"Yes. that would be pleasant. Same table?"

"Why not?-I'll reserve it."

"All right. I'll see you then."

"Good-bye."

The connection was broken.

Suddenly, then, at that moment, colors swirled again through her head; and she saw trees-oaks and pines, poplars and sycamores-great, and green and brown, and iron-colored; and she saw wads of fleecy clouds, dipped in paintpots, swabbing a paste! sky; and a burn- ing sun, and a small willow tree, and a lake of a deep, almost violet, blue. She folded her torn handkerchief and put it away.

She pushed a button beside her desk and music filled the office: Scriabin. Then she pushed another button and replayed the tape she had dictated, half-listening to each.

Pierre sniffed suspiciously at the food. The attendant moved away from the tray and stepped out into the hall, locking the door behind him- The enormous salad waited on -the floor. Pierre approached cautiously, snatched a handful of lettuce, gulped it.

He was afraid.

// only the steel would stop crashing and crashing against steel, somewhere in that dark night ... If only . . .

Sigmund rose to his feet, yawned, stretched. His hind legs trailed out behind him for a moment, then he snapped to attention and shook himself. She would be coming home soon. Wagging his tail slowly, he glanced up at the human-level clock with the raised numerals, verified his feelings, then crossed the apartment to the teevee. He rose onto his hind legs, rested one paw against the table and used the other to turn on the set.

86.

It was nearly time for the weather report and the roads would be icy.

"I have driven through countrywide graveyards," wrote Render, "vast forests of stone that spread further every

day.

"Why does man so zealously guard his dead? Is it be- cause this is the monumentally democratic way of im- mortalization, the ultimate affirmation of the power to hurt-that is to say, life-and the desire that it continue on forever? Unamuno has suggested that this is the case.

If it is, then a greater percentage of the population ac- tively sought immortality last year than ever before in history... .*'

Tch-tchg, tchga-tchgt

"Do you think they're really people?"

"Naw, they're too good."

The evening was starglint and soda over ice. Render wound the S-7 into the cold sub-subcellar, found his park- ing place, nosed into it.

There was a damp chill that emerged from the con- crete to gnaw like rats* teeth at their flesh. Render guided her toward the lift, their breath preceding them in dis- solving clouds.

"A bit of a chill in the air," he noted.

She nodded, biting her lip.

Inside the lift, he sighed, unwound his scarf, lit a ciga- rette.

"Give me one, please," she requested, smelling the

tobacco.

He did.

They rose slowly, and Render leaned against the wall, puffing a mixture of smoke and crystallized moisture.

"I met another routie shep," he recalled, "in Switzer- land. Big as Sigmund. A hunter though, and as Prussian as they come," he grinned.

"Sigmund likes to hunt, too," she observed. "Twice every year we go up to the North Woods and I turn him loose. He's gone for days at a time, and he's always quite

87.

happy when he returns. Never says what he's done, but he's never hungry. Back when I got him I guessed that he would need vacations from humanity to stay stable. I think I was right."

The lift stopped, the door opened and they walked out into the hall, Render guiding her again.

Inside his office, he poked at the thermostat and warm air sighed through the room. He hung their coats in the inner office and brought the great egg out from its nest behind the wall. He connected it to an outlet and moved to convert his desk into a control panel.

"How long do you think it will take?" she asked, run- ning her fingertips over the smooth, cold curves of the egg. "The whole thing, I mean. The entire adaptation to seeing."

He wondered.

"I have no idea," he said, "no idea whatsoever, yet.

We got off to a good start, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I think I'll be able to make a good guess in an- other three months."

She nodded wistfully, moved to his desk, explored the controls with finger strokes like ten feathers.

"Careful you don't push any of those."

"I won't. How long do you think it will take me to learn to operate one?" *

"Three months to leam it. Six, to actually become pro- ficient enough to use it on anyone, and an additional six under close supervision before you can be trusted on your own. -About a year altogether."

"Uh-huh." She chose a chair.

Render touched the seasons to life, and the phases of day and night, the breath of the country, the city, the elements that raced naked through the skies, and all the dozens of dancing cues he used to build worlds. He smashed the clock of time and tasted the seven or so ages of man,

"Okay," he turned, "everything is ready."

It came quickly, and with a minimum of suggestion on Render's part. One moment there was grayness. Then a dead-white fog. Then it broke itself apart, as though a quick wind had risen, although he neither heard nor felt a wind.

He stood beside the willow tree beside the lake, and she stood half-hidden among the branches and the lat-

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