"Cats, fortunately, are more subject to reason than

many mal. And now I think I'll answer the rest of

your questions.

"My name is Pericles. I come from Quaestor." Quaestor! Magic, distant, Imperial capital! Her

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Dream Done Green

anger at this maFs insolence was subsumed in excitement.

"You mean you've actually traveled all the way from the capital... to meet me?"

"There is no need to repeat," the horse murmured, "only to confirm. It took a great deal of time and searching to find someone like you. I need someone young . . . you are that. Only a young human would be responsive to what I have to offer. I needed someone bored, and you are wealthy as well as young."

"I'm not bored," Casperdan began defiantly, but he ignored her.

"I needed someone very rich, but without a multitude of ravenous relatives hanging about. Your father is a self-made tycoon, your mother an orphan. You have no other relatives. And I needed someone with the intelligence and sensitivity to take orders from a mere mal."

This last was uttered with a disdain alien to Casperdan. Servants were not sarcastic.

"In sum," he concluded, "I need you."

"Indeed?" she mused, too overwhelmed by the outrageousness of this animal's words to compose a suitable rejoinder.

"Indeed," the horse echoed drily.

"And what, pray tell, do you need me for?"

The horse dropped its head and seemed to consider how best to continue. It looked oddly at her.

"Laugh now if you will. I have a dream that needs fulfilling."

"Do you, now? Really, this is becoming quite amusing." What a story she'd have to tell at the preparty tomorrow!

"Yes, I do. Hopefully it will not take too many years."

She couldn't help blurting, "Years!"

"I cannot tell for certain. You see, I am a genius and a poet. For me it's the dream part that's solid. The reality is what lacks certitude. That's one reason why I need human help. Need you."

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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE .,.

This time she just stared at him.

"Tomorrow," continued the horse easily, "you will not marry the man du Sable. Instead, you will sign the formal Control Contract and assume directorship of the Dan family business. You have the ability and brains to handle it. With my assistance the firm will prosper beyond the wildest dreams of your sire or any of the investors.

"In return, I will deed you a part of my dream, some of my poetry, and something few humans have had for millennia. I would not know of this last thing myself had I not chanced across it in the Imperial

archives."

She was silent for a brief moment, then spoke

brightly,

"I have a few questions."

"Of course."

"First, I'd like to know if horses as a species are insane, or if you are merely an isolated case."

He sighed, tossing his mane. "I didn't expect words to convince you." The long black hair made sailor's knots with sunbeams. "Do you know the Meadows of

Blood?"

"Only by name." She was fascinated by the mention of the forbidden place. "They're in the Ravaged Mountains. It's rumored to be rather a pretty place. But no one goes there. The winds above the canyon make it fatal to arrears."

"I have a car outside," the horse whispered. "The driver is mal and knows of a winding route by which, from to time, it is possible to reach the Meadows, The winds war only above them. They are named, by the way, for the color of the flora there and not for a bit of human history . . . unusual.

"When the sun rises up hi the mouth of a certain canyon and engulfs the crimson grasses and flowers in light... well, it's more than 'rather pretty.' "

"You've already been there," she said.

"Yes, I've already been." He took several steps and

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that powerful, strange face was close to hers. One eye, she noticed offhandedly, was red, the other blue.

"Come with me now to the Meadows of Blood and I'll give you that piece of dream, that something few have had for thousands of years. I'll bring you back tonight and you can give me your answer on the way.

"If it's 'no,' then I'll depart quietly and you'll never see me again."

Now, in addition to being both beautiful and intelligent, Casperdan also had her sire's recklessness.

"All right... I'll come."

When her parents returned home that night from the party and found their daughter gone, they were not distressed. After all, she was quite independent and, heavens, to be married tomorrow! When they learned from Patch that she'd gone off, not with a man, but with a strange mal, they were only mildly concerned. Casperdan was quite capable of taking care of herself. Had they known where she'd gone, things would have been different.

So nothing happened till the morrow.

"Good morning, Cas," said her father.

"Good morning, dear," her mother added. They were eating breakfast on the balcony. "Did you sleep well last night, and where did you go?"

The voice that answered was distant with other thoughts.

"I didn't sleep at all, and I went into the Ravaged Mountains. And there's no need to get excited, Father" —the old man sat back in his chair—"because as you see, I'm back safely and in one piece."

"But not unaffected," her mother stated, noticing the strangeness in her daughter's eyes.

"No, Mother, not unaffected. There will be no wedding." Before that lovely woman could reply, Casperdan turned to her father. "Dad, I want the contract of Control. I intend to begin as director of the firm eight o'clock tomorrow morning. No, better make it noon ... I'll need some sleep." She was smil-

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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE ...

ing faintly. "And I don't think I'm going to get any right now."

On that she was right. Dandavid, that usually even-tempered but mercurial gentleman, got very, very excited. Between his bellows and her sobs, her mother leveled questions and then accusations at her.

When they found out about the incipient changeover, the investors immediately threatened to challenge it in court—law or no law, they weren't going to be guided by the decisions of an inexperienced snippet. In fact, of all those affected, the intended bridegroom took it best. After all, he was handsome and intelligent (if not as rich), and could damn well find himself another spouse. He wished Casperdan well and consoled himself with his cello.

Her father (for her own good, of course) joined with the investors to challenge his daughter in the courts. He protested most strongly. The investors ranted and pounded their checkbooks.

But the judge was honest, the law machines incorruptible, and the precedents clear. Casperdan got her Contract and a year in which to prove herself.

Her first official action was to rename the firm Dream Enterprises. A strange name, many thought, for an industrial concern. But it was more distinctive than the old one. The investors grumbled, while the advertising men were delighted.

Then began a program of industrial expansion and acquisition unseen on somnolent Calder since the days of settlement. Dream Enterprises was suddenly everywhere and into everything. Mining, manufacturing, raw materials. These new divisions sprouted tentacles of their own and sucked in additional businesses.

Paper and plastics, electronics, nucleonics, hydro-logics and parafoih'ng, insurance and banking, tridee stations and liquid tanking, entertainments and hydroponics and velosheeting.

Dream Enterprises became the wealthiest firm on Calder, then in the entire Stone Crescent.

The investors and Dandavid clipped their coupons

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Dream Done Green

and kept their mouths shut, even to ignoring Cas-perdan's odd relationship with an outsystem mal.

Eventually there came a morning when Pericles looked up from his huge lounge in the executive suite and stared across the room at Casperdan in a manner different from before.

The stallion had another line of silver in his mane. The girl had blossomed figuratively and figurewise. Otherwise the years had left them unchanged.

"I've booked passage for us. Put Rollins in charge. He's a good man."

"Where are we going?" asked Casperdan. Not why nor for how long, but where. She'd learned a great deal about the horse in the past few years.

"Quaestor."

Sudden sparkle in beautiful green eyes. "And then will you give me back what I once had?"

The horse smiled and nodded. "If everything goes smoothly."

In the Crescent, Dream Enterprises was powerful and respected and kowtowed to. In the Imperial sector it was different. There were companies on the capital planet that would classify it as a modest little family business. Bureaucratic trip-wires here ran not for kilometers, but for light-years.

However, Pericles had threaded this maze many times before, and knew both men and mal who worked within the bowels of Imperial Government.

So it was that they eventually found themselves in the offices of Sim-sem Alround, subminister for Unincorporated Imperial Territories.

Physically, Alround wasn't quite that. But he did have a comfortable bureaucratic belly, a rectangular face framed by long bushy sideburns and curly red hair tinged with white. He wore the current fashion, a monocle. For all that, and his dry occupation, he proved charming and affable.

A small stream ran through his office, filled with trout and tadpoles and cattails. Casperdan reclined on

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a long couch made to resemble solid granite. Pericles preferred to stand.

"You want to buy some land, then?" queried Alround after drinks and pleasantries had been exchanged.

"My associate will give you the details," Casperdan informed him. Alround shifted his attention from human to horse without a pause. Naturally he'd assumed ...

"Yes sir?"

"We wish to purchase a planet," said Pericles. "A small planet... not very important."

Alround waited. Visitors interested in small transactions didn't get in to see the subminister himself.

"Just one?"

"One will be quite sufficient."

Alround depressed a switch on his desk. A red light flashed on, indicated that all details of the conversation to follow were now being taken down for the Imperial records.

"Purpose of purchase?"

"Development."

"Name of world?"

"Earth."

"All right . . . fine," said the subminister. Abruptly, he looked confused. Then he smiled. "Many planers are called Earth by their inhabitants or discoverers. Which particular Earth is this?"

"The Earth. Birthplace of mankind and malkind. Old Earth. Also known variously as Terra and Sol III."

The subminister shook his head. "Never heard of it."

"It is available, though?"

"We'll know in a second." Alround studied the screen in his desk.

Actually it took several minutes before the gargantuan complex of metal and plastic and liquid buried deep in the soil beneath them could come up with a reply.

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"Here it is, finally," said Alround. "Yes, it's available ... by default, it seems. The price will be . . ." He named a figure which seemed astronomical to Casperdan and insanely low to the horse.

"Excellent!" husked Pericles. "Let us conclude the formalities now."

"Per," Casperdan began, looking at him uncertainly. "I don't know if we have enough ..."

"Some liquidation* will surely be necessary, Casperdan, but we will manage."

The subminister interrupted: "Excuse me ... there's something you should know before we go any further. I can sell you Old Earth, but there is an attendant difficulty."

"Problems can be solved, difficulties overcome, obstructions removed," said the horse irritably. "Please get on with it."

Alround sighed. "As you wish." He drummed the required buttons. "But you'll need more than your determination to get around this one.

"You see, it seems no one knows how to get to Old Earth anymore ... or even where it is."

Later, strolling among the teeming mobs of Imperial City, Casperdan ventured a hesitant opinion.

"I take it this means it's not time for me to receive my part of the dream again?"

"Sadly, no, my friend."

Her tone turned sharp. "Well, what do you intend to do now? We've just paid quite an enormous number of credits for a world located in obscurity, around the corner from no place."

"We shall return to Calder," said the horse with finality, "and continue to expand and develop the company." He pulled back thick lips in an equine smile.

"In all the research I did, in all my careful planning and preparation, never once did I consider that the location of the home world might have been lost.

"So now we must go back and hire researchers to research, historians to historize, and ships to search

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and scour the skies in sanguine directions. And wait."

A year passed, and another, and then they came in small multiples. Dream Enterprises burgeoned and grew, grew and thrived. It moved out of the Stone Crescent and extended its influence into other quadrants. It went into power generation and multiple metallurgy, into core mining and high fashion.

And finally, of necessity, into interstellar shipping.

There came the day when the captain with the stripped-down scoutship was presented to Casperdan and the horse Pericles in their executive office on the two hundred and twentieth floor of the Dream building.

Despite a long, long, lonely journey the captain was alert and smiling. Smiling because the endless trips of dull searching were over. Smiling because he knew the company reward for whoever found a certain aged planet.

Yes, he'd found Old Earth. Yes, it was a long way off, and in a direction only recently suspected. Not in toward the galactic center, but out on the Arm. And yes, he could take them there right away.

The shuttleboat settled down into the atmosphere of the planet. In the distance, a small yellow sun burned smooth and even.

Pericles stood at the observation port of the shuttle as it drifted planetward. He wore a special protective suit, as did Casperdan. She spared a glance at the disconsolate mal. Then she did something she did very rarely. She patted his neck.

"You mustn't be too disappointed if it's not what you expected, Per." She was trying to be comforting. "History and reality have a way of not coinciding."

It was quiet for a long time. Then the magnificent head, lowered now, turned to face her, Pericles snorted bleakly.

"My dear, dear Casperdan, I can speak eighteen languages fluently and get by in several more, and

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there are no words in any of them for what I feel. 'Disappointment'? Consider a nova and call it warm. Regard Quaestor and label it well-off. Then look at me and call me disappointed."

"Perhaps," she continued, not knowing what else to say, "it will be better on the surface."

It was worse.

They came down in the midst of what the captain called a mild local storm. To Casperdan it was a neat slice of the mythical hell.

Stale yellow-brown air whipped and sliced its way over high dunes of dark sand. The uncaring mounds marched in endless waves to the shoreline. A dirty, dead beach melted into brackish water and a noisome green scum covered it as far as the eye could see. A few low scrubs and hearty weeds eked out a perilous existence among the marching dunes, needing only a chance change in the wind to be entombed alive.

In the distance, stark, bare mountains gave promise only of a higher desolation.

Pericles watched the stagnant sea for a long time. Over the intercom his voice was shrunken, the husk of a whisper, those compelling tones beaten down by the moaning wind.

"Is it like this everywhere, Captain?'*

The spacer replied unemotionally. "Mostly. I've seen far worse worlds, sir ... but this one is sure no prize. If I may be permitted an opinion, I'm damned if J can figure out why you want it."

"Can't you feel it, Captain?"

"Sir?" The spacer's expression under his faceglass was puzzled.

"No, no. I guess you cannot. But I do, Captain. Even though this is not the Earth I believed in, I still feel it. I fell in love with a dream. The dream seems to have departed long ago, but the memory of it is still here, still here . . ." Another long pause, then, "You said 'mostly'?"

"Well, yes." The spacer turned and gestured at the distant range. "Being the discovering vessel, we ran a

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pretty thorough survey, according to the general directives. There are places—near the poles, in the higher elevations, out in the middle of the three great oceans—where a certain amount of native life still survives. The cycle of life here has been shattered, but a few of the pieces are still around.

"But mostly, it's like this." He kicked at the sterile sand. "Hot or cold desert—take your pick. The soil's barren and infertile, the air unfit for man or mal.

"We did find some ruins . . . God, they were old! You saw the artifacts we brought back. But except for its historical value, this world strikes me as particularly worthless."

He threw another kick at the sand, sending flying shards of mica and feldspar and quartz onto the highways of the wind.

Pericles had been thinking. "We won't spend much more time here, Captain." The proud head lifted for a last look at the dead ocean. "There's not much to see."

They'd been back in the offices on Calder only a half-month when Pericles announced his decision.

Dream-partner or no dream-partner, Casperdan exploded.

"You quadrupedal cretin! Warm-blooded sack of fatuous platitudes! Terraforming is only a theory, a hypothesis in the minds of sick romantics. It's impossible!"

"No one has ever attempted it," countered the horse, unruffled by her outburst.

"But ... my God!" Casperdan ran delicate fingers through her flowing blond hair. "There are no facilities for doing such a thing ... no company, no special firms to consult. Why, half the industries that would be needed for such a task don't even exist."

"They will," Pericles declared.

"Oh, yes? And just where will they spring from?"

"You and I are going to create them."

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She pleaded with him. "Have you gone absolutely mad? We're not in the miracle business, you know."

The horse walked to the window and stared down at the Greengreen Sea. His reply was distant. "No . . . we're in the dream business . .. remember?"

A cloud of remembrance came over Casperdan's exquisite face. For a moment, she did—but it wasn't enough to stem the tide of objection. Though she stopped shouting.

"Please, Per . . . take a long, logical look at this before you commit yourself to something that can only hurt you worse in the end."

He turned and stared evenly at her. "Casperdan, for many, many years now I've done nothing but observe things with a reasoned eye, done nothing without thinking it through beginning, middle, and end and all possible ramifications, done nothing I wasn't absolutely sure of completing.

"Now I'm going to take a chance. Not because I want to do it this way, but because I've run out of options. I'm not mad, no ... but I am obsessed." He looked away from her.

"But I can't do it without you, damn it, and you know why ... no mal can bead a private concern that employs humans."

She threw up her hands and stalked back to her desk. It was silent in the office for many minutes. Then she spoke softly.

"Pericles, I don't share your obsession . . . I've matured, you know . . . now I think I can survive with just the memory of my dream-share. But you rescued me from my own narcissism. And you've given me ... other things. If you can't shake this psychotic notion of yours, I'll stay around till you can."

Horses and geniuses don't cry ... ah, but poets ...!

And that is how the irony came about—that the first world where terraforming was attempted was not some sterile alien globe, but Old Earth itself. Or as the horse

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Pericles is reputed to have said, "Remade in its own image."

The oceans were cleared ... the laborious, incredibly costly first step. That done, and with a little help from two thousand chemists and bioengineers, the atmosphere began to cleanse itself. That first new air was neither sweet nor fresh—but neither was it toxic.

Grasses are the shock troops of nature. Moved in first, the special tough strains took hold in the raped soil. Bacteria and nutrients were added, fast-multiplying strains that spread rapidly. From the beachheads near the Arctic and in the high mountains flora and fauna were reintroduced.

Then came the major reseeding of the superfast trees: spruce and white pine, juniper and birch, cypress and mori and teak, fir and ash. And from a tiny, museum on Duntroon, long preserved Sequoia and citrus.

Eventually there was a day when the first flowers were replanted. The hand-planting of the first bush—a green rose—was watched by the heads of the agricultural staffs, a black horse, and a ravishing woman in the postbloom of her first rejuvenation.

That's when Pericles registered the Articles. They aroused only minor interest within the sleepy, vast Empire. The subject was good for a few days' conversation before the multitudes returned to more important news.

But among the mal, there was something in the Articles and accompanying pictures that tugged at nerves long since sealed off in men and mankind by time and by choice. Something that pulled each rough soul toward an unspectacular planet circling an unremarkable star in a distant corner of space.

So the mal went back to Old Earth. Not all, but many. They left the trappings of Imperial civilization and confusing intelligence and went to the first mal planet.

More simply, they went home.

There they labored not for man, but for themselves.

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And when a few interested humans applied for permission to emigrate there, they were turned back by the private patrol. For the Articles composed by the horse Pericles forbade the introduction of man to Old Earth. Those Articles were written in endurasteel, framed in paragraphs of molten duralloy. Neither human curiosity nor money could make a chip in them.

It was clear to judges and law machines that while the Articles (especially the phrase about "the meek finally inheriting the Earth") might not have been good manners or good taste, they were very good law.

It was finished.

It was secured.

It was given unto the mal till the end of time.

Casperdan and Pericles left the maze that was now Dream Enterprises and went to Old Earth. They came to stand on the same place where they'd stood decades before.

Now clean low surf grumbled and subsided on a beach of polished sand that was home to shellfish and worms and brittle stars..They stood on a field of low, waving green grass. In the distance a family of giraffe moved like sentient signal towers toward the horizon. The male saw them, swung its long neck in greeting. Pericles responded with a long, high whinny.

To their left, in the distance, the first mountains began. Not bare and empty now, but covered with a mat of thick evergreen crowned with new snow.

They breathed in the heady scent of fresh clover and distant honeysuckle.

"It's done," he said.

Casperdan nodded and began to remove her clothes. Someday she would bring a husband down here. She was the sole exception in the Articles. Her golden hair fell in waves to her waist. Someday, yes ... But for now...

"You know, Pericles, it really wasn't necessary. All this, I mean."

The stallion pawed at the thick loam underfoot.

"What percentage of dreams are necessary, Cas-

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perdan? You know, for many mal intelligence was not a gift but a curse. It was always that way for man, too, but he had more time to grow into it. For the mal it came like lightning, as a shock. The mal are still tied to their past—to this world. As I am still tied. Have you ever seen mal as happy as they are here?

"Certainly sentience came too quickly for the horse. According to the ancient texts we once had a special relationship with man that rivaled the dog's. That vanished millennia ago. The dog kept it, though, and so did the cat, and certain others. Other mal never missed it because they never had it. But the horse did, and couldn't cope with the knowledge of that loss that intelligence brought. There weren't many of us left, Casperdan.

"But we'll do well here. This is home. Man would feel it too, if he came here now. Feel it ... and ruin this world all over again. That's why I wrote the Articles."

She was clad only in shorts now and to her great surprise found she was trembling slightly. She hadn't done that since she was fifteen. How long ago was that? Good God, had she ever been fifteen? But her face and figure were those of a girl of twenty. Rejuvenation.

"Pericles, I want back what you promised. I want back what I had in the Meadows of Blood in the Ravaged Mountains."

"Of course," he replied, as though it had happened yesterday. A mal's sense of time is different from man's, and Pericles' was different from that of most mal.

"You know, I have a confession to make."

She was startled to see that the relentless dreamer was embarrassed!

"It was done only to bribe you, you know. But in truth ... in truth, I think I enjoyed it as much as you. And I'm ashamed, because I still don't understand why."

He kicked at the dirt.

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She smiled understandingly. "It's the old bonds you talk about, Per. I think they must work both ways."

She walked up to him and entwined her left hand in his mane, threw the other over his back. A pull and she was up. Her movement was done smoothly . . . she'd practiced it ten thousand times in her mind.

Both hands dug tightly into the silver-black mane. Leaning forward, she pressed her cheek against the cool neck and felt ropes of muscle taut beneath the skin. The anticipation was so painful it hurt to speak,

"I'm ready," she whispered breathlessly.

"So am I," he replied.

Then the horse Pericles gave her what few humans had had for millennia, what had been outlawed in the Declaration of Animal's Rights, what they'd shared in the Meadows of Blood a billion years ago.

Gave her back the small part of the dream that was hers.

Tail flying, hooves digging dirt, magnificent body moving effortlessly over the rolling hills and grass, the horse became brother to the wind as he and his rider thundered off toward the waiting mountains. . . .

And that's why there's confusion in the old records. Because they knew all about Casperdan in the finest detail, but all they knew about the horse Pericles was that he was a genius and a poet. Now, there's ample evidence as to his genius. But the inquisitive are puzzled when they search and find no record of his poetry.

Even if they knew, they wouldn't understand.

The poetry, you see, was when he moved.

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He

When I wrote the first version of this story, "jaws" were something that took up space between your neck and nose. While the story has undergone considerable rewriting to bring it to its current state, the central figure hasn't changed a bit.

In fact, there's even a nonverbal reference to Him in that notorious novel and movie named after that thing which takes up space between . . . you remember. Our hero, the police chief, is thumbing through several books on sharks. One picture shows a black-and-white photo of four scientists standing together, within one of His jaws.

So while I loved the book and the movie, after researching this story I had to be a bit disappointed in the minnowish size of Mr. Bencbley s main character.

He came out of the abyss and out of the eons, and He didn't belong. His kind had passed from the world long ago, and it was better thus for the world, for They were of all Nature's creations the most terrible.

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He

But still He survived, last of His kind, a relic of the time when They had ruled most of this world. He was old, now, terribly old, but with His kind it showed little. He'd stayed to Himself, haunting the hidden kingdom of darkness and pressure. But now, again, something impelled Him upward, something inside the superb engine of Himself drove Him toward the light, something neither He nor anyone could understand.

Two men died. The reason was basic.

The rain had worked itself out and the sun was shining by the time Poplar reached the station. The building was as unspectacular as the simple sign set into the white stucco.

UNITED STATES

OCEANOGRAPHIC

RESEARCH STATION

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

AMERICAN SAMOA

He pushed through a series of doors and checkpoints, occasionally pausing to chat with friends and coworkers. As station director, it was his obligation as well as a pleasure.

The door to his own offices was hah* ajar. Long ago he'd lost the habit of stopping to admire the gold letters set into the cloudy glass.

DR. WOODRUTH L, POPLAR DIRECTOR

He paused in front of Elaine's desk. She'd arrived some six months ago, the first crimp in a routine otherwise unbroken for the past five yeafs-His first reactions had been confused. He still was. She swiveled around from her pile of books to face him.

In her mid-twenties, Elaine Shai had tiny, delicate features that would keep her looking childlike into her forties and fifties. Long auburn hair fell loosely in

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back, framing small blue eyes, a tiny gash of a mouth, and a, dimpled chin. In contrast, her unnervingly spectacular figure was enveloped in print jeans and a badly outflanked white blouse. She had a fresh yellow frangi-pani behind one ear. She looked great.

The elfin illusion was blurred only when she opened her mouth. Her accent was pure Brooklyn. It had disconcerted Poplar only once, when he'd greeted her on her arrival at the airport. From that point, for all it mattered, she could have chattered away in Twi. But she bothered him. "Well, what are you staring at, Tree?" "You must be using a new shampoo," he said easily. "Your follicles are in bloom."

She grinned, touched the flower lightly. "Pretty, isn't it? He's in your office. I got tired of him staring at the door. Strange old bird. Never took his hands off that package. But you know these small-island Matai better than I do, Doctor. Stuffy." "Proud, you mean."

She popped her bubblegum at him. That was her one disgusting habit. He pushed open the door to his

office.

As always, his first glance was reserved for the magnificent view of the harbor out his back window. He was always afraid he'd come in one day and find a view of downtown New York, the one from his old office at Columbia. Reassured, he turned to greet the man seated in front of his desk.

Standing in front of his chair, he managed to take a fast inventory of the papers and envelopes padding his desk while at the same time extending a greeting hand.

"Talofa," he said.

"Hello, Dr. Poplar. My name is Ha'apu." The oldster's grip was firm and tight. He sat down when Poplar did.

The director stared at the man across from him. On second and third glance, maybe he wasn't so old. That Gauguinish face, weather-beaten and sunburnt, could

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He

have as well seen forty summers as seventy. The few lines running in it were like sculpture in a well-decorated home, placed here and there strategically, for character, to please the eye. The hair was cut short and freckled with white.

The Matai retained a taut, blocky build. Ropes of stringy muscle flexed when his arms shifted. He matched Poplar's 175 cms. in height.

"I've come a distance to see you, Dr. Poplar."

"You sure have, all by yourself, if what they tell me is true. I'm flattered." He changed to his best fatherly-executive style, which was pretty sad. "How are things on Tafahi?"

The old chief shook his head slowly. "Not good. Since He came."

"I'm sorry to hear that," replied Poplar in what he hoped was a convincing display of sincerity. Privately he didn't give much of a damn about daily life on Tafahi. "Uh ... who is 'He'?"

"I have heard over the television that you are a Doctor to the Sea. Is this true?"

Poplar smiled condescendingly. "I can't cure storms or improve fishing, if that's what you mean." Educational television had performed miracles in reaching and teaching the widely scattered Polynesian and Mel-anesian peoples throughout the Pacific.

It was Ha'apu's turn to smile. "I still think we may be better at that than you." He turned somber again. "By Sea-Doctor, I mean that it is your business, your life, to study what the ocean is, what lives in it, and why Tangaroa does the things he does."

"That's a very astute summation," replied the director. He felt the sea-god himself would have approved, and his estimation of this man's intelligence went up a notch.

Ha'apu seemed satisfied. "So I believed. I wanted to make certain I understood. My mind takes longer to think things than it once did. What I have brought to show you . . ." he indicated the small package in his

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lap, *'. . . could be understood and believed only by such a person."

"Of course," said Poplar, sneaking a fast glance at his watch. He wished the chief would come to the point. Then Poplar could haggle, politely refuse, kindly suggest the chief try the usual tourist markets downtown and wharfside, and he could get to work. He'd found one new shell this morning that . . . But he didn't want to be rude by hurrying the conversation. Some Matai were easily insulted. And he wasn't famous for his diplomatic manner.

Ha'apu was working at the small package. It was tightly bound in clean linen and secured with twine.

"But first you must promise me you will be careful of whom you speak to about this. We have no wish to endure an assault of the curious."

Poplar thought back to the moaning jetliner that had passed overhead this morning, crammed to the gills with bloated statesiders eager for a glimpse of the quaint locals betwixt brunch and supper, and applauded the Matai's attitude. He wasn't all that naive.

"I promise it will be so, Matai."

Ha'apu continued to work deliberately with the knots. "You are familiar with Niuhi?"

"Yes, certainly." He peered at the shrinking pile of cloth and twine with renewed interest. A good carving of Niuhi would be something of a novelty. At least it wasn't yet another dugout or tiki.

"Then you will know this," said Ha'apu solemnly. He removed an irregular shaped object and placed it carefully on the desk in front of the director.

Poplar stared at it for a long moment before he recognized it for what it was. The realization took another moment to penetrate fully. Slowly he reached out and picked it up. A rapid examination, a few knuckle taps convinced him it was real and not a clever fake. It wasn't the sort of thing one could easily fake. And besides, even the simplest islander would know he couldn't get away with it. He brought it up to eye level.

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"Ye gods and little fishes," he murmured in astonishment.

It wasn't a carving.

It was a tooth. And it was quite impossible. The tooth was almost a perfect triangle. He reached into his desk and brought out a ruler, laid it alongside the hard bone. Slightly under 18 cms. long, about 14 cms. wide at the bottom, and over five thick. The base was slightly curved where it fit into the jaw. Both cutting edges were wickedly serrated, like a saw. He stared at it for a long, long time, running his fingers along the razor-sharp cutting edges, testing the perfect point. A magnifying glass all but confirmed its reality. That failed to temper his uncertainty.

"Where did you get this, Ha'apu? And are there any more?" he asked softly.

"This was taken from the wood of a paopao." The Matai smiled slightly. "There is another."

It took Poplar about thirty seconds to connect this with what the chief bad told him earlier. Einsteinian calculations aside, he could still add up the implications. He leaned back in his chair.

"Now Ha'apu, you're not going to try and convince me that this tooth came out of the mouth of a living Great White!"

The chief began slowly, picking his words. "The doctor is very sure of himself. About three weeks ago, two young men from my village were out fishing an area we rarely visit, rather far from Tafahi. There is better fishing in other directions, and closer to home, but they wished also a little adventure. They did not return to us, even hours after nightfall.

"All of the men of the village, including myself, set out to search for them. We were not yet worried. We knew where they had gone. Perhaps their boat had been damaged, or both had been injured. There was no moon that night. One cannot see far onto the ocean at night by only torch and flashlight. We did not find them.

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anchored to the coral, was the rear half of their pao-pao. It had been snapped in two, Dr. Poplar, That tooth you hold now in your hand was buried in the side of the wreckage. Television and great jet airplanes admitted, Doctor, old beliefs still linger on most of the islands. I am the most educated man in my village and proud of my learning. But this frightened me. We have lived with the sea too long to doubt what might come from it. We put on an exhibition of rowing that could not be matched, Dr. Poplar, in any of the Olympic games.

"It was very quiet on Tafahi the next day. Fishing, a daily task for us, had grown suddenly unpopular. I pointed out there was still a chance to recover the bodies or . . ." he winced, ", . . parts of them. But no one would return to that reef.

"I went alone. It is a small atoll . . . very tiny, not on any but the most detailed of your maps, I should guess. That was where our two men had gone to fish. To the northeast of it, I believe, the ocean bottom disappears very fast."

Poplar nodded. "The northern tip of the Kermadec-Tonga Trench runs across there. In spots the sea floor drops almost straight down for, oh, 3500, 3600 fathoms ... and more."

"As you say, Doctor. The sun does not go far there. It is where He dwells.

"I anchored my paopao behind the protection of the little reef, safe from the breakers on the other side. It was where the men had anchored. Swimming was not difficult, despite a slight current."

"If you thought you might encounter a big Great White prowling around down there, why'd you go in?" asked Poplar shrewdly.

The chief shrugged. "My family have been chiefs and divers for enough generations for my genealogy to bore you, Doctor. I respect Niuhi and know him. I was careful. Anyhow, someone had to do it. I did not swim too long or too deep. I had only mask and fins

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and did not use the weights. I also have respect for age, including my own.

"The small lunch I had brought with me did not take long to eat. The afternoon was long, the sun pleasant. I dove again.

"I had given up and was swimming back to the boat when I noticed a dark spot in the water to my left. It was keeping pace with me. The water was clear, and so it must have been far away to be so blurred. It paced me all the way back to the boat. Despite the distance I knew it was Him."

"Mightn't it have been . .. ?" Poplar didn't finish the question. Ha'apu was shaking his head.

"My eyes, at least, are still young. It was Him. I could not be absolutely certain He was watching me. I doubt it. Faster or slower I did not swim. A sudden change of stroke might have caught His attention. But I was glad when I was in the bottom of my boat, breathing free of the sea.

"I waited and watched for a long time, not daring to leave the small shelter of the reef. Once, far away, I think I saw a fin break the surface. If it was a fin, it was taller than a tall man, Doctor. But it might not have been. It was far away and the sun was dropping.

"I have only been truly afraid, and I say this honestly, a few times in my life. To be alone on the sea with Him was terrible enough. To have been caught there in the dark would have frozen the blood of a god. Then I knew the legend was true."

"What legend?" asked Poplar.

"Whoever sees Him is forever changed, Doctor. His soul is different, and a little bit of it is stolen away by Him. The rest is altered forever."

"In what way?" Poplar inquired. Better to humor the old man. He was interested in the damn tooth, not local superstition.

"It depends so much on the man," the Matai mused. "For myself, the sea will never again be the open friend of my youth. I ride upon it now and look into its

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depths with hesitation, for any day, any hour, He maybe come for me.

"My people were surprised to see me. They had not expected me to return."

Poplar considered silently. "That's quite a story you want me to swallow. In fact, it's pretty unbelievable."

"A strange thing for you to say, Sea-Doctor," smiled Ha'apu. "But I do not blame you. Come back with me. Bring a good boat and your diving tools. I will show you what remains of our young men's paopao. And then I will take you to the spot where I saw Him, if you dare. He may have returned to the deeps. Surely this is a rare thing, or He would have been seen before. There must be a purpose for it."

B.S., M.S., Ph.D., he thought hard for a moment. The legend stuff was all bushwah, of course. But the tooth ... he tried to visualize its owner, and a little shiver went down his spine. This business about soul-changing . . . ridiculous! . . . he, frightened of another fish?

"This tooth could be very, very old, you know. They've been found before, like new. Although," he swallowed and cursed himself for it, "not quite of this size. According to the best estimates these creatures became extinct only very recently."

"Creatures? There is only one of him," said Ha'apu firmly.

"You could fake the ruined outrigger," persisted Poplar.

"To what end?"

"I don't know!" He was irritated at his irrational terror. Goddammit, man, it probably doesn't exist! And if it, by some incredible chance, did, it was only another fish.

"Maybe you want to attract those tourists you profess to dislike. Or want to try and wangle some free diving equipment. Or simply want to draw some attention to yourself. Who knows? But I can't take that chance." He took another look at the tooth. "You

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know I can't, damn you. Where are you staying while you're on Tutuila?"

"With friends."

"Okay, we have a couple of cruisers here at the station. They're not in use just now. Down at the very end of Pier Three. The one we'll use is called the Vatia. You can't mistake it. The other, the Aku-Aku, is longer and has a flying bridge. Meet me at, oh, ten tomorrow morning, on the pier. If you get there ahead of me, tie your boat to the stern." He stopped turning the tooth over and over, feigned unconcern. Inside, he was quivering with tension.

"May I keep this?" He knew what he was asking. Did the chief?

"There is another still set in the paopao. Yes, you may have this one. For your children, to remind them of when you were young."

"I have no children. I'm not married, Ha'apu."

"That is sad. The other tooth must remain with us. It will not. . ." he said, in reply to the imposed question, '*... ever be for sale."

Poplar was seeing his name blazoned across the cover and title page of every scientific journal in the world. Below the name, a picture of himself holding the largest tooth of Carcharodon megalodon ever found. He might even manage to include Ha'apu in the picture.

He leaned over the desk, began shuffling papers.

"Good-bye till tomorrow, then, Matai Ha'apu."

"Tofa, Sea-Doctor Poplar." The chief gathered up his wrappings and left quietly.

He began going over the supplies they'd need in addition to what was standard stock on board the Vatai. Plan on being gone at least a week, maybe two. Get him out of the office, at least.

Elaine walked in, strolled over to the desk and leaned across it. That finished any attempt at paperwork. When she noticed the tooth in front of him, she almost swallowed her gum.

'My God, what's that?'

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"You're a master's candidate in marine bio. You tell me." He handed it to her.

She examined it closely, and those pixie eyes got wider and wider.

"Some gag. It looks like a Great White's tooth. But that's absurd."

"So was the coelacanth when it turned up in 1938," he replied evenly.

"But it can't be Carcharodon!" she protested. "It's three times too big!"

"For Carcfarodon carcharias, yes. Not for Carcharodon megalodon." He turned and dug into,the loosely stacked books that inhabited the space between desk chair and wall. In a teacher-student situation, he was perfectly comfortable with her.

"You mean the Great White's ancestor? Well, maybe." She took another look at the unreal weapon in her hand. "I found one in Georgia about half this size. And there was a six-incher turned up just a few years ago. Extrapolating from what we know about the modern Great White, carcharias, that would mean this tooth came out of a shark ninety fee—"

"Ah-ah," he warned.

"Oh, all right. About, urn, thirty meters long." She didn't smile. "Kind of hard to imagine."

"So are sharks attacking boats. But there are dozens of verified incidents of sharks, often Great Whites, hitting small craft. Happens off stateside waters as well as in the tropics. The White Death. The basis for a real Moby Dick, only ten times worse. Not to mention a few thousand years of sea-serpent stories."

"You think one of these might have survived into recent times?"

Poplar was thumbing through a thick tome. "That's what that chief thinks, only to him it's a god and not a shark. The Great White prefers ocean-going- mammals to fish. Probably this oversized ancestor of his fed on the earlier, slower-moving whales. First the whales grew more streamlined, and then man began picking off the slower ones. The sea couldn't have supported

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too many of these monsters anyway. A megalodon would have a killer whale for breakfast."

"A man-eater as big as a blue whale." She shook her lovely head. "A diver's nightmare."

"The Matai who brought this one in says he knows where there's another, and maybe more."

"Far out. You think I might get my thesis out of this?"

"Well," he smiled, "the chief did say that according to legend anyone who sees Him is forever changed. All you've got to do is spot Him."

"Very funny."

"We leave first thing tomorrow morning, on the Vatai. Tenish. Now go and pack." But she was already out the door.

She was not so happy for the reasons Poplar thought

Tourists waved from the hotel balcony. It had been built at the point where the open sea met Pago Pago's magnificent harbor. Elaine slid her lava-lava down a little lower on one shoulder and waved back coquet-tishly. Poplar looked up from the wheel disapprovingly.

"Just because naked native maidens went out of fashion forty years ago is no reason for you to feel any obligation to revive the tradition for the benefit of overweight used-car salesmen from Des Moines."

"Oh, foo! For what they charge the poor slobs to stay in that concrete doghouse they're entitled to a little wish-fulfillment."

"Courtesy of downtown Brooklyn, hmm," he grinned in spite of himself. He swung the wheel hard over and they headed south-southwest. The powerful twin diesels purred evenly below deck.

Wreathed in gold-gray clouds, Mt. Rainmaker, all 530 meters of it, watched them from astern long after Tutuila itself had vanished into the sea.

The trip was uneventful, except that Elaine insisted on sleeping stark naked. She also had what Popfar felt was a childish habit of kicking her sheets down to her feet. He considered going over and replacing them,

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but hesitated. He might wake her and that would be awkward.

Ha'apu was clearly pleased at the situation, and there wasn't anything Poplar could do about it. Well, if she wanted to expose herself, he'd simply ignore her. Clearly she was looking for attention, and he didn't intend to give it to her.

So until he fell asleep, he spent a lot of time staring at the sterile cabin wall that separated him from the sea.

And the other wall remained equally unbroken.

Like most small, low-lying Pacific islands, Tafahi was nonexistent one moment and a destination the next, popping out of the blue ocean like a cork. The white sand beach sparkled in evening sun, devoid of the usual ornaments of civilization . . . beer cans, dogeared sandals, plastic wrappers, empty candy papers, beer cans.

There was a broad, clear entrance to the small lagoon. Poplar had no trouble bringing the Vatai inside. Ha'apu climbed into his paopao, its little sail tightly furled, and paddied ashore. Poplar and Elaine followed in the Vatai'?, powerful little runabout.

"We're not here just to look for teeth, Elaine," he said abruptly. She stared at him expectantly.

"Ha'apu really thinks—I know it sounds absurd— that this monster is still swimming around somewhere to the east of here. Supposedly it's taken two fishermen along with the front half of their boat. Probably a cleverly faked fraud the villagers have made up, for what purpose I don't know yet. Commercial, probably."

"I see," she replied easily. "Be careful you don't run over any of the local craft when we hit the beach."

For all the surprise she'd shown you might have thought they were here for an evening feast and a casual swim in the little lagoon.

They were on the best of terms with the islanders right from the start. Poplar had rammed the runabout into a beached paopao, spilling them both into the shal-

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low water. Being men of the sea, the villagers thus felt the same sort of sympathy for Poplar that they'd have given any idiot.

When Ha'apu had finally managed to separate himself from his immediate family and Poplar and Elaine had dried out a little, the Matai beckoned them inland.

"The remains of the dugout are in front of my fale, Doctor."

Tafahi was far from being a major island, but it was large enough to support a fair population. A televiskm-FM antenna poked its scarecrow shape above the tallest coconut palm. It jutted from an extra-large fale that served as combination school, church, and town hall.

If the damage to the outrigger had been faked, it was the product of experts. Poplar knelt, ran his hands over the torn edges of the opened hull. Great triangular gashes, each larger than his fist, showed clearly around the shredded edges. Apparently it had been hit —or the hit had been faked to indicate an attack from an angle slightly to port.

"The first tooth was in here . . ." Ha'apu knelt beside Poplar to indicate a narrowing hole in the bottom of the craft, ". . . and the other, here." He pointed, and Poplar saw the other tooth, as large as the one back in his office, still embedded in the side of the outrigger.

"He lost them, as Niuhi and his cousins often do when they attack hard objects," commented Ha'apu in a helpful tone.

"Yeah," agreed Poplar, absorbed in his examination. "Always carries plenty in reserve, though. I wouldn't think his ancestor would be any exception." He squinted up at the sinking sun. It had begun the spectacular light-show sunset that was an every-evening occurrence in the South Seas.

"It's getting late. No point in hurrying to reach that reef tonight. About two hours to get there, you said?"

Ha'apu nodded. "In your boat, yes."

Poplar was a bit surprised. Now was the time the

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Matai should have begun his excuses, his hedging. He stood, brushed sand from his pants. "Then if you can put us up, I'd just as soon spend the night here. We've been doing enough shipboard sleeping and well be doing more."

"I agree!" said Elaine, rather more loudly than was necessary.

The Matai nodded. "Of course there will be a fale for you."

"With two mats," Poplar added.

"Why should it be otherwise, Dr. Poplar?" agreed Ha'apu. If the old chief was being sarcastic, he covered it well. But as he walked away, muttering in Samoan, he was shaking his head slowly.

It wasn't the strange surroundings, nor the hard floor beneath the mat of woven tapa cloth that made Poplar's sleep uneasy. He'd enjoyed some of the deepest sleeps of his life in similar situations. And when he was awakened about midnight by a sudden bumping, he drew a startled breath. His dreams had been full of dark arrow-shapes with mouths like black pits. But it was only Elaine. She'd rolled over in her sleep and was resting against his shoulder, breathing softly. Courteously, he didn't push her away, but it made it harder for him to get back to sleep, which displeased him.

When he awoke the next morning he was covered with sweat.

"This may not be the exact spot, but it is very close," breathed Ha'apu. "I know by the trees."

Since the single minuscule "island" harbored barely six or seven small palms, with but two of decent size, Poplar felt confident the old chief had found the spot he wanted.

They'd anchored in the lee of the atoll. It was small enough so that you could see the surf booming against the coral on the far side.

Poplar kept an eye on Ha'apu while he helped Elaine into her scuba gear. Still no sign of an attempt to keep

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him from diving. He thought the hoax was beginning to go a little far.

The tanks they'd brought were the latest models. They'd have an hour on the bottom with plenty of safe time. Elaine checked her regulator, he checked his. They each took up a shark stick, but Poplar gave his to Elaine. He wanted both hands for his camera, and she could handle anything likely to bother them.

There was a diver's platform set just below the wa-terline at the stern of the Vatai. Elaine jumped in with a playful splash. He followed more slowly, handling the expensive camera with care.

Both wore only the upper half of a heat-retaining wetsuit. The ocean flowing around his bare legs told him it was a good thing he had. It wasn't cold, but cooler water flowing from the depths of the oceanic trench obviously found its way up here. The thermo-cline would rise nearer the surface. That would permit deep-sea dwellers to rise closer to the top. Still, it was comfortable and refreshing after the trip on the boat

Ha'apu watched them descend, and worried.

The water inside the lagoon would be clear as quartz. Even out here, visibility was excellent in all directions.

The underwater world held as much fascination for him now as it had on his first dive, years ago. Much of the mystery was gone, but the beauty of his refuge was ever-present.

For the first few minutes, as they swam parallel to the reef, he couldn't stop himself from turning to look anxiously in all directions. He gave up that nonsense after five minutes. Nothing more impressive than a fair-sized grouper had trundled clumsily across their path. His shark prod now dangled lazily from his belt.

They stopped often for pictures. Even if this were only a pleasure jaunt, it would be nice to bring back something to justify the expenditure and time.

They returned to the Vatai ten minutes early. Poplar was feeling hungry and a little discouraged. The tiny reef had been exceptional in its mediocrity. He'd

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seen hundreds of identical spots during his trips throughout the Pacific and the Caribbean. And he didn't feel like staying another five or six days.

In sum, he was being took. If Ha'apu's plan was to use the two teeth to get a free estimate of the fishing grounds (probably been in the village for years, he thought), it was working admirably. Poplar was definitely being used.

"Did you see anything?" asked Ha'apu politely as he helped Elaine doff her tanks.

"I got a couple of shots of a pretty good-sized Moray. Otherwise, Ha'apu, there's more sea life to be found outside the harbor at Pago Pago or Apia."

"He has frightened them all away," commented the chief knowingly. "Perhaps you will have better luck on your next dive."

"Sure," replied Poplar drily, helping himself to a glass of tea.

By the third day, the attractions of the un-unusual reef had long since paled for Poplar. Even the attraction of swimming through the brilliantly lit water was beginning to feel like work again. Elaine seemed to thrive on it, but, then, there was still something in every crevice to delight her. But he'd seen enough angel fish, brain coral, giant mollusks, trumpet fish, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, to last him another year. And nothing he couldn't see with much less trouble right in the station's backyard.

In fact, except for a peaceful encounter with a poisonous stonefish, the last three days had been about as exciting as a dive in one of Pago Pago's hotel pools.

"Possibly He willl come this afternoon," said Ha'apu.

"I know, I know," Poplar replied irritably. It was just about time to tell the old chief off, find out what he wanted, and return home.

In the many-times-three dives, they'd sighted exactly three sharks. Two small blues and one pelagic white-tip, a seven-footer that had turned and run for

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the open sea even before Poplar could set his camera for a decent shot. To him they were just three more fish.

They'd go home tomorrow. True, he'd sort of promised the Matai a week. But the longer he stayed away from the office, the more work would be piled up for his return. Although he'd left the pressures of extreme paperwork back in the States and settled into the more agreeable Samoan mode, old habits died hard. As director, he still had certain responsibilities.

He was drifting along just above the sea bottom about hah* a mile from the boat. His camera had lined on a gorgeous black and yellow sea worm, flowerlike body fully extended. It was the first really unusual thing he'd seen since they'd arrived. A perfect picture ... his light meter shrank by half.

Damn and hell, that was the last straw! Poplar whirled angrily, expecting to see a playful Elaine floating just above and behind him. He'd warned her at least half a dozen times to stay out of the light when he was taking pictures. She'd seemed to think it was fun.

But something else had swallowed the sun.

For a second Poplar, training, degrees, and experience notwithstanding, stopped thinking. He went back to his childhood. When he'd lain in bed at night, the covers up around his chin, staring at where his clothes lay draped over the back of his chair. You wouldn't know the kind of terrifying shapes clothes and chair and night can combine to make in a child's mind. Fear squeezed his spine and his heart pumped madly.

Above him, Carcharodon megalodon glided majestically through the clear water, its seemingly unending tail beating hypnotically from side to side, the great pectoral fins cutting the current like hydrofoils.

He turned, saw Elaine drifting alongside. He tugged at her arm. She ignored it. He tugged harder. As though in a dream, she turned to face him. He pointed in the direction of the boat. She nodded, sluggishly following him, half swimming, half towed.

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A line from Cousteau ran through his mind, and he tried desperately to swim faster.

"Sharks can instinctively sense when a fish or animal is in trouble."

She shook free from him, nodded at his concerned gaze, and began swimming steadily on her own.

For a while the monster seemed not to notice them. It swam slightly ahead, moving effortlessly. A single gigantic stretch of cartilage, tooth, sinew, and muscle. Poplar stared at it and knew that what Ha'apu had said was true. This was more than a fish, more than a shark. You could feel it in yourself and in the water.

Lazily, it banked like a great bird and came at them.

He turned frantically, gestured to Elaine. The shark was between them and the boat. Trying to outswim it would be like trying to outrun lightning. He'd spotted a long crack in the battlements of the reef. Usually such breaks harbored morays, powerful clams, and poisoners like the stonefish. Right now they seemed like the best of friends, harmless as puppies.

There was no subtlety, no attempt to deceive, in their retreat. They swam like hell.

Maybe He was disinterested in such small prey. Whatever the reason, His pursuit remained leisurely. They attained the safety of the rift. Wedged back in the deep, wide crevice, they still had room to swim freely.

-' He came straight at them. Poplar had to fight down the urge to scrape frantically at the coral behind him. For the moment, he was afraid the monster would try to bite them out, coral and all. It looked big enough to take half the atoll in one gulp.

At the last moment, He swerved to His right. There was a brief glimpse of a half-open mouth, a cavern big enough to swallow a truck. It was lined with multiple rows of 18-centimeter-long teeth. A wide black eye passed, pure malignancy floating in a pool of red-hot venom. Then there was a long, endless wall of iron-gray flesh rough as sandpaper—darker than the

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skin of a Great White, some part of him noted—and it was past.

He floated. Elaine prodded him and he could see the terror behind her mask. He wondered if he looked as bad. The great bulk had circled and was beginning a slow patrol of the reef. Not that it was smart enough to consider bottling them up. Clearly it liked the area.

Anyhow, they were stuck.

If the rift had been a chimney, open all the way to the surface, they could have swum upward. Despite the battering of the light surf, they'd have been safer on the reef's jagged top than in the water with Him. But it was closed overhead. To reach the surface, they would have to leave their small fortress.

Minutes passed. They looked at each other without seeing. Each was wholly absorbed in personal thoughts. They'd encountered a terror whose psychological effect was even more overwhelming than its reality. It did not belong to the world of men, this perfect, unmatched killing machine. How puny man seemed, how feeble his invented efforts at destruction.

How frightened he was.

He looked down at his watch. At the rate they were using air, in a few minutes they'd be down to their emergency supply. Elaine prodded, moved her hands in diver's argot. He remained frozen. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. But there was no way he could tell her in sign language of this new problem.

Woodruth "Woody" Poplar was a coward. A physical and moral coward. He knew it, buried it beneath work and joking.

Elaine started tugging at her own tanks. It unfroze him. He grabbed her arms, held them at her side until she finally nodded slowly, calmed.

It took every ounce of courage he possessed to look outside that cranny. He blinked, drifted out further. He had disappeared. Poplar glanced in all directions. Nothing.

He beckoned to Elaine. Carefully he made his intentions clear. Megalodon, being as stupid as any

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modern shark, had doubtlessly drifted off in search of prey that behaved like such and didn't melt into hard, unappetizing coral.

Poplar armed his shark stick ... a terribly futile-seeming gesture. Elaine did likewise. He had to try twice with his shaking hands before he got the shell armed. The monster was a good 30 meters long and must weigh more tons than Poplar cared to think about. The shark stick might tickle Him. But it was comforting to hold in the crook of one arm.

He pushed away first and they headed for the Vatai. Moving fast, they hugged the reef as tightly as they could. He let her get a little ahead, as arranged. That way they'd make less of a blur against the reef. The smaller shapes would be harder for the shark's eyesight to detect against the dark coral.

As they rose gradually toward the surface, leaving the protection of the reef wall, he tried to watch five directions at once. Inside he was oddly calm. What an animal! Nearly a hundred feet of sheer grace and power.

He missed a stroke. Hell, he'd forgotten to take a single picture! Not one lousy shot! AH he had by way of proof was the corroborative statement of Elaine— worth nothing in such august publications as the Journal of Marine Biology—and a couple of teeth that they'd treat as he first had. He would have cried, but it would have ruined his vision.

The curved bottom of the Vatai became visible just ahead and above, its anchor cable hardly moving in the calm sea. The platform occasionally broke the surface. He looked regretfully down at his camera.

An unmistakable shape, a slate-gray torpedo, was coming up fast behind them. This time it wasn't a lazy chase. The attack was as sharply defined as death. Sunlight flashed on teeth that could snap through steel plate.

They swam for their lives. Panic filled him, terror made jelly of his muscles. Only adrenalin pushed him through the clean glass water.

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They weren't going to make it. He wasn't a fish. He was the devil himself, Beelzebub, all the things that go bump in the night, the terrors of childhood and of little-boy darkness.

Elaine was falling behind. He slowed.

Goddammit, it was only a fish.

He turned and waited. Elaine paused only to give him a stricken look in passing and then was gone. Perfectly calm, he was. Relaxed and peaceful in the cool water. Inside, his one major concern was that no one would be able to record this for the Journal. Pity. Then there was no sea bottom, no reef, no sunlight. Only He and me, thought Poplar,

He kicked with every bit of energy in his legs, exploding to his right. He had a brief glimpse of an obscene eye as big as a saucer, a black gullet as deep as a well. It touched him. Consciousness departed as he jabbed with the shark stick.

He doubted, along with the best Biblical referents, that the sky in heaven was blue. But he wasn't going to argue. There was a constriction, a tightness in his throat, that wasn't caused by fear. Elaine was hugging him and crying. It felt like he'd swallowed a cork.

"For Christ's sake let me get some air!" he finally managed to croak. She backed off.

"Damn you, damn you. You scared the hell out of me, you insensitive, you . . . !" She sniffled. Her hair was wet and stringy and she was totally beautiful. "I ran away and left you." The crying broke out again in full force, and she fell onto his chest, sobbing.

"I'm sorry, I apologize for my inconsiderateness. Tell you what, I'll marry you. Will that make up for it?" He rolled over, felt the softness of the mat they'd slipped under him. Someone had removed bis tanks and mask.

She pulled away, stared at him in stunned silence. For some reason, this started her crying all over again. They'd removed his fins, too. He wiggled his toes.

Only one set moved.

He sat up slowly and looked down at himself. His

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right foot ended at the ankle in a swath of bandages and dried blood. His voice was so even it shocked him.

"What happened?" he asked the old Matai, who had been watching him carefully. He was aware the question lacked brilliance, but at the moment he didn't feel very witty.

"He did not take you, Sea-Doctor Poplar. Perhaps so close to the surface, the sun blinded it at the last moment. Perhaps He lost you against the bottom of the boat."

"You don't believe any of that," said Poplar accusingly. He searched for pain but there wasn't any. Someone had made use of the Vatat1^ medical kit.

"No, Dr. Poplar, not really. Tangaroa knows why."

Poplar thought of something, started laughing. Elaine looked at him in alarm, but he quickly reassured her.

"No. I'm still sane, I think, 'Laine. It just occurred to me that I can't go stalking around the office like Ahab himself, with only a lousy foot taken. What a cruddy break."

"Don't joke about it," she blubbered, then managed a weak smile. "It will ruin your rhythm at the wedding."

He laughed, too, then slammed a fist against the deck. "We're going back to Tutuila. I'm going to get a ship from the Navy base, somehow, and harpoons. We'll come back here and ..."

"Poplar," began Ha'apu quietly, "no one will believe you. Your Navy people will laugh at you and make jokes."

"Well, then I'll get the funds to hire a bigger ship, someway. One big enough to haul that thing back on. My God, one day I'll see it stuffed and mounted in the Smithsonian!"

"They'll have to build a special wing," Elaine grinned tightly.

"Yeah. And don't you go putting out any fishing

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lines on the way back, you hear? I don't want to lose you on the trip in."

"How about after we get back?" she replied, staring at him.

He looked at her evenly. "Not then, either. Not ever. Hey, you know something? I'm famished."

"You've been unconscious for five hours," she told him. "I'll fix you something." She rose, moved below decks.

"And now you are as I, Doctor, for you have gazed upon Him. He has changed you, and you are no longer yourself as before, and He has taken a piece of your soul."

"Listen, Ha'apu, I don't want to offend you by attacking your religion, but that was just a fish, that's all. A monstrous big fish, but no more. I'm the same sea-doctor, and you're the same Matai, and we're just lucky all I lost was a few toes and such. Understand?"

"Of course, Dr. Poplar." Ha'apu turned, went up to the bridge.

Changed indeed! He crawled over to the low railing near the stern, looked down into the waters. Small fish swam down there, magnified and distorted by the sea. He shivered just a little.

He would have married Elaine anyway, of course. And if she'd been threatened by anything, he'd have stepped in to defend her, wouldn't he? Ha'apu fired the engines and the Vatai started to move.

Well, wouldn't he?

Maybe He knew.

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Polonaise

This was written for a volume of alternate-history stories, the "What if the South had won the Civil War?" type. I went back a bit further than that, to a period of European history little studied in this country. It all came out of my liking for a writer named Henryk Sienkewicz —and I don't mean his Quo Vadis? I'm talking about his other books, the good stuff.

Henryk who? Among other things, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905. And his obscurity is one reason I chose the alternate history I did. Another is the fact that it could have happened.

Then we wouldn't have been stuck with all these American jokes.

"It's a very delicate situation, Michael, very delicate. We cannot afford an incident now, yet if we treat this too seriously it will invite unwanted attention. It all happened so fast. Quite ridiculous, when you view it from a distance."

Framed against the imposing panorama of sun-

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steamed fog as seen through the massive two-story window, the old man looked terribly tiny and fragile. Now and then a gull or two would sail past the twentieth-floor overlook and gift the men with a peek of sorrowful curiosity.

Beyond, solidifying now as the morning mists burned off the Baltic coast, was the long low spit of land known as the Hel Peninsula. Running parallel to the nothern shore of the Imperial Republic, it formed a surprisingly resistant barrier to the sea.

The flotilla of sightseeing boats was still growing. Like hovering bees they huddled together in anchored expectancy of the launch. Tall dark shapes were taking form off their bows, way down the peninsula. Vertical piers cradling a very different kind of vessel.

Michael Yan surveyed the scene visible on either side of the administrator and shook his head.

The Poles were a gentle people. If any of the boosters misfired, there would be a chance of serious injury to the growing mob of spectators, and considerable national hand-wringing would ensue. It was typical of the King that he'd agonized for days over whether or not to permit outsiders a good view of the launch. And equally typical that he'd given in.

"Can you at least tell me who he is?"

Administrator Longin ran a hand over his white crewcut, fingered the scar over his broken nose where he'd slammed into the computer console on the fourth moon-flight, and turned to face Michael.

"Not he, she. She planned it all very carefully." He nodded appreciatively. "She went straight to the American Embassy and then got in touch with us. Basically, she threatened to release the taped information she stole unless we agree to call off the shot and admit on-site inspectors to all subsequent multiple launchings."

"That's all? Look, why not let her go ahead and blab to the press? What harm can it do? What can she know? So we plan to launch six ships simultane-

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ously to celebrate the King's birthday. So what?" Longin was shaking his head dolefully.

"It's not as simple as that, Michael. The release of the tapes we could absorb. The problem is that she's convinced we've an ulterior motive concealed in the launch. She should know if we do." Michael's smile disappeared.

"Why is that?"

"She works .. . worked ... in your department."

"My . . . ?" He stopped, then continued guardedly, "What does she think is this 'ulterior reason' behind the shot?"

Longin sat down behind his desk. "She is quite convinced from her inside knowledge of material being loaded on board some of the ships, that we are planning to establish a permanent military base on Mars and claim the whole planet for the Republic."

Michael's grim smile turned to a look of honest bafflement. "That's the most nonsensical thing I ever heard. Doesn't she know the Imperial Edicts forbid acquisition of territory except by vote of independent peoples? You say she works in my department. I can't imagine what might motivate any of my people to jeopardize the King's birthday."

"Not citizens, no. But you have a number of exchange students working for you, do you not?"

"As part of our policy of sharing space science, yes."

"Any Americans?"

"The Americans, the Americans!" Michael threw up his hands. "That's all you hear about, the American threat! Just because their newspaper columnists—"

"Do you know those who have access to restricted files?" pressed Longin softly.

"Oh, John Huxley, Marshall McGregor, and Dana Canning . . ." He paused, considered a moment. "You said 'she'? No, that's crazy, Henryk."

"Not as crazy as this situation we suddenly find ourselves in. I just finished talking to the American ambassador. Her premise is absolutely mad, as we

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know, but she's thrown enough real facts at him to get him unsettled. And we cannot do with prying this close to lift-off."

"No, of course not." Michael considered. "You don't really think the Americans would actually try and stop the launch?" Longin leaned back in his chair and gave an expressive shrug.

"Who knows?" His face was sad. "Americans are capable of anything—all that misdirected drive. They're even crazier than the French."

"You'd think we'd never helped them win then- independence from England," Michael added ruefully.

Longin nodded. "They never forgave us for that. Charity's never appreciated as much as it's resented. They're suspicious of us because they don't understand us."

"You'd think they'd worry more about the Russian Federalists."

"They might," Longin agreed, "if the Russians ever get strong enough. But we worry them more. According to their philosophy, our government should have collapsed a hundred years ago." He sighed.

"Their ambassador pretends to understand, but of course he doesn't. I tried to explain to him. 'You elect a President/ I said, 'and we elect a King.' And he counters, 'But how can you give absolute power to a new person every five years?' I asked him the same question and of course he gave me that cow-eyed pitying look they all do whenever the subject comes up. Insists the American President doesn't have anywhere near the same kind of power. So I list historical examples for him and he gets all huffy and self-righteous.

"But he can cause real trouble. So that's why you've got to go over there and convince that girl she's got her tape systems crossed. So much planning has gone into this birthday present for the King—too much for the ravings of some neurotic adolescent to ruin it. We could take less orthodox steps to quiet her, but—well, you know that's just not our style. If we did that we'd be exactly the kind of folk she seems to think we are."

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Yan spread his hands. "Mars colonization! Honestly! But why me, sir? Why not someone from the Defense Ministry?"

"You know her, Michael. As a friend. None of her tirades included you. We know, we taped them. Either she doesn't believe you're involved, which is unlikely, or else she has a desire not to implicate you, which is better."

"Look, sir . . ." Michael squirmed uncomfortably.

*Tm an engineer. I have a fiancee, and I'm just not going to try and seduce some misguided teenager."

"We're not asking you to be nearly so melodramatic about this, Michael. Of course," the administrator murmured, "if you should happen to find the situation developing along apolitical lines, it wouldn't be..."

"All right, all right! I'll talk to her. For the project, mind. And for the King, of course."

"Naturally."

"How am I supposed to convince her the launch has nothing to do with Mars? I can't show her secret files."

"No, you can't. You must convince her that the Imperial Republic of Poland has embarked on the exploration of space for the good of all mankind and nothing more, and that we have no intention of deviating from that principle with this launch. Our very strength renders this unnecessary. Just show her the truth, Michael

—in a circumspect fashion, of course.

"Consider yourself fortunate. You have only a slightly hysterical young lady to convince, while I am forced to contend with high-pressure Hartford and his horde of foggy-headed foggy bottoms. I'd trade with you anytime."

Michael sighed. "Where do I meet her, and when?" "We'll set up something on the grounds of the American Embassy." Longin's expression took on overtones of disgust. "She's convinced if she leaves it she'll be cut down in the streets. Does she think Warsaw is Chicago?"

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As arranged, she was waiting for him by the Japanese pool in the Embassy garden. The bull-necked Marine at the gate eyed him hostilely, but passed him through. As requested, there was no one with her.

No doubt she was bugged from head to foot, while he was probably walking under the gaze of half a dozen sharpshooters. His neck itched. This wasn't his line at all.

Michael was less concerned with the bugs, since he packed enough antibugging equipment inside his jacket to electronically fumigate a skyscraper. Hopefully their would-be listeners wouldn't interfere, trusting in Dana to report to them later.

She was small, blonde, pretty, quiet: the last woman in the world he would have selected as a self-appointed martyr.

"Hello Dana," he said gently,

"Mr. Yan?" Not Michael, as in the office, but mister.

There was defiance in her voice, in her eyes, in her stance. He didn't know this girl at all. Longin had been wrong.

She was daring him. All right. Her Polish was better than his English, despite her odd accent. She was from Georgia. He remembered because he was always confusing it with Russian Georgia.

He gestured at the bridge leading over the pond and they started off toward it. The ripples on the surface were reflected in the surrounding glass walls of the Embassy buildings. How the Americans loved their glass!

"Dana, I love you." She stumbled and her expression changed drastically. At least he'd put her off her guard.

"You've got a funny sense of humor, Mr. Yan."

"Michael, please. I'm not old enough to be called 'mister.'"

"Michael, if you will. I don't believe—No, wait a minute." She smiled sardonically. "Of course you love

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me. You also love Maricella, Jean, Don-anna and all the other girls in the office. You love everybody."

"Yes, that's right. And everyone thinks we Poles are crazy because we love everybody. It causes us jo much trouble."

"You didn't love the Germans," she reminded him. He shrugged.

"What were we supposed to do? Nobody else seemed ready to stand up to the maniac. Fortunately, the Germans declared war on us first. You didn't have to fight anybody. Why complain? We hated it. War isn't our style."

She looked at him challengingry, but with a little less belligerence, he thought. "You make such a big deal out of it. He was just another petty despot."

Just another petty despot! Michael shuddered. He'd read the madman's book. It was fortunate King Yampolsky XIX had recognized the danger and mobilized the armed forces early. The French, English, Americans, and others showed no inclination to fight, despite the madman's avowed intentions.

Six long months of war. But the madman had been killed and a form of democratic monarchism patterned on the Republic had been established in Germany, with that popular war hero—what was his name?—oh yes, Goering, elected first King. Germany had been well-behaved ever since.

It was the establishment of the Polish form of government hi Germany that really irked the Americans, though. But the Germans had had all examples to choose from and had chosen the best.

"Dana, this tantrum of yours is understandable, I suppose. An outsider could read all sorts of things into those loading specifications. But it's not true, about Mars."

"Is."

Spoiled child. Typical adolescent American messiah complex. He stared hard at her and tried to sound solemn.

"I swear on my honor, Dana, that tomorrow's launch

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has nothing whatsoever to do with claiming any planet or moon or setting up any base thereon. We haven't done it on Luna . . . why should we do it on Mars? I'm just an engineer, Dana, I'm not involved with anything like your CIA.

"Why can't you believe me when I swear that we're only interested in preserving the peace of mankind— what peace there is in a world where the Japanese and Brazilians and the Semitic Union all have thermonuclear capability?

"Peace and freedom—don't you see? Poland's had the stablest government in the world for over three hundred years now. Why should we want to jeopardize that by antagonizing your country, or the Russians?"

"It's wrong to slave under a dictator!" she sputtered. "Monarchies are outmoded, archaic, despotic forms of government. No other major power has a king or queen."

"And no other major power is quite as major as the republic, for that very reason. What's wrong with 'slaving' under the highest standard of living in the world? So we have a true king, with absolute power. He serves only for five years. And then we elect a new king, or queen, from the nobles and princes. It works. That's the only rationale I can give you."

"It'll collapse any day now," she insisted, "and then maybe you'll get a real democracy."

"Good God, no! Anything but that, Dana. A 'real democracy,' like yours? Where the legislature is paralyzed, the executive corrupt, the courts logjammed? We've become what we have precisely because we've avoided all that.

"Just as an example, to change the republic's television networks to 3-D hologram, the king signed a proclamation. You're still arguing over who gets what rights, years later. And we've not called on the final check—the Society of Assassins—for 230 years."

She didn't understand. They never would, he thought sadly. An elected monarchy was impossible

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and therefore could not exist. This did not trouble the Poles.

"Look, don't ruin this launching, Dana. I don't blame you for misinterpreting the data you found. You don't really know what all that information means, do you?"

She looked at the Koi, playing near her feet. "Well, not entirely, but there are orders for material that. . ."

"Suppose," he sighed, "I agree to take a lie-detector test? Voluntarily, here, on one of your own Embassy's machines? Would that satisfy you?" Longin wouldn't like that, but at this point Michael didn't see what else he could do. If it didn't work, Longin would have only himself to blame.

He'd told him he was only an engineer.

She looked uncertain. "You'd do that?"

"Right now, if you want."

"Well, yes, I guess that would do it." She looked confused. "That fueling data ... I was so sure."

"Anyone would be, I guess." He put an arm around her shoulders. "Let's go take that test."

The multiple launch was a great success. The King was pleased, Longin was pleased, everyone connected with Project Polonaise was pleased.

It was two weeks later that his intercom buzzed and a harried secretary reported that there was a hysterical woman in the lobby, screaming Michael's name hi juxtaposition with unpleasant words.

"She had a gun with her, too, sir, but it was detected at the gate. The security people have her."

"What does she look like?" He already knew, but the secretary confirmed it.

"The police want to know if you want to speak with her, sir, before she's removed."

"I suppose I should. You might relay appropriate information to the proper offices to see that they initiate deportation proceedings. She doesn't belong here. She's ... confused. But yes, I will see her."

There was a curious crowd gathered around the se-

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curity cubby at the entrance to the center. Michael gestured irritably at them.

"There are a hundred men and women in orbit wholly dependent on us here at the Center. Get back to work, now." The crowd scattered back to consoles and desks.

Two large gentlemen were in the room, Dana Canning held firmly between them. Her hair was disheveled, her look wild. All traces of the elfin innocence he remembered so fondly were gone.

"You! You lied to me, damn you!"

"I did not lie to you, Dana."

"You Hed to me about the launch!"

"And the detector? Did I lie to it, too?"

"You—you evaded the question!" She tried to kick him and he stepped carefully out of range. The guards tightened their grip on her.

"You never asked it. If you had, I couldn't have answered. I decided to take a calculated risk."

She glanced at him bitterly. "An orbiting station— a missile platform big enough to cover every nuclear station and launch site in the world!"

"Its purpose is primarily commercial and scientific in nature, Dana," he said quietly, "but it is true that the station does possess some military capability."

She laughed. There was no humor in it. " 'Some military capability'! According to the reports on the tube, you've slipped enough warheads up there to destroy any country seconds before a preemptive attack could be launched."

"Ah, and you've hit on it," he confessed. "To a Pole, even the idea of a 'preemptive* attack is enough to bring on a bout of nausea. Don't you see? With the proliferation of atomic arms in the world, somebody had to step in and say 'Don't mess around with your new toy or you'll get spanked.'

"The King and the High Council reluctantly decided that we had to take this burden on ourselves. We're too close to the stars, Dana, to risk crippling ourselves now. Poland hasn't initiated a war against

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anyone in hundreds of years. The same cannot be said of any other world power, including yours. A critical vacuum has been filled."

"The old story," she spat. "Everyone has only the betterment of mankind on their minds. The rationale of every conqueror since the pharaohs. Why should you be any different?"

He shook his head. She'd never see, never understand. Nor would the Russians, or Chinese, or Ken-yans. They'd never understand and they'd always be jealous and there was nothing that could be done about it, nothing at all—except press on.

He turned away, shut out her screaming and insults.

It was something that couldn't be explained, something in the fabric of the people themselves. He'd wanted to show her. The reason why Poland was the most powerful country on Earth, why no other country could ever hope to equal the Republic.

The Poles were a gentle people, the only ones.

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Wolfstroker

Anyone who thinks telekinesis, telepathy, and thought-control are merely science-fictional inventions has never attended a decent-sized rock concert. It's almost a certainty John W. Campbell never did, because his psi-oriented stories in Analog would never have been the same.

This is one of those stories where several seemingly unrelated elements suddenly fall into place for the writer, and you have that supreme thrill of abruptly shouting to yourself, "Jesus, where did that come from!? I didn't think up that, did I? Oh boy ohboyohboy ... I wonder what happens next?"

That's what the fans at a concert wonder, too, when the music stops going from ear to brain and instead enters directly into the bloodstream, and you find yourself utterly at the mercy of the electric guitar, bass, organ, and drum. It's possession, body and soul.

A version of this story was published in mangled form by an enterprise called Cog magazine. What follows is the first publication of the full, unbutchered text.

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You're getting fat, Sam Parker. Too fat and too old. You drink too much, you smoke too much, and you go around with bad ladies, yes. Why don't you wise up, Parker? Cut out the stogies, lay oS the liquor, read a good book once in a while.

Why don't you shut up, Sam Parker. I can't, Sam Parker sighed. I'm you, He chomped down defiantly on the cheap cigar and gave the dingy exterior of the club another look. Name: Going Higher. Parker shook his head slowly. Going down, more likely, into the depths. Just like him.

The only hint of brightness on the exterior, which fronted on equally drab Pico Boulevard, was the small neon sign that belligerently shouted "Beer on Draft" to the uncaring double-lane strip of tired asphalt. It hadn't been a good week for Mrs. Parker's little boy. On Monday "Deanna and her Performing Pups" had played their first engagement under his aegis. In the middle of the act, what does one of the rancid bitches do but take a sinking leap into the audience and proceed to put the fang to a couple of hysterical moppets. Sam's abortive relationship with Madame Deanna had dissolved faster than a headache tablet. He escaped partnership in three separate lawsuits only because the apologetic madame had providentially signed her name to their agreement in the wrong place. And now this.

The January wind poured out of the Hollywood Hills like white wine and stung his cheeks. It had to be warmer inside. He walked down the three steps.

The crowd was a surprise, larger than he'd expected. Considering the near-mystical affectation for dirt and filth by today's generation, he should have known better. He took an empty table in a front corner, forsaken because you had to lean outward to see

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more than hah* the performing area that passed for a stage. He put down the stub of his cigar. One fast glance around the club told him all he'd need to know -about it and all he'd ever want to.

The "fresh flowers" on the tables might qualify as passable lichens. The nicest thing one could say about the rest of the place was that it wouldn't be hurt by a new coat of paint. Naturally^ in keeping with proper atmosphere, it was too dark to see your own pants.

A young man with blond hair like Aryan seaweed appeared at Sam's side, pad in hand. He had a dreamy, disaffected look, probably from trying to study all day and work all night. Sam felt a smidgen of sympathy for him.

"Scotch and soda."

"I'm sorry, sir," the youth murmured. "We don't serve hard liquor. Can I get you a hot cider?"

Saints preserve us, hot cider! Parker would have laughed, only it was bad for his ulcer. That Lipson kid had been so enthusiastic about this place! Well, he nodded imperceptibly, he'd learned his lesson. Last tip he took from that quarter of the "in" people.

"Can I maybe get a Heinekin's?"

"Not on tap, sir.*'

"That's all right," said Parker thankfully. "A bottle will be fine." The waiter vanished.

You couldn't rightly say the stage lights came on. Rather, the section of club that served for performing became slightly less stygian than the rest. Then the band—he used the term advisedly—moseyed out on stage.

With the possible exception of the lead guitar, they were as sad-looking a group as he'd ever seen. Lead guitar, bass, drums, and yes, it had to be, a xylophone, for God's sake! He almost smiled. Maybe the quiet evening would present him with a chuckle to go with his good beer.

Sam Parker, if you haven't guessed by now, was an agent. Not undercover, but theatrical, which was

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harder on body and soul. One of a multitude of busy ants, forever scrounging the ashcans of talent. Occasionally an ant died. Then he was casually dismembered by his fellows and carried into the hill to be eaten. Sam had come close a few times, but so far he was still intact and out among the scavengers. He was very observant, was Sam. So he didn't miss the unmistakable aura of expectancy that had settled over the audience. For this schlock group? This skeletal collection of insensate clods? Something didn't smell right. He found himself getting just a teensy bit excited.

Well, the drummer killed that when he started things. Sam resisted the melodramatic gesture of putting hands over ears. It was no worse than the performing pups. But if this kid had a real rhythm in his body he was preserving it for his death throes.

The bass was next, fumbling at his strings like he was sorting soggy spaghetti. Worse and worse. The xy-lophonist—Sam still hadn't recovered from that— joined in. Or rather, he started playing. What he played bore no relationship—rhythmically, melod-icaUy, harmonically—to the bass or drummer. Sam was ready to go, but he'd only started the beer. He shut out the disaster on stage and tried to concentrate on the music in the bubbles.

The lead guitar shuffled up to the single mike. There was one sad spotlight, which might have been a big flashlight on a string. He had a face like polished sandstone, full of lines that shouldn't have appeared there for another forty years yet. Straight black hair cut off at thin, bony shoulders was caught up in a single rawhide headband. He wore faded blue jeans, faded from heavy use and not modish bleaching, a stained flannel shirt, and boots whose leather had merged forever with caked earth and gray clay.

A colorless, tired, dead personality, washed up at the age of twenty-four, maybe twenty-five.

Only in the eyes, something. Eyes, pieces of fine old obsidian... and Gorgon's hair for fingers.

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It didn't take a song, or even a stanza for Sam Parker to know. Those long young-old fingers came down and gentled on the strings, the left hand rose and curled vinelike about the top. A finger moved, touched the electric guitar, which made a sound. Near the back of the room a girl moaned.

~ His name was Willie Whitehorse, and he played like a god.

Sam Parker sat up straight in his cider-damp chair and leaned forward, wheezing a little. It didn't matter that the drummer couldn't carry a simple beat. It didn't matter than the bass had hands like wrought-iron shovels. It didn't matter that the xylophone player ignored the others for his own private limbo. It only mattered that Willie Whitehorse played—and sang.

Sang about what it was like to be like the brown eagle, to be alone. Sang how love was like snow-melt on hot winter days. Sang about smooth rocks and small crowded bird bowers and fresh green holly sprigs, about the crusty feel of tree bark under your palms and the smell of dry firewood and old histories. Sam Parker missed a lot of it, but he missed none of the crowd.

When the black-eyed singer sang- happy, the audience laughed, and strangers nudged their neighbors. When he sang sad, the cynical students cried. When he sang angry, just a little, there were frightening mad mutterings from the far blacknesses of the club, and somewhere a glass broke.

He was skinny and tired and all alone up there. But there was something in him and in his music that reached out and toyed with the souls of those who listened; grabbed and twisted and tweaked and hung on tight, tight without letting go, till it had flung them twice round the white moon and back again.

Yes, it even touched Sam Parker. And for thirty-five years nothing, absolutely nothing had affected Sam Parker. But there was a strange wildness at work here that passed the ramparts erected by decades of Dorsey

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and James and Lombardo to tantalize the little man slightly.

And right at the finish there was something that frightened him just a little. It went away fast and he forgot it soon enough, for now. As he watched Willie Whitehorse, for just the shortest odd second there was no guitar in those thin arms, no guitar but instead a vapory gray outline. Like one of those things everyone sees out of the corner of their eyes and aren't there at all when they turn to look at them. A funny outline that had four legs and a tail, in those arms. Four legs, a tail, sharp pointed ears, long snout clustered with coconut-pale teeth, and two tiny eye pits of red-orange that burned like wax matches.

Beer and bad lighting, of course, and Sam Parker forgot it quick.

After a while the musicians and applause drifted away and the stage lights followed. Sam sat staring at the empty place for a few minutes, thinking. Then he tapped his vest pocket, heard the faint rustle of the blank contract he always carried there. He liked to joke about it, his "soul" contract. If the Devil ever presented Sam with an offer for same, he wanted to be ready for him. Know better what he was getting and Satan might try to back out of the deal.

"Another beer, sir?" Sam blinked and looked around. The waiter was back at his side, as sleepy and tired as before.

"What?"

"Would you care for another drink, sir?"

"No. No thanks." Sam shoved back his chair and stood. He handed the kid a five-dollar bill.

"I'll get your change, sir."

Sam put an arm out. "Hold it, s—pal. I got enough change. I'm rolling in change. Just tell me how to get to the dressing room."

The waiter licked his lips, eyed the faded green paper. "Won't be anyone there, 'cept maybe White-horse. His first name's Willie." The bill vanished into a shirt, to be replaced by directions,

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n.

He hadn't really expected to find a dressing room in this dump, but damned if there wasn't one. As if unconsciously aware of the incongruity, it partly compensated by having no door.

Someone sat inside on a bench in front of a chest of drawers that had seen good days before the last world war. There was a mirror above it. An electric guitar lay across the chest, like an Aztec maiden readied for sacrifice. Sam hesitated at the entrance, rapped on the inside of the wall.

"Can I come in?" The singer turned and Sam saw the bottle, near empty.

"Can't keep you out,'* muttered the figure, finishing a long swallow. He choked, wiped his lips with the back of a wrist. This was bad, but it didn't stop Sam.

"Yes you can. Just tell me to and I won't come in."

The singer seemed ready for another swallow, paused, and vested a flicker of interest on Sam. It disappeared before anyone might see it.

"Come in or get lost, as it pleases you. Makes no difference to me."

Sam walked in, sat down in the single wicker chair, facing the singer's back.

"I'll be short and to the point. I'm an agent."

A slight smile touched the corners of the singer's mouth as he turned slowly. There was no humor in it.

"How sad for you."

"That's an opinion others share," Sam agreed. "Sometimes I feel that way myself. You Willie White-horse?"

Barely audible around sips of raw sad whiskey. "Yeah."

"You're an Indian?"

That produced the first reply above a mumble. Whitehorse opened his eyes aU the way (how black

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they were!) and glared at the agent. Sam squirmed a little. They seemed to back up to naked space.

"You're a Jew, aren't you?"

"I am," replied Sam, unperturbed.

"Parker your real name?"

"No. My folks changed it when I was small."

The singer shook a little. It might have been laughter. It was probably the liquor.

"Well, Whitehorse is my real name, and my folks didn't go and change it! And I'm not about to." His gaze was unsteady but defiant. "Guess that makes me just a cut or two above you, don't it?"

Folding his hands over his tummy, Sam replied quietly, "If it pleases you to look at it that way."

The eyes glittered a moment longer. Then they closed tight, like wrung-out washrags, and turned away.

"God damn you," Whitehorse hissed. "Oh, God damn you!"

Pause; quiet. "You got an agent, Willie?"

"No." With satisfaction, "Can't stand 'em."

"I'm not surprised. Most of us are pretty obnoxious."

"And you're different, I suppose?" he sneered.

"I think so. You may come to think so. You know what I think, Willie? You've got talent. A lot of talent." When there was no reply to that, Sam continued:

"I'd like to handle you. I think you could be a big star. The biggest, maybe. Get you some respectable sidemen, put together a decent band. Like a chance to work with some guys who can play more than chopsticks, Willie?" Still no reaction. But no rejection, either. Encouraged, Sam plunged on:

"I guarantee to get you out of this sump heap, anyway." He sat back, concealing his anticipation with the ease of long practice. "What do you say, Willie?"

Only sound the greasy tinkle of the bottle tapping rhythmically against the wooden bench. It was empty and so was the rhythm.

Then, "Sure, why not? At least somebody else can

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fight with the owners for drink money. Stupid bastards, think they all know music . . . Yeah, sure, you can be my agent. What'd you say your name was?"

"Parker," Sam repeated patiently. "Samuel Parker."

"Okay, Samuel Parker. Deal. Manitou help you."

"Fine," said Sam, reaching into his vest. "Now if you'll just sign here, and he—" Whitehorse was shaking his head.

"Huh-uh. No contracts, no papers. If I want to quit, I up and quit. Just like that."

"Where does that leave me?" prompted Sam.

"In hell for all I care. I could give a damn. That's a problem for the Great Spirit, not me. Take it or screw it."

Sam sighed. "I'll take it. Now that that's done with," he stood and extracted a fresh cigar, "what's the first thing Ijcaa do for you, to seal our agreement?"

Whitehorse hungrily sucked the last recalcitrant drops from the glass. He gazed at it moodily, hefting it by the neck. When he threw it into the far wall it shattered in a crystalline shower of quick brilliance and cheap wind chimes.

"Get me another bottle."

m.

Without even seeing the hovel Whitehorse was living in, Sam offered the singer the use of his own apartment. Whitehorse refused, but he didn't like riding the bus. So he accepted Sam's offer of a ride home.

On the way Sam nearly blew it.

"You know," he mused conversationally, "I've been thinking about ideas, presentation. Every group's got to have a gimmick to make it these days." . "Yeah," muttered the singer indifferently, staring out the window. "Hey, I know," he turned suddenly. "You're probably thinking that Indians are pretty 'in' right now, huh?"

"Well, I was sort of considering—"

"You were thinking of maybe fixing me up in some-

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thing real authentic. Beads and buckskin, maybe, with a full war bonnet and moccasins. Call us 'War Party' or something? Hey, how about a handful of fake cigars, too?1*

"Not exactly that," Sam countered, aware he'd somehow upset the singer. "There's already a group with a similar name and—"

" 'Come see the real Indian band play the sacred music of the Red Man as you've never heard it before. The new in, now powwow sound—that it, Parker? That's pretty good, ain't it, 'powwow'?" His voice was getting close to a shout.

"Easy, easy," said Sam placatingly, not looking into those volcanic orbs. They ate at something in him. "I didn't mean anything like that."

"No?" screamed Whitehorse. What bothered Sam wasn't the kid's violence. Darned if he didn't seem to be almost crying. Abruptly the singer seemed to collapse in on himself.

"No. Maybe you didn't. I'm sorry." He put his head in his hands and rocked a little on the seat. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. I've taken so much of that, that sickening, sticky, patronizing—" He coughed twice, violently the second time.

"Ought to lay off that stuff," Sam commented, keeping his tone carefully neutral. Whitehorse swayed, laughed a little wildly.

'"Hunk I'm drunk, don't you?"

"No—" began Sam.

"Well, I'm not! Most Indians drink, mister agent Parker. Not 'cause they like this rot. Not that. They drink 'cause most of what they were was ripped away from them by the white man's world before they got born. Liquor blurs over all the empty spaces a little. All those dark wide holes that were once full of beautiful things. And the worse thing is, Parker, that you don't really know what they were, those things. Just a big nothingness feeling that they aren't there anymore.

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"No, I'm not drunk, Parker. When I'm drinking I'm sober. I'm only drunk when I'm playing."

Sam slowed and pulled into the curb. He didn't offer to come up. They weren't in Beverly Hills. It took the singer three tries to get the door open.

Sara leaned over from the wheel, looking out. "Remember, Willie. The studio tomorrow. Sure you can find it?"

Whitehorse swayed, turned to face the agent. He held the guitar to him like a mute child. "I'll find it." It was hard to tell whether he was laughing or crying. "Man, I'm an Indian! I can find my way to anywhere, don't you know that? Yeah, I'll get there, if I can make it up the stairs." He put his hand to his mouth, blew out.

"Woo, woo, w—!" The third war whoop expired prematurely, subsumed in wracking cough. Sam turned away, embarrassed.

"I'll be there. I'll be there."

IV.

Three young men stood in the concrete womb of the studio and stared impatiently at the white walls, their instruments, and Sam Parker. Sam transferred his gaze to his innocent watch and tried not to let them see how worried he was. He'd told Whitehorse ten o'clock. It was now twelve thirty and the trio was not in good humor.

He couldn't blame them. They were top performers all, maybe the best three unattached musicians in L.A. just now. He'd spent all night begging, pleading, offering his unmarketable soul again, to get them to cancel their other plans and show up here. No, he didn't blame them for being impatient. These guys were good, damn good, and Sam knew he couldn't expect them to hang around much longer. The next time he asked for a little more time they would laugh at him.

Meanwhile every half hour in the studio was costing him money, lots of money. Money he didn't have. The

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only thing that was doing well was his ulcer. He'd been a fool not to drag his discovery home with him, keep him in sight. Damnfool crazy drunken kid! Might have done anything. Might've hopped a plane to anywhere, or more likely a freight.

Every five minutes he'd phoned Whitehorse's apartment, then every ten. The last call had been forty-five minutes ago. If he was still there he wasn't asleep, he was catatonic. Or dead. Sam's hopes and visions were dying just as fast.

Drivin' Jack Cavanack stopped clicking stick on stick and looked up from behind his drums.

"Hey, man, this hotshot of yours better show up real quicklike, or I'm splitting. I got a gig in Seattle tonight and I do not, positively do not, feel like gettin' in there in the dark and cold. Comprende?"

Uccelo plunked his bass for the thousandth time and didn't look up at Parker. "Right on." Vincente Rivera honked a few funky free notes on his harmonica, gazed sympathetically at the harried agent.

"Sorry, Sam, but Jack's right. We all of us have got other things to do than wait around here. This is a favor from me to you, I know. But we been here for too many hours now, Sam. Offhand, I don't think your wonder boy's gonna show."

He snapped open a small black case with red velvet guts and eased his harmonica therein.

"Please Vince . . . Jack, Milo. Give me a chance, willya? Hey, another ten minutes, that's all I ask. Okay? Ten lousy minutes. I'm sure he'll be here. He promised me he would."

Rivera sighed, snapping the latch on the case. "Sam, I think you've been had."

"He was had when he decided on joining his noble profession," came a thin voice from the studio door. Sam spread a relieved grin from ear to ear, but inwardly he was seething.

"Willie!" It came out like a curse. "Knew you'd make it, fella!" Whitehorse walked past Sam, ignored the preferred palm.

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"Sure, Sam. Promised." The singer looked only slightly less haggard than he had the previous night.

He found a plug, started to hook himself into the ganglion of his guitar's mechanical lungs, and talked while he worked:

"You know, Sara, I wasn't going to come."

Parker pretended not to hear as he closed the studio door.

"I was just going to leave you flat, go to Phoenix. Big joke. This whole thing," and he took in the studio in a half-wave, "doesn't appeal to me. Then I thought Grandfather, whatever he might think of this, wouldn't like to hear I'd gone back on my word. So, what the hell," he finished lamely.

Bless all grandfathers, prayed Parker silently. He felt like a man who'd just pulled an inside straight while hoping for a simple pair.

"What do you want me to do, Sam?" Whitehorse asked.

"Well, Willie, I want to find out if you four are compatible, soundwise. If you are, I'd like to work you together into a group." Uccelo hit a sour note on his bass and snorted derisively.

"Willie, that's-Drivin' Jack Cavanack on skins, Milo Uccelo on bass, and Vincente Rivera on harmonica, organ, Moog, and just about everything else you can imagine. Boys, Willie Whitehorse."

Sam had seen more instant camaraderie among a group of pallbearers.

"All right, Sam, we all know what we play, man," said Cavanack boredly. "Let's get this over with, huh? I got a plane to catch."

"Sure Jack, sure!" smiled Parker hurriedly. Cavanack turned his indifferent gaze on Whitehorse.

"What you want to play, man?"

"I only play my own stuff," Willie replied with equal indifference. "You can follow me.if you like."

"Now look here, man . . . !" began Cavanack, rising to his full six-five and glowering over his cylindrical zoo.

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"Please, Jack!" Sam pleaded, waving his arms. "It's just for a few minutes. Be the big man for a few minutes, huh?" He smiled desperately.

"Okay, Sam," Cavanack agreed warningly. "But you ask a lot, man." He sat down. Willie set his guitar in his arms with that smooth cradling motion.

"Hey, brother," interrupted Uccelo, "don't you want to tune up?"

Eyes of smoked ice fixed on the bass player, just above tight lips.

"I'm not your brother, Uccelo . . . and I'm always in tune."

"Sure, Willie," Sam all but begged. "Go ahead and play something, willya?"

Willie looked over at him quietly. "Sure, Sam. I'll play something."

Willie Whitehorse played.

As a boy my Father told me

When the mountains and the rivers were being

taken down

Down taken, taken down down down Down down taken way down Tom down...

He sang and he played and he played and he sang. And Milo Uccelo and Vince Rivera and Drivin* Jack Cavanack, they just listened. Sat and they listened. Any cop who'd gotten a look at their frozen faces would have busted 'em right then, on suspicion. No question, they were high. High and wild, shootin' up on the music of Willie Whitehorse.

Rivera was the first to join in, moving like a dream man, coaxing a sweet quail-wail from his chrome harmonica, finding the blank spots few in Willie's song and filling them in with notes like crystallized honey.

Then a low giant step from the back of the studio, getting louder and louder, moving faster and quicker, the hunger cry of a dragonfly. Drivin' Jack Cavanack, his eyes glazed and distant, put his wheels under

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Willie's guitar and Rivera's harmonica and took off down the yellow brick road at a hundred twenty per.

Uccelo fought it, swam in it, gave in to it. His hands seemed to move of their own volition, the deep heavy bell-clear sound coming right out of his fingers, to scatter like black orchid blooms about the room.

Sam felt it too, but he had nothing to bring in. Nothing except the faces at the control-room window, noses and hands of employees and passersby squinched up tight against the coo! glass. Bodies beneath moving, heaving, twisting to the irresistible, pounding, relentless power of the music.

This time he saw it twice.

Once it was somewhere in the middle, and once again at the end. Sam saw or thought he saw the steel-silvery outline with the sulfurous sight that burned, burned, bulked in the protective arms of Willie White-horse.

They finished perfectly together, the last note dying a lingering, unwilling death. Sam blinked, looked at his watch.

They'd been playing nonstop for twenty-two minutes.

His shirt was soaked opaque under both arms, and if you'd asked him he'd have insisted he hadn't moved a muscle the whole time. Except maybe in his throat.

Willie calmly unhooked his guitar and walked over to where Sam stood.

"When you want me to play a place, call me, mis-"ter agent." He slammed the door behind him.

That seemed to shatter the spell that had settled shroudlike over the studio. The musicians crowded around Sam, but no one shook his hand, no one pounded his back. They were solemn, but it was an excited solemn. That was the way Jack Cavanack looked at Sam.

"I gotta apologize, man. Count me in but excuse me now. I gotta go cancel that Seattle gig."

"Thanks, Jack. I'm glad." Sam had a thought. "Wait, hold up, Jack. This a solo?"

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"Yeah. They back me with some locals, I play for awhile. It's a good club, Sam."

"Okay, tell your guy he's getting a whole group for the price of a solo and to dump the college band boys," Sam said rapidly. "Tell him you're bringing your own people."

"Okay, Sam," agreed Cavanack, hand on the studio door. "Anything you say."

Rivera remained on the low stage. He was staring at his harmonica, turning it over and over in his hands as though he didn't recognize it. Sam didn't know much Spanish, but he could identify the musician's mumbled "Madre de Dios, madre de Dios," because he said it over and over. And other things, too. Rivera blew a few simple notes on the instrument. In the now quiet studio they sounded as lost as a paper plane in the Grand Canyon.

Uccelo walked over, looking concerned.

"Hey Sam, my hands are shaking, you know that? How about that?" He held them out. It was barely a flutter to Sam, just a hint of movement in the fingertips, but it obviously meant something strong to the bass player.

"Never had that happen to me, Sam. Ever." He shook his head. "I never played that good before, either. Sam, I swear I never heard a sound like that in my life."

The agent smiled, mopped his balding dome with a dirty handkerchief. "You think he's good too, then?"

Uccelo gave him a funny look. "Good? They haven't invented a word for what that fellow is." He swallowed. "I don't think you'll understand this the way it's meant, Sam, because you're not a musician. But when we were moving .up there, really moving, it was better than making it, man." He still looked troubled as he turned away to unhook his bass.

"Fll tell you this, though," he added, working at the wires. "I'll play bass for that man anytime, anywhere. For free, if I have to. But I won't stay in a dark room with him."

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V.

Sam smiled sleepily as the 727 dropped through the clouds toward the Tacoma-Seattle airport. In a few hours he'd have a better idea of what he had. That he had something special he'd known since he'd heard that first guitar note back in the Going Higher. But just how special he couldn't tell for sure ... yet.

Of course, he mused gently as he rolled over in the reclined seat, those people at the studio window had given in to the force of the music as completely as the kids in that club.

Just before he drifted off to sleep, it occurred to him to wonder how anyone had been able to hear the music outside the closed-off, soundproof studio. But he fell asleep then.

SEATTLE 22 JAN (UPI)—The Aquarius, one of downtown Seattle's best-known rock nightspots, was heavily damaged last night when the audience rioted during the performance of the White-horse Band, a new group from Los Angeles. Police, who were called to the scene by Aquarius owner Marshall Patrick, were unable to handle the crowd and were forced to call on the city's special tactical squad for aid. A squad of MPs from nearby Fort Lewis also aided in subduing the crowd, which included a number of young soldiers on leave from the base.

Reports vary on how the disturbance began, but the general impression given was that the crowd was overcome by the fervor of the new group's performance, though conflicting reports raise some doubt on this issue.

The actual disturbance apparently broke out during the final number of the evening, which one young listener out on bail described, somewhat dazedly, as having something to do with "slaughtered babies and howling dogs." Police Sergeant Michael

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Washington, a Seattle force veteran, had this to say: "In twenty years on the force I've never seen a crowd behave Hike this one. It was like a nuthouse. Kids crying, singing, spitting, and squalling like wildcats. Some of my men were scratched up pretty good. Usually it's just the girls, but this time the guys seemed to have gone berserk too. I'll tell you, it scared the —— out of me! I've seen so-called riots at rock concerts before, but nothing like this! Most of !em don't even seem to know what happened. I don't like using clubs on teenagers, but my men had to do it hi self-defense. It was like a madhouse in there."

Damage was heaviest to fixtures and breakables. Owner Patrick commented on the destruction: "This was the worst demonstration, I've ever seen, worse even than that last concert in Belgium. But I'll tell . you, I'd book that bunch in here steady if I could get 'em! I offered their agent everything short of a blank check and he turned me down. Said if I wanted to hear the group again I'd have to come to the Atheneum in Los Angeles. It didn't affect me the way it did those kids, but there's no doubt about it, that lead of theirs, Whitehorse, really has something special."

(In Los Angeles, John Nat Burns, millionaire owner and builder of the Atheneum, refused to comment on band agent Samuel Parker's statement).

Discussing the band's performance, several members of the audience remarked on the interesting optical effect achieved when lead singer WilUe Whitehorse's guitar seemed to take on the outline of a small animal. Some say it was a fox, others insist it was a wolf. All agree the technical device, probably achieved with offstage lights, was quite well done.

VI.

Sam leaned back in the chair in his Wilshire office and contentedly surveyed the list resting on the desk

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in front of him. It was a list of U.S. cities, and it was now more than three-quarters full. Stops on their first nationwide tour, if tonight's concert came off.

Word-of-mouth is a wonderful thing. No less than six major record companies had waved contracts at him in the two weeks since Seattle. When they heard the minimum terms Sam would accept, they reacted in various ways, from mild amusement to outright dis-' gust. Sam smiled to himself. After tonight's concert they'd beg to sign on his terms.

Yes, word-of-mouth was a wonderful thing. The advertising had been minimal, but the wire-press story had piqued interest and the rock underground had taken care of the rest. All sixteen thousand seats had been sold out the day after the ticket agencies offered them. The Atheneum would be picked for the White-horse Band's first major appearance.

The intercom dinged for attention. He pacified it by depressing the proper switch.

"Yes, Janet?"

"Mr. Parker, there's a gentleman here who insists on seeing you. He says .his name is Frank Collins."

"Tell Mr. Collins that all business concerning bookings, recordings, or advertising rights is being deferred until after the concert. Give him an appointment— oh, Tuesday, if he wants, and tell him I'm not seeing anyone today."

"He knows the concert is tonight, Mr. Parker, but I think you might like to meet him. He's not after money or offering it. At least, I don't think so. He says he has a Ph.D. in psychology. He doesn't look it."

Well, Sam had heard plenty of ploys, but the inventiveness of the human mind is a wonderful thing. For a moment he was tempted to have Janet tell the joker to go peel his bananas. Then he considered that the claim was just weird enough to be legit. Besides, he'd never met a real live scientist. Closest he'd come was Morris, the bookie.

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"All right, Janet, send him in. I'll see him." He released the switch.

Janet was one of the few luxuries he'd permitted himself to acquire with the advance from tonight's sellout. She could type 90 words a minute, had a degree from UCLA, an IQ of 130, and a forty-one-incb bust.

Frank Collins wore a dark gray suit and tie, was about Sam's age, had blue eyes, plump cheeks, no chin, a brown briefcase, and much more hair than Sam. For the latter Sam disliked him on sight.

"Sit down, Collins, but don't make yourself at home." The psychologist settled into the chair opposite the desk.

"You're Sam Parker?"

"Unless my mother lied to me. You really a Ph.D?"

Collins had an ingratiating smile. "I like to think of myself as somewhat more than three letters and two periods." He steepled his fingers, grew serious. "I'm very interested in a young man you represent named Willie Whitehorse."

"Who isn't?" Sam acknowledged. He caressed a box. "Cigar?"

"No, thank you. I don't smoke."

"Too bad for you." Sam lit his own, puffed contentedly. From Havana by way of London. Another little luxury. "You're not endearing yourself to me, Collins. What's your angle? Why are you interested in Willie?"

"For the past ten years I have been especially interested in all the parapsychological aspects of rock music, Mr. Parker."

"That's certainly very interesting," nodded Sam. "Suppose you tell me what that is in English, so I can get interested too."

"Perhaps if I explain exactly what it is about rock that has intrigued me—"

"Sure," Sam said, glancing pointedly at the clock on his desk. "Only don't take too long, huh?"

Collins smiled again in a faintly superior way and

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began earnestly, "Have you ever noticed the power certain rock performers have over their audiences?"

Sam wasn't impressed. "Naturally. Only the top people have it. Though I don't know exactly as I'd call it 'power,'"

"Oh, but what else could one call it, Mr. Parker? Surely you've had occasion to observe the audience as well as the players. A few musicians, and usually one lead performer, exercising what amounts to total emotional control over thousands and thousands of rapt spectators. Playing with their feelings, juggling their thoughts, all but directing their bodily movements with their music."

Sam chuckled. "You make it sound like witchcraft."

Collins did not chuckle back. Instead, he nodded. "In old times it would be called exactly that. In fact, music sometimes often was called a power of the devil. But it's all far from supernatural. Psychic powers have long been postulated, Mr. Parker. The ability to control others through the power of one mind. Somehow music seems to increase the projection of the performer and the receptivity of his audience. All music does this to a certain extent, but rock music seems to do so to a far greater extent than any believe possible. And my counterparts are still playing with Rhine cards!" The last was uttered almost contemptuously.

"Tell me, what do you suppose a youth at one of these performances is thinking about? Someone who is totally 'with' the music, as they try to be?"

"Beats me. I'm not one of these kids. Whatever the singer is singing about, I suppose."

"Correct, Mr. Parker. And he is thinking that to the exclusion of everything else. Except for the music, his or her mind is a complete blank. 'Becoming one with the music,' it's called. When the music 'moves' them, it really moves them.

"Usually this oneness is expressed in actions of joy and happiness. Occasionally, if the music is outrageous or strong enough, it engenders violent, antisocial action on the part of the listener. Emotional telepathy,

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Mr. Parker, on a grand scale, and right under our very noses! No wonder their parents don't understand their actions."

- Parker didn't completely understand this spiel, but he wasn't buying any of it. "Baloney! All kids don't react that way. Hell, some of 'em don't even b'ke rock music!"

"Perhaps the minds of some are immune to the effect," Collins shrugged. "Others have raised conditioned barriers in their minds to the music. But in those who are receptive, the reactions are universal. A top group will produce the same effects in an audience of young people in Rome, New York, or Rome, Italy; in Moscow, Idaho or Moscow, Russia." His voice got low and excited.

"In some way, Mr. Parker, I believe that today*s music releases the blocks against intermind communication that normally exist in the human mind. Today's environment may have something to do with it. So may the use of electronics. Consider! Some of the most popular, idolized figures in rock have what are by professional musical standards no voice at all, and are technically weak instrumentalists to boot. They come from every conceivable cultural background, having nothing in common except this uncanny ability to submerge themselves and their audiences in the music." He relaxed slightly, grew a little less fanatical.

"You see, then, with what interest I would read the report of your concert in Seattle."

"And you think Willie exercises some kind of mind control on his audience when he's performing?" Parker shook his head. "At least you're not a boring nut, Collins."

The psychologist looked grim. "Insults and skepticism do not bother me, Mr. Parker. My statistics prove my contentions. Your Mr. Whitehorse will strengthen that proof. I have seen too many blank, empty, mindless faces swaying to the rhythm of today's bands for me to believe otherwise."

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"Why'd you come to see me?" Sam asked abruptly "What do you want?"

The scientist looked sheepish. "I must go to this concert," he explained desperately, "and I ... I couldn't get a ticket. They were all sold."

Sam hesitated. What he ought to do was throw this idiot out on his ear. This learned idiot. On the other hand, he reflected, there might be some terrific pr copy in this, yes.

"Tell you what, Collins. I'll get you in. But if Willie starts singing about how all nasty mad scientists ought to be strung up, don't blame me for supplying the rope."

It was intended as a joke. Collins did not smile.

vn.

Sam had munched his way through two cigars and was hi the process of mutilating a third. Outside, beyond the curtain, was a stamping, screeching mob of what the press euphemistically classified as "young adults." Sometimes their chanting grew typically obscene, sometimes merely impatient. Most often it thundered "WE WANT WILLIE! WE WANT WILLIE, WE WANT WILLIE!"

Well, Sam couldn't argue with them. He wanted Willie too.

Nearby, Vincente Rivera, Milo Uccelo, and Jack Cavanack wore varied expressions of boredom, now shading into disgust. They also wore red leather and fringes. Cavanack was smoking.

Sam broke his thoughts, looked pleadingly at the drummer. "Look, Jack, can't you get rid of that stuff? All I need now is for some overzealous security guard to come sniffing back here and bust you."

Cavanack glanced up and smiled broadly. "Just killin' some time, Sam. Till your buddy-boy Willie gets here. // he gets here."

The agent grimaced, looked absently at Rivera.

"If I were you, Sam, I'd have me a fast set of

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wheels standing by. Because if we sit here much longer, that crowd's going to get ugly. And I sure as hell am not going to be the one who has to go out there and explain things to 'em."

"Right on," Uccelo concurred. "This ain't no recording-studio jam session."

"Don't you think I know that?" Sam cried. "If that son-of-a-bitch forces- me to have the gate refunded ... 1"

"Hey, isn't that him?" broke in Rivera suddenly, standing up and pointing. Sam whirled.

Sure enough, a familiar gangling figure was loping toward them, escorted by a pair of security fuzz. Cavanack had enough presence of mind to pitch his smoke under a hunk of scenery from some long-dead play. Sam halted the singer with a hand on each shoulder.

"Don't do things like this to an old man, Willie. I can't take it anymore. Listen to them out there! They're ready for you. Ready and primed. Now go out there and—"

"I'm not going out, Sam."

Parker stared blankly at him, then grinned sickly.

"Aw c'mon, Willie! Don't joke with me. Like I told you, I'm too old for this stuff."

Willie looked half dead and dead serious.

"I mean it, Sam. I'm not going to play."

Parker stepped away, somehow managed to keep the agonizingly painful smile on his face. It was as real as margarine, but he kept his voice under control.

"All right, Willie. Why don't you want to go out there?"

"Because of this." He fumbled with his shirt, tossed a crumpled ball of paper onto a chair. Sam looked over at it, then back to the singer.

"It's a letter from my grandfather," Willie explained. "He'll never win the Nobel Prize, my grandfather, but he's a great man. You see, he saw the story about the Seattle concert, too. Told me my kind of singing isn't

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meant for a big group of people. Said that I was embarrassing my ancestors."

Sam tried to understand this, but he couldn't. There was no reference point for him in this cultural desert, and he admitted it.

"I don't follow you, Willie. I'd like to, but I don't. How the hell can playing music disgrace your ancestors?"

Willie stared at him with eyes of limpid oil. "Sam, where do you think my songs come from?"

"I thought you made 'em up, Willie."

The singer shook his head.

"No, Sam. Only the words. Most of the music is based on chants. Old medicine chants, Sam. Passed down in my family for hundreds of years. It's all the inheritance I got. Grandfather thinks I'm misusing them. I don't know that I go along with him—I don't feel so good—but I respect him. So I'm not going to play, dammit! Can't you just believe that and leave me alone?" He stumbled, looked around wildly. "I need a drink."

Sam leaned close to him, sniffed. "On top of what you've had already?"

A silly grin spread across Willie's face. "Does it surprise you?"

"No, of course it doesn't, Willie. Now you just go out there with the boys and give those good people a song or two, and I'll go and get you a nice fresh fifth of good stuff, whatever you want. Not the crud you've been gargling. How's that? Look at it this way; you won't be playing for a crowd, just for yourself. That's okay, isn't it?"

"I don't know, Sam, I—" He blinked.

"I respect your grandfather's opinions, too," pressed Sam, "but you've also got a responsibility to those people out there. Most of 'em stood in line for hours for the chance to hear you, Willie. Listen to them!"

"WILLIE, WILLIE, WE WANT WILLIE!"

"You can't disappoint all those thousands. Be like going back on your own generation!"

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Willie stood quietly and for a moment seemed almost sober.

"They're not my generation."

"Okay, okay, however you want to look at it." Sam was beginning to lose Ms patience. "But you go out there and play for them. You've got an obligation to them. And you've also got one to the boys here—" he indicated the three waiting musicians, "—a legal one to me, and to the folks who put up the money for this concert."

Willie tried to draw himself erect but couldn't quite hold it. "I see. That's how it is, huh?"

Sam looked back at him without wavering. "I'm afraid it is, Willie. For tonight, anyway. You'll feel better tomorrow and we can talk then and—"

"No, no, that's all right, Sam, I follow you. I follow you real good." Onyx eyes blinking, the dark side of the moon. He swayed, caught himself. "Bet you think I've been playing for you, huh?

"You—Jack, Milo, Vince—you think I've been playing too, don't you?" He turned back to Sam and smiled that sick, humorless smile. "Well, I got something for you. I haven't been. Not really. Not back in that filthy backwater club where you found me, not hi the studio that time, not in Seattle. You want me to go out there and play—all right."

Sam tried to calm the singer but Willie wouldn't give him a chance.

"What's the matter, Sam? It's okay. That's what you want, that's what you get. Get yourself a good seat, Sam. A real good seat. One where you can hear well and see, too. Because I'm going to play, yes." He subsided, mumbled to himself. "Tonight I'm going to play."

He spun and walked toward the stage. The others had to hurry to make the entrance with him.

A tremendous ovation met them, a roar of expectancy as the four musicians appeared on stage. After the long wait the audience was keyed to fever pitch. Some of them had been hi the Aquarius that night in

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Seattle and had come all the way down to L.A. for this night. They didn't cheer or yell. They just waited. Uccelo had gone first, running past Willie. He snatched up his bass and hurriedly hummed out the opening warm-up theme • he'd composed. The crowd dropped its frenetic greeting and relaxed into a steady, familiar cheering and clapping, maybe a bit louder than that accorded the average new group.

Sam levitated a sigh from the vicinity of his ulcer and patted his face. Tomorrow Willie probably wouldn't -even remember what he'd said tonight. Sam picked up the balled letter and shoved it into a pocket. Then he walked into the wings and settled down to enjoy the show.

Willie ignored the crowd and picked up his waiting guitar. He turned it over and over in his hands, ran them sensuously up and down fhe shiny, spotless instrument. He was smiling at something.

"Play, dammit," Sam hissed, fearful for a moment the singer might do something stupid like chuck it into the audience.

But it was okay. Willie put the strap over his head. He snuggled the guitar firm to his slim body and started to play.

Hush-dead silence greeted the first note. It was all wrong, that first note. It was too deep, too strong, too bad. It woke dark shapes that hid in the back of the mind, woke insect legs that creepy-crawl at night under bedsheets. It made the hair rise on the back of Sam's neck. Willie held it, choked it, wouldn't let it die. It wavered, floated, and finally drifted away crying from its mother the amplifier.

Willie's fingers began to move. A tune emerged from the guitar, a low, ponderous, mephitic melody the like of which Sam had never heard before. It had granite weight and the patience of blowing sand in it, and it came straight from Hell.

Blank-eyed, Milo joined in, his perfectly picked bass a black brother to Wiliie's guitar. Drivin' Jack grunted and kissed his drums; thunder walked the stage. Ri-

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vera took the harmonica from his lips and sat down at the organ. And Willie began to sing.

A first clap, forlorn and naked, peeped from the thousands. Then another, and another. Then the whole sixteen thousand were clapping and moving in unison.

Willie played and he sang and he sang and he played. He played for ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Before you could think to breathe they swung into their second hour, never pausing, never resting, the same Hephaestean beat, the same haunted rhythm, with Willie piling variation on top of variation, weaving a spider web of blood-pulsing harmonics. Somehow Drivin' Jack and Milo and Vince hung on, stayed with him.

Willie sang about the good earth and about rape, sang about young trees and sang about bate. He sang about the things man does to animals and about the animal man. He sang about man poisoning himself with envy, about dead-eyed children and too-young killers. Mostly, he sang about his people and their life and the writhing, insane alienness that was the white man's. He cursed and he prayed and he damned and he praised.

He took that audience up to Heaven and banged their heads against the gates. He dragged them kicking and screaming down to the fiery pit.

And then, the sweat streaming off his face and his clothes hanging limp from his body, pulling him toward the ground in cpllusion with an evil gravity, he began to sing about the Things That Made no Sense, that were less and more than all that had gone before, and, in that was Madness.

The crowd screamed and howled at the constricting concrete sky and steel beams, wanting the stars. They broke and beat at themselves and one another in a frenzy.

Sam sat in the wings and shivered on the lip of his own private delirium as Willie sang hate and burning, sang anger and the final fire that burns in every man's heart. And he saw the wolf.

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But it wasn't gray this time. It was a twisting, spinning ball of four-legged yellow flame that shifted in his arms. Willie's right hand was stroking its flank and the crowd shrieked. His left hand scratched an ear and they moaned. Then Willie played a note that shouldn't have been. The wolf-thing opened its jaws and howled an unearthly sound poor Sam Parker could never have imagined. It didn't come from Willie's throat, was sure.

Hunching in his arms, the wolf-thing spun and clamped its fire-teeth over Willie's mouth, and seemed to swallow. Willie Whitehorse became a pillar of flame.

Sam whimpered and fell to the floor, covering his eyes.

Eventually, lots and lots of sirens came.

VHL

Estes Park, Colorado, is a tourist town, an attractive tourist town, at the eastern entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Once upon a time, the park and the rest of Colorado belonged to the Shoshoni and Wind River Shoshoni, the Ute and the Arapahoe. Today most of the state belongs to the Colorado River Land and Development Company and innumerable bastard cousins.

But it was beautiful country and as tourist towns go, Estes Park wasn't bad. Neither were the neat little homes that nestled in the hills behind the town.

A late-model Chevy pulled up in front of one of them and a man got out. He looked at the numbers on the mailbox and then at a piece of paper he held. The paper was wrinkled badly, as if it might have once been crumpled in a fist. The man walked up to the hand-hewn wooden door and rapped on it. There was no bell.

The man who opened the door was very old. But he was straight as his long white hair and had a merry grin to go with the strings of bright beads around his neck, the faded dungarees, shirt, and a big turquoise ring on one hand.

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"May I help you?" The voice was wise, patient. "I'm Sam Parker," the figure said. He glanced at the paper, back at the guardian of the door. "Are you

John Whitehorse?"

The oldster nodded. Sam said, "I knew your grandson."

Eyes widened slightly, their owner stepping back

from the door. "Come in, please." ' They walked into a small but nicely appointed living room. A baby played quietly in a playpen in the

far corner.

"Sit down," invited John Whitehorse. Sam did. He

looked at the child.

"That is Bill Whitehorse/* the old man informed

him. "My grandson's son."

"I didn't know," Sam confessed apologetically. "Wil-lie never mentioned him. Is Mrs. Whitehorse ...?"

"Died in birthing. The boy came in whiter, in the middle of a terrible storm. He was very early. The doctor tried but could not get here in time. The woman—" and he gestured at the strong figure standing in the hallway, watching "—and I did what we could. Willie never recovered."

"Then he had no other family?"

The old man shook his head slowly.

"His father, my son, was killed in the last world war. There is a picture of him on the table to your

right."

Sam peered over the side of the couch. There was a faded black-and-white photograph of a man in uniform in a small flat glass case. It centered a circle of shiny medals and two oak leaf clusters,. Sam noticed the medical insignia.

"His father was a doctor, then?"

John Whitehorse smiled. "All the Whitehorses have been men of medicine. As I am, and my father was, and my grandfather. Beyond that I do not know for certain, but it is so said in Council.

"We wished it for Willie, too, but. . ." He stopped. "Why are you here, Mr. Parker?"

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"I took charge of the body. I wanted to make sure there was someone who could aff—would want to bury him." Whitehorse nodded. "Do you know how he died?"

"There was some news in the paper that comes from Denver," said the old man, "but not much." He seemed sad. "It was a very small item. I had to look hard for it."

"There was a riot," Sam began. "Fourteen people were killed. A great many were injured. An important building, the Atheneum, was nearly torn down by the audience during Willie's performance. Many of them don't remember what happened. This sort of thing has happened before at similar concerts, but never anything approaching the scale and violence of this one.

"Two of the musicians who were playing with Willie suffered severe shock. One of them is still being treated by doctors. He may not be able to play again, I'm told."

John Whitehorse nodded. "They were close to Willie and they followed him too far. I am glad they did not die."

"As for Willie," continued Sam, watching the old man with eyes that had lately seen too much, "the story being passed around is that he'd doused his guitar with gasoline. Then he set it afire—as a gimmick, an audience-pleaser—but it spread to his clothes before he could get rid of it. I believe he would bum hot—he had enough alcohol in him—but that's not what happened. There was no gas on that guitar, was there?"

John Whitehorse looked tired. "Nadonema, the wolf."

Sam's mouth tightened, but he looked satisfied. "Yeah, the wolf. Everybody thought it was done with trick lights, with mirrors. How was it done, old man?"

"From birth every Whitehorse is made brother to a creature of the forest. I am kin to the bear. To help make big medicine, he will make a picture of it in his mind and try to partake of its strength. It is a great power that takes much time and experience to learn

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well. Willie was very young and made his medicine too strong. Or perhaps, for some reason, he did not care."

"And his music?" Sam asked quickly.

"No Whitehorse can make medicine without music, Sam Parker, nor music without some medicine."

Then Collins was right, Sam thought. Music opens the blocks between minds. Pity the psychologist couldn't be here. He was number eleven on the coroner's list. But Sam was still skeptical.

"C'mon, old man. Next you'll be telling me you can make it rain and cure warts."

"Not I, Sam Parker. I am a modern man and have thrown off the superstitions of the ignorant past.".And he smiled softly.

"Go ahead and laugh at me, then," invited Sam. "There was a guy named Collins, though, who thought there might be some connection between today's music and a crazy sort of mind contact I don't really understand, At first I thought he was nutty as a loon. Now..."

"Do you know, Sam Parker, an interesting thing has come about." John Whitehorse leaned close. "For the first time in this land a generation of whites is growing up that is concerned about the earth and the plants and animals that are their brothers. Is it so surprising that they should be more responsive to their music? Music is the key to so many things. That they should feel deeper and believe stronger and think purer thoughts than you and yours?

"Perhaps it may take one more generation. But as always happens things will come full round one day, and the Indian will have a way to reclaim what is his."

"Yeah, well, I appreciate that, Mr. Whitehorse." The old man's sudden earnestness made Sam nervous. After all, the guy'd lost his son, and now his grandson. He could be pardoned an occasional private madness. Sara stood.

"If you'll excuse me now, I've got to make a connecting flight to New York.

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"Willie had a great gift for lyrics and music, that's all. Maybe unique. It won't happen again, but it was great while he had it. You'll forgive me if I find your picture of adolescent medicine men taking over the country just a little amusing."

"I suppose it does seem rather humorous, Mr. Parker. No doubt you are right. You are kind to an old man who wishes for too much. Still," and he looked at Sam with diamond eyes, "it would be fun to think on what I have said the next time listeners at a concert do not behave in a manner understandable to their elders."

"Sure, sure. Thanks for your hospitality, Mr. White-horse." He glanced over at the cradle. The baby had a coal smudge of black hair with oddly familiar dark-pool eyes. He looked back at Sam innocently.

"Your father was quite a phenomenon, Bill White-horse. I hope your great-grandfather raises you well."

The baby had a little Hopi-like doll rattle in one hand. He gurgled and shook it, rattling the seeds inside against the tissue-thin wood.

Parker shivered from head to foot.

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I love classical music. I love the mountains and the forest. The forest plays its own songs with wind and rain and the musings of small creatures, but what if it could do even more?.. . .

Caitland didn't hate the storm any more.than he had the man he'd just killed, but he was less indifferent to it. It wouldn't have mattered, except that his victim had been armed. Not well enough to save himself, but sufficiently to make things awkward for Caitland.

Even so, the damaged fanship could easily have made it back to the Vaanland outpost, had not the freakish thunderstorm abruptly congealed from a clear blue sky. It was driving him relentlessly northward, away from one of the few chicken scratches of civilization man had made on this world.

If adrenalin and muscle power could have turned the craft, Caitland would have done better than anyone. But every time it seemed he'd succeeded in wrenching the fan around to a proper course, a fresh gust would leap from the nearest thunderhead and toss the tiny vehicle ass over rotor.

He glanced upward through the rain-smeared plex-idome. Only different shades of blackness differentiated the sky above. If the Styx was overhead, what

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lay below?—granite talons and claws of gneiss, the empty-wild peaks of the Silver Spar Range. He'd been blown further north than he'd thought.

Time and again the winds sought to hammer the fan into the ground. Time and again he somehow managed to coax enough from the weakening engine to avoid the next ledge, the next crag, the next cliff.

He could not get above the ice-scoured spires; soon he was fighting just to stay in the air, the fanship dancing through the glacier valleys like a leaf running rapids. The weather was playing a wailing game with bis life, but he was almost too tired to care. The fuel gauge hovered near empty. He'd stalled the inevitable, hoping for even a slight break in the storm, hoping for a minute's chance at a controlled landing. It seemed even that was to be denied him.

The elements had grown progressively' more inimical. Lightning lit the surrounding mountains in rapid-fire surreal flashes, sounded in the thin-shelled ship cabin like a million kilos of frying bacon. Adhesive rain defeated the best efforts of the wipers to keep the front port clear. Navigation instrumentation told him that he was surrounded by sheer rock walls on all sides. As the canyon he'd worked his way into narrowed still further, updrafts became downdrafts, downdrafts became sidedrafts, and sidedrafts became aeolian aberrations without names. Mobiusdrafts.

If tie didn't set the fan down soon, the storm would set it down for him. Better to retain a modicum of control. He pushed the control wheel. If he could get down in one piece, he ought to be home free. There was a high-power homing device built into the radio-corn. It would transmit an automatic SOS on a private channel, to be received by an illegal station near Vaanland.

Caitland was a loyal, trusted, and highly valued employee of that station's owners. There was no doubt in his mind that once it was received by them, they would act on the emergency signal. Just now his job

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was to ensure they would find something worth taking back.

The fanship dipped lower. Caitland fought the wind with words and skillful piloting. It insisted on pushing him sideways when he wanted to go up or down.

There ... a place where the dense green-black mat of forest thinned briefly and the ground looked almost level. Low, over, a little lower. Now hard on the stick, slipping the fan sideways, so that the jets could counteract the force of the scudding wind. Then cut power, cut more, and prepare to settle down.

A tremendous howl reverberated through the little cabin as a wall of rain-laden wind shoved like a giant's hand straight down on the fanship. Jets still roaring parallel to the ground, the fan slid earthward at a 45-degree angle.

First one'blade, then a second of the double rotors hit a tree. There were a metallic snap, several seconds of blurred vision—a montage of tree trunks, lightning and moss-covered earth—followed by stillness.

He waited, but the fan had definitely come to a stop. Rain pierced the shattered dome and pelted forehead and face, a wetness to match the saltier taste in his mouth. The fan had come to rest on its side. Only a single strap of the safety harness had stayed intact. It held him in the ruined cabin by his waist.

He moved to release it—slowly, because of the sharp, hot pain the movements caused in the center of his chest. He coughed, spat weakly. Bits of broken tooth joined the rest of the wreckage.

His intention was to let himself down gently to a standing position. His body refused to cooperate. As the waist buckle uncoupled he fell the short distance from his seat to the shattered side of the fan. Broke inside, he thought hazily. Rain seeped into his eyes, blurred his vision.

Painfully he rolled over, looked down the length of the fan. The flying machine was ruined forever. Right now, the walking machine had to get away from it. There was always the chance of an explosion.

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It was then he discovered he couldn't move his left leg. Lying exhausted, he tried to study the forest around him in the darkness and driving rain.

Driving rain. The fan had broken a circle in the branches overhead. It would be drier under the untouched trees—and he had to get away from the explosive residue hi the fan's tanks.

It appeared to be the lower part of the leg. All right, if he couldn't walk, he could crawl. He started to get to his knees—and couldn't finish. Hurt worse than he'd first thought.

Never mind the chance of explosion, rest was what he had to have. Rest. He lay quietly in the water-soaked ruins of the fan, rain tinkling noisily off the broken plexidome and twisted metal, and listened to the wind moan and cry around him.

Moan? Cry? His head came up dizzily. There was something more than wind out there. A sharp, yes definitely musical quaver that came from all about him. He stared into the trees, saw no one. The effort cost him another dizzy spell and he had to rest his eyes before trying again.

Nothing in the trees, no. But, something about the nearest trunk . . . and the one to its left . . . and possibly the two near by on the other side. Something he should recognize. Too weak to raise a shielding hand, he blinked moisture away and studied the closest bole through slitted eyes.

Yes. The trunk appeared to be expanding and contracting ever so slightly, steadily. His attention shifted to its neighbors. Hints of movement were visible throughout the forest, movement unprompted by wind or rain.

Chimer trees. Chee chimer trees. They had to be.

But there weren't supposed to be any wild chimers left on Chee world, nor as many as four together anywhere outside of the big agricultural research station.

Maybe there were even more than four. He found himself developing a feeling of excitement that almost

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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . .

matched the pain. If he had stumbled on a chimer forest...

Neither imagination nor intellectual prowess were Caitland's forte, but he was not an idiot. And even an idiot knew about the chimers. The finding of one tree anymore was extraordinary, to locate four together, incredible. That there might be more was overwhelming.

So, finally, was the pain. He passed out

The face that formed before Caitland's eyes was a woman's, but not the one he'd been soundlessly dreaming of. The hair was gray, not blond; the face lined, not smooth; skin wrinkled and coarse hi the hollows instead of tear-polished; and the blouse was of red-plaid flannel instead of silk. Only the eyes bore any resemblance to the dream, eyes even bluer than those of the teasing sleep-wraith.

An aroma redolent of fresh bread and steaming meats impinged on his smelling apparatus. It made his mouth water so bad it hurt. At the same time a storm of memories came flooding back. He tried to sit up.

Something started playing a staccato tune on his ribs with a ball-peen hammer. Falling back, he clutched at a point on his left side. Gentle but firm hands exerted pressure there. He allowed them to remove his own, set them back at his sides.

The voice was strong but not deep. It shared more with those blue blue eyes than the parchment skin. "I'm glad you're finally awake, young man. Though heaven knows you've no right to be. I'm afraid your machine is a total loss."

She stood. A straight shape of average height, slim figure, eyes, and flowing gray hair down to her waist; the things anyone would notice first.

He couldn't guess at her age. Well past sixty, though.

"Can you talk? Do you have a name? Or should I go ahead and splint your tongue along with your leg?" Caitland raised his head, moved the. blankets aside,

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Ye Who Would Sing

and stared down at himself. His left leg was neatly splinted. It was complemented by numerous other signs of repair, most notably the acre of bandage that encircled his chest.

"Ribs," she continued. "I wasn't sure if you'd broke all of them or just most, so I didn't take any chances. The whole mess can heal together.

"I had the devil's own time trying to get you here, young man. You're quite the biggest thing in the human line I've ever encountered. For a while I didn't think I was going to get you on the wagon." She shook her head. "Pity that when we domesticated the horse we didn't work on giving him hands."

She paused as though expecting a reply. When Caitland remained silent she continued as though nothing had happened.

"Well, no need to strain your brain now. My name is Naley, Katherine Naley. You can call me Katie, or Grandma.*' She grinned wryly. "Call me Grandma and I'll put rocks in your stew." She moved to a small metal cabinet with a ceramic top on which a large closed pot sat perspiring.

"Should be ready soon."

Her attention diverted to the stove, Caitland let his gaze rove, taking stock of his surroundings. He was on a bed much too small for him, hi a small house. Instead of the expected colonial spray-plastic construction, the place looked to be made of hewn stone and wood. Some observers would probably find it charming and rustic, but to Caitland it only smacked of primi-tiveness and lack of money.

She called back to him. "I'll answer at least one of your questions for you. You've been out for two days on that bed."

"How did I get here? Where's my fan? Where is this place?" She looked gratified.

"So you can talk. You got here in the wagon. Freia pulled you. Your ship is several kilometers down the canyon, and you're in a valley in the Silver Spars. The second person ever to set foot in it, matter of fact."

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WITH FRIENDS LIKE. THESE . ..

Caitland tried to sit up again, found it was still all he could do to turn his head toward her.

"You went out hi that storm by yourself?" She nodded, watching him, "You live here along?" Again the nod. "And you hauled me all the way—several kilometers—up here, and have been watching me for two days?"

"Yes."

Caitland's mind was calibrated according to a certain scale of values. Within that scale decisions on any matter came easy. None of this fit anywhere, however.

"Why?" he finally asked.

She smiled a patronizing smile that he ordinarily wouldn't have taken from anyone.

"Because you were dying, stupid, and that struck me as a waste. I don't know anything about your mind yet except that it doesn't include much on bad weather navigation, but you're fairly young and you've got an excellent body, still. And mine, mine's about shot. So I saw some possibilities. Not that I wouldn't have done the same for you if you'd been smaller than me and twenty kilos lighter. I'm just being honest with you, whoever you are."

"So where's the catch?" he wondered suspiciously. She'd been ladling something into a large bowl from the big kettle. Now she brought it over.

"In your pants, most probably, idiot. I might have expected a thank-you. No, not now. Drink this."

Caitland's temper dissolved at the first whiff of the bowl's contents. It was hot, and the first swallow of the soup-stew seared his insides like molten lead. But he finished it and asked for more.

By the fourth bowl he felt transformed, was even able to sit up slightly, carefully. He considered the situation.

This old woman was no threat. She obviously knew nothing about him and wouldn't have been much of a threat if she had. His friends might not find him for some time, if ever, depending on the condition of the

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radiocom broadcaster. And just now there was the distinct possibility that representatives from the other side of the law would be desirous of his company. He could just as soon do without that. Lawyers and cops had a way of tangling your explanations about things like self-defense.

So hi many respects this looked like a fine place to stay and relax. No one would find him in the Silver Spars and there was nowhere to walk to. He leaned back into the pillow.

Then he heard the singing.

The melody was incredibly complex, the rhythm haunting. It was made of organ pipes and flutes and maudlin bassoons, mournful oboes and a steadying backbeat, all interwoven to produce an alien serenity of sound no human orchestra could duplicate. Scattered through and around was a counterpoint of oddly ; metallic, yet not metal bells, a quicksilver tinkling like little girl-boy laughter.

Caitland knew that sound. Everyone knew that sound. The chimer tree produced it. The chimer tree, a mature specimen of which would fetch perhaps a hundred thousand credits.

But the music that sounded around the house was wilder, stronger, far more beautiful than anything Caitland in his prosaic, uncomplicated existence had ever imagined. He'd heard recordings taken from the famed chimer quartet in Geneva Garden. And he knew that only one thing could produce such an over-, powering wealth of sound—a chimer tree forest.

But there were no more chimer forests. Those scattered about the Chee world had long since been located, transplanted tree by tree, bartered and sold hi the first heady months of discovery by the initial load of colonists. And why not, considering the prices that were offered for them?

Chimer forests hadn't existed for nearly a hundred years, as best he could remember. And yet the sound could be of nothing else.

"That music," he murmured, entranced.

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She was sitting in a chair nearby, ignoring him in favor of the thick book in her lap. He tried to get out of bed, failed. "The music," he repeated.

"The forest, yes," she finally replied, confirming his guess. "I know what you're thinking: that it's impossible, that such a thing doesn't exist anymore. But it's both possible and true. The mountains have protected this forest, you see—the Silver Spars' inaccessibility, and also the fact that all the great concentrations of chimers were found far, far to the south of Holda-mere. Never this far east, never this far north.

"This forest is a freak, but it has survived, survived and developed in its isolation. This is a virgin forest, never cut, Mr...."

"Caitland, John Caitland."

"An untouched forest, Mr. Caitland. Unsoiled by the excavators or the predators, unknown to the music lovers." Her smile disappeared. ". . . To the music eaters, those whose desire for a musical toy in their homes destroyed the chimers."

"It's not their fault," Caitland objected, "that the chimers don't reproduce when transplanted. People will have what they want, and if there's enough money to pay for what they want, no mere law is going to prevent . . ." He stopped. That was too much already. "It's a damned shame they can't reproduce in captivity, but that's—"

"Oh but they can," the old woman broke in. "I can make them."

Caitland started to object, managed to stifle his natural reaction. He forced himself to think more slowly, more patiently than was his wont. This was a big thing. If this old bat wasn't looney from living alone out in the back of nowhere, and if she had found a way to make the chimers reproduce in captivity, then she could make a lot of people very very wealthy. Or a few people even wealthier. Caitland knew of at least one deserving candidate.

"I hadn't heard," he said warily, "that anyone had

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found a way to make the trees even grow after replanting."

"That's because I haven't told anyone yet," she replied crisply. "I'm not ready yet. There are some other things that need to be perfected for the telling first.

"Because if I announce my results and then demonstrate them, I'll have to use this forest. And if the eaters find this place, they'll transplant it, rip it up, take it apart, and sell it in pieces to the highest bidders. And then I won't be able to make anything reproduce, show anybody anything.

"And that will be the end of the chimer tree, because this is the last forest. When the oldest trees die a couple of thousand years from now there'll be nothing left but recordings, ghosts of shadows of the real thing. That's why I've got to finish my work here before I let the secret—and this location—out."

It made things much simpler for the relieved Caitland. She was crazy after all. Poor old bitch. He could understand it, the loneliness and constant alien singing of the trees and all. But she'd also saved his life. Caitland was not ungrateful. He would wait.

He wondered, in view of her long diatribe, if she'd try to stop him from leaving.

"Listen," he began experimentally, "when I'm well enough I'd like to leave here. I have a life to get back to, myself. I'll keep your secret, of course ... I understand and 'sympathize with you completely. How about a—?"

"I don't have a power flitter," she said.

"Well then, your fanship."

She shook her head, slowly.

"Ground buggy?" Another negative shake. Cait-land's brows drew together. Maybe she didn't have to worry about keeping him here. "Are you trying to tell me you have no form of transportation up here whatsoever?"

"Not exactly. I have Freia, my horse, and the wagon she pulls. That's all the transportation I need—

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that and what's left of my legs. Once a year an old friend airdrops me necessary supplies. He doesn't land and he's no botanist, so he's unaware of the nature of this forest. A miner, simple man, good man.

"My electronic parts and such, which I code-flash to his fan on his yearly pass over, constitute most of what he brings back to me. Otherwise," and she made an expansive gesture, "the forest supplies all my needs.'*

He tensed. "You have tridee or radio communication, for emergencies, with the—"

"No, young man, I'm completely isolated here. I like it that way."

He was wondering just how far off course the storm had carried him. "The nearest settlement—Vaan-land?"

She nodded. That was encouraging, at least. "How far by wagon?"

"The wagon would never make it. Terrain's too tough. Freia brought me in—and out one tune, and back again, but she's too old now, I'd say."

"On foot, then."

She looked thoughtful. "A man your size, in good condition, if he were familiar with the country . . . I'd say three to four months, barring mountain predators, avalanche, bad water, and other possibilities,"

So he would have to be found. He wasn't going to find his way out of here without her help, and she didn't seem inclined to go anywhere. Nor did threats of physical violence ever mean much to people who weren't right in the head.

Anyhow, it was silly to think about such things now. First, his leg and ribs had to mend. Better to get her back on a subject she was more enamored of. Something related to her delusions.

"How can you be so sure these trees can be made to reproduce after transplanting?"

"Because I found out why they weren't and the answer's simple. Any puzzle's easy to put together, provided none of the pieces fall off the table. If you're

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well enough to walk in a few days, I'll show you. The crutches I've got are short for you, but you'll manage."

The forest valley was narrow, the peaks cupping it between their flanks high and precipitous. Ages ago a glacier had cut this gorge. Now it was gone, leaving gray walls, green floor, and a roof of seemingly perpetual clouds, low-hanging clouds which shielded it from discovery by air.

The old woman, despite her disclaimers, seemed capable of getting around quite well. Caitland felt she could have matched his pace even if he weren't burdened with the crutches, though she insisted any strenuous climbing was past her.

Despite the narrowness of the valley, the forest was substantial in extent. More important, the major trees were an astonishing fifty-percent chimer. The highest density in the records was thirty-seven percent. That had been in the great Savanna forest on the south continent, just below the capital city of Danover. It had been stripped several hundred years ago.

Katie expounded on the forest at length, though resisting the obvious urge to talk nonstop to her first visitor in—another question Caitland had meant to ask.

Chimer trees of every age were here, mature trees at least fifteen hundred years old; old trees, monarchs of the forest that had sung their songs through twice that span; and youngsters, from narrow boles only a few hundred years old down to sprouting shoots no bigger than a blade of grass.

Everything pointed to a forest that was healthy and alive, a going biological concern of a kind only dreamed about in botanical texts. And he was limping along in the middle of it, one of only two people in the universe aware of its existence.

It wasn't the constant alien music, or the scientific value that awed him. It was the estimated number of chimer trees multiplied by some abstract figures. The lowest estimate Caitland could produce ran into the hundreds of millions.

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He could struggle into Vaanland, register claim to this parcel of backland, and—and nothing. One of the things that made Caitland an exceptional man among his type was that he respected his own limitations. This was too big for him. He was not a developer, not a front man, not a Big Operator.

Very well, he would simply take his cut as discoverer and leave the lion's share for those who knew how to exploit it. His percentage would be gratefully paid. There was enough here for everyone.

He listened to the music, at once disturbing and infectious, and wished he could understand the scientific terms the old woman was throwing at him.

The sun had started down when they headed back toward the house—cabin, Caitland had discovered, with an adjoining warehouse. Nearly there, Katie stopped, panting slightly. More lines showed in her face now, lines and strain from more than age.

"Can't walk as far as I used to. That's why I need Freia, and she's getting on, too." She put a hand out, ran a palm up and down one booming young sapling. "Magnificent, isn't it?" She looked back at him.

"You're very privileged, John. Few people now alive have heard the sound of a chimer forest except on old recordings. Very privileged." She was watching him closely. "Sometimes I wonder..." "Yeah," he muttered uncomfortably. She left the tree, moved to him and felt his chest under the makeshift shirt she'd sewn him. "I mended this clothing as best I could, and I tried to do the same with you. I'm no doctor. How do your ribs feel?"

"I once saw a pet wolfhound work on an old steak bone for a couple of weeks before he'd entirely finished with it. That's what they feel like."

She removed her hand. "They're healing. They'll continue to do so, provided you don't go falling out of storms in the next couple of months." She started on

again.

He followed, keeping pace with ease, taking up great spaces with long sweeps of the crutches. His bulk

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dwarfed her. Towering above, he studied the wasted frame, saw the basic lines of the face and body. She'd been a great beauty once, he finally decided. Now she was like a pressed flower to a living one.

What, he wondered, had compelled her to bury herself in this wilderness? The forest kept her, but what had brought her hi the first place?

"Look," he began, "it looks like I'm going to be here for a while." She was watching him, and laughed at that. She was always watching him, not staring, but not looking away, either. Did she suspect something? How could she? That was nonsense. And if she did, he could dispose of her easily, quickly. The ribs and leg would scarcely interfere. He could...

"I'd like to earn my keep." The words shocked him even as he mouthed the request

"With those ribs? Are you crazy, young man? I admit I might have thought of much the same thing, but—"

"I don't sponge off anyone, lady—Katie. Habit." She appeared to consider, replied, "All right. I think I know an equally stubborn soul when I see one. Heaven knows there are a lot of things I'd like to have done that this body can't manage. I'll show them to you and when you feel up to it, you can start in on them."

He did, too, without really knowing why. He told himself it was to keep his mind occupied and lull any suspicions she might develop—and believed not a word of his thoughts.

He hauled equipment, rode with her in the rickety wagon to check unrecognizable components scattered the length and breadth of the valley, cut wood, repaired a rotting section of wall in the warehouse, repaired the cabin roof, tended to Freia and the colt— and tried to ignore those piercing eyes, those young-old blue eyes that never left him.

And because he wouldn't talk about himself much, they spent spare moments and evenings talking about her, and her isolation, and the how and why of it.

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She found the forest nearly thirty years ago and had been here constantly, excepting one trip, ever since. In that tune she'd confirmed much that was suspected, all that was known, and made many new discoveries about the singing trees.

They began to make music when barely half-meter high snoots, and retained that ability till the last vein of sap dried in the aged trunk. They could grow to a height of eight meters and a base diameter of ten.

Chimers had been uprooted and transplanted since their music-making abilities had been first discovered. At one time it seemed there was hardly a city, a town, a village, or wealthy individual that didn't own one or two of of the great trees.

Seemingly, they thrived in their new environments, thrived and sang. But they would not reproduce— from seeds, from cuttings, nothing. Not even in the most controlled greenhouse ecology, in which other plants from Chee survived and multiplied. Only the chimer died out.

But few of those wealthy music lovers had ever heard a whole forest sing, Caitland reflected.

The song of the forest, he noticed, varied constantly. The weather would affect it, the cry of animals, the time of day. It never stopped, even at night.

She explained to him how the trees sang, how the semiflexible hollow trunk and the rippling protrusions inside controlled the flow of air through the reverberating bole to produce an infinite range of sound. How the trunk sound was complemented by the tinkling bells—chimes—on the branches. Chimes which were hard, shiny nuts filled with loose seeds.

With the vibration of the main trunk, the branches would quiver, and the nuts shake, producing a light, faintly bell-like clanging.

"And that's why," she finally explained to him, "the chimers won't reproduce in captivity. I've calculated that reproduction requires the presence of a minimum of two hundred and six healthy, active trees.

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"Can you think of any one city, any one corporation, any one system that could afford two hundred and six chimers of a proper spread of maturity?"

Of course he couldn't. No system, not even Terra-Sol, could manage that kind of money for artistic purr poses.

"You see," she continued, "it takes that number of trees, singing in unison, to stimulate the bola beetle to lay its eggs. Any less and it's like an orchestra playing a symphony by Mahler. You can take out, say, the man with the cowbell and it will still sound like a symphony, but it won't be the right symphony. The bola beetle is a fastidious listener."

She dug around in the earth, came up with a pair of black, stocky bugs about the size of a thumbnail. They scrambled for freedom.

"When the nuts are exactly ripe, the forest changes to a specific highly intricate melody with dozens of variations. The beetles recognize it immediately. They climb the trees and lay their eggs, several hundred per female, within the hollow space of the nuts. The loose seeds inside, at the peak of ripeness, provide food for the larvae while the hard shell protects them from predators. And it all works out fine from the bola's point of view—except for the tumbuck.

"That small six-legger that looks like an oversized guinea pig?"

"That's the one. The tumbuck, John, knows what that certain song means, too. It can't climb, but it's about the only critter with strong enough teeth to crack a chimer nut. When the ripe nuts drop to the ground, it cracks them open and uses its long, thin tongue to hunt around inside the nut, not to scoop out the seeds, which it ignores, but the insect eggs.

"It's the saliva of the tumbuck, deposited as it seeks out the bola eggs, which initiates the germinating process. The tumbuck leaves the nut alone and goes off hi search of other egg-filled ones. Meanwhile the seed is still protected by most of its shell.

"Stimulated by the chemicals and dampness of the

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tumbuck saliva, the first roots are sent out through the crack in the shell and into the ground. The young plant lives briefly inside the shell and finally grows out through the same crack toward the light.

"It's the song of the massed trees that's the key. That's what took me twenty years to figure out. No wonder bola beetles and tumbucks ignored the nuts of the transplanted chimers. The music wasn't right. You need at least two hundred and six trees—the full orchestra."

Caitland sat on the wooden bench cut from a section of log and thought about this. Some of it he didn't understand. What he could understand added up to something strange and remarkable and utterly magnificent, and it made him feel terrible.

"But that's not all, John Caitland. My biggest discovery started as a joke on myself, became a hobby, then an obsession." There was a twinkle in her eyes that matched the repressed excitement in her voice. "Come to the back of the warehouse."

A metal cabinet was set out there, one Caitland had never seen her open before. Leads from it were connected, he knew, to a number of complex antennae mounted on the warehouse roof. They had nothing to do with long-range communications, he knew, so he'd ignored them.

The instrumentation within the cabinet was equally unfamiliar. Katie ran her hand up and down the bole of a young chimer that grew almost into the cabinet, then moved her hands over the dials and switches within. She leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes, one hand resting on a last switch, the other stroking the trunk, like a cat, almost.

"Now look, John, and tell me what you feel." She threw the switch.

For long seconds there was nothing different, only the humming of the bat-winged mammals that held the place of birds here. And that familiar song of the forest.

But even as he strained all his senses for he knew

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not what, the song changed. It changed unabashedly and abruptly, astoundingly, fantastically.

Gloriously.

_ Something grand thundered out of the forest around him, something too achingly lovely to be heard. It was vaguely familiar, but utterly transformed by the instrument of the forest, like a tarnished angel suddenly made clean and holy again.

To Caitland, whose tastes had never advanced beyond the basal popular music of the time, this sudden outpouring of human rhythm couched in alien terms was at once a revelation and a mystery. Blue eyes opened and she stared at him as the music settled into a softer mode, rippling, pulsing about and through them.

"Do you like it?'*

"What?" he mumbled lamely, overpowered, awed.

"Do you like it?'*

"Yeah. Yeah, I like it." He leaned back against the wall of the cabin and listened, let the new thing shudder and work its way into him, felt the vibrations in the wood wall itself. "I like it a lot It's . . ." and he finished with a feeling of horrible inadequacy, "... nice."

"Nice?" she murmured, the one hand still caressing the tree. "It's glorious, it's godlike—it's Bach. The 'Toccato and Fugue in D Minor,' of course."

They listened to the rest of it in silence. After the Jast thundering chord had died away and the last echo had rumbled off the mountainsides, and the forest had resumed its normal chant, he looked at her and asked. "How?"

"Twelve years of experimentation, of developing proper stimulus procedures and designing the hardware and then installing it. The entire forest is weird. You've helped me fix some of the older linkages yourself. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response. Try and try and try again, and give up in disgust, and go" back for another try.

"My first successful effort was 'row, row, row your

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boat.* It took me nine years to get one tree to do that. But from then on response has been phenomenal. I've reduced programming time to three months for an hour's worth of the most complex Terran music. Once a pattern is learned, the forest always responds to the proper stimulus signal. The instrumental equivalents are not the same, of course."

"They're better," Caitland interrupted. She smiled.

"Perhaps. I like to think so. Would you like to hear something special? The repertoire of the forest is still limited, but there's the chance that—"

"I don't know," he answered. "I don't know much about music. But I'd like to learn, I think."

"All right then, John Caitland. You sit yourself

down and relax."

She adjusted some switches in the console cabinet, then leaned back against her tree. "It was observing the way the slight movements caused by the vibrations seemed to complement each other that first gave me the clue to their reproductive system, John. We have a few hours left before supper." She touched the last

switch.

"Now this was by another old Terran composer." Olympian strains rolled from the trees around them as the forest started the song of another world's singer.

"His name was Beethoven," she began.

Caitland listened to the forest and to her for many days. Exactly how many he never knew because he didn't keep track. He forgot a lot of things while he was listening to the music and didn't miss them.

He would have been happy to forget them forever, only they refused to be forgotten. They were waiting for him in—the form of three men—one day. He recognized them all, shut the cabin door slowly behind

him.

"Hello, John," said Morris softly. Wise, easygoing,

ice-hard Morris,

Three of them, his employer and two associates. Associates of his, too,

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"We'd given you up for lost," Morris continued. "I was more than just pleased when the old lady here told us you were all right. That was a fine job you did, John, a fine job. We know because the gentleman in 'question never made his intended appointment."

"John." He looked over at Katherine. She was sitting quietly hi her rocking chair, watching them. "These gentlemen came down in a skimmer, after lunch. They said they were friends of yours. How did you do on the broadcast unit?"

"Fixed some wiring, put hi a new power booster," he said automatically. "They're business associates, Katie."

"Rich business associates," added Ari, the tall man standing by the stove. He was examining the remains of a skinned ascholite—dinner. He was almost as big as Caitland. Their similarities went further than size.

"It's not like you to keep something like this to yourself, John," Morris continued, in a reserved tone that said Caitland had one chance to explain things and it had better be good.

Caitland moved into the main room, put his backpack and other equipment carefully onto the floor. If his body was moving casually his mind was not. He's already noticed that neither Ari nor Hashin had any weapons out; but that they were readily available went without saying. Caitland knew Morris's operating methodology too well for that—he'd beenj a cog in it himself for three years now. A respected, well-paid cog.

He spoke easily, and why not, it was the truth.

"There's no fan or flitter here, not even a motorbike, Mr. Morris. You can find that out for yourself, if you want to check. Also no telecast equipment, no way of communicating with the outside world at all."

"I've seen enough electronic equipment to cannibalize a simple broadcast set," the leader of the little group countered.

"I guess maybe there is, if you're a com engineer,"

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Caitland retorted. Morris appeared to find that satisfactory, even smiled slightly.

"True enough. Brains aren't your department, after all, John." Caitland said nothing.

"Even so, John, considering a find like this," he shook his head, "I'm surprised you didn't try to hike

out."

"Hike out how, Mr. Morris? The storm blew me to hell and gone. I had no idea where I was, a busted leg, a bunch of broken ribs, plus assorted bruises, contusions, and strains. I wasn't in any shape to walk anyplace, even if I'd known where I was in relation to Vaanland. How did you find me, anyway? Not by the automatic com caster, or you'd have been here weeks

ago."

"No, not by that, John." Morris helped himself to the remaining chair. "You're a good man. The best. Too good to let rot up here. We knew where you were to go to cancel the appointment. I had a spiral charted from there and a lot of autofliers out hunting for you. "They spotted the wreckage of your fan three days ago. I got here as fast as I could. Dropped the business, everything." He rose, walked to a window and looked outside, both hands resting on the sill.

"Now I see it was all worth waiting for. Any idea how many trees there must be in this valley, Caitland?" He ought to be overjoyed at this surprise arrival. He tried to look overjoyed.

"Thousands," Morris finished for him, turning from the window. "Thousands. We'll file a formal claim first thing back in Vaanland. You're going to be rich, John. Rich beyond dream. I hope you don't retire on it—I need you. But maybe we'll all retire, because we're all going to be rich.

"I've waited for something like this, hoped for it all my life, but never expected anything of this magnitude. Only one thing bothers me." He turned sharply to stare at the watching Katherine. "Has she filed a claim on it?"

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"No," Caitland told him. "It should still be open land." Morris relaxed visibly.

"No problem, then. Who is she, anyway?"

"A research botanist," Caitland informed him, and then the words tumbled out in a rapid stream. "She's found a way to make the trees reproduce after transplanting, but you need a full forest group, at least two hundred and six trees for it. If you leave at least that many, out of the thousands, we'll be able to mine it like a garden, so there'll always be some trees avail-ble."

"That's a good idea, John, except that two hundred and six trees works out to about twenty million credits. What are you worrying about saving them for? They live two, sometimes three thousand years. I don't plan to be around then. I'd rather have my cash now, wouldn't you?"

"Ari?" Caitland's counterpart looked alert. "Go to the skimmer and call Nohana back at the lodge; Give him the details, but just enough so that he'll know what piece of land to register. Tell him to hop down to Vaanland and buy it up on the sly. No one should ask questions about a piece of territory this remote, anyway."

The other nodded, started for the door but found a small, gray-haired woman blocking his way.

"I'm sorry, young man," she said tightly, looking up at him, "I can't let you do that." She glanced frantically at Caitland, then at Morris and Hashin. "You can't do this, gentlemen. I won't permit it. Future generations—"

"Future generations will survive no matter what happens today," Morris said easily.

"That's not the point. It's what they'll survive in that—"

"Lady, I work hard for my money.. I do a lot of things I'd rather not do for it, if I had my druthers. Now, it seems, I do. Don't lecture me. I'm not in the mood."

"You mustn't do this."

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WITH FMENDS LIKE THESE . .. "Get out of my way, old woman," rumbled Ari

warningly.

"Katie, get out of his way," Caitland said quietly.

"It'll be all right, you'll see."

She glared at him, azure eyes wild, tears starting. "These are subhumans, John. You can't talk to them, you can't reason with them. Don't you understand? They don't think like normal human beings, they haven't the same emotions. Their needs spring from

vile depths that—"

"Warned you," Ari husked. A massive hand hit her on the side of the head. The thin body slammed into the doorsill, head meeting wood loudly, and crumpled soundlessly to the floor. Ari stepped over one bent withered leg and reached for the handle. Caitland broke his neck.

There was no screaming, no yells, no sounds except for the barely articulate inhuman growl that might have come from Caitland's throat. Hashin's gun turned a section of the wall where Caitland had just stood into smoking charcoal. As he spun, he threw the huge corpse of the dead Ari at the gunman.

It hit with terrible force, broke his jaw and nose. Splinters from the shattered nose bone pierced the brain. Morris had a high-powered projectile weapon. He put four of the tiny missiles into Caitland's body before the giant beat him into permanent silence.

It was still in the room for several minutes. Eventually, one form stirred, rose slowly to its feet. A bruise mark the size of a small plate forming on her temple, Katherine staggered over to where Caitland lay draped across the bulging-eyed, barely human form of Morris. She rolled the big man off the distorted corpse. None of the projectiles had struck anything vital. She stopped the bleeding, removed the two metal cylinders still in the body, wrestled the enormous limp form

into bed.

It was time to wait for him again.

Caitland stayed with her in the mountains for an-230

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other sixteen years. It was only during the last two that she grew old with a speed that appalled and stunned him. When the final disease took hold, it was nothing exotic or alien, just oldness. The overworked body was worn out.

She'd been on the bed for days now, the silvered hair spread out like steel powder behind her head, the wrinkles uncamoufiaged by smiles anymore, the energy in the glacier-blue eyes fading slowly.

"I think I'm going to die, John."

He didn't reply. What could one say?

"I'm scared." He took the flimsy hand in his own. "I want it to be outside. I want to hear the forest again,

John."

He scooped up the frighteningly thin form, blankets and all, and took her outside. There was a lounge chair he'd built for her a year ago, next to the young tree by the control cabinet.

"... hear the forest again, John..." He nodded and went to the console (which he'd long since become as expert at operating as she), thought a moment, then set the instrumentation. They'd added a lot of programming these past years, from her endless crates of tapes.

The alien chant faded, to be replaced by a familiar melody, one of his and her favorites.

"I can't reach the tree, John," came the whispery, paper-thin voice. He moved the lounge a little nearer to the tree, took her arm, and pressed her hand against the expanding, contracting trunk. She had to touch the tree, of course. Not only because she loved the forest and its music, but for the reason he'd discovered fifteen years ago.

The reason why she always followed him with her eyes—so she could see his face, his throat ... his

lips.

She'd been completely deaf since the age of twelve. No wonder she'd been so sensitive to the vibrations of the trees. No wonder she'd been so willing to isolate

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herself, to leave the rest of a forever incomprehensible mankind behind. No wonder.

There was a cough after an hour or so. Gradually cold crept into the other hand, the one he held. He folded it over the shallow chest, brought the other one across, too. Crying he'd have none of. He was too familiar with death to cry in its presence.

Instead he watched as the music played out its end and the sun went down and the stars appeared, foam-like winking friends of evening looking down at them.

Someday soon he would go down and tell the rest of mankind what lived and thrived and sang up here in a deep notch of the Silver Spars. Someday when he thought they were hungry and deserving enough. But for a little while longer he would stay. He and the shell of this remarkable woman, and Freia's daughter, and listen to the music.

He sat down, his back against the comforting massage of the pulsing bark, and stared up into the out-flung branches where loose seeds rang like bells inside hard-shelled nuts and the towering trunk exhaled magnificence into the sky.

This part coming up now, this part he knew well. The tree expanded suddenly, shuddered and moaned, and the thunder of the rising crescendo echoed down the valley as thrice a thousand chimers piled variation and chorus and life into it

Beethoven, it was.

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