'None of the big-league baseball teams train there. Within striking distance of Tampa there's a lot. And I've got to stay here to keep in touch with them.' He paused, and before Andy could probe deeper, Yancey said: 'I love baseball. I love bein' around the professionals. I'm stayin' right where I am, and Ella feels the same way.'

Having failed twice to persuade some valued members of his staff to move north with him, he could comfort himself with the knowledge that his most valuable staff member would be making the trip, for on the day he and Betsy decided to go to Tennessee they had approached Nora and said: 'We'll need you in the new place. You especially, because up there I'm going to be a full-fledged doctor, not the manager of a posh hotel. We'll get someone else to do that. You're to be my head nurse, and together we'll give Tennessee the best retirement facility in the States. Just what our brochures promise: "Full medical attention guaranteed for the rest of your life." '

'Sounds exciting,' she had said, 'but I hate to leave Dr. Leitonen and my AIDS patients.'

'We understand. But there'll be work to do up there, too, and we know you'll find it,' so she had agreed to make the move.

Now, on their last day together at the Palms, Andy promised her: 'We'll provide the very best, and you and I will have a great time working together on our patients care.'

As he made his way down the hall he was now stopped by a committee of residents who had come to express their thanks for his impeccable management. They were four citizens of Gateways whom he had especially liked and who were indebted to him: the Mallorys, whose lawsuit he had helped resolve in their favor; Ms. Oliphant, whom he had helped through her battle with cancer; and the Duchess, whose temperamental excesses he had tolerated with good humor. 'We wish we could go with you,' Ms. Oliphant said, and the two other women began to sniffle. Mr. Mallory joked: 'Aren't you glad you allowed us back in after we behaved so poorly three times?' And the Duchess asked coyly: 'We defended the honor of the place, didn't we?'

He embraced them all, sniffled himself, and said: 'This is a marvelous way to say good-bye. Live to a hundred, all of you,' and he was off.

By the time he joined Betsy and Nora in the car, his spirits had revived and he was ready for the final farewell.

As he started his car and drove around the oval, Ken Krenek came rushing from the building and ran across to intercept him as he was about to pass through the gate. 'Hey! Andy! I came to say good-bye and wish you well. You were one of the best.'

'I thought we said a proper farewell at the dinner last night, but always glad to have another. Ken, you proved yourself a most excellent assistant, and as I said: "You're ready for the big job." Tell Taggart I said so.'

Krenek did not want to hear this: 'Andy, you must have seen. I was cut out to be a damned good second in command. Help the big boss achieve his goals. I'm good at that. Anything higher, I get nervous.'

'You mean you'd turn down my job?'

'Yes. I like things to stay the way they are,' and he leaned in the car to bid good-bye to the two women, and when he turned back to the home base on which he felt secure, Betsy said: 'He's such a good guy, I'll miss him.'

Finally they drove down that superb avenue of soaring palms on the left, a fugitive Brazilian pepper tree hiding among the oleanders on the right, and when Betsy saw the bright red berries she was loath to leave them. 'Stop the car, Andy,' she said, and with her cane to aid her she walked over the rough ground to the pepper tree and broke off a large branch covered with an infinity of berries. Back in the car she said: 'I'll bet they'll last till Tennessee, and provide us with a housewarming there. Let's go.'

But Andy did not start the car immediately, for he too was moved by the thought that this might be the last time he would ever see those majestic palms, with their halo of green only at the top. And as they left the Palms they looked back with affection at the towering palm trees.

As the three expatriates reached the North Carolina border with the Great Smoky National Park lying just to the west, Betsy smiled mysteriously and chuckled, and when the others asked: 'What's so funny?' she said: 'The floating white angel, and the way she diverted attention from who did the break-in.'

'What do you know about the angel?' Andy asked, and Betsy said: 'I invented her. She was my idea, a brilliant one, if I do say so myself. A real angel! Two different witnesses saw her, didn't they, and others, too?'

'Come clean,' Andy said as he headed up into the Smokies, and Betsy explained: 'I found myself identifying tremendously with poor Berta Umlauf, I'd been so close to death myself and had contemplated it much more deeply than either of you two could know.

'So death is very real to me and when I watched that marvelous Umlauf family frustrated in every move they made to help their wonderful old mother die in peace, the way she wanted, I think it accurate to say that my blood boiled. I mean it. My temperature rose to the boiling point, and when I heard how Gretchen Umlauf had vomited after seeing her mother-in-law lashed to her bed with gizmos sticking into her body from all angles, I decided to help and arranged for Gretchen's son to slip her into Extended Care by a back door that few used. In a flash of inspiration I told her: "Let's make it as mysterious as possible," and gave her a flimsy white nightgown, all lace and frills, that a dear friend had given me when it was thought I'd be bedridden for the rest of my life. When I helped Gretchen into it, I kissed her and said: "You're doing God's work, kiddo," and off she went into local immortality. An angel who really did God's work. Helped a noble woman, old and worn-out, enter heaven as God intended.'

Suddenly she clapped her hands: 'To hell with Clarence Hasslebrook and his plots against us. We'll fight him all the way! Sometimes the good guys really do win.' As the three people who would be responsible for the character of the Sheltering Hills approached the dividing line between the states, Betsy surprised the others by asking Andy to stop so that she could get out. As she stood there with her cane she said in a whisper: 'Last spring I left Tennessee a hopeless cripple ready to die. Now this year I walk on my own legs back into my beloved state ready for whatever needs to be done,' and in this determined spirit the three associates crossed over into Tennessee.

Almost as soon as he wakened on the day after Zorn's departure, Richard St. Pres realized that things were beginning to unravel. He found, on attempting to read the morning paper, that the cataract in his left eye had worsened, for he could not maintain his focus on the print. He did not panic, since he had been warned that slow, manageable deterioration would probably occur, but it was an irritation, for it presaged the inevitable diminution of eyesight toward that day when he would have to undergo eye surgery.

To bolster his spirits, he gave himself a pep talk: 'Not to worry. They tell me you go into the opththalmologist's office at nine, have the operation-forty minutes-leave at eleven and drive home, if you wish. Nothing like the old days when you lay immobilized with bags of sand locking your head in a safe position.' But when his infirmity seemed to worsen as he read, he concluded: 'I'd better check it out with Dr. Farquhar,' and he thought no more about it.

When it came time to dress for a morning meeting at which he was to represent the residents in a confrontation with the Palms' managerial staff about an increase in monthly fees, he started to tie his necktie-something he had done thousands of times. Over fifty years earlier a Harvard classmate noted for his meticulous grooming had seen that St. Pres was accustomed to fix his tie in an ordinary four-in-hand knot, which produced an uneven knot that kept sliding off to the left. 'Richard, my dear friend,' the man had chided: 'Has no one taught you the latest in neckwear?' and the dapper young man had demonstrated the Windsor, an intricate maneuver in which the right hand wove the long end of the tie under and over and about the shorter end, with a most satisfying result: 'There, you see. The knot is handsomely centered directly over your Adam's apple, but it is also wide at the top and neatly tapered toward the bottom. Voil! You are now a gentleman.'

From that day on, St. Pres had meticulously followed the intricate procedure, gratified when his silk ties, on which he had spent much money and more care, had been paraded before the world and the television cameras. But on this morning, as he entered upon the routine of making the knot, he mysteriously forgot how to manipulate his right hand. The long end of the tie did not behave and the proposed knot became a mess. In a mild confusion and with a growl of irritation, he ripped open the knot, straightened the ends of the tie and began again, but now he was trapped in a phenomenon that attacks many otherwise competent men and women: when he tried to think his way through what had become a daily routine requiring no thought whatever, he found himself totally unable to sort out what he was doing. His brain could not keep up with his fingers; indeed, his fingers required no input from the brain and when mental suggestions arrived, they confused the fingers rather than instructed them.

For a second time he failed to complete this simple operation and the knot became an impossible jumble.

Clawing at it, he dissolved the knot, straightened the ends and proceeded to instruct himself as if he were again a little child: 'The right hand with the long end is the important one. Over and under, then around and under, drawing it tight to make that handsome square knot. Then over, under and around. End with thrusting the long end into the knot and tighten everything.' Surveying with childish pride the finished knot, finally perfect in all respects, he congratulated himself: 'See! It wasn't such a big problem after all.'

But then he stared at himself in the mirror and broke into a nervous laugh, for he remembered how, as a Boy Scout at summer camp in Vermont, he had been reprimanded by the scoutmaster: 'Richard, you'll never be a proper Scout until you learn to tie something besides a granny knot. See how it pulls apart the way you tie it? It's easy to tie a square knot, and look! No power can break that knot apart.'

'How do I do it?' Richard had asked him, and his instructor had made the task an easy one: 'The right hand controls. The left hand never moves. Right hand under, then bring it back over, draw it tight and you have a perfect knot.' The half-smile in the mirror vanished, and in its place came a look of trembling fear: Am I beginning to fall apart? A simple thing like fixing a necktie, and I almost crumbled. Studying his features in the glass he conducted an inventory: Hair thinning and turning white. Teeth showing signs of cracking. Nose not taking in and delivering the amount of oxygen it used to, so lungs less efficient than before. Ticker seems OK but the legs are weakening, and that damned cataract does creep on apace. Still, in reaching a summary he said: 'Not hopeless, all things considered. I can still stand erect and I look as good as any of the others ten years younger than me.'

Then came the doubts: 'Did the tie fiasco have any real significance? I mean, was it a premonition, a signal that disintegration really is speeding up?' The question was so unsettling that he remained for some moments staring into the mirror, and the more intently he studied himself, the more frightened he became, so much so that he telephoned President Armitage and asked to be excused from the morning meeting: 'I'm a bit queasy, not in top form. I need fresh air.'

As he prepared to leave his quarters he chanced to see himself once more in the mirror, and with a brusque wave of his hand he obliterated the image: I'm as good as I have a right to expect, and with that he ripped off the offending tie, cast aside his dress shirt, kicked off his black trousers and dress shoes and dressed instead in what he called his 'African gear,' stout bush shoes, heavy twill khaki pants, rough shirt, English-style scarf and wide-brimmed felt hat. In this garb he stepped briskly from his room, strode to the elevator and descended to the ground level, pleased that he did not encounter anyone to whom he must explain what he was doing.

As he left Gateways and started for what used to be his beloved savanna the noisy gulls began to gather in the air. Soon, realizing that St. Pres was bringing them no food, the angry gulls began to chastise him, screaming through the air and diving almost on his safari hat.

Two of the swift gulls came very low from two different directions, streamlined forms so like those of the Japanese suicide planes that had tried to sink his cruiser at Okinawa. The kamikazes, cheaply built airplanes carrying unbelievably large cargoes of explosive, were piloted by fearless young men whose job it was to seek out the American warships and dive directly into them, destroying their plane, themselves and the enemy ship. So many had attacked his ship that hectic morning that now the sky became filled not with seagulls but with screaming Japanese warplanes, and he was again in uniform, fighting the enemy.

One bird, infuriated by St. Pres's empty hands, wheeled in the sky and flew directly back at him, head-on, and his motions were so like those of a kamikaze that Richard cried: 'It's him! The one who nearly sank us!' and he clenched his fists as if once again activating the antiaircraft guns on his cruiser. The suicide pilot seemed immortal, for he continued his dive through an aerial carpet of flak, on and on, coming ever closer to Richard's ship. But at the crucial moment, bullets from the cruiser struck the plane and aborted the dive, so that in a flash the kamikaze whirled by overhead, missing the ship and exploding in the sea beyond.

In the fatal second as the airplane missed its mark, St. Pres caught a glimpse of the Japanese pilot, a boy of about seventeen, as he fell into the sea, having accomplished nothing. Waving his right hand at the fiery gull, St. Pres ended in a reverent salute to the young pilot who had come so close to destroying the cruiser.

He was now at the edge of that portion of the former savanna that resembled those portions of Africa that had most deeply affected him, the great veldts south of the Congo. Staring at the scarred land from which all growing things had been erased, he visualized once more that reach of spiny shrub, berried bushes and scrub trees in which he had so often trekked, and as he saw these forms rising like gray-green ghosts from the barren land he recalled those hectic, harried days in which he had won his civilian medals, from President Truman this time, as a rather young chief of mission at an American consular post in one of the minor African states that had been carved out of the former Belgian possessions neighboring the Congo River.

So on this morning of reflection and evaluation, Richard was traversing meaningful ground. Somewhat to the south of where he had entered the barren ground now completely restructured by bulldozers, he could see areas that had not been totally denuded and he made his way toward them, thinking as he went. This really could be Africa. Those low shrubs ahead. The Brazilian pepper trees. That vagrant tree here and there, short but growing. I'm homesick. They say that every foreign officer remembers most clearly the spot where the going was the roughest. I remember Africa ten times more often than I do the glamorous nights in Vienna.

But as soon as he had said this, he recalled those wonderful nights in the Austrian capital and that glorious opera hall, romantic in its wartime near-ruin, resplendent in its postwar resurrection, where the great singers of the world gave performances of Die Meistersinger, Lohengrin and Aida: that was living, with celebrations at Demel's and the Bristol. What glorious variety I've had. Suicide bombers at Okinawa to test whether I was a man or not. The tour in Africa to prove that I could run an isolated mission, and Vienna to prove that I could operate a full-scale embassy, too.

Tears came to his eyes as he remembered the loss of his wife, but quickly he brushed them away: I'm ashamed of myself. The doubts this morning. The hesitations. Of course I'm growing older, but for God's sake, Richard, let's do it with some class. Get your damned eye fixed. Write to your old companions. Invite that Englishman who behaved so well in Africa over to visit for a while. Get on with it, man. End it in style. Remember what the scoutmaster taught you: 'Never tie a granny knot that comes undone. Tie a square one that can't be pulled apart by wild horses.'

At this point in his wandering he saw that he was close to the spot where the Emerald Pool nestled among the low trees and shrubs: 'They did leave a few growing things about,' and as he approached the spot he saw that remnants were prospering despite the carnage about them. As he moved closer to the spot to which he had become attached in his explorations of the savanna, he became almost afraid of what he would see: the deterioration of the pool itself, the denuding of the surrounding landscape, the absence of wildlife, but as he neared it he saw that something, at least, had been salvaged. There was the body of water, still with its emerald cover, and there were a few shrubs about the edges and a frayed patch of grass.

As he studied the deterioration of what had been a thriving oasis he thought of the massive changes he had witnessed in his life: the wild adjustments in the map of Africa, the demise of Communism throughout the world, the quiet gaining of power by China, the rise of Japan and Germany as major competitors of the United States, and the sad decline of our own productive capacity with its concomitant loss of national leadership. 'It's been a rocky ride,' he said aloud, 'but I wouldn't have missed it.'

As his words echoed heavily in the silent air, he was heard by a longtime resident of the area about the pool, and this one took immediate fright at the unexpected noise. It was Rattler, who had found the recent months most disturbing. He'd been repelled by the big blue heron when he tried to steal her chicks, and had been repeatedly attacked by her mate when he tried to retreat. He had spent weeks without catching a mouse or a rabbit, and those dreadful machines that tore up the earth had come perilously close to where he had lived for so many years of his life.

The various commotions and defeats had put him in an ill temper, so as he watched this new intrusion with hooded eyes, one of the man-things he had been watching through the years and ignoring if they passed him by and allowed him to rest, he followed the approaching footsteps with added care. In preparation for defense, he twisted himself into a tight coil from which he could spring with tripled force if he felt he must attack before the moving object attacked him. In this posture, scarcely breathing lest he move a twig that might alert the intruder, he waited.

Closer and closer came the heavy, steel-toed boots. It seemed as if the next steps must strike the area where Rattler waited, and when one of the huge feet did rise as if it were going to hit the snake, the snake activated his warning rattles and with a mighty thrust of his coiled body leaped forward in the air, fangs at the ready and bullet head directed right at the upper leg of the invader. In a flash during which morning sunlight illuminated the long, thick body of the snake, Rattler's potent fangs sank deeply into the calf just above St. Pres's bush shoe, delivered their deadly poison and withdrew.

St. Pres caught only a fleeting glimpse of the snake as it came flying at him through the air, but he did see the head strike his leg, and he was aware that the fangs had plunged deeply and hung there for a long moment. And he saw the snake retreat as a strange sensation throbbed in his leg and seemed to course upward in some artery or vein.

Clutching his left leg and pressing upon the stricken area as if to limit the effect of the venom, he fell backward upon a matted tuft of grass growing from a mound that now formed a kind of chair. 'Is this how it's to end?' he asked himself quietly as he watched the grasses move slightly as the rattlesnake slithered away, and he had the courage to answer: 'So far from the hospital! I doubt I'd reach there.' Then, scientist that he had always been, even if only an enthusiastic amateur, he reasoned: He seemed very big. Thick as my arm. He must have delivered- He did not finish the thought, for the poison the great snake had injected was already coursing toward the heart, inducing a faintness as it sped along, blocking the passage of oxygen. He knew the attack was fatal, he could feel the numbness growing throughout his body. Then he looked away, across the devastated savanna toward the Palms: 'We had a decent life there. I hope Zorn's successor and Helen Quade-'

A powerful pain overwhelmed him as the major burden of the poison reached his heart, but he was strong and in reasonably good condition, so he did not lose consciousness at once. Instead, he gripped the area about his heart, steadied himself and looked northward to where the gulls, frenzied by some newcomer bringing no food, wheeled in the sky and became Zero fighters over Okinawa. The enemy planes exploded and again he saluted, his right arm so heavy he could barely raise it.

Adjusting his body to alleviate the pain, he suddenly cried a mighty 'Ugh!' and fell backward toward the watching snake. Looking up at the sky, he saw the flash of the medals he had rightly won, and with a last cry he shouted 'Margaret!' the name of his wife, who had died too soon.

There was no reason why anyone should have missed the ambassador at noontime, since residents did not take lunch together, nor was he expected at any afternoon meetings. But toward three in the afternoon Reverend Quade called his room several times to inquire about some papers he was supposed to give her regarding a scholarship for one of the waitresses who was applying to Duke University. When she failed three times to reach him, she experienced a powerful premonition that some accident might have occurred, a premonition rooted in unhappy experience.

In her work at the three levels of care at the Palms she had formed a habit of looking directly and intensely into the eyes of the residents, and had discovered that there was a different look in the eyes of those older people who had begun to resign themselves to the inevitability of death: 'They seem to flash signals to those who care. Time's running out. I've served my enlistment on the battlefields of life and it's time to make an orderly retreat.' She had noticed that people who sent such messages were satisfied that their sons had found a secure place for themselves in life and that their daughters were safely married. Their grandchildren were doing moderately well, no drugs or premature pregnancies, scholarships to the respected colleges.

'I do not see surrender in their eyes,' she had told St. Pres one evening at the tertulia, 'rather a sense of reassuring completeness. The race is over, a modest victory has been won.' She realized now that in the last few days she'd seen such a look in Richard's eyes as he neared his eightieth birthday, but in his case it was a look of bewildered resignation, not triumph, and it was her recollection of that look that now sent her to the main office: 'I'm worried about the ambassador. He was supposed to call me at three, and there's been no word.'

'I'll call again,' said the switchboard operator and still no response. 'Do you want us to look in his room? He hasn't rung for help.'

'No. That would be intrusive.' A slight blush crept over her composed face. 'I've no right to be checking on him.' So the forced entry to his room was not made.

But as she left the main desk she was not at ease. Richard St. Pres had been signaling for help, of that she was convinced, and as she started inquiring whether anyone had seen him since breakfast she learned that he had forgone the morning meeting and headed for the savanna. 'I saw him being bombarded by the gulls when he brought no food,' Laura Oliphant reported, and someone else had seen him striding in the general direction of the Emerald Pool.

'Did anyone see him come back?'

'No.'

She did not confide in the others that she was going to wander through the savanna in case he might have fallen into some kind of disabling trouble, but that is what she did, and she, too, had to fight off the protesting gulls.

Freed of them, she cut across the barren ground that had once been so filled with growing things and small animals and headed for the Emerald Pool, recalling the afternoon when Richard had first taken her to see this secluded gem, green and glistening in sunlight, and the recent visit when he had proposed to her. She half expected to see him sitting on some hummock and either reading or studying the signs of life still existing about the edges of the pool.

As she drew closer she saw that he was not there and experienced a sense of dread, for if he had wandered farther afield and was incapacitated, it might prove difficult to find him. Then, as she was about to turn away she saw him-fallen face upward from the slight rise on which he must have been perched when death came.

She did not cry out, nor did she shrink away in horror. Methodically, as if he were some stricken child, she bent down, studied his ashen face and felt for the heart that had long since ceased functioning. That he was dead, and had been for some hours, was obvious, and this realization fixed her to the spot as she contemplated what to do.

Dinner would be starting in half an hour, the time it would take her to return to the Palms, and if she burst in with the news that the ambassador had died, there would be a commotion and a barrage of questions she could not answer. But what had he died of? Heart failure? Some massive stroke? It would never have occurred to her to examine his legs to see if a snake had struck him; indeed, she was not aware that Rattler lay coiled nearby watching with hooded eyes as this new stranger invaded his sanctuary.

The snake was not required to strike again, for Reverend Quade, her mind at ease as to what she must do, had begun to walk away from the pool. Not hurrying and showing no sign of distraction or despair, she walked solemnly across the barren savanna to the main building, where residents were already filing into the dining room. Avoiding them, she walked casually to Mr. Krenek's office, greeted him formally, sat down and started to speak, but a flood of such emotion swept over her, the pent-up sorrow of having lost a noble friend, that she suddenly burst into tears.

'Reverend Quade! What is it?'

She continued sobbing for some moments, then controlled herself and, placing her right forefinger on her lips to indicate that Krenek must not react noisily and attract attention, she whispered: 'Ambassador St. Pres, your men will find him at the Emerald Pool.'

'Dead?'

'Yes.'

'What happened?'

'Natural causes, one supposes.'

'You saw him? You're sure he was dead?'

'At the pool. They'll find him there.'

'And you want us to keep it quiet? Till the body has been removed? And the doctors can give us an explanation?'

'Yes. There's no need to create distress in there,' and she motioned toward the dining room, which was now filled.

'I'll go out myself to fetch him,' Krenek said, and before Helen left the office, two strong workmen arrived to receive instructions: 'A sad task, men. We have to do it in complete secrecy,' and the three set off for the Emerald Pool.

When Reverend Quade entered the dining room she paused at the door, studied the tables and said to herself: 'These are my flock whom I have elected to serve till I die.' As she studied the familiar faces she realized how deeply she loved these serious people who had made their decisions relating to the last years of their lives. She wished each of them well, and many years of contentment.

At that moment it seemed to her that she could hear organ music she had known long ago. She was a young missionary in China and had been dispatched to a small branch church in the hinterlands to conduct a week of services in a ramshackle building, which contained a fine German organ. An elderly Chinese man had taught himself to play the simple tunes required, and at the end of each service, as she was leaving the pulpit, he played a splendid piece of music with obvious enthusiasm.

On the fourth night she lingered to ask him what the refrain was, and he had handed her a well-worn sheet of music with the heading 'Recessional. To be played at the close of service.' It bore no publisher's name, no date at which it was printed nor the name of the composer. It had no text, it was just a sheet of music dating far back in the history of Christianity, but it was a powerful accompaniment to the close of worship and the filing out of the faithful.

'Recessional,' she whispered softly to herself as she studied the dining room. 'We're all passing slowly, honorably away.'

Then her eyes drifted toward the round table in the corner, where the tertulia was now deprived of its second member. Whom would they move into their circle to take the ambassador's place? Perhaps Maxim Lewandowski. But did it have to be another man?

As she moved quietly to join President Armitage and Senator Raborn as they waited at the round table, she noticed that Ms. Oliphant was lecturing somebody about something. The Mallorys were regaling a table with a story about their latest evening on the town.

And once again the yogurt machine was on the blink.

BY JAMES A. MICHENER.

Tales of the South Pacific.

The Fires of Spring.

Return to Paradise The Voice of Asia.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri Sayonara The Floating World The Bridge at Andau.

Hawaii Report of the Country Chairman Caravans.

The Source Iberia Presidential Lottery.

The Quality of Life Kent State: What Happened and Why The Drifters A Michener Miscellany: 19501970 Centennial Sports in America.

Chesapeake The Covenant Space.

Poland Texas Legacy Alaska.

Journey Caribbean The Eagle and the Raven.

Pilgrimage The Novel James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook.

Mexico.

Creatures of the Kingdom Recessional Miracle in Seville This Noble Land: My Vision for America.

The World Is My Home with A. Grove Day.

Rascals in Paradise with John Kings Six Days in Havana.

About the Author.