettle-like bushes? And Kosler." He gestured in the direction of the elderly custodian. "If he hadn't gotten to me as quick as he did he would be dead, too. With Tallchief the situation was against us; he had gone out by himself, at night, and there was no one around to react to his plight. He died alone, but if we had been there he could have been saved." After a pause Roberta Rockingham, seated, with a huge rug over her lap, said, "Why, I think that's ever so much more encouraging than our own speculation. It would appear that no one is trying to kill us . . . which is really quite wonderful, don't you think?" She gazed around at them, straining to hear if any had spoken. "Evidently," Wade Frazer said remotely, with a private grimace. "Babble," Ignatz Thugg said, "we voted without you." "Good grief," Betty Jo Berm said. "That's so. We'll have to vote again." "You selected one of us as a leader?" Babble said. "Without letting me exercise my own personal involvement? Who did you decide on?" "On me," Glen Belsnor said. Babble consulted with himself. "It's all right as far as I'm concerned," he said at last, "to have Glen as our leader." "He won by three votes," Susie Smart said. Babble nodded. "In any case I'm satisfied." Seth Morley walked over to Babble, faced him and said, "You're sure that was the cause of death?" "Beyond doubt. I have equipment which can determine--" "Did you find an insect bite-mark on him anywhere?" "Actually no," Babble said. "A possible spot where a plant leaf might have speared him?" "No," Babble said, "but that isn't an important aspect of such a determination. Some of the insects here are so small that any sting-spot or bite-spot wouldn't be visible without a microscopic examination, and that would take days." "But you're satisfied," Belsnor said, also coming up; he stood with his arms folded, rocking back and forth on his heels. "Absolutely." Babble nodded vigorously. "You know what it would mean if you're wrong." "How? Explain." "Oh Christ, Babble," Susie Smart said, "it's obvious. If someone or something deliberately killed him then we're in just as much danger as he was--possibly. But if an insect stung him--" "That's what it was," Babble said. "An insect stung him." His ears had turned bright carmen with stubborn, irritable anger. "Do you think this is my first autopsy? That I'm not capable of handling pathology-report instrumentation that I've handled all my adult life?" He glared at Susie Smart. "Miss Dumb," he said. "Come on, Babble," Tony Dunkelwelt said. "It's Dr. Babble to you, sonny," Babble said. Nothing is changed, Seth Morley said to himself. We are as we were, a mob of twelve people. And it may destroy us. End forever our various separate lives. "I feel a vast amount of relief," Susie Smart said, coming up beside him and Mary. "I guess we were becoming paranoid; we thought everyone was after us, trying to kill us." Thinking about Ben Tallchief--and his last encounter with him--Morley felt no sympathetic resonance within him to her newly refreshed attitude. "A man is dead," he said. "We barely knew him. In fact we didn't know him at all." "True," Morley said. Maybe it's because I feel so much personal guilt. "Maybe I did it," he said aloud to her. "A bug did it," Mary said. "May we finish the prayer, now?" Maggie Walsh said. Seth Morley said to her, "How come we need to shoot a petition-prayer eighty thousand miles up from the planet's surface, but this sort of prayer can be done without electronic help?" I know the answer, he said to himself. This prayer now--it really doesn't matter to us if it's heard. It is merely a ceremony, this prayer. The other one was different. The other time we needed something for ourselves, not for Tallchief. Thinking this he felt more gloomy than ever. "I'll see you later," he said aloud to Mary. "I'm going to go unpack the boxes I've brought from our noser." "But don't go near the nosers," Mary warned him. "Until tomorrow; until we have time to scout out the plant or bug--" "I won't be outdoors," Morley agreed. "I'll go directly to our quarters." He strode from the briefing room out into the compound. A moment later he was ascending the steps to the porch of their joint living quarters. I'll ask The Book, Seth Morley said to hmself. He rummaged through several cartons and at last found his copy of _How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You_. Seated, he held it on his lap, placed both hands on it, shut his eyes, turned his face upward and said, "Who or what killed Ben Tallchief?" He then, eyes shut, opened the book to a page at random, put his finger at one exact spot, and opened his eyes. His finger rested on: the Form Destroyer. That doesn't tell us much, he reflected. All death comes as a result of a deterioration of form, due to the activity of the Form Destroyer. And yet it scared him. It doesn't sound like a bug or a plant, he thought starkly. It sounds like something entirely else. A tap-tap sounded at his door. Rising warily, he moved by slow degrees to the door; keeping it shut he swept the curtain back from the small window and peered out into the night darkness. Someone stood on the porch, someone small, with long hair, tight sweater, peek-n-squeeze bra, tight short skirt, barefoot. Susie Smart has come to visit, he said to himself, and unlocked the door. "Hi," she said brightly, smiling up at him. "May I come in and talk a little?" He led her over to The Book. "I asked it what or who killed Tallchief." "What did it say?" She seated herself, crossed her bare legs and leaned forward to see as he placed his finger on the same spot as before. "The Form Destroyer," she said soberly. "But it's always the Form Destroyer." "Yet I think it means something." "That it wasn't an insect?" He nodded. "Do you have anything to eat or drink?" Susie said. "Any candy?" "The Form Destroyer," he said, "is loose outside." "You're scaring me." "Yes," he said. "I want to. We've got to get a prayer off this planet and to the relay network. We're not going to survive unless we get help." "The Walker comes without prayer," Susie said. "I have a Baby Ruth candy bar," he said. "You can have that." He rummaged through a suitcase of Mary's, found it, handed it to her. "Thank you," she said, tearing the paper from one of the candy bar's blunt ends. He said, "I think we're doomed." "We're always doomed. It's the essence of life." "Doomed immediately. Not abstractly--doomed in the sense that I and Mary were doomed when I tried to load up the _Morbid Chicken_. Mors certa, hora incerta; there's a big difference between knowing that you're going to die and knowing you're going to die within the next calendar month." "Your wife is very attractive." He sighed. "How long have you two been married?" Susie gazed at him intently. "Eight years," he said. Susie Smart swiftly stood up. "Come over to my place and let me show you how nice these little rooms can be fixed up. Come on--it's depressing in here." She tugged little-girl-wise at his hand and he found himself following after her. They danced up the porch, passed several doorways and came at last to Susie's door. It was unlocked; she opened it, welcoming him into warmth and light. She had told the truth; it did look nice. Can we make ours as nice as this? he asked himself as he looked around, at the pictures on the walls, the textures of fabrics, and the many, many planter boxes and pots, out of which multicolored blossoms dazzled the eye. "Nice," he said. Susie banged the door shut. "Is that all you can say? It's taken me a month to make it look like this." "'Nice' was your word for it, not mine." She laughed. "I can call it 'nice,' but since you're a visitor you have to be more lavish about it." "Okay," he said, "it's wonderful." "That's better." She seated herself in a black canvasbacked chair facing him, leaned back, rubbed her hands together briskly, then fastened her attention on him. "I'm waiting," she said. "For what?" "For you to proposition me." "Why would I do that?" Susie said, "I'm the settlement whore. You're supposed to die of priapism because of me. Haven't you heard?" "I just got here late today," he pointed out. "But somebody must have told you." "When someone does," he said, "he'll get his nose punched in." "But it's true." "Why?" he said. "Dr. Babble explained to me that it's a diencephalic disturbance in my brain." He said, "That Babble. You know what he said about my visit with the Walker? He said most of what I said was untrue." "Dr. Babble has a keen little maliciousness about him. He loves to put down everyone and everything." "If you know that about him," Seth Morley said, "then you know enough not to pay any attention." "He just explained _why_ I'm that way. I am that way. I've slept with every man in the settlement, except that Wade Frazer." She shook her head, making a wry face. "He's awful." With curiosity, he said, "What does Frazer say about you? After all, he's a psychologist. Or claims he is." "He says that--" She reflected, staring up pensively at the ceiling of the room, meantime chewing abstractedly on her lower lip. "It's a search for the great world-father archetype. That's what Jung would have said. Do you know about Jung?" "Yes," he said, although in fact he had only heard little more than the name; Jung, he had been told, had in many ways laid the groundwork for a rapprochement between intellectuals and religion--but at that point Seth Morley's knowledge gave out. "I see," he said. "Jung believed that our attitudes toward our actual mothers and fathers are because they embody certain male and female archetypes. For instance, there's the great bad earthfather and the good earth-father and the destroying earthfather, and so forth. . . and the same with women. My mother was the bad earth-mother, so all my psychic energy was turned toward my father." "Hmm," he said. He had, all at once, begun to think about Mary. Not that he was afraid of her, but what would she think when she got back to their living quarters and found him gone? And then--God forbid--found him here with Susie Dumb, the self-admitted settlement whore? Susie said, "Do you think the sexual act makes a person impure?" "Sometimes," he responded reflexively, still thinking about his wife. His heart labored and he felt his pulse race. "Specktowsky isn't too clear about that in The Book," he mumbled. "You're going to take a walk with me," Susie said. "Now? I am? Where? Why?" "Not now. Tomorrow when it's daylight. I'll take you outside the settlement, out into the real Delmak-O. Where the strange things are, the movements that you catch out of the corner of your eye--and the Building." "I'd like to see the Building," he said, truthfully. Abruptly she rose. "Better get back to your living quarters, Mr. Seth Morley," she said. "Why?" He, too, confused, rose to his feet. "Because if you stay here your attractive wife is going to find us and create chaos and open the way for the Form Destroyer, who you say is loose outside, to get all of us." She laughed, showing perfect, pale teeth. "Can Mary come on our walk?" he asked. "No." She shook her head. "Just you. Okay?" He hesitated, a flock of thoughts invading his mind; they pulled him this way and that, then departed, leaving him free to make an answer. "If I can work it," he said. "Try. Please. I can show you all the places and life forms and things I've discovered." "Are they beautiful?" "S-some. Why are you looking at me so intently? You make me nervous." "I think you're insane," he said. "I'm just outspoken. I simply say, 'A man is a sperm's way of producing another sperm.' That's merely practical." Seth Morley said, "I don't know much about Jungian analysis, but I certainly do not recall--" He broke off. Something had moved at the periphery of his vision. "What's the matter?" Susie Smart asked. He turned swiftly, and this time saw it clearly. On the top of the dresser a small gray square object inched its way forward, then, apparently aware of him, ceased moving. In two steps he was over to it; he snatched up the object, held it gripped tightly in the palm of his hand. "Don't hurt it," Susie said. "It's harmless. Here, give it to me." She held out her hand, and, reluctantly, he opened his enclosing fingers. The object which he held resembled a tiny building. "Yes," Susie said, seeing the expression on his face. "It comes from the Building. It's a sort of offspring, I suppose. Anyhow it's exactly like the Building but smaller." She took it from him, for a time examined it, then placed it back on the dresser. "It's alive," she said. "I know," he said. Holding it, he had felt the animate quality of it; it had pushed against his fingers, trying to get out. "They're all over the place," Susie said. "Out there." She made a vague gesture. "Maybe tomorrow we can find you one." "I don't want one," he said. "You will when you've been here long enough." "Why?" "I guess they're company. Something to break the monotony. I remember as a child finding a Ganymedian toad in our garden. It was so beautiful with its shining flame and its long smooth hair that--" Morley said, "It could have been one of these things that killed Tallchief." "Glen Belsnor took one apart one day," Susie said. "He said--" She pondered. "It's harmless, anyhow. The rest of what he said was electronic talk; we couldn't follow it." "And he'd know?" "Yes." She nodded. Seth Morley said, "You--we--have a good leader." But I don't think quite good enough, he said to himself. "Shall we go to bed?" Susie said. "What?" he said. "I'm interested in going to bed with you. I can't judge a man unless I've been in bed with him." "What about women?" "I can't judge them at all. What, do you think I go to bed with the women, too? That's depraved. That sounds like something Maggie Walsh would do. She's a lesbian, you know. Or didn't you know?" "I don't see that it matters. Or that it's any of our business." He felt shaky and uneasy. "Susie," he said, "you should get psychiatric help." He remembered, all at once, what the Walker-on-Earth had said to him, back at Tekel Upharsin. Maybe we all need psychiatric help, he thought. But not from Wade Frazer. That's totally, entirely out. "You don't want to go to bed with me? You'd enjoy it, despite your initial prudery and reservations. I'm very good. I know a lot of ways. Some which you probably never heard about. I made them up myself." "From years of experience," he said. "Yes." She nodded. "I started at twelve." "No," he said. "Yes," Susie said, and grabbed him by the hand. On her face he saw a desperate expression, as if she were fighting for her life. She drew him toward her, straining with all her strength; he held back and she strained vainly. Susie Smart felt the man pulling away from her. He's very strong, she thought. "How come you're so strong?" she asked, gasping for air; she found herself almost unable to breathe. "Carry rocks," he said with a grin. I want him, she thought. Big, evil, powerful. . . he could tear me to pieces, she thought. Her longing for him grew. "I'll get you," she gasped, "because I want you." I need to have you, she said to herself. Covering me like a heavy shade, a protection from the sun and from seeing. I don't want to look any more, she said to herself. Weigh me down, she thought. Show me what there is of you; show me your real being, without benefit of clothes. Fumbling behind her she unsnapped her peek-n-squeeze bra. Deftly she tugged it out from its place within her sweater; she pulled, strained, managed to drop it onto a chair. At that the man laughed. "Why are you laughing?" she demanded. "Your neatness," he said. "Getting it onto a chair instead of dropping it onto the floor." "Damn you," she said, knowing that he, like everyone else, was laughing at her. "I'll get you," she snarled, and pulled him with all her strength; this time she managed to move him a few tottering steps in the direction of the bed. "Hey, goddam it," he protested. But again she managed to move him several steps. "Stop!" he said. And then she had tumbled him onto the bed. She held him down with one knee and rapidly, with great expertise, unsnapped her skirt and pushed it from the bed, onto the floor. "See?" she said. "I don't have to be neat." She dove for him then; she pinned him down with her knees. "I'm not obsessive," she said, as she removed the last of her clothing. Now she tore at the buttons of his shirt. A button, ripped loose, rolled like a little wheel from the bed and onto the floor. At that she laughed. She felt very good. This part always excited her--it was like the final stage of a hunt, in this case a hunt for a big animal which smelled of sweat and of cigarette smoke and of agitated fear. How can he be afraid of me? she asked herself, but it was always this way--she had come to accept it. In fact she had come to like it. "Let--me--go," he gasped, pushing upward against her weight. "You're so darn--slippery," he managed to say as she gripped his head with her knees. "I can make you so happy, sexually," she told him; she always said this, and sometimes it worked; sometimes the man gave in at the prospect which she held open to him. "Come on," she said, in rapid, imploring grunts. The door of the room banged open. Immediately, instinctively, she sprang from the man, from the bed, stood upright, breathing noisily, peering at the figure in the doorway. His wife. Mary Morley. Susie at once snatched up her clothes; this was one part which she did not enjoy, and she felt overwhelming hatred toward Mary Morley. "Get out of here," Susie panted. "This is my room." "Seth!" Mary Morley said in a shrill voice. "What in the name of God is the matter with you? _How could you do this?_" She moved stiffly toward the bed, her face pale. "God," Morley said, sitting up and smoothing his hair into place. "This girl is nuts," he said to his wife in a plaintive, whining tone. "I had nothing to do with it; I was trying to get away. You saw that, didn't you? Couldn't you tell I was trying to get away? Didn't you see that?" Mary Morley said in her shrill, speeded-up voice, "If you had wanted to get away you could have." "No," he said imploringly. "Really, so help me God. She had me pinned down. I was getting loose, though. If you hadn't come in I would have gotten away by myself." "I'll kill you," Mary Morley said; she spun, paced about in a great circle which swept out most of the room. Looking for something to pick up and hit with; Susie knew the motion, the searching, the glazed, ferocious, incredulous expression on her face. Mary Morley found a vase, snatched it up, stood by the dresser, her chest heaving as she confronted Seth Morley. She raised the vase in a spasmodic, abrupt, backward swing of her right arm . On the dresser the miniaturized building slid a minute panel aside. A tiny cannon projected. Mary did not see it, but Susie and Seth Morley did. "Look out!" Seth gasped, groping at his wife to get hold of her hand. He yanked her toward him. The vase crashed to the floor. The barrel of the cannon rotated, taking new aim. All at once a beam projected from it, in Mary Morley's direction. Susie, laughing, backed away, putting distance between herself and the beam. The beam missed Mary Morley. On the far wall of the room a hole appeared and through it black night air billowed, cold and harsh, entering the room. Mary wobbled, retreated a step. Rushing into the bathroom, Seth Morley disappeared, then came dashing out again, the waterglass in his hand. He sprinted to the dresser, poured water onto the building replica. The snout of the cannon ceased to rotate. "I think I got it," Seth Morley said, wheezing asthmatically. From the diminutive structure a curl of gray smoke drifted up. The structure hummed briefly and then a pool of sticky, grease-like stain dribbled out from it, mixing with the pool of water which had now formed around it. The structure bucked, spun, and then all at once decayed into inanimation. He was right; it was dead. "You killed it," Susie said, accusingly. Seth Morley said, "That's what killed Tallchief." "Did it try to kill me?" Mary Morley asked faintly. She looked about unsteadily, the fanaticism of fury gone from her face now. Cautiously, she seated herself and stared at the structure, blank and pale, then said to her husband, "Let's get out of here." To Susie, Seth Morley said, "I'm going to have to tell Glen Belsnor." He gingerly, and with great caution, picked up the dead little block; holding it in the palm of his hand he stared at it a long, long time. "It took me three weeks to tame that one," Susie said. "Now I have to find another, and bring it back here without getting killed, and tame it like I did this one." She felt massive waves of accusation slapping higher and higher within her. "Look what you did," she said, and went swiftly to gather up her clothing. Seth and Mary Morley started toward the door, Seth's hand on his wife's back. Guiding her out. "Goddam you both!" she shouted in accusation. Halfdressed, she followed after them. "What about tomorrow?" she said to Seth. "Are we still going on a walk? I want to show you some of the--" "No," he said harshly, and then he turned to gaze at her long and somberly. "You really don't understand what happened," he said. Susie said, "I know what _almost_ happened." "Does someone have to die before you can wake up?" he said. "No," she said, feeling uneasy; she did not like the expression in his hard, boring eyes. "All right," she said, "if it's so important to you, that little toy--" "'Toy,' "he said mockingly. "Toy," she repeated. "Then you ought to be really interested in what's out there. Don't you understand? This is just a model of the real Building. Don't you want to see it? I've seen it very closely. I even know what the sign reads over the main entrance. Not the entrance where the trucks come and go but the entrance--" "What does it say?" he said. Susie said, "Will you go with me?" To Mary Morley she said, with all the graciousness she could command, "You, too. Both of you ought to come." "I'll come alone," Seth said. To his wife he said, "It's too dangerous; I don't want you along." "You don't want me along," Mary said, "for obvious other reasons." But she sounded dim and scared, as if the close call with the structure's energy beam had banished every emotion in her except raw, clinging fear. Seth Morley said, "What does it say over the entrance?" After a pause Susie said, "It says 'Whippery.' "What does that mean?" he said. "I'm not positive. But it sounds fascinating. Maybe we can somehow get inside, this time. I've gone real close, almost up to the wall. But I couldn't find a side door, and I was afraid--I don't know why--to go in the main entrance." Wordlessly, Seth Morley, steering his dazed wife, strode out into the night. She found herself standing there in the middle of her room, alone and only half-dressed. "Bitch!" she called loudly after them. Meaning Mary. They continued on. And were gone from sight. 7 "Don't kid yourself," Glen Belsnor said. "If it shot at your wife it's because that loopy dame, that Susie Dumb or Smart, whichever it is, wanted it to. She taught it. They can be trained, you see." He sat holding the tiny structure, staring down at it, a brooding expression settling by degrees into his long, lean face. "If I hadn't grabbed her," Seth said, "we would have had a second death tonight." "Maybe yes, maybe no. Considering the meager output of these things it probably would only have knocked her out." "The beam bored through the wall." Belsnor said, "The walls are cheap plastic. One layer. You could punch a hole through with your fist." "So you're not upset by this." Belsnor plucked at his lower lip, thoughtfully. "I'm upset by the whole thing. What the hell were you doing with Susie in her room?" He raised his hand. "Don't tell me, I know. She's deranged sexually. No, don't give me any details." He played aimlessly with the replica of the Building. "Too bad it didn't shoot Susie," he murmured, half to himself. "There's something the matter with all of you," Seth said. Belsnor raised his shaggy head and studied Seth Morley. "In what way?" "I'm not sure. A kind of idiocy. Each of you seems to be living in his own private world. Without regard for anyone else. It's as if--" He pondered. "As if all you want, each of you, is to be left alone." "No," Belsnor said. "We want to get away from here. We may have nothing else in common, but we do share that." He handed the destroyed structure back to Seth. "Keep it. As a souvenir." Seth tossed it onto the floor. "You're going out exploring with Susie tomorrow?" Belsnor said. "Yes." He nodded. "She'll probably attack you again." "I'm not interested in that. I'm not worried by that. I think that we have an active enemy on the planet, working from outside the settlement area. I think it--or they--killed Tallchief. Despite what Babble found." Belsnor said, "You're new here. Tallchief was new here. Tallchief is dead. I think there's a connection; I think his death was connect