--_A favor for a favor, _Dra_ Sandow_.

"Give them to me."

--_The rite_ . . .

. . . A new Kathy, a Kathy who had never met Mike Shandon, my Kathy--and Nick, the breaker of noses.

"You drive a hard bargain, Pei'an."

--_I have no choice--and please hurry_.

"All right. I'll go through with it, this one last time. --Where are the tapes?"

--_After the rite has begun and may not be stopped, then I will tell you_.

I chuckled.

"Okay. I don't blame you for not trusting me."

--_You were s.h.i.+elding. You must have been planning to trick me_.

"Probably. I'm not really sure."

I unwrapped the _glitten_, broke off the proper proportions.

"Now we will walk together," I began, "and only one of us two will return to this place . . ."

After a cold, gray time and a black, warm one, we walked in a twilit place without wind or stars. There was only bright green gra.s.s, high hills and a faint aurora borealis that licked at the grayblueblack sky, following the entire circle of the broken horizon. It was as if the stars had all fallen, been powdered, were strewn upon the hilltops.

We walked effortlessly--almost strolling, though with a purpose--our bodies whole once more. Green was at my left hand, among the hills of the _glitten_-dream--or was it a dream? It seemed true and substantial, while our broken, tired carca.s.ses lying on rocks in the rain now seemed a dream remembered, out of times long gone by. We had always been walking here, so, Green and I--or so it seemed--and a feeling of well-being and amity lay upon us. It was almost the same as the last time I had come to this place. Perhaps I had always really been here.

We sang an old Pei'an song for a time, then Green said, "I give you the _pai'badra_ I held against you, _Dra_. I hold it no more."

"This is good, _Dra_ tharl."

"I promised, too, to tell you something. It was of the tapes, yes. --They lie beneath the empty green body I was privileged to wear for a time."

"I see."

"They are useless. I called them to me there with my mind, from a vault where I had kept them. They had been damaged by the forces let loose upon the isle; and so, also, were the tissue cultures. Thus do I keep my word, but poorly. You gave me no choice, though. I could not come this way alone."

I felt that I should be upset, and knew that for a time I could not be.

"You did what you had to," I felt myself saying. "Do not be troubled. Perhaps it is better that I cannot recall them. So much has gone by since their times. Perhaps they would have felt as I once felt, lost in a strange place. They might not have gone on as I did, to embrace it. I do not know. Let it be as it is. The thing is done."

"Now I must tell you of Ruth Laris," he said. "She lies in the Asylum of Fallon in Cobacho, on Driscoll, where she is registered as Rita Lawrence. Her face has been altered, and her mind. You must remove her and hire doctors."

"Why is she there?"

"It was easier than bringing her to Illyria."

"All this pain which you caused meant nothing to you, did it?"

"No. Perhaps I had worked with the stuff of life too long . . ."

". . . And poorly. I am inclined to think it was Belion within you."

"I did not wish to say it, because I did not want to offer excuses, but I feel this way also. This is why I tried to kill s.h.i.+mbo. It was this part of me that you faced, and I wished to strike at it, too. After he left me for Shandon, I felt remorse for many of the things I had done. He had to be sent away, which is why s.h.i.+mbo of Darktree came. Belion could not be permitted to create more worlds of cruelty and ugliness. s.h.i.+mbo, who cast them like jewels into the darkness, sparkling with the colors of life, had to confront him once again. Now that he has won, there will be more such as these."

"No," I said. "We can't operate without each other, and I've resigned."

"You are bitter oven all that has happened, and perhaps justly so. But one does not easily abandon a calling such as yours, _Dra_. Perhaps with the pa.s.sage of time . . ."

I did not answer him for my thoughts had turned inward again.

The way that we walked was the way of death. However pleasant it seemed, this was a _glitten_ experience; and while ordinary people may become addicted to _glitten_ because of the euphoria and the brain-bending, telepaths use _glitten_ in special ways.

Used by a single individual, it serves to heighten his powers.

Used by two persons, a common dream will be dreamed. It, also, is always a very pleasant dream--and among Strantrians it is always the same dream, because this form of religious training conditions the subconscious to produce it by reflex. It is a tradition.

. . . And two dream it and only one awakens.

It is, therefore, used in the death rite, so that one need not go alone to the place I've spent over a thousand years avoiding.

Also, it is used for dueling purposes. For, unless agreed upon and bound by ritual, it is only the stronger who comes back. It is the nature of the drug that some sleeping parts of the two minds are set in conflict, though the conscious portions be all unaware of this.

Green Green had been so bound, so I did not fear a last-ditch trick for the gaining of Pei'an vengeance. Also, even if it were a dueling situation, I did not feel that I had anything to fear, considering his condition.

But as we walked along, I considered that I was probably hastening his death by several hours, under guise of a pleasant, near-mystical ritual.

Telepathic euthanasia.

Mental murder.

I was glad to be able to help a fellow creature shuffle off in such a decent way, on the condition that he wanted it. It made me think of my own pa.s.sing, which I am certain will not be a pleasant one.

I have heard people say that no matter how much you love living, now, this minute, and think that you would like to live forever, someday you will _want_ to die, someday you will pray for death. They had pain in mind when they spoke. They meant they would like to go pretty, like this, to escape.

I do not expect to go pretty, gentle or resigned into this good night myself, thank you. Like the man says, I intend to rage against the dying of the light, fighting and howling every d.a.m.n step of the way. The disease that was responsible for my making it this far involved quite a bit of pain, you might even say agony, and for a long while, before they froze me. I thought about it a lot then, and I decided I would never opt for the easy way out. I wanted to live, pain and all. There's a book and a man I respect: Andre Gide and his _Fruits of the Earth_. On his deathbed he knew he had only a few days left and he wrote like blue blazes. He finished it in about three days and died. In it, he recounts every beautiful thing about the permutations of earth, air, fire and water that surrounded him, things that he loved, and you could tell that he was saying goodbye and did not want to go, despite everything. That is how I feel about it. So, in spite of my involvement, I could not sympathize with Green's choice. I would rather have lain there, broken-boned and all, feeling the rain come down upon me and wondering at it, regretting, resenting a bit and wanting a lot. Maybe it was this, this hunger, that allowed me to learn worldscaping in the first place--so that I could do it all myself, so that I could make more of it. h.e.l.l.

We mounted a hill and paused on its summit. Even before we reached it, I knew what would be there when we looked down the far slope.

. . . Beginning between two ma.s.sive prows of gray stone, with a greensward that started out as bright as that beneath our feet and grew darker and darker as I swept my eyes ahead, there was the place. It was the big, dark valley. And suddenly I was staring into a blackness so black that it was nothing, nothing at all.

"Another hundred steps will I go with you," I said.

"Thank you, _Dra_."

And we descended the hillside, moved toward the place.

"What will they say of me on Megapei when they hear that I am gone?"

"I do not know."

"Tell them, if they ask you, that I was a foolish man who regretted his folly before he came to this place."

"I will."

"And . . ."

"That, too," I said. "I will ask that your bones be taken into the mountains of the place that was your home."

He bowed his head.

"That is all. You will watch me walk on?"

"Yes."

"It is said that there is a light at the end."

"So is it said."

"I must seek it now."

"Walk well, _Dra_ Gringrin-tharl."

"You have won your battles and you will depart this place. Will you cast the worlds I never could?"

"Maybe," and I stared into that blackness, sans stars, comets, meteors, anything.

But suddenly there was something there.

New Indiana hung in the void. It seemed a million miles away, all its features distinct, cameo-cut, glowing. It moved slowly to the right, until the rock blocked it from my view. By then, however, Cocytus had come into sight. It crossed, was followed by all the others: St. Martin, Buningrad, Dismal, M-2, Honkeytonk, Mercy, Summit, Tangia, Illyria, Roden's Folly, Homefree, Castor, Pollux, Centralia, Dandy, and so on.

For some stupid reason my eyes filled with tears at this pa.s.sage. Every world I had designed and built moved by me. I had forgotten the glory.

The feeling that had filled me with the creation of each of them came over me then. I had hurled something into the pit. Where there had been darkness, I had hung my worlds. They were my answer. When I finally, walked that Valley, they would remain after me. Whatever the Bay claimed, I had made some replacements, to thumb my nose at it. I had done something, and I knew how to do more.

"There _is_ a light!" said Green, and I did not realize that he had been clutching my arm, staring at the pageant.

I clasped his shoulder, said, "May you dwell with Kirwar of the Four Faces, Father of Flowers," and I did not quite catch his reply as he drew away from me, pa.s.sed between the stones, walked the Valley, was gone.

I turned then and faced what had to be the east and began the long walk home.

Coming back. . . .

Bra.s.s gongs and polliwogs.

I was stuck to a rough ceiling. No. I was lying there, face up on nothing, trying to support the world with my shoulders. It was heavy and the rocks poked, gouged. Below me lay the Bay, with its condoms, its driftwood, its ropes of seaweed, empty dories, bottles and sc.u.m. I could hear its distant splas.h.i.+ng, and it splashed so high that it kept striking my face. There it was, life, slopping, smelling, chilly. I had had a real wild romp through its waters, and now as I looked down upon it I felt myself falling once more, falling back toward its shallows. Maybe I heard bird-cries. I had walked to the Valley and now I was returning. With luck I would evade the icy fingers of the crumbling hand once more. I fell, and the world twisted about me, resolved itself into what it had been when I left it.

The sky was bleak as slate and streaked with soot. It oozed moisture. The rocks dug into my back. Acheron was pocked and wrinkled. There was no warmth in the air.

I sat up, shaking my head to clear it, s.h.i.+vered, regarded the body of the green man that lay beside me. I said the final words, completing the rite, and my voice shook as I said them.

I rolled Green's body into a more comfortable-looking position and covered it with my flimsy. I picked up the tapes and their bio-cylinders which he had been concealing beneath him. He had been right. They were ruined. I placed them in my knapsack. At least Earth Intelligence would be happy with this state of affairs. Then I crawled on to the power-pull and waited there, raising a screen of forces to attract the T, and watching the sky.

I saw her walking, walking away, her neat hips sheathed in white and swaying slightly, her sandals slapping the patio. I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility? There had been giants and dwarves, toads and mushrooms, caves full of jewels and not one, but ten wizards. . .

I felt the _Model T_ before I saw it, when it locked with the power-pull.

Ten wizards, financial ones, the merchant barons of Algol . . .

All of them her uncles.

I had thought that the alliance would hold, sealed as it was with a kiss. I had not been planning a doublecross, but when it came from the other side something had to be done. It was not all my doing either. There was a whole combine involved. I could not have stopped them if I had wanted to.

I could feel the _T_ homing in now. I rubbed my leg above the break, hurt it, and stopped.

Business arrangement to fairy tale to vendetta. . . . It was too late to recall the second phase of that cycle, and I had just won the final one. I should have felt great.

The _T_ came into view, descended quickly and hung like a world overhead as I manipulated it through the pull.

I have been a coward, a G.o.d and a son of a b.i.t.c.h in my time, among other things. That is one of the things about living for a very long time. You go through phases. Right now I was just tired and troubled and had only one thing on my mind.

I brought the _T_ down to rest on a level s.p.a.ce, cracked the hatch, began crawling toward it.

It did not matter now, not really, all these things I had thought when the fire was high. Any way you looked at it, it did not matter.

I made it to the s.h.i.+p. I crawled inside.

I fiddled with the controls and brought it to a more sensitive life.

My leg hurt like h.e.l.l.

We drifted.

Then I answered us, picked up the necessary equipment, crawled outside once more.

Forgive me my trespa.s.ses, baby.

I positioned myself carefully, took aim, dissolved one big rock.

"Frank? Is that you?"

"No, just us chickens."