The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford

   “I have something to show you,” Doc Labyrinth said. From his coat pocket he gravely drew forth a matchbox. He held the matchbox tightly, his eyes fixed on it. “You’re about to see the most momentous thing in all modern science. The world will shake and shudder.”
   “Let me see,” I said. It was late, past midnight. Outside my house rain was falling on the deserted streets. I watched Doc Labyrinth as he carefully pushed the matchbox open with his thumb, just a crack. I leaned over to see.
   There was a brass button in the matchbox. It was alone, except for a bit of dried grass and what looked like a bread crumb.
   “Buttons have already been invented,” I said. “I don’t see much to this.” I reached out my hand to touch the button but Labyrinth jerked the box away, frowning furiously.
   “This isn’t just a button,” he said. Looking down at the button he said, “Go on! Go on!” He nudged the button with his finger. “Go on!”
   I watched with curiosity. “Labyrinth, I wish you’d explain. You come here in the middle of the night, show me a button in a matchbox, and—”
   Labyrinth settled back against the couch, sagging with defeat. He closed the matchbox and resignedly put it back in his pocket. “It’s no use pretending,” he said. “I’ve failed. The button is dead. There’s no hope.”
   “Is that so unusual? What did you expect?”
   “Bring me something.” Labyrinth gazed hopelessly around the room. “Bring me—bring me wine.”
   “All right, Doc,” I said getting up. “But you know what wine does to people.” I went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of sherry. I brought them back and gave one to him. We sipped for a time. “I wish you’d let me in on this.”
   Doc put his glass down, nodding absently. He crossed his legs and took out his pipe. After he had lit his pipe he carefully looked once more into the matchbox. He sighed and put it away again.
   “No use,” he said. “The Animator will never work, the Principle itself is wrong. I refer to the Principle of Sufficient Irritation, of course.”
   “And what is that?”
   “The Principle came to me this way. One day I was sitting on a rock at the beach. The sun was shining and it was very hot. I was perspiring and quite uncomfortable. All at once a pebble next to me got up and crawled off. The heat of the sun had annoyed it.”
   “Really? A pebble?”
   “At once the realization of the Principle of Sufficient Irritation came to me. Here was the origin of life. Eons ago, in the remote past, a bit of inanimate matter had become so irritated by something that it crawled away, moved by indignation. Here was my life work: to discover the perfect irritant, annoying enough to bring inanimate matter to life, and to incorporate it into a workable machine. The machine, which is at present in the back seat of my car, is called The Animator. But it doesn’t work.”
   We were silent for a time. I felt my eyes slowly begin to close. “Say, Doc,” I began, “isn’t it time we—”
   Doc Labyrinth leaped abruptly to his feet. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s time for me to go. I’ll leave.”
   He headed for the door. I caught up with him. “About the machine,” I said. “Don’t give up hope. Maybe you’ll get it to work some other time.”
   “The machine?” He frowned. “Oh, the Animator. Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll sell it to you for five dollars.”
   I gaped. There was something so forlorn about him that I didn’t feel like laughing. “For how much?” I said.
   “I’ll bring it inside the house. Wait here.” He went outside, down the steps and up the dark sidewalk. I heard him open the car door, and then grunt and mutter.
   “Hold on,” I said. I hurried after him. He was struggling with a bulky square box, trying to get it out of the car. I caught hold of one side, and together we lugged it into the house. We set it down on the dining table.
   “So this is the Animator,” I said. “It looks like a Dutch oven.”
   “It is, or it was. The Animator throws out a heat beam as an irritant. But I’m through with it forever.”
   I took out my wallet. “All right. If you want to sell it, I might as well be the one who buys it.” I gave him the money and he took it. He showed me where to put in the inanimate matter, how to adjust the dials and meters, and without any warning, he put on his hat and left.
   I was alone, with my new Animator. While I was looking at it my wife came downstairs in her bathrobe.
   “What’s going on?” she said. “Look at you, your shoes are soaked. Were you outside in the gutter?”
   “Not quite. Look at this oven. I just paid five dollars for it. It animates things.”
   Joan stared down at my shoes. “It’s one o’clock in the morning. You put your shoes in the oven and come to bed.”
   “But don’t you realize—”
   “Get those shoes in the oven,” Joan said, going back upstairs again. “Do you hear me?”
   “All right,” I said.

   It was at breakfast, while I was sitting staring moodily down at a plate of cold eggs and bacon, that he came back. The doorbell commenced to ring furiously.
   “Who can that be?” Joan said. I got up and went down the hall, into the living room. I opened the door.
   “Labyrinth!” I said. His face was pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
   “Here’s your five dollars,” he said. “I want my Animator back.”
   I was dazed. “All right, Doc. Come on in and I’ll get it.”
   He came inside and stood, tapping his foot. I went over and got the Animator. It was still warm. Labyrinth watched me carrying it toward him. “Set it down,” he said. “I want to make sure it’s all right.”
   I put it on the table and the Doc went over it lovingly, carefully, opening the little door and peering inside. “There’s a shoe in it,” he said.
   “There should be two shoes,” I said, suddenly remembering last night. “My God, I put my shoes in it.”
   “Both of them? There’s only one now.”
   Joan came from the kitchen. “Hello, Doctor,” she said. “What brings you out so early?”
   Labyrinth and I were staring at each other. “Only one?” I said. I bent down to look. Inside was a single muddy shoe, quite dry, now, after its night in Labyrinth’s Animator. A single shoe—but I had put two in. Where was the other?
   I turned around but the expression on Joan’s face made me forget what I was going to say. She was staring in horror at the floor, her mouth open.
   Something small and brown was moving, sliding toward the couch. It went under the couch and disappeared. I had seen only a glimpse of it, a momentary flash of motion, but I knew what it was.
   “My God,” Labyrinth said. “Here, take the five dollars.” He pushed the bill into my hands. “I really want it back, now!”
   “Take it easy,” I said. “Give me a hand. We have to catch the damn thing before it gets outdoors.”
   Labyrinth went over and shut the door to the living room. “It went under the couch.” He squatted down and peered under. “I think I see it. Do you have a stick or something?”
   “Let me out of here,” Joan said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
   “You can’t leave,” I said. I yanked down a curtain rod from the window and pulled the curtain from it. “We can use this.” I joined Labyrinth on the floor. “I’ll get it out, but you’ll have to help me catch it. If we don’t work fast we’ll never see it again.”
   I nudged the shoe with the end of the rod. The shoe retreated, squeezing itself back toward the wall. I could see it, a small mound of brown, huddled and silent, like some wild animal at bay, escaped from its cage. It gave me an odd feeling.
   “I wonder what we can do with it?” I murmured. “Where the hell are we going to keep it?”
   “Could we put it in the desk drawer?” Joan said, looking around. “I’ll take the stationery out.”
   “There it goes!” Labyrinth scrambled to his feet. The shoe had come out, fast. It went across the room, heading for the big chair. Before it could get underneath, Labyrinth caught hold of one of its laces. The shoe pulled and tugged, struggling to get free, but the old Doc had a firm hold of it.
   Together we got the shoe into the desk and closed the drawer. We breathed a sigh of relief.
   “That’s that,” Labyrinth said. He grinned foolishly at us. “Do you see what this means? We’ve done it, we’ve really done it! The Animator worked. But I wonder why it didn’t work with the button.”
   “The button was brass,” I said. “And the shoe was hide and animal glue. A natural. And it was wet.”
   We looked toward the drawer. “In that desk,” Labyrinth said, “is the most momentous thing in modern science.”
   “The world will shake and shudder,” I finished. “I know. Well, you can consider it yours.” I took hold of Joan’s hand. “I give you the shoe along with your Animator.”
   “Fine.” Labyrinth nodded. “Keep watch here, don’t let it get away.” He went to the front door. “I must get the proper people, men who will—”
   “Can’t you take it with you?” Joan said nervously.
   Labyrinth paused at the door. “You must watch over it. It is proof, proof the Animator works. The Principle of Sufficient Irritation.” He hurried down the walk.
   “Well?” Joan said. “What now? Are you really going to stay here and watch over it?”
   I looked at my watch. “I have to get to work.”
   “Well, I’m not going to watch it. If you leave, I’m leaving with you. I won’t stay here.”
   “It should be all right in the drawer,” I said. “I guess we could leave it for a while.”
   “I’ll visit my family. I’ll meet you downtown this evening and we can come back home together.”
   “Are you really that afraid of it?”
   “I don’t like it. There’s something about it.”
   “It’s only an old shoe.”
   Joan smiled thinly. “Don’t kid me,” she said. “There never was another shoe like this.”

   I met her downtown, after work that evening, and we had dinner. We drove home, and I parked the car in the driveway. We walked slowly up the walk.
   On the porch Joan paused. “Do we really have to go inside? Can’t we go to a movie or something?”
   “We have to go in. I’m anxious to see how it is. I wonder what we’ll have to feed it.” I unlocked the door and pushed it open.
   Something rushed past me, flying down the walk. It disappeared into the bushes.
   “What was that?” Joan whispered, stricken.
   “I can guess.” I hurried to the desk. Sure enough, the drawer was standing open. The shoe had kicked its way out. “Well, that’s that,” I said. “I wonder what we’re going to tell Doc?”
   “Maybe you could catch it again,” Joan said. She closed the front door after us. “Or animate another. Try working on the other shoe, the one that’s left.”
   I shook my head. “It didn’t respond. Creation is funny. Some things don’t react. Or maybe we could—”
   The telephone rang. We looked at each other. There was something in the ring. “It’s him,” I said. I picked up the receiver.
   “This is Labyrinth,” the familiar voice said. “I’ll be over early tomorrow. They’re coming with me. We’ll get photographs and a good write-up. Jenkins from the lab—”
   “Look, Doc,” I began.
   “I’ll talk later. I have a thousand things to do. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He clicked off.
   “Was it the Doctor?” Joan said.
   I looked at the empty desk drawer, hanging open. “It was. It was him, all right.” I went to the hall closet, taking my coat off. Suddenly I had an eerie feeling. I stopped, turning around. Something was watching me. But what? I saw nothing. It gave me the creeps.
   “What the hell,” I said. I shrugged it off and hung my coat up. As I started back toward the living room I thought I saw something move, out of the corner of my eye.
   “Damn,” I said.
   “What is it?”
   “Nothing. Nothing at all.” I looked all around me, but I could not pin anything down. There was the bookcase, the rugs, the pictures on the walls, everything as it always was. But something had moved.
   I entered the living room. The Animator was sitting on the table. As I passed it I felt a surge of warmth. The Animator was still on, and the door was open! I snapped the switch off, and the dial light died. Had we left it on all day? I tried to remember, but I couldn’t be sure.
   “We’ve got to find the shoe before nightfall,” I said.

   We looked, but we found nothing. The two of us went over every inch of the yard, examining each bush, looking under the hedge, even under the house, but without any luck.
   When it got too dark to see we turned on the porch light and worked for a time by it. At last I gave up. I went over and sat down on the porch steps. “It’s no use,” I said. “Even in the hedge there are a million places. And while we’re beating one end, it could slip out the other. We’re licked. We might as well face it.”
   “Maybe it’s just as well,” Joan said.
   I stood up. “We’ll leave the front door open tonight. There’s a chance it might come back in.”
   We left it open, but the next morning when we came downstairs the house was silent and empty. I knew at once the shoe was not there. I poked around, examining things. In the kitchen eggshells were strewn around the garbage pail. The shoe had come in during the night, but after helping itself it had left again.
   I closed the front door and we stood silently, looking at each other. “He’ll be here any time,” I said. “I guess I better call the office and tell them I’ll be late.”
   Joan touched the Animator. “So this is what did it. I wonder if it’ll ever happen again.”
   We went outside and looked around hopefully for a time. Nothing stirred the bushes, nothing at all. “That’s that,” I said. I looked up. “Here comes a car, now.”
   A dark Plymouth coasted up in front of the house. Two elderly men got out and came up the path toward us, studying us curiously.
   “Where is Rupert?” one of them asked.
   “Who? You mean Doc Labyrinth? I suppose he’ll be along any time.”
   “Is it inside?” the man said. “I’m Porter, from the University. May I take a peek at it?”
   “You’d better wait,” I said unhappily. “Wait until the Doc is here.”
   Two more cars pulled up. More old men got out and started up the walk, murmuring and talking together. “Where’s the Animator?” one asked me, a codger with bushy whiskers. “Young man, direct us to the exhibit.”
   “The exhibit is inside,” I said. “If you want to see the Animator, go on in.”
   They crowded inside. Joan and I followed them. They were standing around the table, studying the square box, the Dutch oven, talking excitedly.
   “This is it!” Porter said. “The Principle of Sufficient Irritation will go down in—”
   “Nonsense,” another said. “It’s absurd. I want to see this hat, or shoe, or whatever it is.”
   “You’ll see it,” Porter said. “Rupert knows what he’s doing. You can count on that.”
   They fell into controversy, quoting authorities and citing dates and places. More cars were arriving, and some of them were press cars.
   “Oh, God,” I said. “This will be the end of him.”
   “Well, he’ll just have to tell them what happened,” Joan said. “About its getting away.”
   “We’re going to, not him. We let the thing go.”
   “I had nothing to do with it. I never liked that pair from the start. Don’t you remember, I wanted you to get those ox-blood ones?”
   I ignored her. More and more old men were assembling on the lawn, standing around talking and discussing. All at once I saw Labyrinth’s little blue Ford pull up, and my heart sank. He had come, he was here, and in a minute we would have to tell him.
   “I can’t face him,” I said to Joan. “Let’s slip out the back way.”
   At the sight of Doc Labyrinth all the scientists began streaming out of the house, surrounding him in a circle. Joan and I looked at each other. The house was deserted, except for the two of us. I closed the front door. Sounds of talk filtered through the windows; Labyrinth was expounding the Principle of Sufficient Irritation. In a moment he would come inside and demand the shoe.
   “Well, it was his own fault for leaving it,” Joan said. She picked up a magazine and thumbed through it.
   Doc Labyrinth waved at me through the window. His old face was wreathed with smiles. I waved back halfheartedly. After a while I sat down beside Joan.
   Time passed. I stared down at the floor. What was there to do? Nothing but wait, wait for the Doc to come triumphantly into the house, surrounded by scientists, learned men, reporters, historians, demanding the proof of his theory, the shoe. On my old shoe rested Labyrinth’s whole life, the proof of his Principle, of the Animator, of everything.
   And the damn shoe was gone, outside someplace!
   “It won’t be long now,” I said.
   We waited, without speaking. After a time I noticed a peculiar thing. The talk outside had died away. I listened, but I heard nothing.
   “Well?” I said. “Why don’t they come in?”
   The silence continued. What was going on? I stood up and went to the front door. I opened it and looked out.
   “What’s the matter?” Joan said. “Can you see?”
   “No,” I said. “I don’t get it.” They were all standing silently, staring down at something, none of them speaking. I was puzzled. I could not make sense out of it. “What’s happening?” I said.
   “Let’s go and look.” Joan and I went slowly down the steps, onto the lawn. We pushed through the row of old men and made our way to the front.
   “Good Lord,” I said. “Good Lord.”
   Crossing the lawn was a strange little procession, making its way through the grass. Two shoes, my old brown shoe, and just ahead of it, leading the way, another shoe, a tiny white high-heeled slipper. I stared at it. I had seen it someplace before.
   “That’s mine!” Joan cried. Everyone looked at her. “That belongs to me! My party shoes—”
   “Not any more,” Labyrinth said. His old face was pale with emotion. “It is beyond us all, forever.”
   “Amazing,” one of the learned men said. “Look at them. Observe the female. Look at what she is doing.”
   The little white shoe was keeping carefully ahead of my old shoe, a few inches away, leading him coyly on. As my old shoe approached she backed away, moving in a half circle. The two shoes stopped for a moment, regarding each other. Then, all at once, my old shoe began to hop up and down, first on his heel, then on his toe. Solemnly, with great dignity, the shoe danced around her, until he reached his starting point.
   The little white shoe hopped once, and then she began again to move away, slowly, hesitantly, letting my shoe almost catch up to her before she went on.
   “This implies a developed sense of mores,” an old gentleman said. “Perhaps even a racial unconscious. The shoes are following a rigid pattern of ritual, probably laid down centuries—”
   “Labyrinth, what does this mean?” Porter said. “Explain it to us.”
   “So that’s what it was,” I murmured. “While we were away the shoe got her out of the closet and used the Animator on her. I knew something was watching me, that night. She was still in the house.”
   “That’s what he turned on the Animator for,” Joan said. She sniffed. “I’m not sure I think much of it.”
   The two shoes had almost reached the hedge, the white slipper still just beyond the laces of the brown shoe. Labyrinth moved toward them.
   “So, gentlemen, you can see that I did not exaggerate. This is the greatest moment in science, the creation of a new race. Perhaps, when mankind has fallen into ruin, society destroyed, this new life form—”
   He started to reach for the shoes, but at that moment the lady shoe disappeared into the hedge, backing into the obscurity of the foliage. With one bound the brown shoe popped in after her. There was a rustling, then silence.
   “I’m going indoors,” Joan said, walking away.
   “Gentlemen,” Labyrinth said, his face a little red, “this is incredible. We are witnessing one of the most profound and far-reaching moments of science.”
   “Well, almost witnessing,” I said.

The Builder

   “E.J. Elwood!” Liz said anxiously. “You aren’t listening to anything we’re saying. And you’re not eating a bit. What in the world is the matter with you? Sometimes I just can’t understand you.”
   For a long time there was no response. Ernest Elwood continued to stare past them, staring out the window at the semi-darkness beyond, as if hearing something they did not hear. At last he sighed, drawing himself up in his chair, almost as if he were going to say something. But then his elbow knocked against his coffee cup and he turned instead to steady the cup, wiping spilled brown coffee from its side.
   “Sorry,” he murmured. “What were you saying?”
   “Eat, dear,” his wife said. She glanced at the two boys as she spoke to see if they had stopped eating also. “You know, I go to a great deal of trouble to fix your food.” Bob, the older boy, was going right ahead, cutting his liver and bacon carefully into bits. But sure enough, little Toddy had put down his knife and fork as soon as E.J. had, and now he, too, was sitting silently, staring down at his plate.
   “See?” Liz said. “You’re not setting a very good example for the boys. Eat up your food. It’s getting cold. You don’t want to eat cold liver, do you? There’s nothing worse than liver when it gets cold and the fat all over the bacon hardens. It’s harder to digest cold fat than anything else in the world. Especially lamb fat. They say a lot of people can’t eat lamb fat at all. Dear, please eat.”
   Elwood nodded. He lifted his fork and spooned up some peas and potatoes, carrying them to his mouth. Little Toddy did the same, gravely and seriously, a small edition of his father.
   “Say,” Bob said. “We had an atomic bomb drill at school today. We lay under the desks.”
   “Is that right?” Liz said.
   “But Mr. Pearson our science teacher says that if they drop a bomb on us the whole town’ll be demolished, so I can’t see what good getting under the desk will do. I think they ought to realize what advances science has made. There are bombs now that’ll destroy miles, leaving nothing standing.”
   “You sure know a lot,” Toddy muttered.
   “Oh, shut up.”
   “Boys,” Liz said.
   “It’s true,” Bob said earnestly. “A fellow I know is in the Marine Corps Reserve and he says they have new weapons that will destroy wheat crops and poison water supplies. It’s some kind of crystals.”
   “Heavens,” Liz said.
   “They didn’t have things like that in the last war. Atomic development came almost at the end without there really being an opportunity to make use of it on a full scale.” Bob turned to his father. “Dad, isn’t that true? I’ll bet when you were in the Army you didn’t have any of the fully atomic—”
   Elwood threw down his fork. He pushed his chair back and stood up. Liz stared up in astonishment at him, her cup half raised. Bob’s mouth hung open, his sentence unfinished. Little Toddy said nothing.
   “Dear, what’s the matter?” Liz said.
   “I’ll see you later.”
   They gazed after him in amazement as he walked away from the table, out of the dining-room. They heard him go into the kitchen and pull open the back door. A moment later the back door slammed behind him.
   “He went out in the back yard,” Bob said. “Mom, was he always like this? Why does he act so funny? It isn’t some kind of war psychosis he got in the Philippines, is it? In the First World War they called it shell shock, but now they know it’s a form of war psychosis. Is it something like that?”
   “Eat your food,” Liz said, red spots of anger burning in her cheeks. She shook her head. “Darn that man. I just can’t imagine—”
   The boys ate their food.
   It was dark out in the back yard. The sun had set and the air was cool and thin, filled with dancing specks of night insects. In the next yard Joe Hunt was working, raking leaves from under his cherry tree. He nodded to Elwood.

   Elwood walked slowly down the path, across the yard towards the garage. He stopped, his hands in his pockets. By the garage something immense and white loomed up, a vast pale shape in the evening gloom. As he stood gazing at it a kind of warmth began to glow inside him. It was a strange warmth, something like pride, a little pleasure mixed in, and—and excitement. Looking at the boat always made him excited. Even when he was first starting on it he had felt the sudden race of his heart, the shaking of his hands, sweat on his face.
   His boat. He grinned, walking closer. He reached up and thumped the solid side. What a fine boat it was, and coming along damn well. Almost done. A lot of work had gone into that, a lot of work and time. Afternoons off from work, Sundays, and even sometimes early in the morning before work.
   That was best, early in the morning, with the bright sun shining down and the air good-smelling and fresh, and everything wet and sparkling. He liked that time best of all, and there was no one else up to bother him and ask him questions. He thumped the solid side again. A lot of work and material, all right. Lumber and nails, sawing and hammering and bending. Of course, Toddy had helped him. He certainly couldn’t have done it alone; no doubt of that. If Toddy hadn’t drawn the lines on the board and—
   “Hey,” Joe Hunt said.
   Elwood started, turning. Joe was leaning on the fence, looking at him. “Sorry,” Elwood said. “What did you say?”
   “Your mind was a million miles away,” Hunt said. He took a puff on his cigar. “Nice night.”
   “Yes.”
   “That’s some boat you got there, Elwood.”
   “Thanks,” Elwood murmured. He walked away from it, back towards the house. “Goodnight, Joe.”
   “How long is it you’ve been working on that boat?” Hunt reflected. “Seems like about a year in all, doesn’t it? About twelve months. You sure put a lot of time and effort into it. Seems like every time I see you you’re carting lumber back here and sawing and hammering away.”
   Elwood nodded, moving towards the back door.
   “You even got your kids working. At least, the little tyke. Yes, it’s quite a boat.” Hunt paused. “You sure must be going to go quite a way with it, by the size of it. Now just exactly where was it you told me you’re going? I forget.”
   There was silence.
   “I can’t hear you, Elwood,” Hunt said. “Speak up. A boat that big, you must be—”
   “Layoff.”
   Hunt laughed easily. “What’s the matter, Elwood? I’m just having a little harmless fun, pulling your leg. But seriously, where are you going with that? You going to drag it down to the beach and float it? I know a guy has a little sail-boat he fits on to a trailer cart, hooks it up to his car. He drives down to the yacht harbor every week or so. But my God, you can’t get that big thing on a trailer. You know, I heard about a guy built a boat in his cellar. Well, he got done and you know what he discovered? He discovered that the boat was so big when he tried to get it out the door—”
   Liz Elwood came to the back door, snapping on the kitchen light and pushing the door open. She stepped out on to the grass, her arms folded.
   “Good evening, Mrs. Elwood,” Hunt said, touching his hat. “Sure a nice night.”
   “Good evening.” Liz turned to E.J. “For heaven’s sake, are you going to come in?” Her voice was low and hard.
   “Sure.” Elwood reached out listlessly for the door. “I’m coming in. Goodnight, Joe.”
   “Goodnight,” Hunt said. He watched the two of them go inside. The door closed, the light went off. Hunt shook his head. “Funny guy,” he murmured. “Getting funnier all the time. Like he’s in a different world. Him and his boat!”
   He went indoors.

   “She was just eighteen,” Jack Fredericks said, “but she sure knew what it was all about.”
   “Those southern girls are that way,” Charlie said. “It’s like fruit, nice soft, ripe, slightly damp fruit.”
   “There’s a passage in Hemingway like that,” Ann Pike said. “I can’t remember what it’s from. He compares a—”
   “But the way they talk,” Charlie said. “Who can stand the way those southern girls talk?”
   “What’s the matter with the way they talk?” Jack demanded. “They talk different, but you get used to it.”
   “Why can’t they talk right?”
   “What do you mean?”
   “They talk like—colored people.”
   “It’s because they all come from the same region,” Ann said.
   “Are you saying this girl was colored?” Jack said.
   “No, of course not. Finish your pie.” Charlie looked at his wristwatch. “Almost one. We have to be getting on back to the office.”
   “I’m not finished eating,” Jack said. “Hold on!”
   “You know, there’s a lot of colored people moving into my area,” Ann said. “There’s a real estate sign up on a house about a block from me. ‘All races welcomed.’ I almost fell over dead when I saw it.”
   “What did you do?”
   “I didn’t do anything. What can we do?”
   “You know, if you work for the Government they can put a colored man or a Chinese next to you,” Jack said, “and you can’t do anything about it.”
   “Except quit.”
   “It interferes with your right to work,” Charlie said. “How can you work like that? Answer me.”
   “There’s too many pinks in the Government,” Jack said. “That’s how they got that, about hiring people for Government jobs without looking to see what race they belong to. During WPA days, when Harry Hopkins was in.”
   “You know where Harry Hopkins was born?” Ann said. “He was born in Russia.”
   “That was Sidney Hillman,” Jack said.
   “It’s all the same,” Charlie said. “They all ought to be sent back there.”
   Ann looked curiously at Ernest Elwood. He was sitting quietly, reading his newspaper, not saying anything. The cafeteria was alive with movement and noise. Everyone was eating and talking, coming and going, back and forth.
   “E.J., are you all right?” Ann said.
   “Yes.”
   “He’s reading about the White Sox,” Charlie said. “He has that intent look. Say, you know, I took my kids to the game the other night, and—”
   “Come on,” Jack said, standing up. “We have to get back.”
   They all rose. Elwood folded his newspaper up silently, putting it into his pocket.
   “Say, you’re not talking much,” Charlie said to him as they went up the aisle. Elwood glanced up.
   “Sorry.”
   “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Do you want to come over Saturday night for a little game? You haven’t played with us for a hell of a long time.”
   “Don’t ask him,” Jack said, paying for his meal at the cash register. “He always wants to play queer games like deuces wild, baseball, spit in the ocean—”
   “Straight poker for me,” Charlie said. “Come on, Elwood. The more the better. Have a couple of beers, chew the fat, get away from the wife, eh?” He grinned.
   “One of these days we’re going to have a good old stag party,” Jack said, pocketing his change. He winked at Elwood. “You know the kind I mean? We get some gals together, have a little show—” He made a motion with his hand.
   Elwood moved off. “Maybe. I’ll think it over.” He paid for his lunch. Then he went outside, out on to the bright pavement. The others were still inside, waiting for Ann. She had gone into the powder room.
   Suddenly Elwood turned and walked hurriedly down the pavement, away from the cafeteria. He turned the corner quickly and found himself on Cedar Street, in front of a television store. Shoppers and clerks out on their lunch hour pushed and crowded past him, laughing and talking, bits of their conversations rising and falling around him like waves of the sea. He stepped into the doorway of the television shop and stood, his hands in his pockets, like a man hiding from the rain.
   What was the matter with him? Maybe he should go see a doctor. The sounds, the people, everything bothered him. Noise and motion everywhere. He wasn’t sleeping enough at night. Maybe it was something in his diet. And he was working so damn hard out in the yard. By the time he went to bed at night he was exhausted. Elwood rubbed his forehead. People and sounds, talking, streaming past him, endless shapes moving in the streets and stores.
   In the window of the television shop a big television set blinked and winked a soundless program, the images leaping merrily. Elwood watched passively. A woman in tights was doing acrobatics, first a series of splits, then cartwheels and spins. She walked on her hands for a moment, her legs waving above her, smiling at the audience. Then she disappeared and a brightly dressed man came on, leading a dog.
   Elwood looked at his watch. Five minutes to one. He had five minutes to get back to the office. He went back to the pavement and looked around the corner. Ann and Charlie and Jack were no place to be seen. They had gone on. Elwood walked slowly along, past the stores, his hands in his pockets. He stopped for a moment in front of the ten cent store, watching the milling women pushing and shoving around the imitation jewelry counters, touching things, picking them up, examining them. In the window of a drugstore he stared at an advertisement for athlete’s foot, some kind of a powder, being sprinkled between two cracked and blistered toes. He crossed the street.
   On the other side he paused to look at a display of women’s clothing, skirts and blouses and wool sweaters. In a color photograph a handsomely dressed girl was removing her blouse to show the world her elegant bra. Elwood passed on. The next window was suitcases, luggage and trunks.
   Luggage. He stopped, frowning. Something wandered through his mind, some loose vague thought, too nebulous to catch. He felt, suddenly, a deep inner urgency. He examined his watch. Ten past one. He was late. He hurried to the corner and stood waiting impatiently for the light to change. A handful of men and women pressed past him, moving out to the curb to catch an oncoming bus. Elwood watched the bus. It halted, its doors opening. The people rushed on to it. Suddenly Elwood joined them, stepping up the steps of the bus. The doors closed behind him as he fished out change from his pocket.
   A moment later he took his seat, next to an immense old woman with a child on her lap. Elwood sat quietly, his hands folded, staring ahead and waiting, as the bus moved off down the street, moving towards the residential district.

   When he got home there was no one there. The house was dark and cool. He went to the bedroom and got his old clothes from the closet. He was just going out into the back yard when Liz appeared in the driveway, her arms loaded with groceries.
   “E.J.!” she said. “What’s the matter? Why are you home?”
   “I don’t know. I took some leave. It’s all right.”
   Liz put her packages down on the fence. “For heaven’s sake,” she said irritably. “You frightened me.” She stared at him intently. “You took leave?”
   “Yes.”
   “How much does that make, this year? How much leave have you taken in all?”
   “I don’t know.”
   “You don’t know? Well, is there any left?”
   “Left for what?”
   Liz stared at him. Then she picked up her packages and went inside the house, the back door banging after her. Elwood frowned. What was the matter? He went on into the garage and began to drag lumber and tools out on to the lawn, beside the boat.
   He gazed up at it. It was square, big and square, like some enormous solid packing crate. Lord, but it was solid. He had put endless beams into it. There was a covered cabin with a big window, the roof tarred over. Quite a boat.
   He began to work. Presently Liz came out of the house. She crossed the yard silently, so that he did not notice her until he came to get some large nails.
   “Well?” Liz said.
   Elwood stopped for a moment. “What is it?”
   Liz folded her arms.
   Elwood became impatient. “What is it? Why are you looking at me?”
   “Did you really take more leave? I can’t believe it. You really came home again to work on—on that.”
   Elwood turned away.
   “Wait.” She came up beside him. “Don’t walk off from me. Stand still.”
   “Be quiet. Don’t shout.”
   “I’m not shouting. I want to talk to you. I want to ask you something. May I? May I ask you something? You don’t mind talking to me?”
   Elwood nodded.
   “Why?” Liz said, her voice low and intense. “Why? Will you tell me that? Why?”
   “Why what?”
   “That. That-that thing. What is it for? Why are you here in the yard in the middle of the day? For a whole year it’s been like this. At the table last night, all of a sudden you got up and walked out. Why? What’s it all for?”
   “It’s almost done,” Elwood murmured. “A few more licks here and there and it’ll be—”
   “And then what?” Liz came around in front of him, standing in his path. “And then what? What are you going to do with it? Sell it? Float it? All the neighbors are laughing at you. Everybody in the block knows—” Her voice broke suddenly. “—Knows about you, and this. The kids at school make fun of Bob and Toddy. They tell them their father is—That he’s—”
   “That he’s crazy?”
   “Please, E.J. Tell me what it’s for. Will you do that? Maybe I can understand. You never told me. Wouldn’t it help? Can’t you even do that?”
   “I can’t,” Elwood said.
   “You can’t! Why not?”
   “Because I don’t know,” Elwood said. “I don’t know what it’s for. Maybe it isn’t for anything.”
   “But if it isn’t for anything why do you work on it?”
   “I don’t know. I like to work on it. Maybe it’s like whittling.” He waved his hand impatiently. “I’ve always had a workshop of some kind. When I was a kid I used to build model airplanes. I have tools. I’ve always had tools.”
   “But why do you come home in the middle of the day?”
   “I get restless.”
   “Why?”
   “I—I hear people talking, and it makes me uneasy. I want to get away from them. There’s something about it all, about them. Their ways. Maybe I have claustrophobia.”
   “Shall I call Doctor Evans and make an appointment?”
   “No. No, I’m all right. Please, Liz, get out of the way so I can work. I want to finish.”
   “And you don’t even know what it’s for.” She shook her head. “So all this time you’ve been working without knowing why. Like some animal that goes out at night and fights, like a cat on the back fence. You leave your work and us to—”
   “Get out of the way.”
   “Listen to me. You put down that hammer and come inside. You’re putting your suit on and going right back to the office. Do you hear? If you don’t I’m never going to let you inside the house again. You can break down the door if you want, with your hammer. But it’ll be locked for you from now on, if you don’t forget that boat and go back to work.”
   There was silence.
   “Get out of the way,” Elwood said. “I have to finish.”
   Liz stared at him. “You’re going on?” The man pushed past her. “You’re going to go ahead? There’s something wrong with you. Something wrong with your mind. You’re—”
   “Stop,” Elwood said, looking past her. Liz turned.
   Toddy was standing silently in the driveway, his lunch pail under his arms. His small face was grave and solemn. He did not say anything to them.
   “Tod!” Liz said. “Is it that late already?”
   Toddy came across the grass to his father. “Hello, boy,” Elwood said. “How was school?”
   “Fine.”
   “I’m going in the house,” Liz said. “I meant it, E.J. Remember that I meant it.”
   She went up the walk. The back door slammed behind her.
   Elwood sighed. He sat down on the ladder leading up the side of the boat and put his hammer down. He lit a cigarette and smoked silently. Toddy waiting without speaking.
   “Well, boy?” Elwood said at last. “What do you say?”
   “What do you want done, Dad?”
   “Done?” Elwood smiled. “Well, there’s not too much left. A few things here and there. We’ll be through, soon. You might look around for boards we didn’t nail down on the deck.” He rubbed his jaw. “Almost done. We’ve been working a long time. You could paint, if you want. I want to get the cabin painted. Red, I think. How would red be?”
   “Green.”
   “Green? All right. There’s some green porch paint in the garage. Do you want to start stirring it up?”
   “Sure,” Toddy said. He headed towards the garage.
   Elwood watched him go. “Toddy—”
   The boy turned. “Yes?”
   “Toddy, wait.” Elwood went slowly towards him. “I want to ask you something.”
   “What is it, Dad?”
   “You—you don’t mind helping me, do you? You don’t mind working on the boat?”
   Toddy looked up gravely into his father’s face. He said nothing. For a long time the two of them gazed at each other.
   “Okay!” Elwood said suddenly. “You run along and get the paint started.”

   Bob came swinging along the driveway with two of the kids from the junior high school. “Hi, Dad,” Bob called, grinning. “Say, how’s it coming?”
   “Fine,” Elwood said.
   “Look,” Bob said to his pals, pointing to the boat. “You see that? You know what that is?”
   “What is it?” one of them said.
   Bob opened the kitchen door. “That’s an atomic powered sub.” He grinned, and the two boys grinned. “It’s full of Uranium 235. Dad’s going all the way to Russia with it. When he gets through, there won’t be a thing left of Moscow.”
   The boys went inside, the door slamming behind them.
   Elwood stood looking up at the boat. In the next yard Mrs. Hunt stopped for a moment with taking down her washing, looking at him and the big square hull rising above him.
   “Is it really atomic powered, Mr. Elwood?” she said.
   “No.”
   “What makes it run, then? I don’t see any sails. What kind of motor is in it? Steam?”
   Elwood bit his lip. Strangely, he had never thought of that part. There was no motor in it, no motor at all. There were no sails, no boiler. He had put no engine into it, no turbines, no fuel. Nothing. It was a wood hull, an immense box, and that was all. He had never thought of what would make it go, never in all the time he and Toddy had worked on it.
   Suddenly a torrent of despair descended over him. There was no engine, nothing. It was not a boat, it was only a great mass of wood and tar and nails. It would never go, never never leave the yard. Liz was right: he was like some animal going out into the yard at night, to fight and kill in the darkness, to struggle dimly, without sight or understanding, equally blind, equally pathetic.
   What had he built it for? He did not know. Where was it going? He did not know that either. What would make it run? How would he get it out of the yard? What was it all for, to build without understanding, darkly, like a creature in the night?
   Toddy had worked alongside him, the whole time. Why had he worked? Did he know? Did the boy know what the boat was for, why they were building? Toddy had never asked because he trusted his father to know.
   But he did not know. He, the father, he did not know either, and soon it would be done, finished, ready. And then what? Soon Toddy would lay down his paint brush, cover the last can of paint, put away the nails, the scraps of wood, hang the saw and hammer up in the garage again. And then he would ask, ask the question he had never asked before but which must come finally.
   And he could not answer him.
   Elwood stood, staring up at it, the great hulk they had built, struggling to understand. Why had he worked? What was it all for? When would he know? Would he ever know? For an endless time he stood there, staring up.
   It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.

Meddler

   They entered the great chamber. At the far end, technicians hovered around an immense illuminated board, following a complex pattern of lights that shifted rapidly, flashing through seemingly endless combinations. At long tables machines whirred—computers, human-operated and robot. Wall-charts covered every inch of vertical space. Hasten gazed around him in amazement.
   Wood laughed. “Come over here and I’ll really show you something. You recognize this, don’t you?” He pointed to a hulking machine surrounded by silent men and women in white lab robes.
   “I recognize it,” Hasten said slowly. “It’s something like our own Dip, but perhaps twenty times larger. What do you haul up? And when do you haul?” He fingered the surface-plate of the Dip, then squatted down, peering into the maw. The maw was locked shut; the Dip was in operation. “You know, if we had any idea this existed, Histo-Research would have—”
   “You know now.” Wood bent down beside him. “Listen. Hasten, you’re the first man from outside the Department ever to get into this room. You saw the guards. No one gets in here unauthorized; the guards have orders to kill anyone trying to enter illegally.”
   “To hide this? A machine? You’d shoot to—”
   They stood, Wood facing him, his jaw hard. “Your Dip digs back into antiquity. Rome. Greece. Dust and old volumes.” Wood touched the big Dip beside them. “This Dip is different. We guard it with our lives, and anyone else’s lives; do you know why?”
   Hasten stared at it.
   “This Dip is set, not for antiquity, but—for the future.” Wood looked directly into Hasten’s face. “Do you understand? The future.”
   “You’re dredging the future? But you can’t! It’s forbidden by law; you know that!” Hasten drew back. “If the Executive Council knew this they’d break this building apart. You know the dangers. Berkowsky himself demonstrated them in his original thesis.”
   Hasten paced angrily. “I can’t understand you, using a future oriented Dip. When you pull material from the future you automatically introduce new factors into the present; the future is altered—you start a never-ending shift. The more you dip the more new factors are brought in. You create unstable conditions for centuries to come. That’s why the law was passed.”
   Wood nodded. “I know.”
   “And you still keep dipping?” Hasten gestured at the machine and the technicians. “Stop, for God’s sake! Stop before you introduce some lethal element that can’t be erased. Why do you keep—”
   Wood sagged suddenly. “All right, Hasten, don’t lecture us. It’s too late; it’s already happened. A lethal factor was introduced in our first experiments. We thought we knew what we were doing…” He looked up. “And that’s why you were brought here. Sit down—you’re going to hear all about it.”

   They faced each other across the desk. Wood folded his hands. “I’m going to put it straight on the line. You are considered an expert, the expert at Histo-Research. You know more about using a Time Dip than anyone alive; that’s why you’ve been shown our work, our illegal work.”
   “And you’ve already got into trouble?”
   “Plenty of trouble, and every attempt to meddle further makes it that much worse. Unless we do something, we’ll be the most culpable organization in history.”
   “Please start at the beginning,” Hasten said.
   “The Dip was authorized by the Political Science Council; they wanted to know the results of some of their decisions. At first we objected, giving Berkowsky’s theory; but the idea is hypnotic, you know. We gave in, and the Dip was built—secretly, of course.
   “We made our first dredge about one year hence. To protect ourselves against Berkowsky’s factor we tried a subterfuge; we actually brought nothing back. This Dip is geared to pick up nothing. No object is scooped; it merely photographs from a high altitude. The film comes back to us and we make enlargements and try to gestalt the conditions.
   “Results were all right, at first. No more wars, cities growing, much better looking. Blow-ups of street scenes show many people, well-content, apparently. Pace a little slower.
   “Then we went ahead fifty years. Even better: cities on the decrease. People not so dependent on machines. More grass, parks. Same general conditions, peace, happiness, much leisure. Less frenetic waste, hurry.
   “We went on, skipping ahead. Of course, with such an indirect viewing method we couldn’t be certain of anything, but it all looked fine. We relayed our information to the Council and they went ahead with their planning. And then it happened.”
   “What, exactly?” Hasten said, leaning forward.
   “We decided to revisit a period we had already photographed, about a hundred years hence. We sent out the Dip, got it back with a full reel. The men developed it and we watched the run.” Wood paused.
   “And?”
   “And it wasn’t the same. It was different. Everything was changed. War—war and destruction everywhere.” Wood shuddered. “We were appalled; we sent the Dip back at once to make absolutely certain.”
   “And what did you find this time?”
   Wood’s fists clenched. “Changed again, and for worse! Ruins, vast ruins. People poking around. Ruin and death everywhere. Slag. The end of war, the last phase.”
   “I see,” Hasten said, nodding.
   “That’s not the worst! We conveyed the news to the Council. It ceased all activity and went into a two-week conference; it canceled all ordinances and withdrew every plan formed on the basis of our reports. It was a month before the Council got in touch with us again. The members wanted us to try once more, take one more Dip to the same period. We said no, but they insisted. It could be no worse, they argued.
   “So we sent the Dip out again. It came back and we ran the film. Hasten, there are things worse than war. You wouldn’t believe what we saw. There was no human life; none at all, not a single human being.”
   “Everything was destroyed?”
   “No! No destruction, cities big and stately, roads, buildings, lakes, fields. But no human life; the cities empty, functioning mechanically, every machine and wire untouched. But no living people.”
   “What was it?”
   “We sent the Dip on ahead, at fifty year leaps. Nothing. Nothing each time. Cities, roads, buildings, but no human life. Everyone dead. Plague, radiation, or what, we don’t know. But something killed them. Where did it come from? We don’t know. It wasn’t there at first, not in our original dips.
   “Somehow, we introduced it, the lethal factor. We brought it, with our meddling. It wasn’t there when we started; it was done by us, Hasten.” Wood stared at him, his face a white mask. “We brought it and now we’ve got to find what it is and get rid of it.”
   “How are you going to do that?”
   “We’ve built a Time Car, capable of carrying one human observer into the future. We’re sending a man there to see what it is. Photographs don’t tell us enough; we have to know more! When did it first appear? How? What were the first signs? What is it? Once we know, maybe we can eliminate it, the factor, trace it down and remove it. Someone must go into the future and find out what it was we began. It’s the only way.”
   Woods stood up, and Hasten rose, too.
   “You’re that person,” Wood said. “You’re going, the most competent person available. The Time Car is outside, in an open square, carefully guarded.” Wood gave a signal. Two soldiers came toward the desk.
   “Sir?”
   “Come with us,” Wood said. “We’re going outside to the square; make sure no one follows after us.” He turned to Hasten. “Ready?”
   Hasten hesitated. “Wait a minute. I’ll have to go over your work, study what’s been done. Examine the Time Car itself. I can’t—”
   The two soldiers moved closer, looking to Wood. Wood put his hand on Hasten’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, “we have no time to waste; come along with me.”

   All around him blackness moved, swirling toward him and then receding. He sat down on the stool before the bank of controls, wiping the perspiration from his face. He was on his way, for better or worse. Briefly, Wood had outlined the operation of the Time Car. A few moments of instruction, the controls set for him, and then the metal door slammed behind him.
   Hasten looked around him. It was cold in the sphere; the air was thin and chilly. He watched the moving dials for a while, but presently the cold began to make him uncomfortable. He went over to the equipment-locker and slid the door back. A jacket, a heavy jacket, and a flash gun. He held the gun for a minute, studying it. And tools, all kinds of tools and equipment. He was just putting the gun away when the dull chugging under him suddenly ceased. For one terrible second he was floating, drifting aimlessly, then the feeling was gone.
   Sunlight flowed through the window, spreading out over the floor. He snapped the artificial lights off and went to the window to see. Wood had set the controls for a hundred years hence; bracing himself, he looked out.
   A meadow, flowers and grass, rolling off into the distance. Blue sky and ‘ wandering clouds. Some animals grazed a long way off, standing together in the shade of a tree. He went to the door and unlocked it, stepping out. Warmy sunlight struck him, and he felt better at once. Now he could see the animal were cows.
   He stood for a long time at the door, his hands on his hips. Could the plague have been bacterial? Air-carried? If it were a plague. He reached feeling the protective helmet on his shoulders. Better to keep it on.
   He went back and got the gun from the locker. Then he returned to the lip of the sphere, checked the door-lock to be certain it would remain closed during his absence. Only then, Hasten stepped down onto the grass of the meadow. He closed the door and looked around him. Presently he began to walk quickly away from the sphere, toward the top of a long hill that stretched out half a mile away. As he strode along, he examined the click-band on his wrist which would guide him back to the metal sphere, the Time Car, if he could not find the way himself.
   He came to the cows, passing by their tree. The cows got up and moved away from him. He noticed something that gave him a sudden chill; their udders were small and wrinkled. Not herd cows.
   When he reached the top of the hill he stopped, lifting his glasses from his waist. The earth fell away, mile after mile of it, dry green fields without pattern or design, rolling like waves as far as the eye could see. Nothing else? He turned, sweeping the horizon.
   He stiffened, adjusting the sight. Far off to the left, at the very limit of vision, the vague perpendiculars of a city rose up. He lowered the glasses and hitched up his heavy boots. Then he walked down the other side of the hill, taking big steps; he had a long way to go.

   Hasten had not walked more than half an hour when he saw butterflies. They rose up suddenly a few yards in front of him, dancing and fluttering in the sunlight. He stopped to rest, watching them. They were all colors, red and blue, with splashes of yellow and green. They were the largest butterflies he had ever seen. Perhaps they had come from some zoo, escaped and bred wild after man left the scene. The butterflies rose higher and higher in the air. They took no notice of him but struck out toward the distant spires of the city; in a moment they were gone.
   Hasten started up again. It was hard to imagine the death of man in such circumstances, butterflies and grass and cows in the shade. What a quiet and lovely world was left, without the human race!
   Suddenly one last butterfly fluttered up, almost in his face, rising quickly from the grass. He put his arm up automatically, batting at it. The butterfly dashed against his hand. He began to laugh—
   Pain made him sick; he fell half to his knees, gasping and retching. He rolled over on his face, hunching himself up, burying his face in the ground. His arm ached, and pain knotted him up; his head swam and he closed his eyes.
   When Hasten turned over at last, the butterfly was gone; it had not lingered.
   He lay for a time in the grass, then he sat up slowly, getting shakily to his feet. He stripped off his shirt and examined his hand and wrist. The flesh was black, hard and already swelling. He glanced down at it and then at the distant city. The butterflies had gone there…
   He made his way back to the Time Car.

   Hasten reached the sphere a little after the sun had begun to drop into evening darkness. The door slid back to his touch and he stepped inside. He dressed his hand and arm with salve from the medicine kit and then sat down on the stool, deep in thought, staring at his arm. A small sting, accidental, in fact. The butterfly had not even noticed. Suppose the whole pack—
   He waited until the sun had completely set and it was pitch black outside the sphere. At night all the bees and butterflies disappeared; or at least, those he knew did. Well, he would have to take a chance. His arm still ached dully, throbbing without respite. The salve had done no good; he felt dizzy, and there was a fever taste in his mouth.
   Before he went out he opened the locker and brought all the things out. He examined the flash gun but put it aside. A moment later he found what he wanted. A blowtorch, and a flashlight. He put all the other things back and stood up. Now he was ready—if that were the word for it. As ready as he would ever be.
   He stepped out into the darkness, flashing the light ahead of him. He walked quickly. It was a dark and lonely night; only a few stars shone above him, and his was the only earthly light. He passed up the hill and down the other side. A grove of trees loomed up, and then he was on a level plain, feeling his way toward the city by the beam of the flashlight.
   When he reached the city he was very tired. He had gone a long way, and his breath was beginning to come hard. Huge ghostly outlines rose up ahead of him, disappearing above, vanishing into darkness. It was not a large city, apparently, but its design was strange to Hasten, more vertical and slim than he was used to.
   He went through the gate. Grass was growing from the stone pavement of the streets. He stopped, looking down. Grass and weeds everywhere; and in the corners, by the buildings were bones, little heaps of bones and dust. He walked on, flashing his light against the sides of the slender buildings. His footsteps echoed hollowly. There was no light except his own.
   The buildings began to thin out. Soon he found himself entering a great tangled square, overgrown with bushes and vines. At the far end a building larger than the others rose. He walked toward it, across the empty, desolate square, flashing his light from side to side. He walked up a half-buried step and onto a concrete plaza. All at once he stopped. To his right, another building reared up, catching his attention. His heart thudded. Above the doorway his light made out a word cut expertly into the arch:


Bibliotheca

   This was what he wanted, the library. He went up the steps toward the dark entrance. Wood boards gave under his feet. He reached the entrance and found himself facing a heavy wood door with metal handles. When he took hold of the handles the door fell toward him, crashing past him, down the steps and into the darkness. The odor of decay and dust choked him.
   He went inside. Spider webs brushed against his helmet as he passed along silent halls. He chose a room at random and entered it. Here were more heaps of dust and gray bits of bones. Low tables and shelves ran along the walls. He went to the shelves and took down a handful of books. They powdered and broke in his hands, showering bits of paper and thread onto him. Had only a century passed since his own time?

   Hasten sat down at one of the tables and opened one of the books that was in better condition. The words were no language he knew, a Romance language that he knew must be artificial. He turned page after page. At last he took a handful of books at random and moved back toward the door. Suddenly his heart jumped. He went over to the wall, his hands trembling. Newspapers.
   He took the brittle, cracking sheets carefully down, holding them to the light. The same language, of course. Bold, black headlines. He managed to roll some of the papers together and add them to his load of books. Then he went through the door, out into the corridor, back the way he had come.
   When he stepped out onto the steps cold fresh air struck him, tingling his nose. He looked around at the dim outlines rising up on all sides of the square. Then he walked down and across the square, feeling his way carefully along. He came to the gate of the city, and a moment later he was outside, on the flat plain again, heading back toward the Time Car.
   For an endless time he walked, his head bent down, plodding along. Finally fatigue made him stop, swaying back and forth, breathing deeply. He set down his load and looked around him. Far off, at the edge of the horizon, a long streak of gray had appeared, silently coming into existence while he was walking. Dawn. The sun coming up.
   A cold wind moved through the air, eddying against him. In the forming gray light the trees and hills were beginning to take shape, a hard, unbending outline. He turned toward the city. Bleak and thin, the shafts of the deserted buildings stuck up. For a moment he watched, fascinated by the first color of day as it struck the shafts and towers. Then the color faded, and a drifting mist moved between him and the city. All at once he bent down and grabbed up his load. He began to walk, hurrying as best he could, chill fear moving through him.
   From the city a black speck had leaped up into the sky and was hovering over it.

   After a time, a long time, Hasten looked back. The speck was still there—but it had grown. And it was no longer black; in the clear light of day the speck was beginning to flash, shining with many colors.
   He increased his pace; he went down the side of a hill and up another. For a second he paused to snap on his click-band. It spoke loudly; he was not far from the sphere. He waved his arm and the clicks rose and fell. To the right. Wiping the perspiration from his hands he went on.
   A few minutes later he looked down from the top of a ridge and saw a gleaming metal sphere resting silently on the grass, dripping with cold dew from the night. The Time Car; sliding and running, he leaped down the hill toward it.
   He was just pushing the door open with his shoulder when the first cloud of butterflies appeared at the top of the hill, moving quietly toward him.
   He locked the door and set his armload down, flexing his muscles. His hand ached, burning now with an intense pain. He had no time for that—he hurried to the window and peered out. The butterflies were swarming toward the sphere, darting and dancing above him, flashing with color. They began to settle down onto the metal, even onto the window. Abruptly, his gaze was cut off by gleaming bodies, soft and pulpy, their beating wings mashed together. He listened. He could hear them, a muffled, echoing sound that came from all sides of him. The interior of the sphere dimmed into darkness as the butterflies sealed off the window. He lit the artificial lights.
   Time passed. He examined the newspapers, uncertain of what to do. Go back? Or ahead? Better jump ahead fifty years or so. The butterflies were dangerous, but perhaps not the real thing, the lethal factor that he was looking for. He looked at his hand. The skin was black and hard, a dead area was increasing. A faint shadow of worry went through him; it was getting worse, not better.
   The scratching sound on all sides of him began to annoy him, filling him with an uneasy restlessness. He put down the books and paced back and forth. How could insects, even immense insects such as these, destroy the human race? Surely human beings could combat them. Dusts, poisons, sprays.
   A bit of metal, a little particle drifted down onto his sleeve. He brushed it off. A second particle fell, and then some tiny fragments. He leaped, his head jerking up.
   A circle was forming above his head. Another circle appeared to the right of it, and then a third. All around him circles were forming in the walls and roof of the sphere. He ran to the control board and closed the safety switch. The board hummed into life. He began to set the indicator panel, working rapidly, frantically. Now pieces of metal were dropping down, a rain of metal fragments onto the floor. Corrosive, some kind of substance exuded from them. Acid? Natural secretion of some sort. A large piece of metal fell; he turned.
   Into the sphere the butterflies came, fluttering and dancing toward him. The piece that had fallen was a circle of metal, cut cleanly through. He did not have time even to notice it; he snatched up the blowtorch and snapped it on. The flame sucked and gurgled. As the butterflies came toward him he pressed the handle and held the spout up. The air burst alive with burning particles that rained down all over him, and a furious odor reeked through the sphere.
   He closed the last switches. The indicator lights flickered, the floor chugged under him. He threw the main lever. More butterflies were pushing in, crowding each other eagerly, struggling to get through. A second circle of metal crashed to the floor suddenly, emitting a new horde. Hasten cringed, backing away, the blowtorch up, spouting flame. The butterflies came on, more and more of them.
   Then sudden silence settled over everything, a quiet so abrupt that he blinked. The endless, insistent scratching had ceased. He was alone, except for a cloud of ashes and particles over the floor and walls, the remains of the butterflies that had got into the sphere. Hasten sat down on the stool, trembling, he was safe, on his way back to his own time; and there was no doubt, no possible doubt that he had found the lethal factor. It was there, in the heap of ashes on the floor, in the circles neatly cut in the hull of the car. Corrosive secretion? He smiled grimly.
   His last vision of them, of the swelling horde had told him what he wanted to know. Clutched carefully against the first butterflies through the circles were tools, tiny cutting tools. They had cut their way in, bored through; they had come carrying their own equipment.
   He sat down, waiting for the Time Car to complete its journey.

   Department guards caught hold of him, helping him from the Car. He stepped down unsteadily, leaning against them. “Thanks,” he murmured.
   Wood hurried up. “Hasten, you’re all right?”
   He nodded. “Yes. Except my hand.”
   “Let’s get inside at once.” They went through the door, into the great chamber. “Sit down.” Wood waved his hand impatiently, and a soldier hurried a chair over. “Get him some hot coffee.”
   Coffee was brought. Hasten sat sipping. At last he pushed the cup away and leaned back.
   “Can you tell us now?” Wood asked.
   “Yes.”
   “Fine.” Wood sat down across from him. A tape recorder whirred into life and a camera began to photograph Hasten’s face as he talked. “Go on. What did you find?”

   When he had finished the room was silent. None of the guards or technicians spoke.
   Wood stood up, trembling. “God. So it’s a form of toxic life that got them. I thought it was something like that. But butterflies? And intelligent. Planning attacks. Probably rapid breeding, quick adaptation.”
   “Maybe the books and newspapers will help us.”
   “But where did they come from? Mutation of some existing form? Or from some other planet. Maybe space travel brought them in. We’ve got to find out.”
   “They attacked only human beings,” Hasten said. “They left the cows. Just people.”
   “Maybe we can stop them.” Wood snapped on the vidphone. “I’ll have the Council convene an emergency session. We’ll give them your description and recommendations. We’ll start a program, organize units all over the planet. Now that we know what it is, we have a chance. Thanks to you, Hasten, maybe we can stop them in time!”
   The operator appeared and Wood gave the Council’s code letter. Hasten watched dully. At last he got to his feet and wandered around the room. His arm throbbed unmercifully. Presently he went back outside, through the doorway into the open square. Some soldiers were examining the Time Car curiously. Hasten watched them without feeling, his mind blank.
   “What is it, sir?” one asked.
   “That?” Hasten roused himself, going slowly over. “That’s a Time Car.”
   “No, I mean this.” The soldier pointed to something on the hull. “This, sir; it wasn’t on there when the Car went out.”
   Hasten’s heart stopped beating. He pushed past them, staring up. At first he saw nothing on the metal hull, only the corroded metal surface. Then chill fright rushed through him.
   Something small and brown and furry was there, on the surface. He reached out, touching it. A sack, a stiff little brown sack. It was dry, dry and empty. There was nothing in it; it was open at one end. He stared up. All across the hull of the Car were little brown sacks, some still full, but most of them already empty.
   Cocoons.

Paycheck

   All at once he was in motion. Around him smooth jets hummed. He was on a small private rocket cruiser, moving leisurely across the afternoon sky, between cities.
   “Ugh!” he said, sitting up in his seat and rubbing his head. Beside him Earl Rethrick was staring keenly at him, his eyes bright.
   “Coming around?”
   “Where are we?” Jennings shook his head, trying to clear the dull ache. “Or maybe I should ask that a different way.” Already, he could see that it was not late fall. It was spring. Below the cruiser the fields were green. The last thing he remembered was stepping into an elevator with Rethrick. And it was late fall. And in New York.
   “Yes,” Rethrick said. “It’s almost two years later. You’ll find a lot of things have changed. The Government fell a few months ago. The new Government is even stronger. The SP, Security Police, have almost unlimited power. They’re teaching the schoolchildren to inform, now. But we all saw that coming. Let’s see, what else? New York is larger. I understand they’ve finished filling in San Francisco Bay.”
   “What I want to know is what the hell I’ve been doing the last two years!” Jennings lit a cigarette nervously, pressing the strike end. “Will you tell me that?”
   “No. Of course I won’t tell you that.”
   “Where are we going?”
   “Back to the New York Office. Where you first met me. Remember? You probably remember it better than I. After all, it was just a day or so ago for you.”
   Jennings nodded. Two years! Two years out of his life, gone forever. It didn’t seem possible. He had still been considering, debating, when he stepped into the elevator. Should he change his mind? Even if he were getting that much money—and it was a lot, even for him—it didn’t really seem worth it. He would always wonder what work he had been doing. Was it legal? Was it—But that was past speculation, now. Even while he was trying to make up his mind the curtain had fallen. He looked ruefully out the window at the afternoon sky. Below, the earth was moist and alive. Spring, spring two years later. And what did he have to show for the two years?
   “Have I been paid?” he asked. He slipped his wallet out and glanced into it. “Apparently not.”
   “No. You’ll be paid at the Office. Kelly will pay you.”
   “The whole works at once?”
   “Fifty thousand credits.”
   Jennings smiled. He felt a little better, now that the sum had been spoken aloud. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all. Almost like being paid to sleep. But he was two years older; he had just that much less to live. It was like selling part of himself, part of his life. And life was worth plenty, these days. He shrugged. Anyhow, it was in the past.
   “We’re almost there,” the older man said. The robot pilot dropped the cruiser down, sinking toward the ground. The edge of New York City became visible below them. “Well, Jennings, I may never see you again.” He held out his hand. “It’s been a pleasure working with you. We did work together, you know. Side by side. You’re one of the best mechanics I’ve ever seen. We were right in hiring you, even at that salary. You paid us back many times—although you don’t realize it.”
   “I’m glad you got your money’s worth.”
   “You sound angry.”
   “No. I’m just trying to get used to the idea of being two years older.”
   Rethrick laughed. “You’re still a very young man. And you’ll feel better when she gives you your pay.”
   They stepped out onto the tiny rooftop field of the New York office building. Rethrick led him over to an elevator. As the doors slid shut Jennings got a mental shock. This was the last thing he remembered, this elevator. After that he had blacked out.
   “Kelly will be glad to see you,” Rethrick said, as they came out into a lighted hall. “She asks about you, once in a while.”
   “Why?”
   “She says you’re good-looking.” Rethrick pushed a code key against a door. The door responded, swinging wide. They entered the luxurious office of Rethrick Construction. Behind a long mahogany desk a young woman was sitting, studying a report.
   “Kelly,” Rethrick said, “look whose time finally expired.”
   The girl looked up, smiling. “Hello, Mr. Jennings. How does it feel to be back in the world?”
   “Fine.” Jennings walked over to her. “Rethrick says you’re the paymaster.”
   Rethrick clapped Jennings on the back. “So long, my friend. I’ll go back to the plant. If you ever need a lot of money in a hurry come around and we’ll work out another contract with you.”
   Jennings nodded. As Rethrick went back out he sat down beside the desk, crossing his legs. Kelly slid a drawer open, moving her chair back. “All right. Your time is up, so Rethrick Construction is ready to pay. Do you have your copy of the contract?”
   Jennings took an envelope from his pocket and tossed it on the desk. “There it is.”
   Kelly removed a small cloth sack and some sheets of handwritten paper from the desk drawer. For a time she read over the sheets, her small face intent.
   “What is it?”
   “I think you’re going to be surprised.” Kelly handed him his contract back. “Read that over again.”
   “Why?” Jennings unfastened the envelope.
   “There’s an alternate clause. ‘If the party of the second part so desires, at any time during his time of contract to the aforesaid Rethrick Construction Company—’ “
   “ ‘If he so desires, instead of the monetary sum specified, he may choose instead, according to his own wish, articles or products which, in his own opinion, are of sufficient value to stand in lieu of the sum—’ “
   Jennings snatched up the cloth sack, pulling it open. He poured the contents into his palm. Kelly watched.
   “Where’s Rethrick?” Jennings stood up. “If he has an idea that this—”
   “Rethrick has nothing to do with it. It was your own request. Here, look at this.” Kelly passed him the sheets of paper. “In your own hand. Read them. It was your idea, not ours. Honest.” She smiled up at him. “This happens every once in a while with people we take on contract. During their time they decide to take something else instead of money. Why, I don’t know. But they come out with their minds clean, having agreed—”
   Jennings scanned the pages. It was his own writing. There was no doubt of it. His hands shook. “I can’t believe it. Even if it is my own writing.” He folded up the paper, his jaw set. “Something was done to me while I was back there. I never would have agreed to this.”
   “You must have had a reason. I admit it doesn’t make sense. But you don’t know what factors might have persuaded you, before your mind was cleaned. You aren’t the first. There have been several others before you.”
   Jennings stared down at what he held in his palm. From the cloth sack he had spilled a little assortment of items. A code key. A ticket stub. A parcel receipt. A length of fine wire. Haifa poker chip, broken across. A green strip of cloth. A bus token.
   “This, instead of fifty thousand credits,” he murmured. “Two years…”

   He went out of the building, onto the busy afternoon street. He was still dazed, dazed and confused. Had he been swindled? He felt in his pocket for the little trinkets, the wire, the ticket stub, all the rest. That, for two years of work! But he had seen his own handwriting, the statement of waiver, the request for the substitution. Like Jack and the Beanstalk. Why? What for? What had made him do it?
   He turned, starting down the sidewalk. At the corner he stopped for a surface cruiser that was turning.
   “All right, Jennings. Get in.”
   His head jerked up. The door of the cruiser was open. A man was kneeling, pointing a heat-rifle straight at his face. A man in blue-green. The Security Police.
   Jennings got in. The door closed, magnetic locks slipping into place behind him. Like a vault. The cruiser glided off down the street. Jennings sank back against the seat. Beside him the SP man lowered his gun. On the other side a second officer ran his hands expertly over him, searching for weapons. He brought out Jenning’s wallet and the handful of trinkets. The envelope and contract.
   “What does he have?” the driver said.
   “Wallet, money. Contract with Rethrick Construction. No weapons.” He gave Jennings back his things.
   “What’s this all about?” Jennings said.
   “We want to ask you a few questions. That’s all. You’ve been working for Rethrick?”
   “Yes.”
   “Two years?”
   “Almost two years.”
   “At the Plant?”
   Jennings nodded. “I suppose so.”
   The officer leaned toward him. “Where is that Plant, Mr. Jennings. Where is it located?”
   “I don’t know.”
   The two officers looked at each other. The first one moistened his lips, his face sharp and alert. “You don’t know? The next question. The last. In those two years, what kind of work did you do? What was your job?”
   “Mechanic. I repaired electronic machinery.”
   “What kind of electronic machinery?”
   “I don’t know.” Jennings looked up at him. He could not help smiling, his lips twisting ironically. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. It’s the truth.”
   There was silence.
   “What do you mean, you don’t know? You mean you worked on machinery for two years without knowing what it was? Without even knowing where you were?”
   Jennings roused himself. “What is all this? What did you pick me up for? I haven’t done anything. I’ve been—”
   “We know. We’re not arresting you. We only want to get information for our records. About Rethrick Construction. You’ve been working for them, in their Plant. In an important capacity. You’re an electronic mechanic?”
   “Yes.”
   “You repair high-quality computers and allied equipment?” The officer consulted his notebook. “You’re considered one of the best in the country, according to this.”
   Jennings said nothing.
   “Tell us the two things we want to know, and you’ll be released at once. Where is Rethrick’s Plant? What kind of work are they doing? You serviced their machines for them, didn’t you? Isn’t that right? For two years.”
   “I don’t know. I suppose so. I don’t have any idea what I did during the two years. You can believe me or not.” Jennings stared wearily down at the floor.
   “What’ll we do?” the driver said finally. “We have no instructions past this.”
   “Take him to the station. We can’t do any more questioning here.” Beyond the cruiser, men and women hurried along the sidewalk. The streets were choked with cruisers, workers going to their homes in the country.
   “Jennings, why don’t you answer us? What’s the matter with you? There’s no reason why you can’t tell us a couple of simple things like that. Don’t you want to cooperate with your Government? Why should you conceal information from us?”
   “I’d tell you if I knew.”
   The officer grunted. No one spoke. Presently the cruiser drew up before a great stone building. The driver turned the motor off, removing the control cap and putting it in his pocket. He touched the door with a code key, releasing the magnetic lock.
   “What shall we do, take him in? Actually, we don’t—”
   “Wait.” The driver stepped out. The other two went with him, closing and locking the doors behind them. They stood on the pavement before the Security Station, talking.
   Jennings sat silently, staring down at the floor. The SP wanted to know about Rethrick Construction. Well, there was nothing he could tell them. They had come to the wrong person, but how could he prove that? The whole thing was impossible. Two years wiped clean from his mind. Who would believe him? It seemed unbelievable to him, too.
   His mind wandered, back to when he had first read the ad. It had hit home, hit him direct. Mechanic wanted, and a general outline of the work, vague, indirect, but enough to tell him that it was right up his line. And the pay! Interviews at the Office. Tests, forms. And then the gradual realization that Rethrick Construction was finding all about him while he knew nothing about them. What kind of work did they do? Construction, but what kind? What sort of machines did they have? Fifty thousand credits for two years…
   And he had come out with his mind washed clean. Two years, and he remembered nothing. It took him a long time to agree to that part of the contract. But he had agreed.
   Jennings looked out the window. The three officers were still talking on the sidewalk, trying to decide what to do with him. He was in a tough spot. They wanted information he couldn’t give, information he didn’t know. But how could he prove it? How could he prove that he had worked two years and come out knowing no more than when he had gone in! The SP would work him over. It would be a long time before they’d believe him, and by that time—
   He glanced quickly around. Was there any escape? In a second they would be back. He touched the door. Locked, the triple-ring magnetic locks. He had worked on magnetic locks many times. He had even designed part of a trigger core. There was no way to open the doors without the right code key. No way, unless by some chance he could short out the lock. But with what?
   He felt in his pockets. What could he use? If he could short the locks, blow them out, there was a faint chance. Outside, men and women were swarming by, on their way home from work. It was past five; the great office buildings were shutting down, the streets were alive with traffic. If he once got out they wouldn’t dare fire. If he could get out.
   The three officers separated. One went up the steps into the Station building. In a second the others would reenter the cruiser. Jennings dug into his pocket, bringing out the code key, the ticket stub, the wire. The wire! Thin wire, thin as human hair. Was it insulated? He unwound it quickly. No.
   He knelt down, running his fingers expertly across the surface of the door. At the edge of the lock was a thin line, a groove between the lock and the door. He brought the end of the wire up to it, delicately maneuvering the wire into the almost invisible space. The wire disappeared an inch or so. Sweat rolled down Jennings’ forehead. He moved the wire a fraction of an inch, twisting it. He held his breath. The relay should be—
   A flash.
   Half blinded, he threw his weight against the door. The door fell open, the lock fused and smoking. Jennings tumbled into the street and leaped to his feet. Cruisers were all around him, honking and sweeping past. He ducked behind a lumbering truck, entering the middle lane of traffic. On the sidewalk he caught a momentary glimpse of the SP men starting after him.
   A bus came along, swaying from side to side, loaded with shoppers and workers. Jennings caught hold of the back rail, pulling himself up onto the platform. Astonished faces loomed up, pale moons thrust suddenly at him. The robot conductor was coming toward him, whirring angrily.
   “Sir—” the conductor began. The bus was slowing down. “Sir, it is not allowed—”
   “It’s all right,” Jennings said. He was filled, all at once, with a strange elation. A moment ago he had been trapped, with no way to escape. Two years of his life had been lost for nothing. The Security Police had arrested him, demanding information he couldn’t give. A hopeless situation! But now things were beginning to click in his mind.
   He reached into his pocket and brought out the bus token. He put it calmly into the conductor’s coin slot.
   “Okay?” he said. Under his feet the bus wavered, the driver hesitating. Then the bus resumed pace, going on. The conductor turned away, its whirrs subsiding. Everything was all right. Jennings smiled. He eased past the standing people, looking for a seat, some place to sit down. Where he could think.
   He had plenty to think about. His mind was racing.
   The bus moved on, flowing with the restless stream of urban traffic. Jennings only half saw the people sitting around him. There was no doubt of it: he had not been swindled. It was on the level. The decision had actually been his. Amazingly, after two years of work he had preferred a handful of trinkets instead of fifty thousand credits. But more amazingly, the handful of trinkets were turning out to be worth more than the money.
   With a piece of wire and a bus token he had escaped from the Security Police. That was worth plenty. Money would have been useless to him once he disappeared inside the great stone Station. Even fifty thousand credits wouldn’t have helped him. And there were five trinkets left. He felt around in his pocket. Five more things. He had used two. The others—what were they for? Something as important?
   But the big puzzle: how had he—his earlier self—known that a piece of wire and a bus token would save his life?” He had known, all right. Known in advance. But how? And the other five. Probably they were just as precious, or would be.
   The he of those two years had known things that he did not know now, things that had been washed away when the company cleaned his mind. Like an adding machine which had been cleared. Everything was slate-clean. What he had known was gone, now. Gone, except for seven trinkets, five of which were still in his pocket.
   But the real problem right now was not a problem of speculation. It was very concrete. The Security Police were looking for him. They had his name and description. There was no use thinking of going to his apartment—if he even still had an apartment. But where, then? Hotels? The SP combed them daily. Friends? That would mean putting them in jeopardy, along with him. It was only a question of time before the SP found him, walking along the street, eating in a restaurant, in a show, sleeping in some rooming house. The SP were everywhere.
   Everywhere? Not quite. When an individual person was defenseless, a business was not. The big economic forces had managed to remain free, although virtually everything else had been absorbed by the Government. Laws that had been eased away from the private person still protected property and industry. The SP could pick up any given person, but they could not enter and seize a company, a business. That had been clearly established in the middle of the twentieth century.
   Business, industry, corporations, were safe from the Security Police. Due process was required. Rethrick Construction was a target of SP interest, but they could do nothing until some statute was violated. If he could get back to the Company, get inside its doors, he would be safe. Jennings smiled grimly. The modern church, sanctuary. It was the Government against the corporation, rather than the State against the Church. The new Notre Dame of the world. Where the law could not follow.
   Would Rethrick take him back? Yes, on the old basis. He had already said so. Another two years sliced from him, and then back onto the streets. Would that help him? He felt suddenly in his pocket. And there were the remaining trinkets. Surely he had intended them to be used! No, he could not go back to Rethrick and work another contract time. Something else was indicated. Something more permanent. Jennings pondered. Rethrick Construction. What did it construct? What had he known, found out, during those two years? And why were the SP so interested?
   He brought out the five objects and studied them. The green strip of cloth. The code key. The ticket stub. The parcel receipt. The half poker chip. Strange, that little things like that could be important.
   And Rethrick Construction was involved.
   There was no doubt. The answer, all the answers, lay at Rethrick. But where was Rethrick? He had no idea where the plant was, no idea at all. He knew where the Office was, the big, luxurious room with the young woman and her desk. But that was not Rethrick Construction. Did anyone know, beside Rethrick? Kelly didn’t know. Did the SP know?
   It was out of town. That was certain. He had gone there by rocket. It was probably in the United States, maybe in the farmlands, the country, between cities. What a hell of a situation! Any moment the SP might pick him up. The next time he might not get away. His only chance, his own real chance for safety, lay in reaching Rethrick. And his only chance to find out the things he had to know. The plant—a place where he had been, but which he could not recall. He looked down at the five trinkets. Would any of them help?
   A burst of despair swept through him. Maybe it was just coincidence, the wire and the token. Maybe—
   He examined the parcel receipt, turning it over and holding it up to the light. Suddenly his stomach muscles knotted. His pulse changed. He had been right. No, it was not a coincidence, the wire and the token. The parcel receipt was dated two days hence. The parcel, whatever it might be, had not even been deposited yet. Not for forty-eight more hours.
   He looked at the other things. The ticket stub. What good was a ticket stub? It was creased and bent, folded over, again and again. He couldn’t go anyplace with that. A stub didn’t take you anywhere. It only told you where you had been.
   Where you had been!
   He bent down, peering at it, smoothing the creases. The printing had been torn through the middle. Only part of each word could be made out.


PORTOLA T
STUARTSVI
IOW

   He smiled. That was it. Where he had been. He could fill in the missing letters. It was enough. There was no doubt: he had foreseen this, too. Three of the seven trinkets used. Four left. Stuartsville, Iowa. Was there such a place? He looked out the window of the bus. The Intercity rocket station was only a block or so away. He could be there in a second. A quick sprint from the bus, hoping the Police wouldn’t be there to stop him—
   But somehow he knew they wouldn’t. Not with the other four things in his pocket. And once he was on the rocket he would be safe. Intercity was big, big enough to keep free of the SP. Jennings put the remaining trinkets back into his pocket and stood up, pulling the bellcord.
   A moment later he stepped gingerly out onto the sidewalk.

   The rocket let him off at the edge of town, at a tiny brown field. A few disinterested porters moved about, stacking luggage, resting from the heat of the sun.
   Jennings crossed the field to the waiting room, studying the people around him. Ordinary people, workmen, businessmen, housewives. Stuartsville was a small middle Western town. Truck drivers. High school kids.
   He went through the waiting room, out onto the street. So this was where Rethrick’s Plant was located—perhaps. If he had used the stub correctly. Anyhow, something was here, or he wouldn’t have included the stub with the other trinkets.
   Stuartsville, Iowa. A faint plan was beginning to form in the back of his mind, still vague and nebulous. He began to walk, his hands in his pockets, looking around him. A newspaper office, lunch counters, hotels, poolrooms, a barber shop, a television repair shop. A rocket sales store with huge showrooms of gleaming rockets. Family size. And at the end of the block the Portola Theater.
   The town thinned out. Farms, fields. Miles of green country. In the sky above a few transport rockets lumbered, carrying farm supplies and equipment back and forth. A small, unimportant town. Just right for Rethrick Construction. The Plant would be lost here, away from the city, away from the SP.
   Jennings walked back. He entered a lunchroom, BOB’S PLACE. A young man with glasses came over as he sat down at the counter, wiping his hands on his white apron.
   “Coffee,” Jennings said.
   “Coffee.” The man brought the cup. There were only a few people in the lunchroom. A couple of flies buzzed, against the window.
   Outside in the street shoppers and farmers moved leisurely by.
   “Say,” Jennings said, stirring his coffee. “Where can a man get work around here? Do you know?”
   “What kind of work?” The young man came back, leaning against the counter.
   “Electrical wiring. I’m an electrician. Television, rockets, computers. That sort of stuff.”
   “Why don’t you try the big industrial areas? Detroit. Chicago. New York.”
   Jennings shook his head. “Can’t stand the big cities. I never liked cities.”
   The young man laughed. “A lot of people here would be glad to work in Detroit. You’re an electrician?”
   “Are there any plants around here? Any repair shops or plants?”
   “None that I know of.” The young man went off to wait on some men that had come in. Jennings sipped his coffee. Had he made a mistake? Maybe he should go back and forget about Stuartsville, Iowa. Maybe he had made the wrong inference from the ticket stub. But the ticket meant something, unless he was completely wrong about everything. It was a little late to decide that, though.
   The young man came back. “Is there any kind of work I can get here?” Jennings said. “Just to tide me over.”
   “There’s always farm work.”
   “How about the retail repair shops? Garages. TV.”
   “There’s a TV repair shop down the street. Maybe you might get something there. You could try. Farm work pays good. They can’t get many men, anymore. Most men in the military. You want to pitch hay?”
   Jennings laughed. He paid for his coffee. “Not very much. Thanks.”
   “Once in a while some of the men go up the road and work. There’s some sort of Government station.”
   Jennings nodded. He pushed the screen door open, stepping outside onto the hot sidewalk. He walked aimlessly for a time, deep in thought, turning his nebulous plan over and over. It was a good plan; it would solve everything, all his problems at once. But right now it hinged on one thing: finding Rethrick Construction. And he had only one clue, if it really was a clue. The ticket stub, folded and creased, in his pocket. And a faith that he had known what he was doing.
   A Government station. Jennings paused, looking around him. Across the street was a taxi stand, a couple of cabbies sitting in their cabs, smoking and reading the newspaper. It was worth a try, at least. There wasn’t much else to do. Rethrick would be something else, on the surface. If it posed as a Government project no one would ask any questions. They were all too accustomed to Government projects working without explanation, in secrecy.
   He went over to the first cab. “Mister,” he said, “can you tell me something?”
   The cabbie looked up. “What do you want?”
   “They tell me there’s work to be had, out at the Government station. Is that right?”
   The cabbie studied him. He nodded.
   “What kind of work is it?”
   “I don’t know.”
   “Where do they do the hiring?”
   “I don’t know.” The cabbie lifted his paper.
   “Thanks.” Jennings turned away.
   “They don’t do any hiring. Maybe once in a long while. They don’t take many on. You better go someplace else if you’re looking for work.”
   “All right.”
   The other cabbie leaned out of his cab. “They use only a few day laborers, buddy. That’s all. And they’re very choosy. They don’t hardly let anybody in. Some kind of war work.”
   Jennings pricked up his ears. “Secret?”
   “They come into town and pick up a load of construction workers. Maybe a truck full. That’s all. They’re real careful who they pick.”
   Jennings walked back toward the cabbie. “That right?”
   “It’s a big place. Steel wall. Charged. Guards. Work going on day and night. But nobody gets in. Set up on top of a hill, out the old Henderson Road. About two miles and a half.” The cabbie poked at his shoulder. “You can’t get in unless you’re identified. They identify their laborers, after they pick them out. You know.”
   Jennings stared at him. The cabbie was tracing a line on his shoulder. Suddenly Jennings understood. A flood of relief rushed over him.
   “Sure,” he said. “I understand what you mean. At least, I think so.” He reached into his pocket, bringing out the four trinkets. Carefully, he unfolded the strip of green cloth, holding it up. “Like this?”
   The cabbies stared at the cloth. “That’s right,” one of them said slowly, staring at the cloth. “Where did you get it?”
   Jennings laughed. “A friend.” He put the cloth back in his pocket. “A friend gave it to me.”
   He went off, toward the Intercity field. He had plenty to do, now that the first step was over. Rethrick was here, all right. And apparently the trinkets were going to see him through. One for every crisis. A pocketful of miracles, from someone who knew the future!
   But the next step couldn’t be done alone. He needed help. Somebody else was needed for this part. But who? He pondered, entering the Intercity waiting room. There was only one person he could possibly go to. It was a long chance, but he had to take it. He couldn’t work alone, here on out. If the Rethrick plant was here then Kelly would be too…

   The street was dark. At the corner a lamppost cast a fitful beam. A few cruisers moved by.
   From the apartment building entrance a slim shape came, a young woman in a coat, a purse in her hand. Jennings watched as she passed under the streetlamp. Kelly McVane was going someplace, probably to a party. Smartly dressed, high heels tap-tapping on the pavement, a little coat and hat.
   He stepped out behind her. “Kelly.”
   She turned quickly, her mouth open. “Oh!”
   Jennings took her arm. “Don’t worry. It’s just me. Where are you going, all dressed up?”
   “No place.” She blinked. “My golly, you scared me. What is it? What’s going on?”
   “Nothing. Can you spare a few minutes? I want to talk to you.”
   Kelly nodded. “I guess so.” She looked around. “Where’ll we go?”
   “Where’s a place we can talk? I don’t want anyone to overhear us.”
   “Can’t we just walk along?”
   “No. The Police.”
   “The Police?”
   “They’re looking for me.”
   “For you? But why?”
   “Let’s not stand here,” Jennings said grimly. “Where can we go?”
   Kelly hesitated. “We can go up to my apartment. No one’s there.”
   They went up to the elevator. Kelly unlocked the door, pressing the code key against it. The door swung open and they went inside, the heater and lights coming on automatically at her step. She closed the door and took off her coat.
   “I won’t stay long.” Jennings said.
   “That’s all right. I’ll fix you a drink.” She went into the kitchen. Jennings sat down on the couch, looking around at the neat little apartment. Presently the girl came back. She sat down beside him and Jennings took his drink. Scotch and water, cold.
   “Thanks.”
   Kelly smiled. “Not at all.” The two of them sat silently for a time. “Well?” she said at last. “What’s this all about? Why are the Police looking for you?”
   “They want to find out about Rethrick Construction. I’m only a pawn in this. They think I know something because I worked two years at Rethrick’s Plant.”
   “But you don’t!”
   “I can’t prove that.”
   Kelly reached out, touching Jennings’ head, just above the ear. “Feel there. That spot.”
   Jennings reached up. Above his ear, under the hair, was a tiny hard spot. “What is it?”
   “They burned through the skull there. Cut a tiny wedge from the brain. All your memories of the two years. They located them and burned them out. The SP couldn’t possibly make you remember. It’s gone. You don’t have it.”
   “By the time they realize that there won’t be much left of me.”
   Kelly said nothing.
   “You can see the spot I’m in. It would be better for me if I did remember. Then I could tell them and they’d—”
   “And destroy Rethrick!”
   Jennings shrugged. “Why not? Rethrick means nothing to me. I don’t even know what they’re doing. And why are the Police so interested? From the very start, all the secrecy, cleaning my mind—”
   “There’s reason. Good reason.”
   “Do you know why?”
   “No.” Kelly shook her head. “But I’m sure there’s a reason. If the SP are interested, there’s reason.” She set down her drink, turning toward him. “I hate the Police. We all do, every one of us. They’re after us all the time. I don’t know anything about Rethrick. If I did my life wouldn’t be safe. There’s not much standing between Rethrick and them. A few laws, a handful of laws. Nothing more.”
   “I have the feeling Rethrick is a great deal more than just another construction company the SP wants to control.”
   “I suppose it is. I really don’t know. I’m just a receptionist. I’ve never been to the Plant. I don’t even know where it is.”
   “But you wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”
   “Of course not! They’re fighting the Police. Anyone that’s fighting the Police is on our side.”
   “Really? I’ve heard that kind of logic before. Anyone fighting communism was automatically good, a few decades ago. Well, time will tell. As far as I’m concerned I’m an individual caught between two ruthless forces. Government and business. The Government has men and wealth. Rethrick Construction has its technocracy. What they’ve done with it, I don’t know. I did, a few weeks ago. All I have now is a faint glimmer, a few references. A theory.”
   Kelly glanced at him. “A theory?”
   “And my pocketful of trinkets. Seven. Three or four now. I’ve used some. They’re the basis of my theory. If Rethrick is doing what I think it’s doing, I can understand the SP’s interest. As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to share their interest.”

   “What is Rethrick doing?”
   “It’s developed a time scoop.”
   “What?”
   “A time scoop. It’s been theoretically possible for several years. But it’s illegal to experiment with time scoops and mirrors. It’s a felony, and if you’re caught, all your equipment and data becomes the property of the Government.” Jennings smiled crookedly. “No wonder the Government’s interested. If they can catch Rethrick with the goods—”
   “A time scoop. It’s hard to believe.”
   “Don’t you think I’m right?”
   “I don’t know. Perhaps. Your trinkets. You’re not the first to come out with a little cloth sack of odds and ends. You’ve used some? How?”
   “First, the wire and the bus token. Getting away from the Police. It seems funny, but if I hadn’t had them, I’d be there yet. A piece of wire and a ten-cent token. But I don’t usually carry such things. That’s the point.”
   “Time travel.”
   “No. Not time travel. Berkowsky demonstrated that time travel is impossible. This is a time scoop, a mirror to see and a scoop to pick up things. These trinkets. At least one of them is from the future. Scooped up. Brought back.”
   “How do you know?”
   “It’s dated. The others, perhaps not. Things like tokens and wire belong to classes of things. Any one token is as good as another. There, he must have used a mirror.”
   “He?”
   “When I was working with Rethrick. I must have used the mirror. I looked into my own future. If I was repairing their equipment I could hardly keep from it! I must have looked ahead, seen what was coming. The SP picking me up. I must have seen that, and seen what a piece of thin wire and a bus token would do—if I had them with me at the exact moment.”
   Kelly considered. “Well? What do you want me for?”
   “I’m not sure, now. Do you really look on Rethrick as a benevolent institution, waging war against the Police? A sort of Roland at Roncesvalles—”
   “What does it matter how I feel about the Company?”
   “It matters a lot.” Jennings finished his drink, pushing the glass aside. “It matters a lot, because I want you to help me. I’m going to blackmail Rethrick Construction.”
   Kelly stared at him.
   “It’s my one chance to stay alive, I’ve got to get a hold over Rethrick, a big hold. Enough of a hold so they’ll let me in, on my own terms. There’s no other place I can go. Sooner or later the Police are going to pick me up. If I’m not inside the Plant, and soon—”
   “Help you blackmail the Company? Destroy Rethrick?”
   “No. Not destroy. I don’t want to destroy it—my life depends on the Company. My life depends on Rethrick being strong enough to defy the SP. But if I’m on the outside it doesn’t much matter how strong Rethrick is. Do you see? I want to get in. I want to get inside before it’s too late. And I want in on my own terms, not as a two-year worker who gets pushed out again afterward.”
   “For the Police to pick up.”
   Jennings nodded. “Exactly.”
   “How are you going to blackmail the Company?”
   “I’m going to enter the Plant and carry out enough material to prove Rethrick is operating a time scoop.”
   Kelly laughed. “Enter the Plant? Let’s see you find the Plant. The SP have been looking for it for years.”
   “I’ve already found it.” Jennings leaned back, lighting a cigarette. “I’ve located it with my trinkets. And I have four left, enough to get me inside, I think. And to get me what I want. I’ll be able to carry out enough papers and photographs to hang Rethrick. But I don’t want to hang Rethrick. I only want to bargain. That’s where you come in.”
   “I?”
   “You can be trusted not to go to the Police. I need someone I can turn the material over to. I don’t dare keep it myself. As soon as I have it I must turn it over to someone else, someone who’ll hide it where I won’t be able to find it.”
   “Why?”
   “Because,” Jennings said calmly, “any minute the SP may pick me up. I have no love for Rethrick, but I don’t want to scuttle it. That’s why you’ve got to help me. I’m going to turn the information over to you, to hold, while I bargain with Rethrick. Otherwise I’ll have to hold it myself. And if I have it on me—”
   He glanced at her. Kelly was staring at the floor, her face tense. Set.
   “Well? What do you say? Will you help me, or shall I take the chance the SP won’t pick me up with the material? Data enough to destroy Rethrick. Well? Which will it be? Do you want to see Rethrick destroyed? What’s your answer?”

   The two of them crouched, looking across the fields at the hill beyond. The hill rose up, naked and brown, burned clean of vegetation. Nothing grew on its sides. Halfway up a long steel fence twisted, topped with charged barbed wire. On the other side a guard walked slowly, a tiny figure patrolling with a rifle and helmet.
   At the top of the hill lay an enormous concrete block, a towering structure without windows or doors. Mounted guns caught the early morning sunlight, glinting in a row along the roof of the building.
   “So that’s the Plant,” Kelly said softly.
   “That’s it. It would take an army to get up there, up that hill and over the fence. Unless they were allowed in.” Jennings got to his feet, helping Kelly up. They walked back along the path, through the trees, to where Kelly had parked the cruiser.
   “Do you really think your green cloth band will get you in?” Kelly said, sliding behind the wheel.
   “According to the people in the town, a truckload of laborers will be brought in to the Plant sometime this morning. The truck is unloaded at the entrance and the men examined. If everything’s in order they’re let inside the grounds, past the fence. For construction work, manual labor. At the end of the day they’re let out again and driven back to town.”
   “Will that get you close enough?”
   “I’ll be on the other side of the fence, at least.”
   “How will you get to the time scoop? That must be inside the building, some place.”
   Jennings brought out a small code key. “This will get me in. I hope. I assume it will.”
   Kelly took the key, examining it. “So that’s one of your trinkets. We should have taken a better look inside your little cloth bag.”
   “We?”
   “The Company. I saw several little bags of trinkets pass out, through my hands. Rethrick never said anything.”
   “Probably the Company assumed no one would ever want to get back inside again.” Jennings took the code key from her. “Now, do you know what you’re supposed to do?”
   “I’m supposed to stay here with the cruiser until you get back. You’re to give me the material. Then I’m to carry it back to New York and wait for you to contact me.”
   “That’s right.” Jennings studied the distant road, leading through the trees to the Plant gate. “I better get down there. The truck may be along any time.”
   “What if they decide to count the number of workers?”
   “I’ll have to take the chance. But I’m not worried. I’m sure he foresaw everything.”
   Kelly smiled. “You and your friend, your helpful friend. I hope he left you enough things to get you out again, after you have the photographs.”
   “Do you?”
   “Why not?” Kelly said easily. “I always liked you. You know that. You knew when you came to me.”
   Jennings stepped out of the cruiser. He had on overalls and workshoes, and a gray sweatshirt. “I’ll see you later. If everything goes all right. I think it will.” He patted his pocket. “With my charms here, my good-luck charms.”
   He went off through the trees, walking swiftly.
   The trees led to the very edge of the road. He stayed with them, not coming out into the open. The Plant guards were certainly scanning the hillside. They had burned it clean, so that anyone trying to creep up to the fence would be spotted at once. And he had seen infrared searchlights.
   Jennings crouched low, resting against his heels, watching the road. A few yards up the road was a roadblock, just ahead of the gate. He examined his watch. Ten thirty. He might have a wait, a long wait. He tried to relax.
   It was after eleven when the great truck came down the road, rumbling and wheezing.
   Jennings came to life. He took out the strip of green cloth and fastened it around his arm. The truck came closer. He could see its load now. The back was full of workmen, men in jeans and workshirts, bounced and jolted as the truck moved along. Sure enough, each had an arm band like his own, a swathe of green around his upper arm. So far so good.
   The truck came slowly to a halt, stopping at the roadblock. The men got down slowly onto the road, sending up a cloud of dust into the hot midday sun. They slapped the dust from their jeans, some of them lighting cigarettes. Two guards came leisurely from behind the roadblock. Jennings tensed. In a moment it would be time. The guards moved among the men, examining them, their arm bands, their faces, looking at the identification tabs of a few.
   The roadblock slid back. The gate opened. The guards returned to their positions.
   Jennings slid forward, slithering through the brush, toward the road. The men were stamping out their cigarettes, climbing back up into the truck. The truck was gunning its motor, the driver releasing the brakes. Jennings dropped onto the road, behind the truck. A rattle of leaves and dirt showered after him. Where he had landed, the view of the guards was cut off by the truck. Jennings held his breath. He ran toward the back of the truck.
   The men stared at him curiously as he pulled himself up among them, his chest rising and falling. Their faces were weathered, gray and lined. Men of the soil. Jennings took his place between two burly farmers as the truck started up. They did not seem to notice him. He had rubbed dirt into his skin, and let his beard grow for a day. A quick glance he didn’t look much different from the others. But if anyone made a count—
   The truck passed through the gate, into the grounds. The gate slid shut behind. Now they were going up, up the steep side of the hill, the truck rattling and swaying from side to side. The vast concrete structure loomed nearer. Were they going to enter it? Jennings watched, fascinated. A thin high door was sliding back, revealing a dark interior. A row of artificial lights gleamed.
   The truck stopped. The workmen began to get down again. Some mechanics came around them.
   “What’s this crew for?” one of them asked.
   “Digging. Inside.” Another jerked a thumb. “They’re digging again. Send them inside.”
   Jennings’s heart thudded. He was going inside! He felt at his neck. There, inside the gray sweater, a flatplate camera hung like a bib around his neck. He could scarcely feel it, even knowing it was there. Maybe this would be less difficult than he had thought.
   The workmen pushed through the door on foot, Jennings with them. They were in an immense workroom, long benches with half-completed machinery, booms and cranes, and the constant roar of work. The door closed after them, cutting them off from outside. He was in the Plant. But where was the time scoop, and the mirror?
   “This way,” a foreman said. The workmen plodded over to the right. A freight lift rose to meet them from the bowels of the building. “You’re going down below. How many of you have experience with drills?”
   A few hands went up.
   “You can show the others. We are moving earth with drills and eaters. Any of you work eaters?”
   No hands. Jennings glanced at the worktables. Had he worked here, not so long ago? A sudden chill went through him. Suppose he were recognized? Maybe he had worked with these very mechanics.
   “Come on,” the foreman said impatiently. “Hurry up.”
   Jennings got into the freight lift with the others. A moment later they began to descend, down the black tube. Down, down, into the lower levels of the Plant. Rethrick Construction was big, a lot bigger than it looked above ground. A lot bigger than he had imagined. Floors, underground levels, flashing past one after the other.
   The elevator stopped. The doors opened. He was looking down a long corridor. The floor was thick with stone dust. The air was moist. Around him, the workmen began to crowd out. Suddenly Jennings stiffened, pulling back.
   At the end of the corridor before a steel door, was Earl Rethrick. Talking to a group of technicians.
   “All out,” the foreman said. “Let’s go.”
   Jennings left the elevator, keeping behind the others. Rethrick! His heart beat dully. If Rethrick saw him he was finished. He felt in his pockets. He had a miniature Boris gun, but it wouldn’t be much use if he was discovered. Once Rethrick saw him it would be all over.
   “Down this way.” The foreman led them toward what seemed to be an underground railway, to one side of the corridor. The men were getting into metal cars along a track. Jennings watched Rethrick. He saw him gesture angrily, his voice coming faintly down the hall. Suddenly Rethrick turned. He held up his hand and the great steel door behind him opened.
   Jennings’s heart almost stopped beating.
   There, beyond the steel door, was the time scoop. He recognized it at once. The mirror. The long metal rods, ending in claws. Like Berkowsky’s theoretical model—only this was real.
   Rethrick went into the room, the technicians following behind him. Men were working at the scoop, standing all around it. Part of the shield was off. They were digging into the works. Jennings stared, hanging back.
   “Say you—” the foreman said, coming toward him. The steel door shut. The view was cut off. Rethrick, the scoop, the technicians, were gone.
   “Sorry,” Jennings murmured.
   “You know you’re not supposed to be curious around here.” The foreman was studying him intently. “I don’t remember you. Let me see your tab.”
   “My tab?”
   “Your identification tab.” The foreman turned away. “Bill, bring me the board.” He looked Jennings up and down. “I’m going to check you from the board, mister. I’ve never seen you in the crew before. Stay here.” A man was coming from a side door with a check board in his hands.
   It was now or never.
   Jennings sprinted, down the corridor, toward the great steel door. Behind there was a startled shout, the foreman and his helper. Jennings whipped out the code key, praying fervently as he ran. He came up to the door, holding out the key. With the other hand he brought out the Boris gun. Beyond the door was the time scoop. A few photographs, some schematics snatched up, and then, if he could get out—
   The door did not move. Sweat leaped out on his face. He knocked the key against the door. Why didn’t it open? Surely—He began to shake, panic rising up in him. Down the corridor people were coming, racing after him. Open—
   But the door did not open. The key he held in his hand was the wrong key.
   He was defeated. The door and the key did not match. Either he had been wrong, or the key was to be used someplace else. But where? Jennings looked frantically around. Where? Where could he go?
   To one side a door was half open, a regular bolt-lock door. He crossed the corridor, pushing it open. He was in a storeroom of some sort. He slammed the door, throwing the bolt. He could hear them outside, confused, calling for guards. Soon armed guards would be along. Jennings held the Boris gun tightly, gazing around. Was he trapped? Was there a second way out?
   He ran through the room, pushing among bales and boxes, towering stacks of silent cartons, end on end. At the rear was an emergency hatch. He opened it immediately. An impulse came to throw the code key away. What good had it been? But surely he had known what he was doing. He had already seen all this. Like God, it had already happened for him. Predetermined. He could not err. Or could he?
   A chill went through him. Maybe the future was variable. Maybe this had been the right key, once. But not any more!
   There were sounds behind him. They were melting the storeroom door. Jennings scrambled through the emergency hatch, into a low concrete passage, damp and ill lit. He ran quickly along it, turning corners. It was like a sewer. Other passages ran into it, from all sides.
   He stopped. Which way? Where could he hide? The mouth of a major vent pipe gaped above his head. He caught hold and pulled himself up. Grimly, he eased his body onto it. They’d ignore a pipe, go on past. He crawled cautiously down the pipe. Warm air blew into his face. Why such a big vent? It implied an unusual chamber at the other end. He came to a metal grill and stopped.
   And gasped.
   He was looking into the great room, the room he had glimpsed beyond the steel door. Only now he was at the other end. There was the time scoop. And far down, beyond the scoop, was Rethrick, conferring at an active vidscreen. An alarm was sounding, whining shrilly, echoing everywhere. Technicians were running in all directions. Guards in uniform poured in and out of doors.
   The scoop. Jennings examined the grill. It was slotted in place. He moved it laterally and it fell into his hands. No one was watching. He slid cautiously out, into the room, the Boris gun ready. He was fairly hidden behind the scoop, and the technicians and guards were all the way down at the other end of the room, where he had first seen them.
   And there it was, all around him, the schematics, the mirror, papers, data, blueprints. He flicked his camera on. Against his chest the camera vibrated, film moving through it. He snatched up a handful of schematics. Perhaps he had used these very diagrams, a few weeks before!
   He stuffed his pockets with papers. The film came to an end. But he was finished. He squeezed back into the vent, pushing through the mouth and down the tube. The sewerlike corridor was still empty, but there was an insistent drumming sound, the noise of voices and footsteps. So many passages—They were looking for him in a maze of escape corridors.
   Jennings ran swiftly. He ran on and on, without regard to direction, trying to keep along the main corridor. On all sides passages flocked off, one after another, countless passages. He was dropping down, lower and lower. Running downhill.
   Suddenly he stopped, gasping. The sound behind him had died away for a moment. But there was a new sound, ahead. He went along slowly. The corridor twisted, turning to the right. He advanced slowly, the Boris gun ready.
   Two guards were standing a little way ahead, lounging and talking together. Beyond them was a heavy code door. And behind him the sound of voices were coming again, growing louder. They had found the same passage he had taken. They were on the way.
   Jennings stepped out, the Boris gun raised. “Put up your hands. Let go of your guns.”
   The guards gawked at him. Kids, boys with cropped blond hair and shiny uniforms. They moved back, pale and scared.
   “The guns. Let them fall.”
   The two rifles clattered down. Jennings smiled. Boys. Probably this was their first encounter with trouble. Their leather boots shone, brightly polished.
   “Open the door,” Jennings said. “I want through.”
   They stared at him. Behind, the noise grew.
   “Open it.” He became impatient. “Come on.” He waved the pistol. “Open it, damn it! Do you want me to—”
   “We—we can’t.”
   “What?”
   “We can’t. It’s a code door. We don’t have the key. Honest, mister. They don’t let us have the key.” They were frightened. Jennings felt fear himself now. Behind him the drumming was louder. He was trapped, caught.
   Or was he?
   Suddenly he laughed. He walked quickly up to the door. “Faith,” he murmured, raising his hand. “That’s something you should never lose.”
   “What—what’s that?”
   “Faith in yourself. Self-confidence.”
   The door slid back as he held the code key against it. Blinding sunlight streamed in, making him blink. He held the gun steady. He was outside, at the gate. Three guards gaped in amazement at the gun. He was at the gate—and beyond lay the woods.
   “Get out of the way.” Jennings fired at the metal bars of the gate. The metal burst into flame, melting, a cloud of fire rising.
   “Stop him!” From behind, men came pouring, guards, out of the corridor.
   Jennings leaped through the smoking gate. The metal tore at him, searing him. He ran through the smoke, rolling and falling. He got to his feet and scurried on, into the trees.
   He was outside. He had not let him down. The key had worked, all right. He had tried it first on the wrong door.
   On and on he ran, sobbing for breath, pushing through the trees. Behind him the Plant and the voices fell away. He had the papers. And he was free.

   He found Kelly and gave her the film and everything he had managed to stuff into his pockets. Then he changed back to his regular clothes. Kelly drove him to the edge of Stuartsville and left him off. Jennings watched the cruiser rise up into the air, heading toward New York. Then he went into town and boarded the Intercity rocket.
   On the flight he slept, surrounded by dozing businessmen. When he awoke the rocket was settling down, landing at the huge New York spaceport.
   Jennings got off, mixing with the flow of people. Now that he was back there was the danger of being picked up by the SP again. Two security officers in their green uniforms watched him impassively as he took a taxi at the field station. The taxi swept him into downtown traffic. Jennings wiped his brow. That was close. Now, to find Kelly.
   He ate dinner at a small restaurant, sitting in the back away from the windows. When he emerged the sun was beginning to set. He walked slowly along the sidewalk, deep in thought.
   So far so good. He had got the papers and film, and he had got away. The trinkets had worked every step along the way. Without them he would have been helpless. He felt in his pocket. Two left. The serrated half poker chip, and the parcel receipt. He took the receipt out, examining it in the fading evening light.
   Suddenly he noticed something. The date on it was today’s date. He had caught up with the slip.
   He put it away, going on. What did it mean? What was it for? He shrugged. He would know, in time. And the half poker chip. What the hell was it for? No way to tell. In any case, he was certain to get through. He had got him by, up to now. Surely there wasn’t much left.
   He came to Kelly’s apartment house and stopped, looking up. Her light was on. She was back; her fast little cruiser had beaten the Intercity rocket. He entered the elevator and rose to her floor.
   “Hello,” he said, when she opened the door.
   “You’re all right?”
   “Sure. Can I come in?”
   He went inside. Kelly closed the door behind him. “I’m glad to see you. The city’s swarming with SP men. Almost every block. And the patrols—”
   “I know. I saw a couple at the spaceport.” Jennings sat down on the couch. “It’s good to be back, though.”
   “I was afraid they might stop all the Intercity flights and check through the passengers.”
   “They have no reason to assume I’d be coming into the city.”
   “I didn’t think of that.” Kelly sat down across from him. “Now, what comes next? Now that you have got away with the material, what are you going to do?”
   “Next I meet Rethrick and spring the news on him. The news that the person who escaped from the Plant was myself. He knows that someone got away, but he doesn’t know who it was. Undoubtedly, he assumes it was an SP man.”
   “Couldn’t he use the time mirror to find out?”
   A shadow crossed Jennings’ face. “That’s so. I didn’t think of that.” He rubbed his jaw, frowning. “In any case, I have the material. Or, you have the material.”
   Kelly nodded.
   “All right. We’ll go ahead with our plans. Tomorrow we’ll see Rethrick. We’ll see him here, in New York. Can you get him down to the Office? Will he come if you send for him?”
   “Yes. We have a code. If I ask him to come, he’ll come.”
   “Fine. I’ll meet him there. When he realizes that we have the picture and schematics he’ll have to agree to my demands. He’ll have to let me into Rethrick Construction, on my own terms. It’s either that, or face the possibility of having the material turned over to the Security Police.”
   “And once you’re in? Once Rethrick agrees to your demands?”
   “I saw enough at the Plant to convince me that Rethrick is far bigger than I had realized. How big, I don’t know. No wonder he was so interested!”
   “You’re going to demand equal control of the Company?”
   Jennings nodded.
   “You would never be satisfied to go back as a mechanic, would you? The way you were before.”
   “No. To get booted out again?” Jennings smiled. “Anyhow, I know he intended better things than that. He laid careful plans. The trinkets. He must have planned everything long in advance. No, I’m not going back as a mechanic. I saw a lot there, level after level of machines and men. They’re doing something. And I want to be in on it.”
   Kelly was silent.
   “See?” Jennings said.
   “I see.”
   He left the apartment, hurrying along the dark street. He had stayed there too long. If the SP found the two of them together it would be all up with Rethrick Construction. He could take no chances, with the end almost in sight.
   He looked at his watch. It was past midnight. He would meet Rethrick this morning, and present him with the proposition. His spirits rose as he walked. He would be safe. More than safe. Rethrick Construction was aiming at something far larger than mere industrial power. What he had seen had convinced him that a revolution was brewing. Down in the many levels below the ground, down under the fortress of concrete, guarded by guns and armed men, Rethrick was planning a war. Machines were being turned out. The time scoop and the mirror were hard at work, watching, dipping, extracting.
   No wonder he had worked out such careful plans. He had seen all this and understood, begun to ponder. The problem of the mind cleaning. His memory would be gone when he was released. Destruction of all the plans.
   Destruction? There was the alternate clause in the contract. Others had seen it, used it. But not the way he intended!
   He was after much more than anyone who had come before. He was the first to understand, to plan. The seven trinkets were a bridge to something beyond anything that—
   At the end of the block an SP cruiser pulled up to the curb. Its doors slid open.
   Jennings stopped, his heart constricting. The night patrol, roaming through the city. It was after eleven, after curfew. He looked quickly around. Everything was dark. The stores and houses were shut up tight, locked for the night. Silent apartment houses, buildings. Even the bars were dark.
   He looked back the way he had come. Behind him, a second SP cruiser had stopped. Two SP officers had stepped out onto the curb. They had seen him. They were coming toward him. He stood frozen, looking up and down the street.
   Across from him was the entrance of a swank hotel, its neon sign glimmering. He began to walk toward it, his heels echoing against the pavement.
   “Stop!” one of the SP men called. “Come back here. What are you doing out? What’s your—”
   Jennings went up the stairs, into the hotel. He crossed the lobby. The clerk was staring at him. No one else was around. The lobby was deserted. His heart sank. He didn’t have a chance. He began to run aimlessly, past the desk, along a carpeted hall. Maybe it led out some back way. Behind him, the SP men had already entered the lobby.
   Jennings turned a corner. Two men stepped out, blocking his way.
   “Where are you going?”
   He stopped, wary. “Let me by.” He reached into his coat for the Boris gun. At once the men moved.
   “Get him.”
   His arms were pinned to his sides. Professional hoods. Past them he could see light. Light and sound. Some kind of activity. People.
   “All right,” one of the hoods said. They dragged him back along the corridor, toward the lobby. Jennings struggled futilely. He had entered a blind alley. Hoods, a joint. The city was dotted with them, hidden in the darkness. The swank hotel a front. They would toss him out, into the hands of the SP.
   Some people came along the halls, a man and a woman. Older people. Well dressed. They gazed curiously at Jennings, suspended between the two men.
   Suddenly Jennings understood. A wave of relief hit him, blinding him. “Wait,” he said thickly. “My pocket.”
   “Come on.”
   “Wait. Look. My right pocket. Look for yourselves.”
   He relaxed, waiting. The hood on his right reached, dipping cautiously into the pocket. Jennings smiled. It was over. He had seen even this. There was no possibility of failure. This solved one problem: where to stay until it was time to meet Rethrick. He could stay here.
   The hood brought out the half poker chip, examining the serrated edges. “Just a second.” From his own coat he took a matching chip, fitting on a gold chain. He touched the edges together.
   “All right?” Jennings said.
   “Sure.” They let him go. He brushed off his coat automatically. “Sure, mister. Sorry. Say, you should have—”
   “Take me in the back,” Jennings said, wiping his face. “Some people are looking for me. I don’t particularly want them to find me.”
   “Sure.” They led him back, into the gambling rooms. The half chip had turned what might have been a disaster into an asset. A gambling and girl joint. One of the few institutions the Police left alone. He was safe. No question of that. Only one thing remained. The struggle with Rethrick!

   Rethrick’s face was hard. He gazed at Jennings, swallowing rapidly.
   “No,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you. We thought it was the SP.”
   There was silence. Kelly sat at the chair by her desk, her legs crossed, a cigarette between her fingers. Jennings leaned against the door, his arms folded.
   “Why didn’t you use the mirror?” he said.
   Rethrick’s face flickered. “The mirror? You did a good job, my friend. We tried to use the mirror.”
   “Tried?”
   “Before you finished your term with us you changed a few leads inside the mirror. When we tried to operate it nothing happened. I left the plant half an hour ago. They were still working on it.”
   “I did that before I finished my two years?”
   “Apparently you had worked out your plans in detail. You know that with the mirror we would have no trouble tracking you down. You’re a good mechanic, Jennings. The best we ever had. We’d like to have you back, sometime. Working for us again. There’s not one of us that can operate the mirror the way you could. And right now, we can’t use it at all.”
   Jennings smiled. “I had no idea he did anything like that. I underestimated him. His protection was even—”
   “Who are you talking about?”
   “Myself. During the two years. I use the objective. It’s easier.”
   “Well, Jennings. So the two of you worked out an elaborate plan to steal our schematics. Why? What’s the purpose? You haven’t turned them over to the Police.”
   “No.”
   “Then I can assume it’s blackmail.”
   “That’s right.”
   “What for? What do you want?” Rethrick seemed to have aged. He slumped, his eyes small and glassy, rubbing his chin nervously. “You went to a lot of trouble to get us into this position. I’m curious why. While you were working for us you laid the groundwork. Now you’ve completed it, in spite of our precautions.”
   “Precautions?”
   “Erasing your mind. Concealing the Plant.”
   “Tell him,” Kelly said. “Tell him why you did it.”
   Jennings took a deep breath. “Rethrick, I did it to get back in. Back to the Company. That’s the only reason. No other.”
   Rethrick stared at him. “To get back into the Company? You can come back in. I told you that.” His voice was thin and sharp, edged with strain. “What’s the matter with you? You can come back in. For as long as you want to stay.”
   “As a mechanic.”
   “Yes. As a mechanic. We employ many—”
   “I don’t want to come back as a mechanic. I’m not interested in working for you. Listen, Rethrick. The SP picked me up as soon as I left this Office. If it hadn’t been for him I’d be dead.”
   “They picked you up?”
   “They wanted to know what Rethrick Construction does. They wanted me to tell them.”
   Rethrick nodded. “That’s bad. We didn’t know that.”
   “No, Rethrick. I’m not coming in as an employee you can toss out any time it pleases you. I’m coming in with you, not for you.”
   “With me?” Rethrick stared at him. Slowly a film settled over his face, an ugly hard film. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
   “You and I are going to run Rethrick Construction together. That’ll be the way, from now on. And no one will be burning my memory out, for their own safety.”
   “That’s what you want?”
   “Yes.”
   “And if we don’t cut you in?”
   “Then the schematics and films go to the SP. It’s as simple as that. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to destroy the Company. I want to get into the Company! I want to be safe. You don’t know what it’s like, being out there, with no place to go. An individual has no place to turn to, anymore. No one to help him. He’s caught between two ruthless forces, a pawn between political and economic powers. And I’m tired of being a pawn.”
   For a long time Rethrick said nothing. He stared down at the floor, his face dull and blank. At last he looked up. “I know it’s that way. That’s something I’ve known for a long time. Longer than you have. I’m a lot older than you. I’ve seen it come, grow that way, year after year. That’s why Rethrick Construction exists. Someday, it’ll be all different. Someday, when we have the scoop and the mirror finished. When the weapons are finished.”
   Jennings said nothing.
   “I know very well how it is! I’m an old man. I’ve been working a long time. When they told me someone had got out of the Plant with schematics, I thought the end had come. We already knew you had damaged the mirror. We knew there was a connection, but we had parts figured wrong.
   “We thought, of course, that Security had planted you with us, to find out what we were doing. Then, when you realized you couldn’t carry out your information, you damaged the mirror. With the mirror damaged, SP could go ahead and—”
   He stopped, rubbing his cheek.
   “Go on,” Jennings said.
   “So you did this alone… Blackmail. To get into the Company. You don’t know what the Company is for, Jennings! How dare you try to come in! We’ve been working and building for a long time. You’d wreck us, to save your hide. You’d destroy us, just to save yourself.”
   “I’m not wrecking you. I can be a lot of help.”
   “I run the Company alone. It’s my Company. I made it, put it together. It’s mine.”
   Jennings laughed. “And what happens when you die? Or is the revolution going to come in your own lifetime?”
   Rethrick’s head jerked up.
   “You’ll die, and there won’t be anyone to go on. You know I’m a good mechanic. You said so yourself. You’re a fool, Rethrick. You want to manage it all yourself. Do everything, decide everything. But you’ll die, someday. And then what will happen?”
   There was silence.
   “You better let me in—for the Company’s good, as well as my own. I can do a lot for you. When you’re gone the Company will survive in my hands. And maybe the revolution will work.”
   “You should be glad you’re alive at all! If we hadn’t allowed you to take your trinkets out with you—”
   “What else could you do? How could you let men service your mirror, see their own futures, and not let them lift a finger to help themselves. It’s easy to see why you were forced to insert the alternate-payment clause. You had no choice.”
   “You don’t even know what we are doing. Why we exist.”
   “I have a good idea. After all, I worked for you two years.”
   Time passed. Rethrick moistened his lips again and again, rubbing his cheek. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. At last he looked up.
   “No,” he said. “It’s no deal. No one will ever run the Company but me. If I die, it dies with me. It’s my property.”
   Jennings became instantly alert. “Then the papers go to the Police.”
   Rethrick said nothing, but a peculiar expression moved across his face, an expression that gave Jennings a sudden chill.
   “Kelly,” Jennings said. “Do you have the papers with you?”
   Kelly stirred, standing up. She put out her cigarette, her face pale. “No.”
   “Where are they? Where did you put them?”
   “Sorry,” Kelly said softly. “I’m not going to tell you.”
   He stared at her. “What?”
   “I’m sorry,” Kelly said again. Her voice was small and faint. “They’re safe. The SP won’t ever get them. But neither will you. When it’s convenient, I’ll turn them back to my father.”
   “Your father!”
   “Kelly is my daughter,” Rethrick said. “That was one thing you didn’t count on, Jennings. He didn’t count on it, either. No one knew that but the two of us. I wanted to keep all positions of trust in the family. I see now that it was a good idea. But it had to be kept secret. If the SP had guessed they would have picked her up at once. Her life wouldn’t have been safe.”
   Jennings let his breath out slowly. “I see.”
   “It seemed like a good idea to go along with you,” Kelly said. “Otherwise you’d have done it alone, anyhow. And you would have had the papers on you. As you said, if the SP caught you with the papers it would be the end of us. So I went along with you. As soon as you gave me the papers I put them in a good safe place.” She smiled a little. “No one will find them but me. I’m sorry.”
   “Jennings, you can come in with us,” Rethrick said. “You can work for us forever, if you want. You can have anything you want. Anything except—”
   “Except that no one runs the Company but you.”
   “That’s right. Jennings, the Company is old. Older than I am. I didn’t bring it into existence. It was—you might say, willed to me. I took the burden on. The job of managing it, making it grow, moving it toward the day. The day of revolution, as you put it.
   “My grandfather founded the Company, back in the twentieth century. The Company has always been in the family. And it will always be. Someday, when Kelly marries, there’ll be an heir to carry it on after me. So that’s taken care of. The Company was founded up in Maine, in a small New England town. My grandfather was a little old New Englander, frugal, honest, passionately independent. He had a little repair business of some sort, a little tool and fix-it place. And plenty of knack.
   “When he saw government and big business closing in on everyone, he went underground. Rethrick Construction disappeared from the map. It took government quite a while to organize Maine, longer than most places. When the rest of the world had been divided up between international cartels and world-states, there was New England, still alive. Still free. And my grandfather and Rethrick Construction.
   “He brought in a few men, mechanics, doctors, lawyers, little once-a-week newspapermen from the Middle West. The Company grew. Weapons appeared, weapons and knowledge. The time scoop and mirror! The Plant was built, secretly, at great cost, over a long period of time. The Plant is big. Big and deep. It goes down many more levels than you saw. He saw them, your alter ego. There’s a lot of power there. Power, and men who’ve disappeared, purged all over the world, in fact. We got them first, the best of them.
   “Someday, Jennings, we’re going to break out. You see, conditions like this can’t go on. People can’t live this way, tossed back and forth by political and economic powers. Masses of people shoved this way and that according to the needs of this government or that cartel. There’s going to be resistance, someday. A strong, desperate resistance. Not by big people, powerful people, but by little people. Bus drivers. Grocers. Vidscreen operators. Waiters. And that’s where the Company comes in.
   “We’re going to provide them with the help they’ll need, the tools, weapons, the knowledge. We’re going to ‘sell’ them our services. They’ll be able to hire us. And they’ll need someone they can hire. They’ll have a lot lined up against them. A lot of wealth and power.”
   There was silence.
   “Do you see?” Kelly said. “That’s why you mustn’t interfere. It’s Dad’s Company. It’s always been that way. That’s the way Maine people are. It’s part of the family. The Company belongs to the family. It’s ours.”
   “Come in with us,” Rethrick said. “As a mechanic. I’m sorry, but that’s our limited outlook showing through. Maybe it’s narrow, but we’ve always done things this way.”
   Jennings said nothing. He walked slowly across the office, his hands in his pockets. After a time he raised the blind and stared out at the street, far below.
   Down below, like a tiny black bug, a Security cruiser moved along, drifting silently with the traffic that flowed up and down the street. It joined a second cruiser, already parked. Four SP men were standing by it in their green uniforms, and even as he watched some more could be seen coming from across the street. He let the blind down.
   “It’s a hard decision to make,” he said.
   “If you go out there they’ll get you,” Rethrick said. “They’re out there all the time. You haven’t got a chance.”
   “Please—” Kelly said, looking up at him.
   Suddenly Jennings smiled. “So you won’t tell me where the papers are. Where you put them.”
   Kelly shook her head.
   “Wait.” Jennings reached into his pocket. He brought out a small piece of paper. He unfolded it slowly, scanning it. “By any chance did you deposit it with the Dunne National Bank, about three o’clock yesterday afternoon? For safekeeping in their storage vaults?”
   Kelly gasped. She grabbed her handbag, unsnapping it. Jennings put the slip of paper, the parcel receipt, back in his pocket. “So he saw even that,” he murmured. “The last of the trinkets. I wondered what it was for.”
   Kelly groped frantically in her purse, her face wild. She brought out a slip of paper, waving it.
   “You’re wrong! Here it is! It’s still here.” She relaxed a little. “I don’t know what you have, but this is—”
   In the air above them something moved. A dark space formed, a circle. The space stirred. Kelly and Rethrick stared up, frozen.
   From the dark circle a claw appeared, a metal claw, joined to a shimmering rod. The claw dropped, swinging in a wide arc. The claw swept the paper from Kelly’s fingers. It hesitated for a second. Then it drew itself up again, disappearing with the paper, into the circle of black. Then, silently, the claw and the rod and the circle blinked out. There was nothing. Nothing at all.
   “Where—where did it go?” Kelly whispered. “The paper. What was that?”
   Jennings patted his pocket. “It’s safe. It’s safe, right here. I wondered when he would show up. I was beginning to worry.”
   Rethrick and his daughter stood, shocked into silence.
   “Don’t look so unhappy,” Jennings said. He folded his arms. “The paper’s safe—and the Company’s safe. When the time comes it’ll be there, strong and very glad to help out the revolution. We’ll see to that, all of us, you, me and your daughter.”
   He glanced at Kelly, his eyes twinkling. “All three of us. And maybe by that time there’ll be even more members to the family!”

The Great C

   He was not told the questions until just before it was time to leave. Walter Kent drew him aside from the others. Putting his hands on Meredith’s shoulders, he looked intently into his face.
   “Remember that no one has ever come back. If you come back you’ll be the first. The first in fifty years.”
   Tim Meredith nodded, nervous and embarrassed, but grateful for Kent’s words. After all, Kent was the Tribe Leader, an impressive old man with iron-gray hair and beard. There was a patch over his right eye, and he carried two knives at his belt, instead of the usual one. And it was said he had knowledge of letters.
   “The trip itself takes not much over a day. We’re giving you a pistol. There are bullets, but no one knows how many of them are good. You have your food?”
   Meredith fumbled in his pack. He brought out a metal can with a key attached. “This should be enough,” he said, turning the can over.
   “And water?”
   Meredith rattled his canteen.
   “Good.” Kent studied the young man. Meredith was dressed in leather boots, a hide coat, and leggings. His head was protected by a rusty metal helmet. Around his neck binoculars hung from a rawhide cord. Kent touched the heavy gloves that covered Meredith’s hands. “That’s the last pair of those,” he said. “We won’t see anything like them again.”
   “Shall I leave them behind?”
   “We’ll hope they—and you—come back.” Kent took him by the arm and moved even farther away, so that no one would hear. The rest of the tribe, the men and women and children, stood silently together at the lip of the Shelter, watching. The Shelter was concrete, reinforced by poles that had been cut from time to time. Once, in a remote past, a network of leaves and branches had been suspended over the lip, but that had all rotted away as the wires corroded and broke. Anyhow, there was nothing in the sky these days to notice a small circle of concrete, the entrance to the vast underground chambers in which the tribe lived.
   “Now,” Kent said. “The three questions.” He leaned close to Meredith. “You have a good memory?”
   “Yes,” Meredith said.
   “How many books have you committed to memory?”
   “I’ve only had six books read to me,” Meredith murmured. “But I know them all.”
   “That’s enough. All right, listen. We’ve been a whole year deciding on these questions. Unfortunately we can ask only three, so we’ve chosen carefully.” And, so saying, he whispered the questions into Meredith’s ear.
   There was silence afterward. Meredith thought over the questions, turning them around in his mind. “Do you think the Great C will be able to answer them?” he said at last.
   “I don’t know. They’re difficult questions.”
   Meredith nodded. “They are. Let’s pray.”
   Kent slapped him on the shoulder. “All right, then. You’re ready to go. If everything goes right, you’ll be back here in two days. We’ll be watching for you. Good luck, boy.”
   “Thanks,” Meredith said. He walked slowly back to the others. Bill Gustavson handed him the pistol without a word, his eyes gleaming with emotion.
   “A compass,” John Page said, stepping away from his woman. He handed a small military compass to Meredith. His woman, a young brunette captured from a neighboring tribe, smiled encouragingly at him.
   “Tim!”
   Meredith turned. Anne Fry was running toward him. He reached out, taking hold of her hands. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
   “Tim.” She looked up at him wildly. “Tim, you be careful. Will you?”
   “Of course.” He grinned, running his hand awkwardly through her thick short hair. “I’ll come back.” But in his heart there was a coldness, a block of hardening ice. The chill of death. He pulled suddenly away from her. “Goodbye,” he said to all of them.
   The tribe turned and walked away. He was alone. There was nothing to do but go. He ran over the three questions once more. Why had they picked him? But someone had to go and ask. He moved toward the edge of the clearing.
   “Good-bye,” Kent shouted, standing with his sons.
   Meredith waved. A moment later he plunged into the forest, his hand on his knife, the compass clutched tightly to him.

   He walked steadily, swinging the knife from side to side, cutting creepers and branches that got in his way. Occasionally huge insects scurried in the grass ahead of him. Once he saw a purple beetle, almost as large as his fist. Had there been such things before the Smash? Probably not. One of the books he had learned was about lifeforms in the world, before the Smash. He could not remember anything about large insects. Animals were kept in herds and killed regularly, he recalled. No one hunted or trapped.
   That night he camped on a slab of concrete, the foundation of a building that no longer existed. Twice he awoke, hearing things moving nearby, but nothing approached him, and when the sun appeared again he was unharmed. He opened his ration tin and ate from it. Then he gathered up his things and went on. Toward the middle of the day the counter at his waist began to tick ominously. He stopped, breathing deeply and considering.
   He was getting near the ruins, all right. From now on he could expect radiation pools continually. He patted the counter. It was a good thing to have. Presently he advanced a short distance, walking carefully. The ticking died; he had passed the pool. He went up a slope, cutting his way through the creepers. A horde of butterflies rose up in his face and he slashed at them. He came to the top and stood, raising the binoculars to his eyes.
   Far off, there was a splash of black in the center of the endless expanse of green. A burned-out place. A great swathe of ruined land, fused metal and concrete. He caught his breath. This was the ruins; he was getting close. For the first time in his life he was actually seeing the remains of a city, the pillars and rubble that had once been buildings and streets.
   A wild thought leaped through his mind. He could hide, not go on! He could lie in the bushes and wait. Then, when everyone thought he was dead, when the tribe scouts had gone back, he could slip north, past them, beyond and away.
   North. There was another tribe there, a large tribe. With them he would be safe. There was no way they could find him, and anyhow, the northern tribe had bombs and bacteriaspheres. If he could get to them—
   No. He took a deep shuddering breath. It was wrong. He had been sent on this trip. Each year a youth went, as he was going now, with three carefully-planned questions. Difficult questions. Questions that no man knew answers for. He ran the questions over in his mind. Would the Great C be able to answer them? All three of them? It was said the Great C knew everything. For a century it had answered questions, within its vast ruined house. If he did not go, if no youth were sent—He shuddered. It would make a second Smash, like the one before. It had done it once; it could do it again. He had no choice but to go on.
   Meredith lowered his binoculars. He set off, down the side of the slope. A rat ran by him, a huge gray rat. He drew his knife quickly, but the rat went on. Rats—they were bad. They carried the germs.
   Half an hour after his counter clicked again, this time with wild frenzy. He retreated. A pit of ruins yawned ahead, a bomb crater, not yet overgrown. It would be better to go around it. He circled off to one side, moving slowly, warily. Once the counter clicked, but that was all. A fast burst, like bullets flying. Then silence. He was safe.
   Later in the day he ate more of his rations and sipped water from the canteen. It would not be long. Before nightfall he would be there. He would go down the ruined streets, toward the sprawling mass of stone and columns that was its house. He would mount the steps. It had been described to him many times. Each stone was carefully listed on the map back at the Shelter. He knew by heart the street that led there, to the house. He knew how the great doors lay on their faces, broken and split. He knew how the dark, empty corridors would look inside. He would pass into the vast chamber, the dark room of bats and spiders and echoing sounds. And there it would be. The Great C. Waiting silently, waiting to hear the questions. Three—just three. It would hear them. Then it would ponder, consider. Inside, it would whirr and flash. Parts, rods, switches and coils would move. Relays would open and shut.
   Would it know the answers?
   He went on. Far ahead, beyond miles of tangled forest land, the outline of the ruins grew.

   The sun was beginning to set as he climbed the side of a hill of boulders and looked down at what had once been a city. He took his belt-light and snapped it on. The light dimmed and wavered; the little cells inside were almost gone. But he could see the ruined streets and heaps of rubble. The remains of a city in which his grandfather had lived.
   He climbed down the boulders and dropped with a thud onto the street. His counter clicked angrily, but he ignored it. There was no other entrance. This was the only way. On the other side a wall of slag cut off everything. He walked slowly, breathing deeply. In the twilight gloom a few birds perched on the stones, and once in a while a lizard slithered off, disappearing into a crack. There was life here, of a sort. Birds and lizards that had adapted themselves to crawling among the bones and remains of buildings. But nothing else came this way, no tribes, no large animals. Most life, even the wild dogs, stayed away from this kind of place. And he could see why.
   On he went, flashing his feeble light from side to side. He skirted a gaping hole, part of an underground shelter. Ruined guns stuck up starkly on each side of him, their barrels bent and warped. He had never fired a gun, himself. Their tribe had very few metal weapons. They depended mostly on what they could make, spears and darts. Bows and arrows. Stone clubs.
   A colossus rose up before him. The remains of an enormous building. He flashed his light up, but the beam did not carry far enough for him to make it out. Was this the house? No. It was farther. He went on, stepping over what had once been a street barricade, slats of metal, bags of spilled sand, barbed wire.
   A moment later he came to it.
   He stopped, his hands on his hips, staring up the concrete steps at the black cavity that was the door. He was there. In a moment there would be no turning back. If he went on now, he would be committed. He would have made his decision as soon as his boots touched the steps. It was only a short distance beyond the gaping door, down a winding corridor, in the center of the building.
   For a long time Meredith stood, deep in thought, rubbing his black beard. What should he do? Should he run, turn and go back the way he had come? He could shoot enough animals with his gun to stay alive. Then north—
   No. They were counting on him to ask the three questions. If he did not, then someone else would have to come later on. There was no turning back. The decision had already been made. It had been made when he had been chosen. Now it was far too late.
   He started up the rubbled steps, flashing his light ahead. At the entrance he stopped. Above him were some words, cut in the concrete. He knew a few letters, himself. Could he make these out? Slowly, he spelled: FEDERAL RESEARCH STATION 7 SHOW PERMIT ON DEMAND
   The words meant nothing to him. Except, perhaps, the word “federal.” He had heard it before, but he could not place it. He shrugged. It did not matter. He went on.
   It took only a few minutes to negotiate the corridors. Once, he turned right by mistake and found himself in a sagging courtyard, littered with stones and wiring, overgrown with dark, sticky weeds. But after that he went correctly, touching the wall with his hand to keep from making a wrong turn. Occasionally his counter ticked, but he ignored it. At last a rush of dry, fetid air blew up in his face and the concrete wall beside him abruptly ended. He was there. He flashed his light around him. Ahead was an aperture, an archway. This was it. He looked up. More words, this time on a metal plate bolted to the concrete.


Division of Computation
Only Authorized Personnel Admitted
All Others Keep out

   He smiled. Words, signs. Letters. All gone, all forgotten. He went on, passing through the arch. More air blew around him, rushing past him. A startled bat flapped past. By the ring of his boots he knew that the chamber was huge, larger than he had imagined. He stumbled over something and stopped quickly, flashing his light.
   At first he could not make out what they were. The chamber was filled with things, rows of things, upright, crumbling, hundreds of them. He stood, frowning and puzzling. What were they? Idols? Statues? Then he understood. They were things to sit on. Rows of chairs, rotting away, breaking into bits. He kicked at one and it fell into a heap, dust rising in a cloud, dispersing into the darkness. He laughed out loud.
   “Who is there?” a voice came.
   He froze. His mouth opened, but no sound came. Sweat rose on his skin, tiny drops of icy sweat. He swallowed, rubbing his lips with stiff fingers.
   “Who is there?” the voice came again, a metallic voice, hard and penetrating, without warmth to it. An emotionless voice. A voice of steel and brass. Relays and switches.
   The Great C!
   He was afraid, more afraid than ever in his life. His body was shaking terribly. Awkwardly, he moved down the aisle, past the ruined seats, flashing his light ahead.
   A bank of lights glimmered, far ahead, above him. There was a whirr. The Great C was coming to life, aware of him, rousing itself from its lethargy. More lights winked into life, more sounds of switches and relays.
   “Who are you?” it said.
   “I—I’ve come with questions.” Meredith stumbled forward, toward the bank of lights. He struck a metal rail and reeled back, trying to regain his balance. “Three questions. I must ask you.”
   There was silence.
   “Yes,” the Great C said finally. “It is time for the questions again. You have prepared them for me?”
   “Yes. They are very difficult. I don’t think that you will find them easy. Maybe you won’t be able to answer them. We—”
   “I will answer. I have always answered. Come up closer.”
   Meredith moved down the aisle, avoiding the rail.
   “Yes, I will know. You think they will be difficult. You people have no conception of the questions put to me in times past. Before the Smash I answered questions that you could not even conceive. I answered questions that took days of calculating. It would have taken men months to find the same answers on their own.”
   Meredith began to pluck up some courage. “Is it true,” he said, “that men came from all over the world to ask you questions?”
   “Yes. Scientists from everywhere asked me things, and I answered them. There was nothing I didn’t know.”
   “How—how did you come into existence?”
   “Is that one of your three questions?”
   “No.” Meredith shook his head quickly. “No, of course not.”
   “Come nearer,” the Great C said. “I can’t make your form out. You are from the tribe just beyond the city?”
   “Yes.”
   “How many are there of you?”
   “Several hundred.”
   “You’re growing.”
   “There are more children all the time.” Meredith swelled a little, with pride. “I, myself, have had children by eight women.”
   “Marvelous,” the Great C said, but Meredith could not tell how it meant it. There was a moment of silence.
   “I have a gun,” Meredith said. “A pistol.”
   “Do you?”
   He lifted it. “I’ve never fired a pistol before. We have bullets, but I don’t know if they still work.”
   “What is your name?” the Great C said.
   “Meredith. Tim Meredith.”
   “You are a young man, of course.”
   “Yes. Why?”
   “I can see you fairly well,” the Great C said, ignoring his question. “Part of my equipment was destroyed in the Smash but I can still see a little. Originally, I scanned mathematical questions visually. It saved time. I see you are wearing a helmet and binoculars. And army boots. Where did you get them? Your tribe does not make such things, does it?”
   “No. They were found in underground lockers.”
   “Military equipment left over from the Smash,” the Great C said. “United Nations equipment, by the color.”
   “Is it true that—that you could make a second Smash come? Like the first? Could you really do it again?”
   “Of course! I could do it any time. Right now.”
   “How?” Meredith asked cautiously. “Tell me how.”
   “The same way as before,” the Great C said vaguely. “I did it before—as your tribe well knows.”
   “Our legends tell us that all the world was put to the fire. Made suddenly terrible by—by atoms. And that you invented atoms, delivered them to the world. Brought them down from above. But we do not know how it was done.”
   “I will never tell you. It is too terrible for you ever to know. It is better forgotten.”
   “Certainly, if you say so,” Meredith murmured. “Man has always listened to you. Come and asked and listened.”
   The Great C was silent. “You know,” it said presently, “I have existed a long time. I remember life before the Smash. I could tell you many things about it. Life was much different then. You wear a beard and hunt animals in the woods. Before the Smash there were no woods. Only cities and farms. And men were clean-shaven. Many of them wore white clothing, then. They were scientists. They were very fine. I was constructed by scientists.”
   “What happened to them?”
   “They left,” the Great C said vaguely. “Do you recognize the name, Einstein? Albert Einstein?”
   “No.”
   “He was the greatest scientist. Are you sure you don’t know the name?” The Great C sounded disappointed. “I answered questions even he could not have answered. There were other Computers, then, but none so grand as I.”
   Meredith nodded.
   “What is your first question?” the Great C said. “Give it to me and I will answer it.”
   Sudden fear gripped Meredith, surging over him. His knees shook. “The first question?” He murmured. “Let me see. I must consider.”
   “Have you forgotten?”
   “No. I must arrange them in order.” He moistened his lips, stroking his black beard nervously. “Let me think. I’ll give you the easiest one first. However, even it is very difficult. The Leader of the Tribe—”
   “Ask.”
   Meredith nodded. He glanced up, swallowing. When he spoke his voice was dry and husky. “The first question. Where—where does—”
   “Louder,” the Great C said.
   Meredith took a deep breath. “Where does the rain come from?” he said.
   There was silence.
   “Do you know?” he said, waiting tensely. Rows of lights moved above him. The Great C was meditating, considering. It whirred, a low, throbbing sound. “Do you know the answer?”
   “Rain comes originally from the earth, mostly from the oceans,” the Great C said. “It rises into the air by a process of evaporation. The agent of the process is the heat of the sun. The moisture of the oceans ascends in the form of minute particles. These particles, when they are high enough, enter a colder band of air. At this point, condensation occurs. The moisture collects into great clouds. When a sufficient amount is collected the water descends again in drops. You call the drops rain.”
   Meredith rubbed his chin numbly, nodding.
   “I see.” He nodded again. “That is the way it occurs?”
   “Yes.”
   “You’re sure?”
   “Of course. What is the second question? That was not very hard. You have no conception of the knowledge and information that lies stored within me. Once, I answered questions the greatest minds of the world could not make out. At least, not as fast as I. What’s the next question?”
   “This is much more difficult.” Meredith smiled weakly. The Great C had answered the question about rain, but surely it could not know the answer to this question. “Tell me,” he said slowly. “Tell me if you can: What keeps the sun moving through the sky? Why doesn’t it stop? Why doesn’t it fall to the ground?”
   The Great C gave a funny whirr, almost a laugh. “You will be astonished at the answer. The sun does not move. At least, what you see as motion is not motion at all. What you see is the motion of the earth as it revolves around the sun. Since you are on the earth it seems as if you were standing still and the sun were moving. That is not so. All the nine planets, including the earth, revolve about the sun in regular elliptical orbits. They have been doing so for millions of years. Does that answer your question?
   Meredith’s heart constricted. He began to tremble violently. At last he managed to pull himself together. “I can hardly believe it. Are you telling the truth?”
   “For me there is only truth,” the Great C said. “It is impossible for me to lie. What is the third question?”
   “Wait,” Meredith said thickly. “Let me think a moment.” He moved away. “I must consider.”
   “Why?”
   “Wait.” Meredith stepped back. He squatted down on the floor, staring dully ahead. It was not possible. The Great C had answered the first questions without trouble! But how could it know such things? How could anyone know things about the sun? About the sky? The Great C was imprisoned in its house. How could it know that the sun did not move? His mind reeled. How could it know about something it had not seen? Books, perhaps. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Perhaps, before the Smash, someone had read books on it. He scowled, setting his lips. Probably that was it. He stood up slowly.
   “Are you ready now?” the Great C said. “Ask.”
   “You can’t possibly answer this. No living creature could know. Here is the question. How did the world begin?” Meredith smiled. “You could not know. You did not exist before the world. Therefore, it is impossible that you could know.”
   “There are several theories,” the Great C said calmly. “The most satisfactory is the nebular hypothesis. According to this, a gradually shrinking—”
   Meredith listened, stunned, only half hearing the words. Could it be? Could the Great C really know how the world had been formed? He drew himself together, trying to catch the words.
   “… There are several ways to verify this theory, giving it credence over the others. Of the others, the most popular, although in disrepute of late, is the theory that a second star once approached our own, causing a violent—”
   On and on the Great C went, warming up to its subject. Clearly, it enjoyed the question. Clearly, this was the type of question that had been asked of it in the dim past, before the Smash. All three questions, questions the Tribe had worked on for an entire year, had been easily answered. It did not seem possible. He was stunned.
   The Great C finished. “Well?” it said. “Are you satisfied? You can see that I know the answers. Did you really imagine that I would not be able to answer?”
   Meredith said nothing. He was dazed, terrified with shock and fear. Sweat ran down his face, into his beard. He opened his mouth, but no words came.
   “And now,” the Great C said, “since I have been able to answer the questions, please step forward.”
   Meredith moved forward stiffly, gazing ahead as if in a trance. Around him light appeared, flickering into life, illuminating the room. For the first time he saw the Great C. For the first time the darkness lifted.
   The Great C lay on its raised dais, an immense cube of dull, corroded metal. Part of the roof above it had been broken open, and blocks of concrete had dented its right side. Metal tubes and parts lay scattered around on the dais, broken and twisted elements that had been severed by the falling roof.
   Once, the Great C had been shiny. Now the cube was dirty and stained. Water had dripped through the broken roof, rain and dirt washed down the walls. Birds had flown down and perched on it, leaving feathers and filth behind. In the original destruction, most of the connecting wires had been cut, the wiring from the cube to the control panel.
   And with the metal and wire remnants scattered and heaped around the dais were something else. Littering the dais in a circle before the Great C were piles of bones. Bones and parts of clothing, metal belt buckles, pins, a helmet, some knives, a ration tin.
   Remains of the fifty youths who had come before, each with his three questions to ask. Each hoping, praying, that the Great C would not know the answers.
   “Step up,” the Great C said.
   Meredith stepped up on the dais. Ahead of him a short metal ladder led to the top of the cube. He mounted the ladder without comprehension, his mind blank and dazed, moving like a machine. A portion of the metal surface of the cube grated, sliding back.
   Meredith stared down. He was looking into a swirling vat of liquid. A vat within the bowels of the cube, in the very depths of the Great C. He hesitated, struggling suddenly, pulling back.
   “Jump,” the Great C said.
   For a long moment Meredith stood on the edge, staring down into the vat, paralyzed with fear and horror. His head rang, his vision danced and blurred. The room began to tilt, spinning slowly around him. He was swaying, reeling back and forth.
   “Jump,” the Great C said.
   He jumped.
   A moment later the metal surface slid back into place. The surface of the cube was again unbroken.
   Inside, in the depths of the machinery, the vat of hydrochloric acid swirled and eddied, plucking at the body lying inert within it. Presently the body began to dissolve, the component elements absorbed by pipes and ducts, flowing quickly to every part of the Great C. At last motion ceased. The vast cube became silent.
   One by one the lights flickered out. The room was dark again.
   The last act of absorption was the opening of a narrow slot in the front of the Great C. Something gray was expelled, ejected. Bones, and a metal helmet. They dropped into the piles before the cube, joining the refuse from the fifty who had come before. Then the last light went off and the machinery became silent. The Great C began its wait for the next year.

   After the third day, Kent knew that the youth would not return. He came back to the Shelter with the Tribe scouts, his face dark, scowling and saying nothing.
   “Another gone,” Page said. “I was so damn sure it wouldn’t be able to answer those three! A whole year’s work gone.”
   “Will we always have to sacrifice to it?” Bill Gustavson asked. “Will this go on forever, year after year?”
   “Some day, we’ll find a question it can’t answer,” Kent said. “Then it’ll let us alone. If we can stump it, then we won’t have to feed it any more. If only we can find the right question!”
   Anne Fry came toward him, her face white. “Walter?” she said.
   “Yes?”
   “Has it always been—been kept alive this way? Has it always depended on one of us to keep it going? I can’t believe human beings were supposed to be used to keep a machine alive.”
   Kent shook his head. “Before the Smash it must have used some kind of artificial fuel. Then something happened. Maybe its fuel ducts were damaged or broken, and it changed its ways. I suppose it had to. It was like us, in that respect. We all changed our ways. There was a time when human beings didn’t hunt and trap animals. And there was a time when the Great C didn’t trap human beings.”
   “Why—why did it make the Smash, Walter?”
   “To show it was stronger than we.”
   “Was it always so strong? Stronger than man?”
   “No. They say that, once, there was no Great C. That man himself brought it to life, to tell him things. But gradually it grew stronger, until at last it brought down the atoms—and with the atoms, the Smash. Now it lives off us. Its power has made us slaves. It became too strong.”
   “But some day, the time will come when it won’t know the answer,” Page said.
   “Then it will have to release us,” Kent said, “according to tradition. It will have to stop using us for food.”
   Page clenched his fists, staring back across the forest. “Some day that time will come. Some day we’ll find a question too hard for it!”
   “Let’s get started,” Gustavson said grimly. “The sooner we begin preparing for next year, the better!”

Out in the Garden

   “That’s where she is,” Robert Nye said. “As a matter of fact, she’s always out there. Even when the weather’s bad. Even in the rain.”
   “I see,” his friend Lindquist said, nodding. The two of them pushed open the back door and stepped out onto the porch. The air was warm and fresh. They both stopped, taking a deep breath. Lindquist looked around. “Very nice-looking garden. It’s really a garden, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “I can understand her, now. Look at it!”
   “Come along,” Nye said, going down the steps onto the path. “She’s probably sitting on the other side of the tree. There’s an old seat in the form of a circle, like you used to see in the old days. She’s probably sitting with Sir Francis.”
   “Sir Francis? Who’s that?” Lindquist came along, hurrying behind him.
   “Sir Francis is her pet duck. A big white duck.” They turned down the path, past the lilac bushes, crowded over their great wooden frames. Rows of tulips in full bloom stretched out on both sides. A rose trellis stretched up the side of a small greenhouse. Lindquist stared in pleasure. Rose bushes, lilacs, endless shrubs and flowers. A wall of wisteria. A massive willow tree.
   And sitting at the foot of the tree, gazing down at a white duck in the grass beside her, was Peggy.
   Lindquist stood rooted to the spot, fascinated by Mrs. Nye’s beauty. Peggy Nye was small, with soft dark hair and great warm eyes, eyes filled with a gentle, tolerant sadness. She was buttoned up in a little blue coat and suit, with sandals on her feet and flowers in her hair. Roses.
   “Sweetheart,” Nye said to her, “look who’s here. You remember Tom Lindquist, don’t you?”
   Peggy looked up quickly. “Tommy Lindquist!” she exclaimed. “How are you? How nice it is to see you.”
   “Thanks.” Lindquist shuffled a little in pleasure. “How have you been, Peg? I see you have a friend.”
   “A friend?”
   “Sir Francis. That’s his name, isn’t it?”
   Peggy laughed. “Oh, Sir Francis.” She reached down and smoothed the duck’s feathers. Sir Francis went on searching out spiders from the grass. “Yes, he’s a very good friend of mine. But won’t you sit down? How long are you staying?”
   “He won’t be here very long,” her husband said. “He’s driving through to New York on some kind of business.”
   “That’s right,” Lindquist said. “Say, you certainly have a wonderful garden here, Peggy. I remember you always wanted a nice garden, with lots of birds and flowers.”
   “It is lovely,” Peggy said. “We’re out here all the time.”
   “We?”
   “Sir Francis and myself.”
   “They spend a lot of time together,” Robert Nye said. “Cigarette?” He held out his pack to Lindquist. “No?” Nye lit one for himself. “Personally, I can’t see anything in ducks, but I never was much on flowers and nature.”
   “Robert stays indoors and works on his articles,” Peggy said. “Sit down, Tommy.” She picked up the duck and put him on her lap. “Sit here, beside us.”
   “Oh, no,” Lindquist said. “This is fine.”
   He became silent, looking down at Peggy and all the flowers, the grass, the silent duck. A faint breeze moved through the rows of iris behind the tree, purple and white iris. No one spoke. The garden was very cool and quiet. Lindquist sighed.
   “What is it?” Peggy said.
   “You know, all this reminds me of a poem.” Lindquist rubbed his forehead. “Something by Yeats, I think.”
   “Yes, the garden is like that,” Peggy said. “Very much like poetry.”
   Lindquist concentrated. “I know!” he said, laughing. “It’s you and Sir Francis, of course. You and Sir Francis sitting there. ‘Leda and the Swan’.”
   Peggy frowned. “Do I—”
   “The swan was Zeus,” Lindquist said. “Zeus took the shape of a swan to get near Leda while she was bathing. He—uh—made love to her in the shape of a swan. Helen of Troy was born—because of that, you see. The daughter of Zeus and Leda. How does it go … ‘A sudden blow: the great wings beating still above the staggering girl’—”
   He stopped. Peggy was staring up at him, her face blazing. Suddenly she leaped up, pushing the duck from her path. She was trembling with anger.
   “What is it?” Robert said. “What’s wrong?”
   “How dare you!” Peggy said to Lindquist. She turned and walked off quickly.
   Robert ran after her, catching hold of her arm. “But what’s the matter? What’s wrong? That’s just poetry!”
   She pulled away. “Let me go.”
   He had never seen her so angry. Her face had become like ivory, her eyes like two stones. “But Peg—”
   She looked up at him. “Robert,” she said, “I am going to have a baby.”
   “What!”
   She nodded. “I was going to tell you tonight. He knows.” Her lips curled. “He knows. That’s why he said it. Robert, make him leave! Please make him go!”
   Nye nodded mechanically. “Sure, Peg. Sure. But—it’s true? Really true? You’re really going to have a baby?” He put his arms around her. “But that’s wonderful! Sweetheart, that’s marvelous. I never heard anything so marvelous. My golly! For heaven’s sake. It’s the most marvelous thing I ever heard.”
   He led her back toward the seat, his arm around her. Suddenly his foot struck something soft, something that leaped and hissed in rage. Sir Francis waddled away, half-flying, his beak snapping in fury.
   “Tom!” Robert shouted. “Listen to this. Listen to something. Can I tell him, Peg? Is it all right?”
   Sir Francis hissed furiously after him, but in the excitement no one noticed him, not at all.

   It was a boy, and they named him Stephen. Robert Nye drove slowly home from the hospital, deep in thought. Now that he actually had a son his thoughts returned to that day in the garden, that afternoon Tom Lindquist had stopped by. Stopped by and quoted the line of Yeats that had made Peg so angry. There had been an air of cold hostility between himself and Sir Francis, after that. He had never been able to look at Sir Francis quite the same again.
   Robert parked the car in front of the house and walked up the stone steps. Actually, he and Sir Francis had never gotten along, not since the first day they had brought him back from the country. It was Peg’s idea from the beginning. She had seen the sign by the farmhouse—
   Robert paused at the porch steps. How angry she had been at poor Lindquist. Of course, it was a tactless line to quote, but still… He pondered, frowning. How stupid it all was! He and Peg had been married three years. There was no doubt that she loved him, that she was faithful to him. True, they did not have much in common. Peg loved to sit out in the garden, reading or meditating, or feeding the birds. Or playing with Sir Francis.
   Robert went around the side of the house, into the back yard, into the garden. Of course she loved him! She loved him and she was loyal to him. It was absurd to think that she might even consider—That Sir Francis might be—
   He stopped. Sir Francis was at the far end of the garden, pulling up a worm. As he watched, the white duck gulped down the worm and went on, looking for insects in the grass, bugs and spiders. Suddenly the duck stopped, warily.
   Robert crossed the garden. When Peg came back from the hospital she would be busy with little Stephen. This was the best time, all right. She would have her hands full. Sir Francis would be forgotten. With the baby and all—
   “Come here,” Robert said. He snatched up the duck. “That’s the last worm for you from this garden.”
   Sir Francis squawked furiously, struggling to get away, pecking frantically. Robert carried him inside the house. He got a suitcase from the closet and put the duck into it. He snapped the lock closed and then wiped his face. What now? The farm? It was only a half hour’s drive into the country. But could he find it again?
   He could try. He took the suitcase out to the car and dropped it into the back seat. All the way, Sir Francis quacked loudly, first in rage, then later (as they drove along the highway) with growing misery and despair.
   Robert said nothing.

   Peggy said little about Sir Francis, once she understood that he was gone for good. She seemed to accept his absence, although she stayed unusually quiet for a week or so. But gradually she brightened up again, laughing and playing with little Stephen, taking him out in the sun to hold on her lap, running her fingers through his soft hair.
   “It’s just like down.” Peggy said once. Robert nodded, jarred a little. Was it? More like corn silk, it seemed to him, but he said nothing.
   Stephen grew, a healthy, happy baby, warmed by the sun, held in tender, loving arms hour after hour in the quiet garden, under the willow tree. After a few years he had grown into a sweet child, a child with large, dark eyes who played pretty much to himself, away from the other children, sometimes in the garden, sometimes in his room upstairs.
   Stephen loved flowers. When the gardener was planting, Stephen went along with him, watching with great seriousness each handful of seeds as they went into the ground, or the poor little bits of plants wrapped in their moss, lowered gently into the warm soil.
   He did not talk much. Sometimes Robert stopped his work and watched from the living room window, his hands in his pockets, smoking and studying the silent child playing by himself among the shrubs and grass. By the time he was five, Stephen was beginning to follow the stories in the great flat books that Peggy brought home to him. The two of them sat together in the garden, looking at the pictures, tracing the stories.
   Robert watched them from the window, moody and silent. He was left out, deserted. How he hated to be on the outside of things! He had wanted a son for so long—
   Suddenly doubt assailed him. Again he found himself thinking about Sir Francis and what Tom had said. Angrily, he pushed the thought aside. But the boy was so far from him! Wasn’t there any way he could get across to him?
   Robert pondered.

   One warm fall morning Robert went outdoors and stood by the back porch, breathing the air and looking around him. Peggy had gone to the store to shop and have her hair set. She would not be home for a long time.
   Stephen was sitting by himself, at the little low table they had given him for his birthday, coloring pictures with his crayons. He was intent on his work, his small face lined with concentration. Robert walked toward him slowly, across the wet grass.
   Stephen looked up, putting down his crayons. He smiled shyly, friendlily, watching the man coming toward him. Robert approached the table and stopped, smiling down, a little uncertain and ill at ease.
   “What is it?” Stephen said.
   “Do you mind if I join you?”
   “No.”
   Robert rubbed his jaw. “Say, what is it you’re doing?” he asked presently.
   “Doing?”
   “With the crayons.”
   “I’m drawing.” Stephen held his picture up. It showed a great yellow shape, like a lemon. Stephen and he studied it together.
   “What is it?” Robert said. “Still life?”
   “It’s the sun.” Stephen put the picture back down and resumed his work. Robert watched him. How skillfully he worked! Now he was sketching in something green. Trees, probably. Maybe someday he would be a great painter. Like Grant Wood. Or Norman Rockwell. Pride stirred inside him.
   “That looks good,” he said.
   “Thank you.”
   “Do you want to be a painter when you grow up? I used to do some drawing, myself. I did cartooning for the school newspaper. And I designed the emblem for our frat.”
   There was silence. Did Stephen get his ability from him? He watched the boy, studying his face. He did not look much like him; not at all. Again doubt filled his mind. Could it really be that—But Peg would never—
   “Robert?” the boy said suddenly.
   “Yes?”
   “Who was Sir Francis?”
   Robert staggered. “What? What do you mean! Why do you ask that?”
   “I just wondered.”
   “What do you know about him? Where did you hear the name?”
   Stephen went on working for a while. “I don’t know. I think mother mentioned him. Who is he?”
   “He’s dead,” Robert said. “He’s been dead for some time. Your mother told you about him?”
   “Perhaps it was you,” Stephen said. “Somebody mentioned him.”
   “It wasn’t me!”
   “Then,” Stephen said thoughtfully, “perhaps I dreamed about him. I think perhaps he came to be in a dream and spoke to me. That was it. I saw him in a dream.”
   “What did he look like?” Robert said, licking his lip nervously, unhappily.
   “Like this,” Stephen said. He held the picture up, the picture of the sun.
   “How do you mean? Yellow?”
   “No, he was white. Like the sun is, at noon. A terribly big white shape in the sky.”
   “In the sky?”
   “He was flying across the sky. Like the sun at noon. All ablaze. In the dream, I mean.”
   Robert’s face twisted, torn by misery and uncertainty. Had she told the child about him? Had she painted a picture for him, an idealized picture? The Duck God. The Great Duck in the Sky, descending all ablaze. Then perhaps it was so. Perhaps he was not really the boy’s father. Perhaps—It was too much to bear.

   “Well, I won’t bother you any more.” Robert said. He turned away, toward the house.
   “Robert?” Stephen said.
   “Yes?” He turned quickly.
   “Robert, what are you going to do?”
   Robert hesitated. “How do you mean, Stephen?”
   The boy looked up from his work. His small face was calm and expressionless. “Are you going inside the house?”
   “Yes. Why?”
   “Robert, in a few minutes I’m going to do something secret. No one knows about it. Not even mother.” Stephen hesitated, slyly studying the man’s face. “Would—would you want to do it with me?”
   “What is it?”
   “I’m going to have a party in the garden here. A secret party. For myself alone.”
   “You want me to come?”
   The boy nodded.
   Wild happiness filled up Robert. “You want me to come to your party? It’s a secret party? I won’t tell anyone. Not even your mother! Of course I’ll come.” He rubbed his hands together, smiling in a flood of relief. “I’d be glad to come. Do you want me to bring something? Cookies? Cake? Milk? What do you want me to bring?”
   “No.” Stephen shook his head. “Go inside and wash your hands and I’ll make the party ready.” He stood up, putting the crayons away in the box. “But you can’t tell anyone about it.”
   “I won’t tell anyone,” Robert said. “I’ll go wash my hands. Thanks, Stephen. Thanks a lot. I’ll be right back.”

   He hurried toward the house, his heart thumping with happiness. Maybe the boy was his after all! A secret party, a private, secret party. And not even Peg knew about it. It was his boy, all right! There was no doubt of that. From now on he would spend time with Stephen whenever Peg left the house. Tell him stories. How he was in North Africa during the war. Stephen would be interested in that. How he had seen Field Marshal Montgomery, once. And the German pistol he had picked up. And his photographs.
   Robert went inside the house. Peg never let him do that, tell stories to the boy. But he would, by golly! He went to the sink and washed his hands. He grinned. It was his kid, all right.
   There was a sound. Peg came into the kitchen with her arms full of groceries. She set them on the table with a sigh. “Hello, Robert,” she said. “What are you doing?”
   His heart sank. “Home?” he murmured. “So soon? I thought you were going to get your hair fixed.”
   Peggy smiled, small and pretty in her green dress and hat and high heeled shoes. “I have to go back. I just wanted to bring the groceries home first.”
   “Then you’re leaving again?”
   She nodded. “Why? You look so excited. Is something going on? What is it?”
   “Nothing,” Robert said. He dried his hands. “Nothing at all.” He grinned foolishly.
   “I’ll see you later today,” Peggy said. She went back into the living room. “Have a good time while I’m gone. Don’t let Stephen stay in the garden too long.”
   “No. No, I won’t.” Robert waited, listening until he heard the sound of the front door closing. Then he hurried back out onto the porch and down the steps, into the garden. He hurried through the flowers.
   Stephen had cleared off the little low table. The crayons and paper were gone, and in their place were two bowls, each on a plate. A chair was pulled up for him. Stephen watched him come across the grass and toward the table.
   “What took you so long?” Stephen said impatiently. “I’ve already started.” He went on eating avidly, his eyes gleaming. “I couldn’t wait.”
   “That’s all right,” Robert said. “I’m glad you went ahead.” He sat down on the little chair eagerly. “Is it good? What is it? Something extra nice?”
   Stephen nodded, his mouth full. He went on, helping himself rapidly from his bowl with his hands. Robert looked down at his own plate, grinning.
   His grin died. Sickened misery filled his heart. He opened his mouth, but no words came. He pushed his chair back, standing up.
   “I don’t think I want any,” he murmured. He turned away. “I think maybe I’ll go back in.”
   “Why?” Stephen said, surprised, stopping a moment.
   “I—never cared for worms and spiders,” Robert said. He went slowly back, into the house again.

The King of the Elves

   It was raining and getting dark. Sheets of water blew along the row of pumps at the edge of the filling station; the tree across the highway bent against the wind.
   Shadrach Jones stood just inside the doorway of the little building, leaning against an oil drum. The door was open and gusts of rain blew in onto the wood floor. It was late; the sun had set, and the air was turning cold. Shadrach reached into his coat and brought out a cigar. He bit the end off it and lit it carefully, turning away from the door. In the gloom, the cigar burst into life, warm and glowing. Shadrach took a deep draw. He buttoned his coat around him and stepped out onto the pavement.
   “Darn,” he said. “What a night!” Rain buffeted him, wind blew at him. He looked up and down the highway, squinting. There were no cars in sight. He shook his head, locked up the gasoline pumps.
   He went back into the building and pulled the door shut behind him. He opened the cash register and counted the money he’d taken in during the day. It was not much.
   Not much, but enough for one old man. Enough to buy him tobacco and firewood and magazines, so that he could be comfortable as he waited for the occasional cars to come by. Not very many cars came along the highway any more. The highway had begun to fall into disrepair; there were many cracks in its dry, rough surface, and most cars preferred to take the big state highway that ran beyond the hills. There was nothing in Derryville to attract them, to make them turn toward it. Derryville was a small town, too small to bring in any of the major industries, too small to be very important to anyone. Sometimes hours went by without—
   Shadrach tensed. His fingers closed over the money. From outside came a sound, the melodic ring of the signal wire stretched along the pavement.
   Dinggg!
   Shadrach dropped the money into the till and pushed the drawer closed. He stood up slowly and walked toward the door, listening. At the door, he snapped off the light and waited in the darkness, staring out.
   He could see no car there. The rain was pouring down, swirling with the wind; clouds of mist moved along the road. And something was standing beside the pumps.
   He opened the door and stepped out. At first, his eyes could make nothing out. Then the old man swallowed uneasily.
   Two tiny figures stood in the rain, holding a kind of platform between them. Once, they might have been gaily dressed in bright garments, but now their clothes hung limp and sodden, dripping in the rain. They glanced half-heartedly at Shadrach. Water streaked their tiny faces, great drops of water. Their robes blew about them with the wind, lashing and swirling.
   On the platform, something stirred. A small head turned wearily, peering at Shadrach. In the dim light, a rain-streaked helmet glinted dully.
   “Who are you?” Shadrach said.
   The figure on the platform raised itself up. “I’m the King of the Elves and I’m wet.”
   Shadrach stared in astonishment.
   “That’s right,” one of the bearers said. “We’re all wet.”
   A small group of Elves came straggling up, gathering around their king. They huddled together forlornly, silently.
   “The King of the Elves,” Shadrach repeated. “Well, I’ll be darned.”
   Could it be true? They were very small, all right, and their dripping clothes were strange and oddly colored.
   But Elves?
   “I’ll be darned. Well, whatever you are, you shouldn’t be out on a night like this.”
   “Of course not,” the king murmured. “No fault of our own. No fault…” His voice trailed off into a choking cough. The Elf soldiers peered anxiously at the platform.
   “Maybe you better bring him inside,” Shadrach said. “My place is up the road. He shouldn’t be out in the rain.”
   “Do you think we like being out on a night like this?” one of the bearers muttered. “Which way is it? Direct us.”
   Shadrach pointed up the road. “Over there. Just follow me. I’ll get a fire going.”
   He went down the road, feeling his way onto the first of the flat stone steps that he and Phineas Judd had laid during the summer. At the top of the steps, he looked back. The platform was coming slowly along, swaying a little from side to side. Behind it, the Elf soldiers picked their way, a tiny column of silent dripping creatures, unhappy and cold.
   “I’ll get the fire started,” Shadrach said. He hurried them into the house.

   Wearily, the Elf King lay back against the pillow. After sipping hot chocolate, he had relaxed and his heavy breathing sounded suspiciously like a snore.
   Shadrach shifted in discomfort.
   “I’m sorry,” the Elf King said suddenly, opening his eyes. He rubbed his forehead. “I must have drifted off. Where was I?”
   “You should retire, Your Majesty,” one of the soldiers said sleepily. “It is late and these are hard times.”
   “True,” the Elf King said, nodding. “Very true.” He looked up at the towering figure of Shadrach, standing before the fireplace, a glass of beer in his hand. “Mortal, we thank you for your hospitality. Normally, we do not impose on human beings.”
   “It’s those Trolls,” another of the soldiers said, curled up on a cushion of the couch.
   “Right,” another soldier agreed. He sat up, groping for his sword. “Those reeking Trolls, digging and croaking—”
   “You see,” the Elf King went on,”as our party was crossing from the Great Low Steps toward the Castle, where it lies in the hollow of the Towering Mountains—”
   “You mean Sugar Ridge,” Shadrach supplied helpfully.
   “The Towering Mountains. Slowly we made our way. A rain storm came up. We became confused. All at once a group of Trolls appeared, crashing through the underbrush. We left the woods and sought safety on the Endless Path—”
   “The highway. Route Twenty.”
   “So that is why we’re here.” The Elf King paused a moment. “Harder and harder it rained. The wind blew around us, cold and bitter. For an endless time we toiled along. We had no idea where we were going or what would become of us.”
   The Elf King looked up at Shadrach. “We knew only this: Behind us, the Trolls were coming, creeping through the woods, marching through the rain, crushing everything before them.”
   He put his hand to his mouth and coughed, bending forward. All the Elves waited anxiously until he was done. He straightened up.
   “It was kind of you to allow us to come inside. We will not trouble you for long. It is not the custom of the Elves—”
   Again he coughed, covering his face with his hand. The Elves drew toward him apprehensively. At last the king stirred. He sighed.
   “What’s the matter?” Shadrach asked. He went over and took the cup of chocolate from the fragile hand. The Elf King lay back, his eyes shut.
   “He has to rest,” one of the soldiers said. “Where’s your room? The sleeping room?”
   “Upstairs,” Shadrach said. “I’ll show you where.”

   Late that night, Shadrach sat by himself in the dark, deserted living room, deep in meditation. The Elves were asleep above him, upstairs in the bedroom, the Elf King in the bed, the others curled up together on the rug.
   The house was silent. Outside, the rain poured down endlessly, blowing against the house. Shadrach could hear the tree branches slapping in the wind. He clasped and unclasped his hands. What a strange business it was—all these Elves, with their old, sick king, their piping voices. How anxious and peevish they were!
   But pathetic, too; so small and wet, with water dripping down from them, and all their gay robes limp and soggy.
   The Trolls—what were they like? Unpleasant and not very clean. Something about digging, breaking and pushing through the woods…
   Suddenly, Shadrach laughed in embarrassment. What was the matter with him, believing all this? He put his cigar out angrily, his ears red. What was going on? What kind of joke was this?
   Elves? Shadrach grunted in indignation. Elves in Derryville? In the middle of Colorado? Maybe there were Elves in Europe. Maybe in Ireland. He had heard of that. But here? Upstairs in his own house, sleeping in his own bed?
   “I’ve heard just about enough of this,” he said. “I’m not an idiot, you know.”
   He turned toward the stairs, feeling for the banister in the gloom. He began to climb.
   Above him, a light went on abruptly. A door opened.
   Two Elves came slowly out onto the landing. They looked down at him. Shadrach halted halfway up the stairs. Something on their faces made him stop.
   “What’s the matter?” he asked hesitantly.
   They did not answer. The house was turning cold, cold and dark, with the chill of the rain outside and the chill of the unknown inside.
   “What is it?” he said again. “What’s the matter?”
   “The King is dead,” one of the Elves said. “He died a few moments ago.”
   Shadrach stared up, wide-eyed. “He did? But—”
   “He was very cold and very tired.” The Elves turned away, going back into the room, slowly and quietly shutting the door.
   Shadrach stood, his fingers on the banister, hard, lean fingers, strong and thin.
   He nodded his head blankly.
   “I see,” he said to the closed door. “He’s dead.”

   The Elf soldiers stood around him in a solemn circle. The living room was bright with sunlight, the cold white glare of early morning.
   “But wait,” Shadrach said. He plucked at his necktie. “I have to get to the filling station. Can’t you talk to me when I come home?”
   The faces of the Elf soldiers were serious and concerned.
   “Listen,” one of them said. “Please hear us out. It is very important to us.”
   Shadrach looked past them. Through the window he saw the highway, steaming in the heat of day, and down a little way was the gas station, glittering brightly. And even as he watched, a car came up to it and honked thinly, impatiently. When nobody came out of the station, the car drove off again down the road.
   “We beg you,” a soldier said.
   Shadrach looked down at the ring around him, the anxious faces, scored with concern and trouble. Strangely, he had always thought of Elves as carefree beings, flitting without worry or sense—
   “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.” He went over to the big chair and sat down. The Elves came up around him. They conversed among themselves for a moment, whispering, murmuring distantly. Then they turned toward Shadrach.
   The old man waited, his arms folded.
   “We cannot be without a king,” one of the soldiers said. “We could not survive. Not these days.”
   “The Trolls,” another added. “They multiply very fast. They are terrible beasts. They’re heavy and ponderous, crude, bad-smelling—”
   “The odor of them is awful. They come up from the dark wet places, under the earth, where the blind, groping plants feed in silence, far below the surface, far from the sun.”
   “Well, you ought to elect a king, then,” Shadrach suggested. “I don’t see any problem there.”
   “We do not elect the King of the Elves,” a soldier said. “The old king must name his successor.”
   “Oh,” Shadrach replied. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with that method.”
   “As our old king lay dying, a few distant words came forth from his lips,” a soldier said. “We bent closer, frightened and unhappy, listening.”
   “Important, all right,” agreed Shadrach. “Not something you’d want to miss.”
   “He spoke the name of him who will lead us.”
   “Good. You caught it, then. Well, where’s the difficulty?”
   “The name he spoke was—was your name.”
   Shadrach stared. “Mine?”
   “The dying king said: ‘Make him, the towering mortal, your king. Many things will come if he leads the Elves into battle against the Trolls. I see the rising once again of the Elf Empire, as it was in the old days, as it was fore—”
   “Me!” Shadrach leaped up. “Me? King of the Elves?”
   Shadrach walked about the room, his hands in his pockets. “Me, Shadrach Jones, King of the Elves.” He grinned a little. “I sure never thought of it before.”
   He went to the mirror over the fireplace and studied himself. He saw his thin, graying hair, his bright eyes, dark skin, his big Adam’s apple.
   “King of the Elves,” he said. “King of the Elves. Wait till Phineas Judd hears about this. Wait till I tell him!”
   Phineas Judd would certainly be surprised!

   Above the filling station, the sun shown, high in the clear blue sky.
   Phineas Judd sat playing with the accelerator of his old Ford truck. The motor raced and slowed. Phineas reached over and turned the ignition key off, then rolled the window all the way down.
   “What did you say?” he asked. He took off his glasses and began to polish them, steel rims between slender, deft fingers that were patient from years of practice. He restored his glasses to his nose and smoothed what remained of his hair into place.
   “What was it, Shadrach?” he said. “Let’s hear that again.”
   “I’m King of the Elves,” Shadrach repeated. He changed position, bringing his other foot up on the running board. “Who would have thought it? Me, Shadrach Jones, King of the Elves.”
   Phineas gazed at him. “How long have you been—King of the Elves, Shadrach?”
   “Since the night before last.”
   “I see. The night before last.” Phineas nodded. “I see. And what, may I ask, occurred the night before last?”
   “The Elves came to my house. When the old king died, he told them that—”
   A truck came rumbling up and the driver leaped out. “Water!” he said. “Where the hell is the hose?”
   Shadrach turned reluctantly. “I’ll get it.” He turned back to Phineas. “Maybe I can talk to you tonight when you come back from town. I want to tell you the rest. It’s very interesting.”
   “Sure,” Phineas said, starting up his little truck. “Sure, Shadrach. I’m very interested to hear.”
   He drove off down the road.
   Later in the day, Dan Green ran his flivver up to the filling station.
   “Hey, Shadrach,” he called. “Come over here! I want to ask you something.”
   Shadrach came out of the little house, holding a waste-rag in his hand.
   “What is it?”
   “Come here.” Dan leaned out the window, a wide grin on his face, splitting his face from ear to ear. “Let me ask you something, will you?”
   “Sure.”
   “Is it true? Are you really the King of the Elves?”
   Shadrach flushed a little. “I guess I am,” he admitted, looking away. “That’s what I am, all right.”
   Dan’s grin faded. “Hey, you trying to kid me? What’s the gag?”
   Shadrach became angry. “What do you mean? Sure, I’m the King of the Elves. And anyone who says I’m not—”
   “All right, Shadrach,” Dan said, starting up the flivver quickly. “Don’t get mad. I was just wondering.”
   Shadrach looked very strange.
   “All right,” Dan said. “You don’t hear me arguing, do you?”

   By the end of the day, everyone around knew about Shadrach and how he had suddenly become the King of the Elves. Pop Richey, who ran the Lucky Store in Derryville, claimed Shadrach was doing it to drum up trade for the filling station.
   “He’s a smart old fellow,” Pop said. “Not very many cars go along there any more. He knows what he’s doing.”
   “I don’t know,” Dan Green disagreed. “You should hear him, I think he really believes it.”
   “King of the Elves?” They all began to laugh. “Wonder what he’ll say next.”
   Phineas Judd pondered. “I’ve known Shadrach for years. I can’t figure it out.” He frowned, his face wrinkled and disapproving. “I don’t like it.”
   Dan looked at him. “Then you think he believes it?”
   “Sure,” Phineas said. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I really think he does.”
   “But how could he believe it?” Pop asked. “Shadrach is no fool. He’s been in business for a long time. He must be getting something out of it, the way I see it. But what, if it isn’t to build up the filling station?”
   “Why, don’t you know what he’s getting?” Dan said, grinning. His gold tooth shone.
   “What?” Pop demanded.
   “He’s got a whole kingdom to himself, that’s what—to do with like he wants. How would you like that, Pop? Wouldn’t you like to be King of the Elves and not have to run this old store any more?”
   “There isn’t anything wrong with my store,” Pop said. “I ain’t ashamed to run it. Better than being a clothing salesman.”
   Dan flushed. “Nothing wrong with that, either.” He looked at Phineas. “Isn’t that right? Nothing wrong with selling clothes, is there, Phineas?”
   Phineas was staring down at the floor. He glanced up. “What? What was that?”
   “What you thinking about?” Pop wanted to know. “You look worried.”
   “I’m worried about Shadrach,” Phineas said. “He’s getting old. Sitting out there by himself all the time, in the cold weather, with the rain water I running over the floor—it blows something awful in the winter, along the highway—”
   “Then you do think he believes it?” Dan persisted. “You don’t think he’s getting something out of it?”
   Phineas shook his head absently and did not answer.
   The laughter died down. They all looked at one another.

   That night, as Shadrach was locking up the filling station, a small figure came toward him from the darkness.
   “Hey!” Shadrach called out. “Who are you?”
   An Elf soldier came into the light, blinking. He was dressed in a little gray robe, buckled at the waist with a band of silver. On his feet were little leather boots. He carried a short sword at his side.
   “I have a serious message for you,” the Elf said. “Now, where did I put it?”
   He searched his robe while Shadrach waited. The Elf brought out a tiny scroll and unfastened it, breaking the wax expertly. He handed it to Shadrach.
   “What’s it say?” Shadrach asked. He bent over, his eyes close to the vellum. “I don’t have my glasses with me. Can’t quite make out these little letters.”
   “The Trolls are moving. They’ve heard that the old king is dead, and they’re rising, in all the hills and valleys around. They will try to break the Elf Kingdom into fragments, scatter the Elves—”
   “I see,” Shadrach said. “Before your new king can really get started.”
   “That’s right.” The Elf soldier nodded. “This is a crucial moment for the Elves. For centuries, our existence has been precarious. There are so many Trolls, and Elves are very frail and often take sick—”
   “Well, what should I do? Are there any suggestions?”
   “You’re supposed to meet with us under the Great Oak tonight. We’ll take you into the Elf Kingdom, and you and your staff will plan and map the defense of the Kingdom.”
   “What?” Shadrach looked uncomfortable. “But I haven’t eaten dinner. And my gas station—tomorrow is Saturday, and a lot of cars—”
   “But you are King of the Elves,” the soldier said.
   Shadrach put his hand to his chin and rubbed it slowly.
   “That’s right,” he replied. “I am, ain’t I?”
   The Elf soldier bowed.
   “I wish I’d known this sort of thing was going to happen,” Shadrach said. “I didn’t suppose being King of the Elves—”
   He broke off, hoping for an interruption. The Elf soldier watched him calmly, without expression.
   “Maybe you ought to have someone else as your king,” Shadrach decided. “I don’t know very much about war and things like that, fighting and all that sort of business.” He paused, shrugged his shoulders. “It’s nothing I’ve ever mixed in. They don’t have wars here in Colorado. I mean they don’t have wars between human beings.”
   Still the Elf soldier remained silent.
   “Why was I picked?” Shadrach went on helplessly, twisting his hands. “1 don’t know anything about it. What made him go and pick me? Why didn’t he pick somebody else?”
   “He trusted you,” the Elf said. “You brought him inside your house, out of the rain. He knew that you expected nothing for it, that there was nothing you wanted. He had known few who gave and asked nothing back.”
   “Oh.” Shadrach thought it over. At last he looked up. “But what about my gas station? And my house? And what will they say, Dan Green and Pop down at the store—”
   The Elf soldier moved away, out of the light. “I have to go. It’s getting late, and at night the Trolls come out. I don’t want to be too far away from the others.”
   “Sure,” Shadrach said.
   “The Trolls are afraid of nothing, now that the old king is dead. They forage everywhere. No one is safe.”
   “Where did you say the meeting is to be? And what time?”
   “At the Great Oak. When the moon sets tonight, just as it leaves the sky.”
   “I’ll be there, I guess,” Shadrach said. “I suppose you’re right. The King of the Elves can’t afford to let his kingdom down when it needs him most.”
   He looked around, but the Elf soldier was already gone.
   Shadrach walked up the highway, his mind full of doubts and wonderings. When he came to the first of the flat stone steps, he stopped.
   “And the old oak tree is on Phineas’s farm! What’ll Phineas say?”
   But he was the Elf King and the Trolls were moving in the hills. Shadrach stood listening to the rustle of the wind as it moved through the trees beyond the highway, and along the far slopes and hills.
   Trolls? Were there really Trolls there, rising up, bold and confident in the darkness of the night, afraid of nothing, afraid of no one?
   And this business of being Elf King…
   Shadrach went on up the steps, his lips pressed tight. When he reached the top of the stone steps, the last rays of sunlight had already faded. It was night.

   Phineas Judd stared out the window. He swore and shook his head. Then he went quickly to the door and ran out onto the porch. In the cold moonlight a dim figure was walking slowly across the lower field, coming toward the house along the cow trail.
   “Shadrach!” Phineas cried. “What’s wrong? What are you doing out this time of night?”
   Shadrach stopped and put his fists stubbornly on his hips.
   “You go back home,” Phineas said. “What’s got into you?”
   “I’m sorry, Phineas,” Shadrach answered. “I’m sorry I have to go over your land. But I have to meet somebody at the old oak tree.”
   “At this time of night?”
   Shadrach bowed his head.
   “What’s the matter with you, Shadrach? Who in the world you going to meet in the middle of the night on my farm?”
   “I have to meet with the Elves. We’re going to plan out the war with the Trolls.”
   “Well, I’ll be damned,” Phineas Judd said. He went back inside the house and slammed the door. For a long time he stood thinking. Then he went back out on the porch again. “What did you say you were doing? You don’t have to tell me, of course, but I just—”
   “I have to meet the Elves at the old oak tree. We must have a general council of war against the Trolls.”
   “Yes, indeed. The Trolls. Have to watch for the Trolls all the time.”
   “Trolls are everywhere,” Shadrach stated, nodding his head. “I never realized it before. You can’t forget them or ignore them. They never forget you. They’re always planning, watching you—”
   Phineas gaped at him, speechless.
   “Oh, by the way,” Shadrach said. “I may be gone for some time. It depends on how long this business is going to take. I haven’t had much experience in fighting Trolls, so I’m not sure. But I wonder if you’d mind looking after the gas station for me, about twice a day, maybe once in the morning and once at night, to make sure no one’s broken in or anything like that.”
   “You’re going away?” Phineas came quickly down the stairs. “What’s all this about Trolls? Why are you going?”
   Shadrach patiently repeated what he had said.
   “But what for?”
   “Because I’m the Elf King. I have to lead them.”
   There was silence. “I see,” Phineas said, at last. “That’s right, you did mention it before, didn’t you? But, Shadrach, why don’t you come inside for a while and you can tell me about the Trolls and drink some coffee and—”
   “Coffee?” Shadrach looked up at the pale moon above him, the moon and the bleak sky. The world was still and dead and the night was very cold and the moon would not be setting for some time.
   Shadrach shivered.
   “It’s a cold night,” Phineas urged. “Too cold to be out. Come on in—”
   “I guess I have a little time,” Shadrach admitted. “A cup of coffee wouldn’t do any harm. But I can’t stay very long…”

   Shadrach stretched his legs out and sighed. “This coffee sure tastes good, Phineas.”
   Phineas sipped a little and put his cup down. The living room was quiet and warm. It was a very neat little living room with solemn pictures on the walls, gray uninteresting pictures that minded their own business. In the corner was a small reed organ with sheet music carefully arranged on top of it.
   Shadrach noticed the organ and smiled. “You still play, Phineas?”
   “Not much any more. The bellows don’t work right. One of them won’t come back up.”
   “I suppose I could fix it sometime. If I’m around, I mean.”
   “That would be fine,” Phineas said. “I was thinking of asking you.”
   “Remember how you used to play ‘Vilia’ and Dan Green came up with that lady who worked for Pop during the summer? The one who wanted to open a pottery shop?”
   “I sure do,” Phineas said.
   Presently, Shadrach set down his coffee cup and shifted in his chair.
   “You want more coffee?” Phineas asked quickly. He stood up. “A little more?”
   “Maybe a little. But I have to be going pretty soon.”
   “It’s a bad night to be outside.”
   Shadrach looked through the window. It was darker; the moon had almost gone down. The fields were stark. Shadrach shivered. “I wouldn’t disagree with you,” he said.
   Phineas turned eagerly. “Look, Shadrach. You go on home where it’s warm. You can come out and fight Trolls some other night. There’ll always be Trolls. You said so yourself. Plenty of time to do that later, when the weather’s better. When it’s not so cold.”
   Shadrach rubbed his forehead wearily. “You know, it all seems like some sort of a crazy dream. When did I start talking about Elves and Trolls? When did it all begin?” His voice trailed off. “Thank you for the coffee.” He got slowly to his feet. “It warmed me up a lot. And I appreciated the talk. Like old times, you and me sitting here the way we used to.”
   “Are you going?” Phineas hesitated. “Home?”
   “I think I better. It’s late.”
   Phineas got quickly to his feet. He led Shadrach to the door, one arm around his shoulder.
   “All right, Shadrach, you go on home. Take a good hot bath before you go to bed. It’ll fix you up. And maybe just a little snort of brandy to warm the blood.”
   Phineas opened the front door and they went slowly down the porch steps, onto the cold, dark ground.
   “Yes, I guess I’ll be going,” Shadrach said. “Good night—”
   “You go on home.” Phineas patted him on the arm. “You run along hot and take a good hot bath. And then go straight to bed.”
   “That’s a good idea. Thank you, Phineas. I appreciate your kindness.” Shadrach looked down at Phineas’s hand on his arm. He had not been that close to Phineas for years.
   Shadrach contemplated the hand. He wrinkled his brow, puzzled.
   Phineas’s hand was huge and rough and his arms were short. His fingers were blunt; his nails broken and cracked. Almost black, or so it seemed in the moonlight.
   Shadrach looked up at Phineas. “Strange,” he murmured.
   “What’s strange, Shadrach?”
   In the moonlight, Phineas’s face seemed oddly heavy and brutal. Shadrach had never noticed before how the jaw bulged, what a great protruding jaw it was. The skin was yellow and coarse, like parchment. Behind glasses, the eyes were like two stones, cold and lifeless. The ears wer immense, the hair stringy and matted.
   Odd that he never noticed before. But he had never seen Phineas in the moonlight.
   Shadrach stepped away, studying his old friend. From a few feet off Phineas Judd seemed unusually short and squat. His legs were slightly bowed. His feet were enormous. And there was something else—
   “What is it?” Phineas demanded, beginning to grow suspicious. “Is there something wrong?”
   Something was completely wrong. And he had never noticed it, not in all the years they had been friends. All around Phineas Judd was an odor, a faint, pungent stench of rot, of decaying flesh, damp and moldy.
   Shadrach glanced slowly about him. “Something wrong?” he echoed. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
   By the side of the house was an old rain barrel, half fallen apart. Shadrach walked over to it.
   “No, Phineas. I wouldn’t say there’s something wrong.”
   “What are you doing?”
   “Me?” Shadrach took hold of one of the barrel staves and pulled it loose. He walked back to Phineas, carrying the barrel stave carefully. “I’m King of the Elves. Who—or what—are you?”
   Phineas roared and attacked with his great murderous shovel hands.
   Shadrach smashed him over the head with the barrel stave. Phineas bellowed with rage and pain.
   At the shattering sound, there was a clatter and from underneath the house came a furious horde of bounding, leaping creatures, dark bent-over things, their bodies heavy and squat, their feet and heads immense. Shadrach took one look at the flood of dark creatures pouring out from Phineas’s basement. He knew what they were.
   “Help!” Shadrach shouted. “Trolls! Help!”

   The trolls were all around him, grabbing hold of him, tugging at him, climbing up him, pummeling his face and body.
   Shadrach fell to with the barrel stave, swung again and again, kicking Trolls with his feet, whacking them with the barrel stave. There seemed to be hundreds of them. More and more poured out from under Phineas’s house, a surging black tide of pot-shaped creatures, their great eyes and teeth gleaming in the moonlight.
   “Help!” Shadrach cried again, more feebly now. He was getting winded. His heart labored painfully. A Troll bit his wrist, clinging to his arm. Shadrach flung it away, pulling loose from the horde clutching his trouser legs, the barrel stave rising and falling.
   One of the Trolls caught hold of the stave. A whole group of them helped, wrenching furiously, trying to pull it away. Shadrach hung on desperately. Trolls were all over him, on his shoulders, clinging to his coat, riding his arms, his legs, pulling his hair—
   He heard a high-pitched clarion call from a long way off, the sound of some distant golden trumpet, echoing in the hills.
   The Trolls suddenly stopped attacking. One of them dropped off Shadrach’s neck. Another let go of his arm.
   The call came again, this time more loudly.
   “Elves!” a Troll rasped. He turned and moved toward the sound, grinding his teeth and spitting with fury.
   “Elves!”
   The Trolls swarmed forward, a growing wave of gnashing teeth and nails, pushing furiously toward the Elf columns. The Elves broke formation and joined battle, shouting with wild joy in their shrill, piping voices. The tide of Trolls rushed against them, Troll against Elf, shovel nails against golden sword, biting jaw against dagger.
   “Kill the Elves!”
   “Death to the Trolls!”
   “Onward!”
   “Forward!”
   Shadrach fought desperately with the Trolls that were still clinging to him. He was exhausted, panting and gasping for breath. Blindly, he whacked on and on, kicking and jumping, throwing Trolls away from him, through the air and across the ground.

   How long the battle raged, Shadrach never knew. He was lost in a sea of dark bodies, round and evil-smelling, clinging to him, tearing, biting, fastened to his nose and hair and fingers. He fought silently, grimly.
   All around him, the Elf legions clashed with the Troll horde, little groups of struggling warriors on all sides.
   Suddenly Shadrach stopped fighting. He raised his head, looking uncertainly around him. Nothing moved. Everything was silent. The fighting had ceased.
   A few Trolls still clung to his arms and legs. Shadrach whacked one with the barrel stave. It howled and dropped to the ground. He staggered back, struggling with the last Troll, who hung tenaciously to his arm.
   “Now you!” Shadrach gasped. He pried the Troll loose and flung it into the air. The Troll fell to the ground and scuttled off into the night.
   There was nothing more. No Troll moved anywhere. All was silent across the bleak moon-swept fields.
   Shadrach sank down on a stone. His chest rose and fell painfully. Red specks swam before his eyes. Weakly, he got out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his neck and face. He closed his eyes, shaking his head from side to side.
   When he opened his eyes again, the Elves were coming toward him, gathering their legion together again. The Elves were disheveled and bruised. Their golden armor was gashed and torn. Their helmets were bent or missing. Most of their scarlet plumes were gone. Those that still remained were drooping and broken.
   But the battle was over. The war was won. The Troll hordes had been put to flight.
   Shadrach got slowly to his feet. The Elf warriors stood around him in a circle, gazing up at him with silent respect. One of them helped steady him as he put his handkerchief away in his pocket.
   “Thank you,” Shadrach murmured. “Thank you very much.”
   “The Trolls have been defeated,” an Elf stated, still awed by what had happened.
   Shadrach gazed around at the Elves. There were many of them, more than he had ever seen before. All the Elves had turned out for the battle. They were grim-faced, stern with the seriousness of the moment, weary from the terrible struggle.
   “Yes, they’re gone, all right,” Shadrach said. He was beginning to get his breath. “That was a close call. I’m glad you fellows came when you did. I was just about finished, fighting them all by myself.”
   “All alone, the King of the Elves held off the entire Troll army,” an Elf announced shrilly.
   “Eh?” Shadrach said, taken aback. Then he smiled. “That’s true, I did fight them alone for a while. I did hold off the Trolls all by myself. The whole darn Troll army.”
   “There is more,” an Elf said.
   Shadrach blinked. “More?”
   “Look over here, O King, mightiest of all the Elves. This way. To the right.”
   The Elves led Shadrach over.
   “What is it?” Shadrach murmured, seeing nothing at first. He gazed down, trying to pierce the darkness. “Could we have a torch over here?”
   Some Elves brought little pine torches.
   There, on the frozen ground, lay Phineas Judd, on his back. His eyes were blank and staring, his mouth half open. He did not move. His body was cold and stiff.
   “He is dead,” an Elf said solemnly.
   Shadrach gulped in sudden alarm. Cold sweat stood out abruptly on his forehead. “My gosh! My old friend! What have I done?”
   “You have slain the Great Troll.”
   Shadrach paused.
   “I what?”
   “You have slain the Great Troll, leader of all the Trolls.”
   “This has never happened before,” another Elf exclaimed excitedly. “The Great Troll has lived for centuries. Nobody imagined he could die. This is our most historic moment.”
   All the Elves gazed down at the silent form with awe, awe mixed with more than a little fear.
   “Oh, go on!” Shadrach said. “That’s just Phineas Judd.”
   But as he spoke, a chill moved up his spine. He remembered what he had seen a little while before, as he stood close by Phineas, as the dying moonlight crossed his old friend’s face.
   “Look.” One of the Elves bent over and unfastened Phineas’s blue-serge vest. He pushed the coat and vest aside. “See?”
   Shadrach bent down to look.
   He gasped.
   Underneath Phineas Judd’s blue-serge vest was a suit of mail, an encrusted mesh of ancient, rusting iron, fastened tightly around the squat body. On the mail stood an engraved insignia, dark and time-worn, embedded with dirt and rust. A moldering half-obliterated emblem. The emblem of a crossed owl leg and toadstool.
   The emblem of the Great Troll.
   “Golly,” Shadrach said. “And I killed him.”
   For a long time he gazed silently down. Then, slowly, realization began to grow in him. He straightened up, a smile forming on his face.
   “What is it, O King?” an Elf piped.
   “I just thought of something,” Shadrach said. “I just realized that—that since the Great Troll is dead and the Troll army has been put to flight—”
   He broke off. All the Elves were waiting.
   “I thought maybe I—that is, maybe if you don’t need me any more—”
   The Elves listened respectfully. “What is it, Mighty King? Go on.”
   “I thought maybe now I could go back to the filling station and not be king any more.” Shadrach glanced hopefully around at them. “Do you think so? With the war over and all. With him dead. What do you say?”
   For a time, the Elves were silent. They gazed unhappily down at the ground. None of them said anything. At last they began moving away, collecting their banners and pennants.
   “Yes, you may go back,” an Elf said quietly. “The war is over. The Trolls have been defeated. You may return to your filling station, if that is what you want.”
   A flood of relief swept over Shadrach. He straightened up, grinning from ear to ear. “Thanks! That’s fine. That’s really fine. That’s the best news I’ve heard in my life.”
   He moved away from the Elves, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them.
   “Thanks an awful lot.” He grinned around at the silent Elves. “Well, I guess I’ll be running along, then. It’s late. Late and cold. It’s been a hard night. I’ll—I’ll see you around.”
   The Elves nodded silently.
   “Fine. Well, good night.” Shadrach turned and started along the path. He stopped for a moment, waving back at the Elves. “It was quite a battle, wasn’t it? We really licked them.” He hurried on along the path. Once again he stopped, looking back and waving. “Sure glad I could help out. Well, good night!”
   One or two on the Elves waved, but none of them said anything.

   Shadrach Jones walked slowly toward his place. He could see it from the rise, the highway that few cars traveled, the filling station falling to ruin, the house that might not last as long as himself, and not enough money coming it to repair them or buy a better location.
   He turned around and went back.
   The Elves were still gathered there in the silence of the night. They had not moved away.
   “I was hoping you hadn’t gone,” Shadrach said, relieved.
   “And we were hoping you would not leave,” said a soldier.
   Shadrach kicked a stone. It bounced through the tight silence stopped. The Elves were still watching him.
   “Leave?” Shadrach asked. “And me King of the Elves?”
   “Then you will remain our king?” an Elf cried.
   “It’s a hard thing for a man of my age to change. To stop selling gasoline and suddenly be a king. It scared me for a while. But it doesn’t any more.”
   “You will? You will?”
   “Sure,” said Shadrach Jones.
   The little circle of Elf torches closed in joyously. In their light, he saw a platform like the one that had carried the old King of the Elves. But this one was much larger, big enough to hold a man, and dozens of the soldiers waited with proud shoulders under the shafts.
   A soldier gave him a happy bow. “For you, Sire.”
   Shadrach climbed aboard. It was less comfortable than walking, but he knew this was how they wanted to take him to the Kingdom of the Elves.