They did, scared but fascinated, as the goat carca.s.s soared out of the launcher and into the water, well downstream from the hippo families so there wouldn't be any accidents.

You wouldn't think a crocodile could run very fast, with those sprawly little legs and huge tail. You'd be wrong. Before the goat hit the water all three of the crocs were doing their high-speed waddle down to the river's edge. When they hit the water, they disappeared; a moment later, all around the floating goat, there were half a dozen little whirlpools of water, with an occasional lashingtail to show what was going on under the surface. The show didn't last long. In a minute that goat was history.

I glanced at the hippos. They hadn't seemed to pay any attention, but I noticed that now all the big ones were on the downstream side of the herd and the babies were on the other side, away from the crocs.

"Show's over," I told the Old Ones. "Back in the van!" I said, pointing to make sure they understood. They didn't delay. They were all shivering as they lined up to climb back in, one by one. I was just about to follow them in when I heard Geoffrey calling my name. I turned around, half in the van, and called, "What's the problem?"

He pointed to his communicator. "Sh.e.l.ly just called. You know that guy who claims he owns the Old Ones? He's back!"

All the way back I had one hand on the wheel and my other hand on my own communicator, checking with Sh.e.l.ly-yes, the son of a b.i.t.c.h did have a pa.s.s this time-and then with Nairobi to see why they'd allowed it. The headquarters guy who answered the call was Bertie ap Dora. He's my boss, and he usually makes sure I remember that. This time he sounded really embarra.s.sed. "Sure, Grace," he said, "we issued a pa.s.s for him. We didn't have any choice, did we?

He's Wan."

It took me a moment. Then, "Oh, my G.o.d," I said. "Really? Wan?" And when Bertrand confirmed that Wan was who the mysterious stranger was, ident.i.ty checked and correct, it all fell into place. If it was Wan, he had been telling the truth. He really was the owner of the Old Ones, more or less, because legally he was the man who had discovered them. Well, that didn't actually make much sense in my book. If you stopped to think about it, Wan himself had been discovered as much as the Old Ones had. However, it didn't have to make sense. That was the way Gateway Corp. had ruled-had given him property rights in the place where the Old Ones had been discovered and ownership of everything on the site-and n.o.body argued with the findings of Gateway Corp.

The thing about the Old Ones was that they had been found on a far-out, orbiting Heechee artifact, and it was the Heechee themselves who had put them there, all those hundreds of thousands of years ago when the Heechees had come to check out Earth's solar system. They were looking for intelligent races at the time. What they discovered were the ancestors of the Old Ones, the dumb, hairy little hominids called australopithecines. They weren't much, but they were the closest the Earth had to the intelligent race the Heechee were looking for at the time, so the Heechee had taken away some breeding stock to study.

And when the Heechee got so scared that they ran off and hid in the Core, all the hundreds of millions of them, they left the australopithecines behind. They weren't exactly abandoned. The Heechee had provided them with the Food Factory they inhabited, so they never went hungry. And so they stayed there,generation after generation, for hundreds of thousands of years, until human beings got to Gateway. And, the story went, one of those human beings, and the only one who survived long enough to be rescued, was the kid named Wan.

As soon as I got to the compound, I saw him. He wasn't a kid anymore, but he wasn't hard to recognize either. His size picked him out; he wasn't all that much taller than some of the Old Ones, a dozen or so of whom had gathered around to regard him with tepid interest. He was better dressed than the Old Ones, though. In fact, he was better dressed than we were. He'd forgotten about the fur collars-sensibly enough-and the outfit he was wearing now was one of those safari-jacket things with all the pockets that tourists are so crazy about.

His, however, was made of pure natural silk. And he was carrying a riding crop, although there wasn't a horse within five hundred kilometers of us.

(Zebras don't count.) As soon as he saw me, he bustled over, hand outstretched and a big, phoney smile on his face. "I'm Wan," he said. "I don't blame you for the misunderstanding yesterday."

Well, there hadn't been any misunderstanding and I didn't feel any blame, but I let it go. I shook his hand briefly. "Grace Nkroma," I said. "Head ranger.

What do you want here?"

The smile got bigger and phonier. "I guess you'd call it nostalgia. Is that the word? Anyway, I have to admit that I'm kind of sentimental about my Old Ones, since they sort of took care of me while I was growing up. I've been meaning to visit them ever since they were relocated here, but I've been so busy-" He gave a winsome little shrug, to show how busy he'd been.

Then he gazed benevolently around at the Old Ones. "Yes," he said, nodding. "I recognize several of them, I think. Do you see how happy they are to see me? And I've brought them some wonderful gifts." He jerked a thumb at his vehicle. "You people had better unload them," he told me. "They've been in the car for some time, and you should get them into the ground as soon as possible."

And then he linked arms with a couple of the Old Ones, and strolled off, leaving us to do his bidding.

3.

There were about forty of the "gifts" that Wan had brought for his former adopted family, and what they turned out to be were little green seedlings in pressed-soil pots. Carlo looked at them, and then at me. "What the h.e.l.l are we supposed to do with those things?" he wanted to know.

"I'll ask," I said, and got on the line with Bernard ap Dora again.

"They're berry bushes," he told me, sounding defensive. "They're some kind of fruit the Old Ones had growing wild when they were on the Food Factory, and they're supposed to love the berries. Actually, it's quite a wonderful gift, wouldn't you say?"

I wouldn't. I didn't. I said. "It would be a lot more thoughtful if he plantedthe d.a.m.n things himself."

Bernard didn't respond to that. "One thing I should tell you about," he said.

"The bushes are supposed to need quite a lot of water, so make sure you plant them near the runoff from the drinking fountains, all right? And, listen, see if you can keep the giraffes from eating the seedlings before they grow out."

"How are we supposed to do that?" I asked, but Bernard had already cut the connection. Naturally. He's a boss. You know the story about the second lieutenant and the sergeant and the flagpole? There's this eight-meter flagpole and the lieutenant only has six meters of rope. Big problem. How does the lieutenant get the flagpole up?

Simple. The lieutenant says, "Sergeant, put that flagpole up," and goes off to have a beer at the officers' club.

As far as Bernard is concerned, I'm his sergeant. I don't have to be, though.

Bernard keeps asking me to come in and take a job as a sector chief at the Nairobi office. There'd be more money, too, but then I'd have to live in the big city. Besides, that would mean I wouldn't be in direct contact with the Old Ones any more.

Everything considered, you might think that didn't sound so bad, but-oh, h.e.l.l, I admit it-I knew I'd miss every smelly, dumb-a.s.s one of them. They weren't very bright and they weren't very clean, and most of the time I wasn't a bit sure that they liked me back. But they needed me.

By the time Wan had been with us for three days, we had got kind of used to having him around. We didn't actually see a lot of him. Most of the daylight time he was off in his hover, with a couple of the Old Ones for company, feeding them ice cream pops and lemonade out of his freezer-things that really weren't good for them but, I had to admit, wouldn't do them much harm once or twice in a lifetime. When it got dark, he was always back in the compound, but he didn't mingle with us even then. He stayed in his vehicle, watching soaps and comedies, again with a couple of Old Ones for company, and he slept in it, too.

When I finally asked Wan just how long he intended to be with us he just gave me that grin again and said, "Can't say, Gracie. I'm having fun."

"Don't call me Gracie," I said. But he had already turned his back on me to collect another handful of Old Ones for a joyride.

Having fun seemed to be what Wan's life was all about. He'd already been all over the galaxy before he came back to see us, flying around in his own private ship. Get that, his own private ship! But he could afford it. His royalties on the Heechee stuff that came out of the Food Factory made him, he said, the eighth richest person in the galaxy, and what Wan could afford was pretty nearly anything he could think up. He made sure he let us all know it, too, which didn't endear him to most of the staff, especially Carlo. "He gets on my nerves with his G.o.dd.a.m.n brag-gjng all the time," Carlo complained to me. "Can't we run the son of a b.i.t.c.h off?"

"As long as he doesn't make trouble," I said, "no. How are you coming withthe planting?"

Actually that was going pretty well. All the guys had to do was scoop out a little hole in the ground, a couple of meters away from a fountain, and set one of the pressed-earth pots in it. That was the whole drill. Since there were a couple of patrols going out all over the reservation every day anyway, checking for signs of elephant incursions or unauthorized human trespa.s.sers, it only took them a couple of extra minutes at each stop.

Then, without warning, Wan left us.

I thought I heard the sound of his hover's fans, just as I was going to sleep. I considered getting up to see what was going on, but-d.a.m.n it!-the pillow seemed more interesting than Wan just then, and I rolled over and forgot it.

Or almost forgot it. I guess it was my subconscious, smarter than the rest of me, that made my sleep uneasy. And about the fourth or fifth time I half woke, I heard the voices of Old Ones softly, worriedly, murmuring at each other just outside my window.

That woke me all the way up. Old Ones don't like the dark, never having had any back home. I pulled on a pair of shorts and stumbled outside. Spot was sitting there on her haunches, along with Brute and Blackeye, all three of them turning to stare at me. "What's the matter?" I demanded.

She was munching on a chunk of food. "Grace." she said politely, acknowledging my existence. "Wan. Gone." She made sweeping-away gestures with her hands to make sure I understood her.

"Well, h.e.l.l," I said. "Gone where?"

She made the same gesture again. "Away."

"Yes, I know away," I snarled. "Did he say when he was coming back?"

She swallowed and spat out of a piece of wrapper. "No back," she said.

I guess I was still pretty sleepy, because I didn't take it in right away. "What do you mean, 'no back'?"

"He gone," she told me placidly. "Also Beautiful. Pony and Gadget gone, too."

4.

Just to make sure, I woke Sh.e.l.ly and Carlo and sent them up in the ultralight to check out the whole reservation, but I didn't wait for their report. I was already calling headquarters even before they were airborne. Bernard wasn't in his office, of course-it was the middle of the night, and the headquarters people kept city hours-but I got him out of bed at home. He didn't sound like he believed me. "Why the h.e.l.l would anyone kidnap a couple of Old Ones?" he wanted to know.

"Ask the b.a.s.t.a.r.d yourself," I snarled at him. "Only find him first. That's three of the Old Ones that he's kidnapped-Beauty and her two-year-old, Gadget. And Pony. Pony is the kid's father, probably."He made a sound of irritation. "All right. First thing, I'll need descriptions-no, sorry," he said, catching himself; how would you describe three Old Ones? And why would you need to? "Forget that part. I'll take it from here. I guarantee he won't get off the planet. I'll have cops at the Loop in ten minutes, and a general alarm everywhere. I'll-"

But I cut him off there. "No, Bernard. Not so much you will. More like we will. I'll meet you at the Loop and, I don't care how rich the son of a b.i.t.c.h is, when we catch him, I'm going to punch him out. And then he's going to see what the inside of a jail looks like."

But, of course, that wasn't the way the hand played out.

I took our two-man hover, which is almost as fast as the ultralight. The way I was goosing it along, maybe a little faster. By the time I got within sight of the Lofstrom Loop, with Nairobi's glowing bubble a few kilometers to the north, I was already aware of police planes crisscrossing across the sky-once or twice dropping down to get a good look at me before they were satisfied and zoomed away.

At night the Loop is picked out with lights, so that it looks like a kind of roller coaster ride, kilometers long. I could hear the whine of its rotating magnetic cables long before I got to the terminal. There weren't many pods either coming or going-maybe because it was nighttime-so, I figured, there wouldn't be so many pa.s.sengers that Wan and his captives might not be noticed.

(As though anybody wouldn't notice three Old Ones.) Actually there were hardly any pa.s.sengers in the terminal. Bernard was there already, with half a dozen Nairobi city cops, but they didn't have much to do. Neither did I, except to fret and swear to myself for letting him get away.

Then the cop manning the communicator listened to something, snarled something back and came toward us, looking shamefaced. "He won't be coming here," he told Bernard. "He didn't use the Loop coming down-used his own lander, and it looks like he used it to get off, too, because it's gone."

And so he had.

By the time Bernard, fuming, got in touch with any of the authorities in orbit, Wan had had plenty of time to dock with his s.p.a.ceship and be on his way, wherever it was he was going, at FTL speeds. And I never saw him, or any of the three missing Old Ones, again.

Tad Williams.

I first met Tad Williams at the American Booksellers a.s.sociation Convention in San Francisco in 1985. We were launching the first DAW hardcover list, and spearheading it with Tad's first novel, Tailchaser's Song. He had come to the ABA to meet me, his first editor, and to sign his bound galleys. At the time, Tad really didn't have the slightest idea how special his debut was, or that most first novelists didn'tget the kind of treatment he was getting, but as he and his wife waltzed around our booth to unheard music, it was clear that he was very, very happy.

Later, in my hotel room, I asked him what he planned to write next. He discussed the possibility of writing an elephant book, or perhaps an alternate history. Then he mentioned this other book ... a really big book-something he had always wanted to write. It would be his ode to Tolkien, to Mervyn Peake, to all the great fantasy writers who had influenced his life. He didn't feel experienced enough yet, but he knew it was something he eventually would have to do. Concerned with the continued commerciality of his career, I convinced him to try writing this other, "bigger" novel. I don't think either one of us ever imagined just how big it would turn out to be.

It took Tad three years to perfect his craft sufficiently to publish The Dragonbone Chair, the first volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, and it would be an additional five years until we published the third and concluding volume, the ma.s.sive To Green Angel Tower, which spent five weeks on The New York Times and the London Times best-seller lists, It was during the writing of this 3,OOO page trilogy that Tad evolved into one of the finest writers I have ever read.

Now Tad writes whatever he wants. And he gets better and better.

His recently completed science fiction quartet, Otherland, is a true masterwork.

Although Tad is one of the smartest, most literate, and most talented men I know, he's also just . . . Tad. Gregarious, interesting, warm, humorous, unpretentious, and interested in editorial input-in many ways he's still the same person who danced to that unheard music.

-BW.

NOT WITH A WHIMPER, EITHER.

Tad Williams.

TALKDOTCOM> FICTION.

Topic Name: Fantasy Rules! SF Sux!

Topic Starter: ElmerFraud-2:25 pm PDT-March 14, 2001 Always a good idea to get down and sling some [email protected] about all those uppity Hard SF readers . . .

RoughRider-10:21 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < um,="" okay,="" so="" let="" me="" get="" this="" straight-the="" whole="" frodo/sam="" thing="" is="" a="" bondage="" relationship?="">

Can anyone say "stupid"?

Wiseguy-10:22 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < no,="" can="" anyone="" say="" "reductio="" ad="" absurdum"?roughrider-10:23="" pm="" pdt-jun="" 28,="" 2002="">< h.e.l.l,="" i="" can't="" even="" spell="">

Lady White Oak-10:23 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < i="" don't="" think="" tinkywinky="" was="" trying="" to="" say="" that="" there="" was="" nothing="" more="" to="" their="" relationship="" than="" that,="" just="" that="" there="" are="">

RoughRider-10:24 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < look,="" i="" didn't="" make="" a="" big="" fuss="" when="" stinkwinky="" came="" on="" and="" said="" that="" all="" of="" heinleins="" books="" are="" some="" kind="" of="" stealth="" queer="" propaganda="" just="" cause="" heinlein="" likes="" to="" write="" about="" people="" taking="" showers="" together="" and="" the="" navy="" and="" stuff="" like="" that="" but="" at="" some="" point="" you="" just="" have="" to="" say="" shut="" up="" that's="">

Lady White Oak-10:24 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < i="" think="" you="" are="" letting="" tinkywinky="" pull="" your="" chain="" and="" that's="" just="" what="" he's="" trying="" to="">

RoughRider-10:25 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < he="" touches="" my="" chain="" he="" dies="" .="">

Wiseguy-10:25 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < i="" just="" can't="" stand="" this="" kind="" of="">

I don't mean THIS kind of thing, what you guys are saying, but this idea that any piece of art can just be pulled into pieces no matter what the artist intended.

Doesn't anybody read history or anything, for G.o.d's sake? It may not be "politically correct" but the master-servant relationship is part of the history of humanity, not to mention literature. Look at Don Quixote and Sancho Panda, for G.o.d's sake.

Lady White Oak-10:26 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < panza.="" although="" i="" like="" the="" image="" .="" .="" .="" ;)="" bbanzai-10:26="" pm="" pdt-jun="" 28,="" 2002="">< tinkywinky="" also="" started="" the="" "conan-what's="" he="" trying="" so="" hard="" to="" hide?"="" topic.="" pretty="" funny,="">

RoughRider-10:27 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < so="" am="" i="" the="" only="" one="" who="" thinks="" its="" insulting="" to="" tolkiens="" memory="" to="" say="" this="" kind="" of="" stupid="">

RoughRider-10:27 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < missed="" your="" post,="">

Glad to see Im not the only one who isn't crazy.

TmkyWinky-10:27 pm PDT-Jun 28, 2002 < tolkien's="" memory?="" give="" me="" a="" break.="" what,="" is="" he="" mahatma="" gandhi="" or="" something?="" some="" of="" you="" people="" can't="" take="" a="" joke-*="" although="" it's="" a="" joke="" with="" a="" pretty="" big="" grain="" of="" truth="" in="" it.="" i="" mean,="" if="" there="" was="" ever="" anyone="" who="" could="" have="" done="" with="" a="" little="" freudian="" a.n.a.lysis="" .="" .="">

The Two Towers, one that stays stiff to the end, one that falls down? All those elves traveling around in merry bands while the girl elves stay home? The ring that everybody wants to put their finger in ...