When the thing slid off the chief warder, only a limp and flattened body lay on the bench. The hot wind trifled with its moustaches. The thing grew fingers and expertly removed the ring of keys from the dead man's belt. A segment of it then detached itself from the main bulk of the thing, which remained in the shadows as the segment scampered across the yard with the keys. It looked like an animated stool, "My G.o.d!" Jeffy said. "It's coming here."

As he backed away from the window to his cell door, the creature, with one bound, appeared between the bars and dropped the keys into the cell. It jumped in after them.

Bit by bit, more of the thing arrived, dropping down before Jeffy's petrified gaze and finally building into- Gerund, or an intolerable replica of him.

Gerund put out a hand and touched his servant, almost as if he was experimenting.

"It's all right, Jeffy," he said at last, speaking with obvious effort. "You have nothing to fear. No harm will come to you. Take these keys, unlock your cell door and come with me up to the governor of the prison."

Grey in the face, shaking like a leaf, Jeffy managed to pull himself together enough to obey. The keys rattling in his hand, he tried them in the lock one by one until he found a key that fitted. Like a man mesmerized, he led the way into the corridor, the pseudo-Gerund follow-ing closely behind.

n.o.body was about. At one point a warder slept in a tipped-back chair, his heels resting high above his head on the whitewashed wall. They did not disturb him. They unlocked the big, barred door at the foot of a private staircase and so ascended into the governor's flat. Open doors showed them the way to a balcony overlook-ing the bay and the central peaks of the island.

On the balcony, alone as usual, drinking wine, as usual, a man sat in a wicker chair. He looked small and -yes, alas!-infinitely tired.

"Are you the prison governor?" Gerund asked, stump-ing into the room.

"I am," I said.

He looked at me for a long while. I could tell then that he was not-what shall I say?-not an ordinary human. He looked what he was: a forgery of a human being. Even so, I recognized him as Gerund Gyres from the photographs the police had circulated.

"Will you both take a chair?" I asked. "It fatigues me to see you standing."

Neither servant nor master moved.

"Why have you-how have you released your man?" I asked.

"I brought him before you," Gerund said, "so that you may hear what I have to say, and so that you may know that Jeffy is a good servant, has never done me harm. I want him released forthwith."

So, this was a reasonable creature which had com-pa.s.sion. Human or no, it was something I could talk to. So many men with whom I have to deal have neither reason nor compa.s.sion.

"I am prepared to listen," I said, pouring myself more wine. "As you see, I have little else to do.

Listening can be even pleasanter than talking."

Whereupon Gerund began to tell me everything I have now set down here to the best of my ability. Jeffy and I listened in silence; though the bondman undoubtedly understood little, I grasped quite enough to make my insides turn cold. After all, was not my copy of Pamlira's work on Para-evolution lying at my elbow?

In the quiet which fell when Gerund finished, we heard the sunset angelus ringing out from a Praia steeple; it brought me no anodyne, and the hard, hot wind carried its notes away. I knew already that a darkness was falling which no prayers would lighten.

"So then," I said, finding my voice, "as governor, the first point I must make is that you, Gerund Gyres, as I must call you, have committed murder: on your own admission, you killed my chief warder.

"That was an error," Gerund said. "You must realize that I-who am a composite of Je Regard, Cyro Gyres and Gerund Gyres, to say nothing of the numerous fish absorbed on my swim up from the sub-port-I believed I could absorb any human. It would not be death; we are alive. But your warder defied absorbtion. So did Jeffy, here, when I touched him."

"Why do you think that is?" I asked stiffly.

He grew a smile on his face. I averted my eyes from it "We learn fast," he said. "We cannot absorb humans who are not conscious of themselves as part of the pro-cess of nature. If they just cling to the outmoded idea of man as a species apart, their cells are antagonistic to ours and absorption will not take place."

"Do you mean to tell me you can only-er, absorb a cultured man?" I asked.

"Exactly. With animals it is different: their conscious-ness is only a natural process; they offer us no obstacle."

I believe it was at this point that Jeff y jumped over the balcony rail into the bushes below. He picked himself up unhurt, and we watched his ma.s.sive frame dwindle from the road as he ran away. Neither of us spoke; I hoped he might go to bring help, but if Gerund thought of that he gave no sign.

"Really, I don't think I understand what you mean at all," I said, playing for time. And I don't think I did grasp it then; to tell you the truth, I was feeling so sick the whole prison seemed to reel round me. This heavy pseudo-man made me more frightened than I knew I could be. Though I fear neither life nor death, before the half-alive I was shivering with the chill of horror.

"I don't understand about absorbing only cultured people," I said, almost at random.

This time it did not bother with opening its mouth to answer.

"Culture implies fuller understanding. Today there is culturally speaking only one way to that understanding: through Galingua. I can only liberate the cells of those who are able to use that semantic tool, those whose whole bio-chemical bondage has already been made malleable by it. The accident that happened to Je Regard releases abilities already latent in every Galingua-speaking person throughout the galaxy. Here and now on Yinnisfar, a giant step ahead has been taken-unexpected, yet the inevitable climax to the employment of Galingua."

"So then," I said, feeling better as I began to compre-hend, "you are the next evolutionary step as predicted by Pamlira in Para-evolution?"

"Roughly speaking, yes," he said. "I have the total awareness Pamlira spoke of. Each of my cells has that gift; therefore I am independent of fixed form, that bane of every multi-celled creature before me."

I shook my head.

"You seem to me not an advance but a retrogression," I said. "Man is, after all, a complex gene-hive; you are saying you can turn into single cells, but single cells are very early forms of life."

"All my cells are aware," he said emphatically. "That's the difference. Genes built themselves into cells and cells into the gene-hive called man in order to develop their potentialities, not man's. The idea of man's being able to develop was purely an anthropomorphic concept. Now the cells have finished with this shape called man; they have exhausted its possibilities and are going on to some-thing else."

To this there seemed nothing to say, so I sat quietly, sipping my drink and watching the shadows grow, spreading from the mountains out to sea, I was still cold but no longer shaking.

"Have you nothing else to ask me?" Gerund inquired, almost with puzzlement in his voice. You hardly expect to hear a monster sounding puzzled.

"Yes," I said. "Just one thing. Are you happy?"

The silence, Eke the shadows, extended itself towards the horizon.

"I mean," I amplified, "if I had a hand in modelling a new species, I'd try and make something more capable of happiness than man. Curious creatures that we are, our best moments come when we are striving for some-thing; when the thing's achieved-la, we are full of unrest again. There is a divine discontent, but divine content comes only to the beasts of the pasture, who regardlessly crop down snails with their gra.s.s. The more intelligent a man is, the more open he is to doubt; con-versely, the bigger fool he is, the more likely he is to be pleased with his lot So I'm asking, are you new species, happy?"

"Yes," Gerund said positively. "As yet I am only three people: Regard, Cyro, Gerund. The last two have struggled for years for full integration-as do all human couples-and now have found it, a fuller integration than was ever feasible before. What humans instinctively seek, we instinctively have; we are the completion of a trend. We can never be anything but happy, no matter how many people we absorb."

Keeping my voice steady, I said, "You'd better start absorbing me then, since that must be what you intend."

"Eventually all human cells will come under the new regime," Gerund said. "But first the word of what is happening must be spread to make people receptive to us, to soften further what Galingua has already softened. Everyone must know, so that we can carry out the absorbtion process. That is your duty. You are a civilized man, governor; you must write to Pamlira for a start, explaining what has occurred. Pamlira will be interested."

He paused. Three cars swept up the road and turned in at the main gate of the prison. Jeffy, then, had had enough intelligence to go for help.

"Supposing I will not aid you?" I asked. "Why should I hurry man's extinction? Supposing I acquaint the Gal-Fed Council with the truth, and get them to blow this whole island to bits? It would be a simple-get out!- a simple matter-confound it!"

We were suddenly surrounded by b.u.t.terflies. In brush-ing them impatiently away, I had knocked over my bottle of wine. The air was full of thousands of b.u.t.terflies, fluttering round us like paper; the darkening sky was thick with them. The angriest gestures of the hand could not clear them away.

"What is this?" Gerund spluttered. For the first time, I personally saw him out of shape, as he grew another attachment to wave the dainty creatures off. It sprouted from what had teen his ear, and flailed the air about his head. I can only say I was nauseated. It cost me the greatest effort to keep a grip on myself.

"As a creature so aware of nature," I said, "you should enjoy this spectacle. These are Painted Lady b.u.t.terflies, blown in thousands off their migratory tracks. We get them here most years. This hot wind, which we call the Marmtarij carries them westwards across the ocean from the continent."

Now I could hear people running up the stairs. They would be able to deal suitably with this creature, whose reasonable words were so in contrast to his unreasonable appearance. I continued, speaking more loudly, so that if possible he would be taken unawares, "It's not entirely a misfortune for the b.u.t.terflies. There are so many of them, no doubt they have eaten most of their food on the mainland and would have starved had they not been carried here by the wind. An admirable example of nature looking after its own."

"Admirable!" he echoed. I could scarcely see him for bright wings. The rescue party was in the next room. They burst out with Jeffy at their head, carrying atomic weapons.

"There he is," I shouted.

But he was not there. Regard-Cyro-Gerund had gone. Taking a tip from the Painted Ladies, he had split into a thousand units, volplaning away on the breeze, safely, invincibly, lost among the crowd of bright insects.

So I come to what is really not the end but the begin-ning of the story. Already, a decade has pa.s.sed since the events in the Capverde Islands. What did I do? Well, I did nothing; I neither wrote to Pamlira nor called Gal-Fed Council. With the marvellous adaptability of my species, I managed in a day or two to persuade myself that "Gerund" would never succeed, or that somehow or other he had misinterpreted what was happening to him.

And so, year by year, I hear the reports of the human race growing fewer and I think, "Weil, anyway they're happy," and I sit up here on my balcony and let the sea breezes blow on me and drink my wine.

In this climate, and at this post, nothing more should be expected of me. And why should I excite myself for a cause in which I have never believed? When Nature pa.s.ses a law it can-not be repealed; for her prisoners there is no escape- and we are all her prisoners. So I sit tight and take another drink. There is only one proper way to become extinct: with dignity.

Not all men faced their fate with the weary resignation of the prison governor. For many years, in many ways, war was waged against the sentient cells until at last nothing remained of them but a little ash in the fields.

By this time the federation had fallen apart. It was ironical that just when Galingua seemed to offer an approach to new realms, this disintegration should come from the language itself. The use of Galingua was pro-hibited. Interpenetrators were abandoned, and the old system of "solid" s.p.a.ce travel was reintroduced. Even the Self-Perpetuating War lost impetus.

A hard and mercenary world grew up-a world new perhaps to the people of that time, but not entirely unfamiliar to us.

Secret of a Mighty City.

The mighty creature was reeling. The hunter's last shot had caught it right between its eyes. Now, all fifty graceful tons of it, it reared up high above the tree tops, trumpeting in agony. For a moment the sun, beautiful and baleful, caught it poised like an immense swan, before it fell-silent now, no more protesting-'headlong into the undergrowth.

"And there lies another triumph for Man the Uncon-querable, Man the Invincible," proclaimed the commen-tator. "On this planet as on others, the stupendously horrible natural life finally bows out before the gigantic little biped from Earth, Yes, sir, everyone of these revolting, unnatural monsters will be slaughtered by the time"

But by this time, some bright boy had warned the pro-jectionist of the new arrival who was now waiting to use the little editing theatre. The projectionist, in a panic, cut everything. The 3-D image vanished, the sound slicked out with a squawk. Lights came on, revealing Mr. Smile P. Wreyermeyer of Supernova Solids standing by the entrance with several of his more up-and-coming lackeys.

"Hope we didn't disturb you boys, Ed?" Mr. Wreyer-meyer said, watching everyone hustling up to leave.

"Not at all, Mr. Wreyermeyer, we were just tinker-ing," Ed, a mere a.s.sistant director said, grabbing at his gear. "We'll wrap this one up tomorrow. Come on, boys, move fast!"

"I wouldn't like to think we'd interrupted," Mr. Wreyermeyer said blandly. "But Harsch Benlin here has something he seems keen to show us." And he nodded, not perhaps without an easy menace, at the lean figure of Harsch Benlin.

Two minutes later, the last humble shirt-sleeved minion had fled from the theatre, leaving the intruding party in occupation.

"Ed didn't seem in any hurry to leave," Mr. Wreyer-meyer observed heavily, settling his bulk in one of the armchair seats. "Well, Harsch, my boy, let's see what you have to show us."

"Sure thing, Smile," Harsch Benlin said. He was one of the few men on the Supernova lot allowed to call the big chief by his first name; give him his due, he worked the privilege for all it was worth. He jumped now, with a parody of athleticism, on to the narrow stage in front of the solid-screen and smiled down at his audience. It consisted of some twenty-five people, half of whom Harsch knew only by first names.

This company broke down roughly into four groups: the big chief and his yes men; Harsch's own yes men, headed by Pony Caley; a handful of boys from Story and Market Response Departments with their yes men; plus the usual quota of hypnotic-breasted stenographers.

"Here's how it is, boys," Harsch began, trying to look disarming. "I've got an idea for a solid that has me knocked sideways, and I'm hoping and expecting it'll have the same effect on all of you. Now I'm not going to try and sell it to you-we're all busy men here, and for another thing, it sells itself. It's a great idea, at once original and familiar, at once homely and inspiring.

"In brief, the idea's this: I want to put over a solid that is going to give Supernova a terrific boost, because it's going to have our studios as background, and some of our personnel as extras. At the same time, it's going to pack colossal punch in terms of human drama and audience appeal. At the same time it's going to be a profile of Nunion, the busiest, biggest, excitingest, megapolitanist planetary capital in this neck of the galaxy."

Harsch paused for effect. Several members of his audience were lighting up aphrohales, picking their noses, or talking to each other in whispers.

"I can see you're asking yourselves," Harsch said, jacking his jaws up into a smile, "just how I intend to cram so much meat into one two-hour solid. O.K. I'll show you."

He raised one hand eloquently, as a signal to his pro-jectionist, Cluet Dander. There was no better man than Gluet at his job; even Harsch had been known to acknowledge that on occasion. Directly his hand rose, a solid appeared in the screen.

It was the face of a man. He was in his late forties. The years which had dried away his flesh had only suc-ceeded in revealing, under the fine skin, the n.o.bility of his bone structure: the tall forehead, the set of the cheekbones, the justness of the jaw. He was talking, although Cluet had turned off the sound, leaving only the animation of the features to speak for themselves. This was the kind of man, you felt instinctively, whose daughter you would like to marry. His countenance com-pletely dwarfed Harsch Benlin.

"This, ladies and gentlemen." Harsh said, clenching his fists and holding them out before him, "this is the face of Art Stayker."

Now he had a reaction. The audience was sitting up, looking at each other, looking at Mr.

Wreyermeyer, trying to gauge the climate of opinion about them. Gratified, without letting the gratification show, Harsch continued.

"Yes, this Is the face of a great man. Art Stayker! What a genius! He was known only to a narrow circle of men, here in this very studio where he worked, yet all who knew him admired and-why don't I come right out with it?-loved him. I had the honour to be his right-hand man back in the good old days when Art was boss of Doc.u.mentary Unit Two, and I plan this solid to be his biography-a tribute to Art Stayker."

He paused. If he could swing this one on Wreyepmeyer and Co. he was made, because if it boosted Art Stayker it was also going to boost Harsch Benlin. He had to play his hand carefully, watching which way the big boys down there in the armchairs jumped.

"Art finished up in the gutter!" someone called out, that was Hi Pilloi, only a yes man's yes man.

"Yes, and I am glad someone brought that point up at once," Harsch said, carefully snubbing Hi Polloi by not mentioning his name. "Sure Art Stayker finished up in the gutter. He couldn't quite make the grade. This solid is going to show why. It's going to have subtility. It's going to show just how much grit and know-how is needed to serve the public as we serve them-because, like I said, it's going to be a solid not just about Art Stayker, but about Supernova, and about Nunion, and about Life. It's going to be bigger than our smash hit saga on Thraldemener! It's going to have everything."

Art's gentle face faded, leaving Harsch standing there on the platform alone. Although thin almost to the point of emaciation, Harsch perpetually consumed slimming tablets for the luxury of hearing his underlings refer to him as "gangling", which he held to be a term of affec-tion.

"And the beauty of this solid is," he continued drama-tically, "that's it's already half made! I'll show you why."

With Cluet sliding smoothly in on his cue again, images began to grow in the seemingly limitless cube of the screen. Something as intricate and lovely as the magnification of a snowflake stirred and seemed to drift towards the audience. It enlarged, sprouting detail, elaborating itself, until every tiny branch had other branches. It seemed, thanks to clever camera work, to be an organic growth: then the descending, slowing, viewpoint at length revealed it to be a creation of concrete and imperve and ferroline, moulded by man into buildings and thoroughfares.

"This," Harsch p.r.o.nounced, "is the fabulous city-our fabulous city-the city of Nunion, as filmed by Unit Two under Art Stayker when he was at the height of his powers, twenty years ago. This solid was to be his great work; it was never completed, for reasons I will tell you later. But the sixteen reels of unedited cathusjell he left behind as his greatest memorial have lain in our vaults here all that long time, until I dug them out just the other day.

"O.K. Now I'm not going to talk any more for a while. I'm going to ask you to sit back and appreciate the sheer beauty of these shots. I'm going to ask you to try and judge their undoubted value in terms of aesthetic appeal and box-office punch. I'm going to ask you to just relax and watch a masterpiece, in which I'm proud to say I had such a considerable hand."

The viewpoint was still sinking with all the leisure of a drowned man, below the highest towers, through the aerial levels, the pedestrian (human and a-human) levels, the various transport and service levels, down to the ground, the imperve ground, embedded in which a con-vex gla.s.s traffic-guide reflected in miniature the whole of that long camera descent from the skies. Then the focus shifted laterally, taking in the bright boots of a police officer.

Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, a commentary had begun. It was a typical Unit Two commentary, quiet, unemphatic, spoken in Art Stayker's own voice.

"On the seventy thousand planets which occupy the insignificant galaxy inhabited by man, there is no bigger or more diverse city than Nunion," the commentary said. "It has become a fable to all men of all races. To describe it is almost impossible without descending into statistics and figures, and this is to lose sight of the reality; we ask you to come exploring the reality with us. Forget the facts and figures: look instead at the streets and man-sions and, above all, at the individuals which comprise Nunion. Look, and ask yourselves this: how does one find the heart of a great city? What secret lies at the heart of it when one gets there?"

Nunion had grown over the ten islands of an archipelago in the temperate zone of Yinnisfar, spreading from the nearby continent. Five hundred bridges, a hundred and fifty subways, sixty heliplane routes and innumerable ferries, gondolas and sailing craft inter-connected the eleven sectors. Lining the water lanes or breaking the seemingly endless phalanxes of streets went avenues of either natural or polycathic trees, with here and there-perhaps at a focal point like the Ishral Memorial-the rare and lovely jenny-merit, especially imported, perpetually flowering. The camera swept over Harby Clive Bridge now, hovering before the first block beyond the waterway. A young man was coming out of the block, springing down the outer steps three at a time. On his face were mingled excitement, triumph and joy. He could hardly contain himself. He could not walk fast enough. He was buoyed with exultation. He was the young man you can find in any large city: a man about to make his mark, having scored his first success, con-fident beyond sense, exuberant beyond measure. In him you could see the fuse burning which had reached out to seventy thousand planets and dreamed of seventy thousand more.

The commentator did not say this. The picture said it for him, catching the young man's strut, his angular shadow sharp and restless on the pavement. But Harsch Benlin could not stay silent. He came forward so that his figure bit its silhouette out of the solid in the screen.

"That's the way it was with Art," he said. "He was always digging around for what he called 'the exact, revealing detail'. Maybe that's why he got no further than he did: he drove us quaints all crazy hanging around for that detail."

"These are just shots of a big city," Janzyez from Story called up impatiently. "We've all seen this sort of footage before, Harsch. Just what does it all add up to?"

Janzyez was a n.o.body trying to be a somebody; the boys in the back office spat when they heard his name.

"If you used your eyes, you'd see the pattern forming," Harsch replied. "That was how it was where Art was concerned-he just let the thing evolve, without impos-ing a pattern. Watch this coming shot now for pure comedy. . . ."