He tore through the veils of snow which now seemed to be falling upward from off the ground-like strings of bubbles.

He approached the shattered form.

Like a swimmer he approached-unable to open his mouth to speak for fear of drowning-of drowning and not knowing, of never knowing.

He could not check his forward motion; he was swept tide-like toward the wreck. He came to a stop, at last, before it.

Some things never change. They are things which have long ceased to exist as objects and stand solely as never-to- be-calendared occasions outside that sequence of elements called Time.

Render stood there and did not care if Fenris leaped upon his back and ate his brains. He had covered his eyes, but he could not stop the seeing. Not this time. He did not care about anything. Most of himself lay dead at his feet.

There was a howl. A gray shape swept past him.

The baleful eyes and bloody muzzle rooted within the wrecked car, chomping through the steel, the glass, grop- ing inside for .. .

"Nol Brute! Chewer of corpses!" he cried. "The dead are sacred! My dead are sacred!"

He had a scalpel in his hand then, and he slashed expertly at the tendons, the bunches of muscle on the straining shoulders, the soft belly, the ropes of the arteries.

Weeping, he dismembered the monster, limb by limb, and it bled and it bled, fouling the vehicle and the re- mains within it with its infernal animal juices, dripping

110 .

and running until the whole plain was reddened and writhing about them.

Render fell across the pulverized hood, and it was soft and warm and dry. He wept upon it.

"Don't cry," she said.

He was hanging onto her shoulder then, holding her tightly, there beside the black lake beneath the moon that was Wedgewood. A single candle flickered upon their ta- ble, She held the glass to his lips.

"Please drink it."

"Yes, give it to mel"

He gulped the wine that was all softness and lightness.

It burned within him. He felt his strength returning.

"I am ..."

"-Render, the Shaper," splashed the lake.

"No!"

He turned and ran again, looking for the wreck. He had to go back, to return ...

"You can't."

"I can!" he cried. "I can, if I try. ..."

Yellow flames coiled through the thick air. Yellow ser- pents. They coiled, glowing, about bis ankles. Then through the murk, two-headed and towering, approached his Adversary.

Small stones rattled past him. An overpowering odor corkscrewed up his nose and into his head.

"Shaperi" came the bellow from one head.

"You have returned for the reckoning!" called the other.

Render stared, remembering.

"No reckoning, Thaumiel," he said. "I beat you and I chained you for-Rothman, yes, it was Rothman-the cabalist." He traced a pentagram in the air. "Return to Qliphoth. I banish you."

"This place be Qliphoth."

". . . By Khamael, the angel of blood by the hosts of Seraphim, in the Name of Elohim Gebor, I bid you vanish!"

"Not this time," laughed both heads.

It advanced.

Render backed slowly away, his feet bound by the yellow serpents. He could feel the chasm opening be- hind him. The world was a jigsaw puzzle coming apart. He could see the pieces separating.

"Vanish!"

111.

The giant roared out its double-laugh.

Render stumbled.

"This way, lovel"

She stood within a small cave to his right.

He shook his head and backed toward the chasm.

Thaumiel reached out toward him.

Render toppled back over the edge.

"Charles!" she screamed, and the world shook itself apart with her wailing.

"Then Vemichtung," he answered as he fell. "I join you in darkness."

Everything came to an end.

"I want to see Doctor Charles Render.**

"I'm sorry, that is impossible."

"But I skip-jetted all the way here. just to thank him.

I'm a new man! He changed my life!"

"I'm sorry. Mister Erikson. When you called this mom- ing, I told you it was impossible."

"Sir, I'm Representative Erikson-and Render once did me a great service."

*Then you can do him one now. Go home."

"You can't talk to me that way!"