I'd lived far too long, and with every day that pa.s.sed the odds kept growing against my lasting much longer. Although they didn't put it quite that way when giving the sales pitch, my insurance company's att.i.tude is reflected in the size of the premiums involved. Their computer cla.s.sified me along with terminal xenopath cases, according to their rates and my spies. Comforting. Probably right, too. This was the first piece of dangerous business I had been out on in a long while. I felt out of practice, though I was not sorry I had skimped. If Green Green noticed that my hands were shaking, he made no comment. They held his life, and he felt badly enough about this as it was. He was in a position now to kill me any time he wanted, if you stop to think about it very carefully. He knew it. I knew it. And he knew I knew it. And . . .

The only thing that was holding him back was the fact that he needed me to get him off of Illyria--which, logically, meant that his s.h.i.+p was on the isle. Which, by extension, meant that if Shandon had a s.h.i.+p at his disposal, he could come looking for us by air, despite our hallucinatory companions' feelings with respect to a confrontation. Which meant that we would be better off working under the trees than on the beach, and that our voyage required the cover of night. Accordingly, I moved our project inland. Green Green thought this a very good idea.

The cloud cover cracked that afternoon as we a.s.sembled the raft, but it did not break completely. The rain continued, the day grew a bit brighter, and two white, white moons pa.s.sed overhead--Kattontallus and Flopsus--lacking only grins and eye-sockets.

Later in the day a silver insect, three times the size of the _Model T_ and ugly as a grub, left the isle and circled the lake six times, spiraling outward, then inward. We were under a lot of foliage, burrowed our ways beneath more, stayed there until it returned to the isle. I clutched my ancient artifact the while. The bunny did not sell me out.

We finished the raft a couple hours before sundown and spent the balance of the day with our backs against the boles of adjacent trees.

"A penny for your thoughts," I said.

"What is a penny?"

"An ancient monetary unit, once common on my home planet. On second thought, don't take me up on it. They're valuable now."

"It is strange to offer to buy a thought. Was this a common practice among your people, in the old days?"

"It had to do with the rise of the merchant cla.s.ses," I said. "Everything has a price, and all that."

"That is a very interesting concept, and I can see how one such as yourself could well believe in it. Would you buy a _pai'badra?_"

"That would be barratry. A _pai'badra_ is a cause for an action."

"But would you pay a person to abandon his vengeance against you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You would take my money and still seek the vengeance, hoping to lull me into a sense of false security."

"I was not speaking of myself. You know that I am wealthy, and that a Pei'an does not abandon his vengeance for any reason. --No. I was thinking of Mike Shandon. He is of your race, and may also believe that everything has a price. As I recall it, he incurred your disfavor in the first place because he needed money and did things that offended you in order to obtain it. Now he hates you because you sent him to prison and then killed him. But since he is of your race, which places a monetary value upon all things, perhaps you might pay him sufficient money for his _pai'badra_ so that he will be satisfied and go away."

Buy our way out? The thought hadn't occurred to me. I had come to Illyria ready to fight with a Pei'an menace. Now I held him in my hand and he was no longer a menace. An Earthman had replaced him as my number one enemy of the moment, and there was a possibility that this a.s.sessment was correct. We are a venal lot, not necessarily moreso than all of the other races--but certainly more than some. It had been Shandon's expensive tastes that had gotten him into a bind in the first place. Things had happened quickly since my arrival on Illyria, and strangely enough--for me and my Tree--it had not occurred to me that my money might be my salvation.

On the other hand, considering Shandon's record as a spender--a thing brought out at the first trial and at the appellate level--he went through money like a _betta splendens_ through that most liquid of all aichemical elements. Say I gave him a half million in universal credit drafts. Anybody else could invest it and live on the dividends. He would go through it in a couple years. Then I would have problems again. He would have hit me this once, and he would figure he could do it again. And of course I could come through again. I could come through any time. So maybe he would not want to kill his golden goose. But then again, I'd never know for sure. I could not live with that.

Still, if he were agreeable, I could buy him off now. Then I could arrange for a team of professional a.s.sa.s.sins to take him out of the game as soon as possible.

But if they should fail . . .

Then he would be on my tail immediately, and it would be him or me again.

I turned it over, looked at it from every possible angle. Ultimately, it boiled down to one thing.

He'd had a gun with him, but he'd tried to kill me with his hands.

"It won't work with Shandon," I said. "He's not a member of the merchant cla.s.s."

"Oh. I meant no offense. I still do not quite understand how these things work with Earthmen."

"You're not alone in that."

I watched the day fade away and the clouds zip themselves together once again. Soon it would be time to carry the raft to the sh.o.r.e and make our ways across the now temperate waters. There would be no moonlight to a.s.sist us.

"Green Green," I said, "in you I see myself, as perhaps I have become more Pei'an than Earthman. I do not think this is the real reason, however, for everything that I am now is but an extension of something that was already within me. I, too, can kill as you would kill and hold with my _pai'badra_ come h.e.l.l or high water."

"I know that," he said, "and I respect you for it."

"What I am trying to say is that when this thing is over, if we should both live through it, I might welcome you as a friend. I might intercede for you with the other Names, that you have another chance at confirmation. I might like to see a high priest of Strantri, in the Name of Kirwar of the Four Faces, Father of Flowers, should He be willing."

"You are trying to find my price now, Earthman."

"No, I am making a legitimate offer. Take it as you would. As yet, you have given me no _pai'badra_."

"By trying to kill you?"

"Under false _pai'badra_. This does not bother me."

"You know that I may slay you whenever I wish?"

"I know that you think so."

"I had thought this thing better s.h.i.+elded."

"It is a matter of deduction, not telepathy."

"You _are_ much like a Pei'an," he said, after a moment. "I promise you that I will withhold my vengeance until after we have dealt with Shandon."

"Soon," I said. "Soon we shall depart."

And we sat there and waited for the night to fall. After a time, it did.

"Now," I said.

"Now," and we stood and raised the raft between us.

We carried it down to the water's edge, waded out into the warm shallows, set it a-drifting.

"Got your paddle?"

"Yes."

"Let's go."

We climbed aboard, stabilized the thing, began paddling, then poling.

"If he was above bribery," he said, "why did he sell your secrets?"

"He would have sold the others out," I said, "had my people paid him more."

"Then why is he above bribery?"

"Because he is of my race and he hates me. Nothing more. There is no buying that kind of _pai'badra_."

I thought then that I was right.

"There are always dark areas within the minds of Earthmen," he observed. "One day I would like to know what is there."

"Me too."

A moon came up then, because a generalized blob of light appeared behind the clouds. It drifted slowly towards midheaven.

The water splashed gently beside us, and little wavelets of it struck against our knees, our boots. A cool breeze followed us from the sh.o.r.e.

"The volcano is at rest," he said. "What did you discuss with Belion?"

"You don't miss a trick, do you?"

"I tried to contact you several times, and I know what I found."

"Belion and s.h.i.+mbo are waiting," I said. "There will be quick movements, and one of them will be satisfied."

The water was black as ink and warm as blood; the isle was a mountain of coal against the pearl and starless night. We poled until we lost the bottom, then commenced paddling, silently, twisting the oars. Green Green had a Pei'an's love of the water in him. I could feel it in the way that he moved, in the ragtails of emotion that I picked up as we proceeded.

To cross over the dark waters . . . It was an eerie feeling, because of what the place meant to me, because of the chord it had struck Within me while I was building it. The feeling of the Valley of Shadows, the sense of the serene pa.s.sing, this was absent. This place was the butcher's block at the end of the nm. I hated it and I feared it. I knew that I lacked the spiritual stamina to ever duplicate it. It was one of those once in a lifetime creations that made me wish I hadn't. To cross over the dark waters meant to me a confrontation with something within myself that I did not understand or accept. I was cruising along on Tokyo Bay, and suddenly this was the answer, looming, the heaped remains of everything that goes down and does not come again to sh.o.r.e, life's giant kitchen-midden, the rubbish heap that remains after all things pa.s.s, the place that stands in testament to the futility of all ideals and intentions, good or bad, the rock that smashes values, there, signalizing the ultimate uselessness of life itself, which must one day be broken upon it, not to rise, never, no, not ever, again. The warm waters splashed about my knees, but a chill shook me and I broke rhythm. Green Green touched my shoulder, and we matched our paddling once again. --"Why did you make it, if you hate it so?" he asked me. --"They paid me well," I replied, and, "Bear to the left. We're going in the back way." Our course altered, s.h.i.+fting westward as he strengthened his strokes and I lightened mine. --"The back way?" he repeated. --"Yes," I said, and I did not elaborate.

As we neared the isle, I ceased my reflections and became a mechanical thing, as I always do when there are too many thoughts to think. I paddled and we slipped through the night, and soon the isle lay to starboard, mysterious lights flecking its face. From ahead, the light that glowed atop the cone crossed our path, dappling the waters, casting a faint red glow upon the cliffs.

We pa.s.sed the isle then and moved toward it from the north. Through the night, I saw the northern face as in daylight. Memory mapped its scars and ridges, and my fingertips tingled with the texture of its stone.

We drew near, and I touched the sheer, black face with my oar. We held that position while I stared upward, then said, "East."

Several hundred yards later, we came to the place where I had hidden the "trail." A cleft slanted within the rock--forty feet of chimney--where the pressure of back and feet allowed ascent to a narrow ledge, along which a man might edge his way for sixty feet, to encounter a series of hand- and foot-holds leading up.

I told this to Green Green, and he stabilized the raft while I went on ahead. Then he followed, uncomplaining, though his shoulder must have been bothering him.

When I reached the top of the chimney, I looked down and was unable to spot the raft. I mentioned this, and Green Green grunted. I waited until he made it to the top, and helped him out of the cleft. Then we began inching our way along the cleft, eastward.

It took us about fifteen minutes to reach the upward trail. Again, I went first, after explaining that we had a five-hundred-foot climb before we reached another ledge. The Pei'an grunted again and followed me.

Soon my arms were sore, and when we made the ledge I sprawled and lit a cigarette. After ten minutes, we moved again. By midnight, we had made it to the top without mishap.

We walked, for about ten minutes. Then we saw him.

He was a wandering figure, doubtless narcotized up to the ears. Maybe not, though. You can never be too sure.

So I approached him, placed my hand upon his shoulder, stood before him, said, "Courtcour, how have you been?"

He looked up at me through heavy-lidded eyes. He weighed about three hundred fifty pounds, wore white garments (Green Green's idea, I guess), was blue-eyed, light-complexioned and soft-spoken. He lisped a bit when he answered me.

"I think I have all the data," he said.

"Good," I answered. "You know that I came here to meet this man--Green Green--in a combat of sorts. We have become allies recently, against Mike Shandon ...?"

"Give me a moment," he replied.

Then, "Yes," he said. "You lose."

"What do you mean?"

"Shandon kills you in three hours and ten minutes."

"No," I said. "He can't."

"If he does not," he replied, "it will be because you have slain him. Then Mister Green will kill you about five hours and twenty minutes from now."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Green is the worldscaper who did Korrlyn?"

"Are you?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Then he will kill you."

"How?"

"Probably by means of a blunt instrument," he said. "If you can avoid that, you might be able to take him with your hands. You've always proven just a bit stronger' than you look, and it fools people. I do not think it will help you this time, though."

"Thanks," I said. "Don't lose any sleep."

". . . Unless you are both carrying secret weapons," he said, "and it is possible that you are."

"Where is Shandon?"

"In the chalet."

"I want his head. How do I get it?"

"You are a kind of demon factor. You have that ability which I cannot fully measure."

"Yes. I know."

"Do not use it."

"Why?"