He closed the door behind him, and I passed through

22 .

the ceilings and floors of the apartments overhead, then up, and into the night above the city. One eye in the building across the street winked out; as I watched, the other did the same.

Bodiless again, I fled upward wishing there was some- thing I could feel.

HE WHO SHAPES.

This is the original novella for which they gave me a Nebula Award at that first, very formal SFWA ban- quet at the Overseas Press Club, and which I expanded at Damon Knight's suggestion into the book The Dream Master. The novel contains some material which I am very happy to have written, but reflecting upon things after the passage of all this time I find that I prefer this, the shorter version. It is more streamlined and as such comes closer to the quasi-Classical notions I had in mind, in terms of economy and directness, in describing a great man with a flaw.

Lovely as it was, with the blood and all. Render could sense that it was about to end.

Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as a minute, he decided-and perhaps the temperature should be increased . . . Somewhere, just at the periphery of everything, the darkness halted its constriction.

Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders, was arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillate of shame and pain and fear.

The Forum was stifling.

Caesar cowered outside the frantic circle. His fore- arm covered his eyes but it could not stop the seeing, not this time.

The senators had no faces and their garments were spattered with blood. All their voices were like the cries of birds. With an inhuman frenzy they plunged their dag- gers into the fallen figure.

All, that is, but Render.

23.

The pool of blood in which he stood continued to widen.

His arm seemed to be rising and falling with a mechan- ical regularity and his throat might have been shaping bird-cries, but he was simultaneously apart from and a part of the scene.

For he was Render, the Shaper.

Crouched, anguished and envious, Caesar wailed his protests.

"You have slain him! You have murdered Marcus Antonius-a blameless, useless fellow!"

Render turned to him and the dagger in his hand was quite enormous and quite gory.

"Aye," said he.

The blade moved from side to side. Caesar, fascin- ated by the sharpened steel, swayed to the same rhythm.

"Why?" he cried. "Why?"

"Because," answered Render, "he was a far nobler Roman then yourself.**

"You lie* It is not sol"

Render shrugged and returned to the stabbing.

"It is not true!" screamed Caesar. "Not truel"

Render turned to him again and waved the dagger.

Puppetlike, Caesar mimicked the pendulum of the blade.

"Not true?" smiled Render. "And who are you to question an assassination such as this? You are no one!

You detract from the dignity of this occasion! Begone!"

Jerkily, the pink-faced man rose to his feet, his hair half-wispy, half-wetplastered, a disarray of cotton. He turned, moved away; and as he walked, he looked back over his shoulder.

He had moved far from the circle of assassins, but the scene did not diminish in size. It retained an elec- tric clarity. It made him feel even further removed, ever more alone and apart.

Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner and stood before him, a blind beggar.

Caesar grasped the front of his garment.

"Have you an ill omen for me this day?"

"Beware!" jeered Render.

"Yest Yes!" cried Caesar. "'Bewarel' That is good!

Beware what?"

"The ides-"

^Yes? The ides-?-

"-of Octember."

24 .

He released the garment.

"What is that you say? What is Octember?"

"A month."

"You liel There is no month of Octemberi"

"And that is the date noble Caesar need fear-the "non-existent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion."

Render vanished around another sudden corner.

"Wait! Come backl"

Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him.

The bird-cries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.

"You mock me!" wept Caesar.